Dossier ready but whew, what a day!

I'll post more tomorrow, for now, here was our day:

Ababa drove me to work so we could get our I-171H and final dossier docs notarized, the car stalled in the middle of West End Avenue. We missed our notary appointment, had to push the car out of the middle of the road, and had to have it towed back uptown....in the rain...

I walked the rest of the way to work, Ababa joined me after "Tool" (our car) was hooked up to the tow truck.

We spent 2 hours getting the final papers notarized and making copies and double checking that everything was in order.

Ababa went down to the county clerk office and the new york state department office to get our affadavit and power of attorney certified.  He spent 3 hours waiting in line and then learned that he needed to be in another line first and they were closing at 3:30 today!  He sweet talked his way through the other line, "please, my wife and I are adopting and this is the last paper we need and it has to be certified today..." and all these jaded New Yorkers tapped into their inner kindness and LET HIM CUT THE LINE!  He made it back to the other line and got certified with just minutes to spare.

On his way home Ababa was on-track to drop our dossier in Express Mail with the requisite money orders (and to check on the car at the mechanic) BUT...he was stuck underground on the subway for MORE THAN 2 HOURS!  Because...there was "an unauthorized body on the tracks" (yep, someone died!) and they shut the power down to the whole subway line!

So, he missed the express mail pick-up and the mechanic.  We'll try again tomorrow morning.

Meanwhile, I was at work trying to do 8 hours worth of work in 4 so that I could leave on-time to take a midterm at school, and now I am supposed to be writing a final paper for another class that is due tomorrow.  Oh, and the State Department released another statement today saying that even though people seem to be moving through court quickly right now MOWA is still holding firm to the 5 cases per day once this backlog is cleared.  So, who knows when we will pass court for B!

We are taking things one day at a time and moving forward in faith that God will bring this sweet little boy into our family in His time...we just wish we knew what that time was...:-)

So, back to the paper for school, but suffice it to say, today was one h*ll of a day, especially for Ababa!

It's here!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Were you blinded today?  By a flash of light?  A ray of sun...nope...that's the gleam from my ear-to-ear grin...I can't stop smiling...OUR I-171H ARRIVED TODAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  God is so good!

I have a midterm tomorrow and a paper due Wednesday so I'm trying to work on those things, but Ababa and I are combing over our dossier one last time, have an appointment first thing tomorrow with the notary, and then Ababa will get the last few documents certified by NY, pop the whole thing in FedEx to DC to get certified there, and hopefully our dossier will be in Ethiopia next week!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Please pray that this all goes smoothly, that B's lifebook and paperwork are all ready to go, and that we can be submitted to court as soon as our paperwork arrives in Addis.

Ray of sunshine!

Ah, the rollercoaster of international adoption! 

We would like a big family with several (many!) children, and have no intention of being a "one and done" family, but the pain of this "labor" will have to fade a lot before we would consider another international adoption! Maybe, like childbirth, this gets easier with successive children...?

Anway, here's today's hopfully good news:

I just got off the phone with someone helpful from USCIS who said we are being assigned a caseworker today (we were apparently in the next batch of cases to be assigned).  Please pray with us that the processing will go quickly and we will receive this I-171H in the mail early next week!

Last year the courts closed from August 6-September 28 for the rainy season. When they re-open there is a backlog of cases so it can sometimes take longer to get a court date then.

So, with a new normal of 6-12 week wait (or longer) to hear a court date and a 5-12 week wait (or longer) from learning our court date to when it actually happens, and then often another week or two until the MOWA letter is ready and we officially pass court...if we get our I-171H next week and get our completed dossier authenticated and sent to Ethiopia in the first two weeks of April, there is still a decent chance that we can pass court before the closing (Embassy appointments continue during the rainy season...). After April 15 I think our chances will start to rapidly decline.

Of course, with all this work on our end, being ready to pass court assumes on B's end that the agency staff in ET have assembled all his paperwork in accordance with the new and ever changing guidelines, that his lifebook is ready (a documented thorough investigation of his history and how he came to be at the orphanage that our agency is now issuing to help provide clear documentation to the Embassy and ensure as best they can that everything about how B came to the orphanage was ethical and that adoption is the option his remaining relatives want for him and really the only viable option for him), and that there are no big glitches in the system. We keep checking-in with our agency re the status of B's paperwork, birth certificates, death certificates, interviews, government paperwork, lifebook, etc. and just keep hearing that they know it is in process but they don't know how close to being done it is...

B's birthday is at the end of October.  He already had his second birthday in an ophanage, we are really hoping that his third birthday will be with his mama and ababa in NYC!

Super craptastic day...

Well, after several hours in the auto-phone system and on email with USCIS it seems that our I-171H is not close to being issued...every prospective adoptive parent I have talked to in the past 3-4 months has gotten their I-171H within about 2 weeks after fingerprinting.  Apparently not us...

We are now well into 3 weeks and no sign of our I-171H so I reached out to USCIS.  After a bunch of run arounds for a receipt number that was not on our fingerprinting receipts, we learned that our case has still not been assigned to a case worker and that USCIS is estimating 75 days from receipt of I-1600A to processing (and approx. 30 days from receipt to be assigned a case worker).

The first reps I spoke to online said the number we had couldn't be tracked in the online system and was being processed by the local center, but I was under the impression that all I-600A applications were being processed through the central processing center.

Also, our receipt number starts with SIM (which the caseworker on email said all of their case receipts start with) but the USCIS site it specifically says: The 13-character application receipt number can be found on application notices you have received from the USCIS.  It begins with three letters such as (EAC, WAC, LIN, or SRC).  When I called the first few times they specifically said only those letters were what could begin the receipt number. Our receipt number with SIM doesn't work in the online system either...


Shocker, there seems to be an issue here...I wish that USCIS could get their story straight and get our I-171H issued ASAP!

We are at 40 days from receipt of our application and no sign of a case worker...

Sigh...!  We could really use a good break right now!!!

B-we love you and are trying to bring you home as soon as possible!