Finally, something smooth!!!

Wow!!!  Go USCIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  We went in this morning for our fingerprinting (even though our appointment was for the 30th).

They open at 8am and we got there around 8:20, parked in a munimeter spot 1 block away (which is pretty much a miracle down there!), and we were done and out by 8:40.  The longest part of the process was waiting in the security line to enter the building.

best.government.office.ever!  Way better than the NYC offices like 1PP and the county clerk!

Staff were courteous, polite, and spoke english fluently, and the building/process was not crowded or backed up at all. It was so great that Ababa and I actually both took the time to fill out and hand in the comment cards!

So, YAY!!!!  Hopefully our I-171H is being processed as I post this and it will arrive in the mail soon (we're out of town next week so hoping we have a great suprise when we get back in town) then Ababa can do the last step of certification on 3/21!

Today I am calling with a few questions for our agency, namely is it ok that on my notarized medical form(which is a huge pain in the rear to get done b/c we have to bring a traveling notary to the Dr and this is the second time we've had to do it b/c our new agency requires a different medical form that our first agency) my Dr wrote that she just met me and had no idea if my immunizations were current (despite the fact that I've been her patient for 4 years, just saw her in Nov, and a year ago she did all my immunizations for grad school-including getting my vaccine records and administering a blood test for MMR antibodies that resulted in me having to get another MMR booster--all of which is documented in my chart which she clearly did not read while filling out this form...I wish I could find a Dr that I like in NYC)! Let's hope the form is still ok!!!!!

But, all groaning aside, if our medical forms are acceptable, there will be 1 day of Ababa running around city and state offices to get our dossier certified when our I-171H arrives and then we can send our dossier through the authentication process in DC and to Ethiopia!!!!  And then our paperchase will be done for now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We are praying that our dossier is in ET by 3/28!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and that our agency has been diligent about B's paperchase even with all the recent changes in regulations and that his paperwork will be ready to be submitted to court!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

One step closer to sweet baby-B (who is really starting to look like an adorable big boy in his photos:-)

On the have my cake and eat it too front-there was a clear reason why I was freaked and it's b/c my spidey sense told me that the proposed situation was no good. Well, it all became clear this weekend and I am so glad that it did!  So, we'll see what other interesting opportunities are out there or if I should focus on making the "cake" I have more palatable!

FINGERPRINTING!!!

Guess who is going to try to crash the local USCIS office tomorrow morning to try and get our prints done early?!?!?!?!  Yep, mama, ababa, and..., well not woosha, but we could get a paw print for solidarity:-)

Here's hoping that USCIS is not backed-up tomorrow morning and we can be in and out!

Fingerprinting

Status Update: We both got fingerprinted today and we scheduled our physicals for early November.  Ababa's birth certificate arrived in a record 24 hours!  We got our money's worth out of that express service fee! I changed my name at Social Security and submitted or bank letter requests...but...I am sending in some additional paper work so that the letter will have my new full legal name b/c apparently foreign governments are even more picky about names matching than the U.S. government. We'll give another update on Friday but it's looking good to accomplish all our tasks for this week.

For fingerprinting we each went to different places near our work.  Gone are the days of ink fingerprinting, it's now all done via a scanner.  I took a cab to my appointment, but traffic was horrible.  I needed to get to 36 and 7th Avenue.  On the west side of 9th Avenue and 34th my cabbie decided he was off-duty and refused to go any further.  So I speed walked/jogged to the appointment.  Needless to say my usually sweaty palms were out of control and the technician and I were both uncertain if the scan would work...but it did!  Thanks to some persistent paper toweling:-) For some reason we'll have to get finger printed again after our I-600A form is filed.  That's called biometric fingerprinting. I'm not really sure how that's different than what we got done today, but our home study agency said for sure we'll have to get another set of prints done then.  I'll keep you posted:-)