wait for a girl? 10/31

Well with the approach of our CIS approval looming closer now we will have to make a decision. Do we want to wait 8 months for a boy or 24 months for a girl. We wanted our kids to be close in age and we've been telling Shawn he was going to get a little brother. But we also both sort of wanted one of each. The longer wait will mean the kids are farther apart in age, and less likely to be as 'close' to each other, plus a boy and a girl will be less close (most likely) than two boys. Waiting longer will mean Shawn will be a little more independent and maybe do better with not being the center of attention. But it will also mean if we leave him home with my parents he will be more aware of our absence. And possibly more excited to see his little sister too. A longer wait time also means more time to save the money, but also means spending more money to renew our CIS approval, since it only lasts 18 months and will need to be redone.

Decisions..decisions.

Hurray court document arrived! 10/27

A mere 4 months after the request was made the disposition finally arrived. It turned out the case had been dismissed, but Dave hadn't remembered that. So all this waiting could have been avoided, but we got it and I mailed it off to USCIS yesterday. Hopefully we will get our approval within a couple weeks!

expedited my butt 10/18

Well Dave has been calling every other day for the last week and a half to find out what the hell is taking so long to send us the court documents. Yesterday he spoke to someone who said it had been mailed. Hopefully we will have it soon!

Educational Meeting 10/9

Well we attended another educational meeting last night. The topic was on attachment. The speaker, who is also the manager of the Kansas City branch spoke a lot from her own experience with her daughter from China and her son from Vietnam. She had some interesting things to say and we will probably just have to deal with attachment issues if/when they arise.
There were two families who had returned with their children from Vietnam (a boy and a girl) and they were so cute. Makes me want to have one even sooner now. There were 5 other Vietnam families at the meeting and they are all ahead of us in the game, but that's how it goes. We were told at the meeting that the wait time from dossier to travel is about A YEAR currently. It just gets longer and longer. It is so frustrating because we haven't even started on a dossier, still being stuck on the I171 stuff.
Shawn cried again when we dropped him off in the child care room, but was happy after we left. Apparently we will be attending meetings for quite some time so hopefully he will be better about being left them as we continue going.

A response from CIS already?! 9/26

Well we got a letter from CIS last Tuesday, but it wasn't our I171. It was them saying they needed wording changed in the homestudy and also a copy of the court disposition of the charge Dave had as a minor. Nikki is going to work on getting wording corrected and Dave called the court because he had made the request for the disposition back on 6/27 and it was actually approved to have it sent to him last month but they just never got around to sending it. They said they would expedite retrieving it from archives and then we can forward it to CIS. But it seems like there are so many hold ups with this adoption. I know there must be a reason for all the delays we've experienced so far, but atleast with a pregnancy you know it will last about 40 weeks, there are so many ifs with an adoption I like having more solid timelines and knowing what to expect. We have done lots of research and do know mostly what to expect, but this hold up wasn't expected. So we just take the obstacles as they come and deal with them. Hopefully we will receive the documents we need to forward to CIS this week and we'll get our I171 approval shortly.