Do you hear that laughing, or is it just in my head?
I came darn close to losing it when I received an email (on my 40th birthday, btw)
saying we would get another email "next week" in place of the approval I anticipated . . .
but Eric talked me down,
after I typed up a response voicing my dismay at their continued delaying of our son's approval,
which I did not send,
by reminding me of the wording of their message:
Dear Ms. Edmunds,
We are working diligently to finalize the adjudication of your current I-600 petition. You should receive by next week a notice of your I-600 approval.
Regards,
Adoption Team
I added the bold type, but see that wording?
Finally, they promised approval, not just another email.
Part of me is in "I will believe it when I see it" mode.
I am pleased, but I know better than to get thrilled YET.
******************************************
So here is something I've been mulling over --
a parent asked the question on Facebook:
"For those who have their kiddos home, what was your total wait time from beginning of home study to arriving home with your child?"
The responses, well, some of them, made me hypertensive.
18 months
21 months
26 months
22 months
16 months!!
Are you kidding me??
We are over 3 years, just from home study to homecoming,
and that does not include some of the other "prep" to adopt.
In the fall of 2010, we met Sister Carmelle
and that is when we were invited to travel to Haiti and meet the children who could be adopted.
We made our first trip to Fondwa the following February (2011),
and that is when we met our son and first fell in love with him.
We went home and immediately set to work, contacting our home study agency and gathering documents.
We filed our I-600A with the Department of Homeland Security (seeking to be labeled "qualified" to adopt), and had approval and an official, legal home study by August 23rd. All of our vital information and documents registered, including a very thorough financial expose of our family, were compiled into a dossier that traveled to the Haitian Consulate in Chicago for legalization before landing on our attorney's desk in Port-au-Prince on October 21, 2011.
This is where we hit our first major speed bump.
While the dossier arrived in Haiti in October 2011,
it remained with our lawyer until September 14, 2012,
when he FINALLY submitted the documents to IBESR (the Haitian equivalent of social services).
11 months lost
We visited our boys . . .
oh, if you haven't read far enough back on this blog, you may not realize that we were originally adopting two beautiful sons from Fondwa.
It's a very long story, and my intention is not to recount our entire timeline here,
but I'll just say that A LOT happened during those 11 months.
Anyway,
our timeline sucks compared to those mentioned above.
From home study completion to homecoming, we = 33 months,
or, as normal folk would say, 2 years and 9 months.
Since we decided to adopt: 3 years and 6 months.
(The ticker at the top of the blog is from the day we were given permission to be Dimitry's forever family.)
I suppose what matters is that we continue to believe that God called us to adopt from Haiti,
and the connection we have to Dimitry is blessed.
He is our son and we are his family.
God willing,
this will be the final month of our separation.
I've already played through the possible dates multiple times . . .
If we receive official approval on Monday,
it is plausible that we could be notified of his visa appointment date by the end of the week,
however,
should they wait until the middle of the week,
we may not know when we'll be reunited with this beautiful child until the following week.
*Heavy Sigh*
It is coming, though.We've come a long way . . .
Now we just need to get our baby home.
It's been a very, very long time coming.
Too long without a family.
Too long waiting.
I miss him so much.
I just hope that he has some idea of how much he is loved and wanted.
I pray that his heart is prepared for the changes that lie ahead.
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