Working in Slow Motion

Have you ever had a day where your brain and body seem to be literally moving in slow motion? That's how I'm feeling today. And Jon, too. It really stinks when both spouses have a slow day on the same day. We have been attempting to clean up the house since 8:30 this morning, and it is nowhere near cleaned up. Of course, it doesn't help that Sara likes to "help" us clean up by dumping water on the floor, unfolding clothes we've just folded, etc. And she's reached a new stage where she wants either Jon or I with her all of the time. She takes our hands and drags us with her to play, and we cannot resist because she is so precious. When she wants us to stop what we're doing so that she can sit in our lap, she says, "Hold ya." It is so cute and a constant and irresistible temptation to stop working and just be with Sara.

I talked with the home study worker last night. She just went over the checklist of all that we need to do for the home study, and we're well on our way. There were a couple of random things I had forgotten about or didn't know about, such as having a fire extinguisher in our kitchen, calling the fire department to do an inspection of our home, drawing out an evacuation plan, getting our pets' shots updated. But there was nothing too overwhelming. The person I talked to last night said that the social worker will probably come for our one and only home visit in mid-May. So from there, we will just have to submit the home study to USCIS and wait for approval. Then we'll compile and submit our dossier, and then we'll hopefully get a travel date.

I was looking at someone's blog yesterday, the blog of a family who is adopting from the same country that we are. They recently sent their dossier and received word from the country that it would be officially submitted in September. I was perplexed since we were lead to believe that it would only take 3-6 months to bring Katya home total, so I e-mailed the coordinator we're working with at Reece's Rainbow. She said that for most of the special needs kids who they help to find homes, there is no wait for the dossier to be submitted, but there is a long wait when adopting typical kids. We are not completely sure if Katya's condition (Crouzon Syndrome) falls on the "official list" that would qualify her for quick submission. Apparently, this "official list" is not published, so we have no way of finding out. The coordinator did say that she will have the facilitator (the in country contact who first found and referred Katya) submit a picture of Katya with the dossier to clarify that she does indeed have a special need. Anyways, this is something we need to pray about. The extra time to prepare would actually be a good thing for us, BUT it would not be a good thing for Katya since she is scheduled to be institutionalized soon and since intercountry adoptions have an unstable future in her country right now. Because of these factors, we hope to get her fast! So we will pray that God's will be done in all of this.

By the way, you may have noticed that we never mention Katya's country of origin. We are not supposed to due to privacy laws in that country, so we will definitely respect that. When we travel, we will set our blog to private so that we can discuss more specifics about where we are. And we can invite anyone interested to be able to follow the blog while we are away.