dactylogram

This adoption update should have happened ages ago. I chalk it up to spanning the continent this summer, all within a couple of weeks.

We got approved for the i800a, meaning my fingerprints went through on the first try this time! Yay for lots of friends and family praying, and double yay for God letting this portion happen without repeats! This meant we could start compiling stuff for our dossier, so we did the initial perusal of things we had already and got a couple things mailed to get authenticated. Then it was time to head to Arizona, so all thoughts of adoption were put on hold. I planned to work hard on all this stuff in August, as the crazy traveling would be done by then.

We got home around midnight Monday/Tuesday, crashed for a few hours and then tried to have a semi-normal day. Tuesday afternoon our social worker emailed saying she had been perusing the database and came across a file that we should take a look at. His general information was out of date, but his main medical issue was listed as 'congenital estropia of both eyes' (cross-eyed), which fit in with the list of special needs on which we checked 'yes'. We had 72 hours to decide if we wanted to accept this as a referral.

WHAT.

Once again, this whole things is being done out of order, as we have nothing submitted for the dossier yet. We frantically consulted various friends who have eye/medical backgrounds and prayed like crazy. There wasn't time to get the adoption doctor opinion at Children's Hospital (in Milwaukee), so it was a little unnerving to have to make a decision, especially since the last report was when he was 3--he's now 4½.

We decided we'd better not let the opportunity pass us by and we said yes to the referral.

Now begins the truly frantic pulling-together-our-documents-for-the-dossier phase and we'll see what happens from here on out. I'm taking the next steps with trepidation, as we got to this stage once before and then everything imploded. I don't think any of it will feel real until we're in China...

Oh, and as you wait with us, check out this fun post about chopsticks.