Fingerprinting and frustration

It's been an extremely hectic week and we are both still exhausted. Bridal season is in full force and I decided it would be a good idea to add more onto that and sell scarves at the Farmers Market this year. Don't get me wrong, I'm excited about it and glad to be working, I just desperately need an intern or something. I did get some scarves done yesterday, though, so progress is being made.

Adoption news, since that's why you come here. We had our fingerprinting appointment on the 6th. It went off without a hitch. In and out in about 10 minutes with smiles on our faces and a couple extra hours together. Sweet! Now we have to wait for an officer and approval. This is where the frustration comes into place. See, in order to be approved, we have to be assigned an officer, but they are backed up right now and we will likely have to wait another week or two (though I intend to call them tomorrow and check on the status). Once we get approved, we have to make a copy of the approval letter (which will take a few days to reach us), have that notarized, then certified with secretary of state (another 3-5 business days), send it with all our other paperwork to our courier in D.C. so that she can get it US authenticated (about 4 days) and then authenticated with the Chinese embassy (another few days). Then we wait for it to ship to us, and ship it all together to our agency. This fancy package is our completed dossier (I know, "completed" is an awesome word to say at this point!). The dossier gets reviewed and translated (about 10 business days) and sent to China, who check it over and give us our LID (log in date: the date we officially begin waiting, it's usually another week or so). At this point we are what many adoptive parents call "paper pregnant".

"So what's the big deal? It's coming up so soon!" you may be saying. Well, if you do the math, there is basically no way of our dossier being ready to send to China before mid-late June. Technically, we can't have an LID until June 21st (my 30th b-day) but I was hoping we could have it really close to that. It shouldn't matter, and in the long-term it really doesn't, but I am super bummed to have another week or two if delay. We've been waiting over 2 years for this and I hate waiting longer than I had planned. I know, it's weird, but that's just how it is right now. Who knows, maybe we'll luck out and get approved this week and still be able to be on-track for a mid-June LID.

So there it is. I've been having a bit of a pity party for myself this week, but I'm trying to keep the guest list very small. I keep thinking how nice it will be to not have to worry about what papers need certification and how long it takes for letters to travel from here to Texas. Waiting for our referral will be tough, but being able to focus solely on work is what I need right now.

On a more personal note, I've been missing our girl really bad this weekend. Is it possible to miss someone you haven't met? Maybe missing isn't the right word, but I don't know how to explain it. I've had very vivid dreams about her and I find myself smiling at the little baby in church who has her same eyes, or going to my niece's 2nd birthday party and realizing that a second birthday is likely the first one we will get with our girl. I look through names and wish we could pick one, or decorate her room, or something, anything that would make it feel like this is real and not just a series of forms and signatures.