New Katie Picture and Adoption Update

With all the excitement of Christmas, I missed posting a Tuesday picture this week!

My Katie girl!  What a little sweetheart!

I have mixed feelings about this picture.  On the one hand, I'm glad to see she's up and mobile.  On the other hand, I'm concerned that she's damaging her foot further by walking on it upside down.  I'm anxious to get her home and start the casting process to get it turned right side up.

We still have Hannah's walker, from before she got her prosthetic leg, so at least Katie will have that option available to her before she gets her prosthetic.  Mostly, I anticipate wearing her in a carrier or using a stroller when we're out, and that she'll crawl at home.  I'm not sure what we would do for shoes if she insists on using the walker outside.  But we'll happily cross that bridge when we come to it!  First we have to get to her!  

Paul took the bulk of our dossier down to the Chinese consulate in San Francisco the Wednesday before Christmas so we could have it processed the slower, cheaper way while we waited for that all-important final piece:  immigration approval.

I had emailed USCIS to let them know we were fingerprinted a little early, and ask if our case had been assigned to an officer yet, but I never heard back from them.  

Christmas Eve, we got an envelope from Dept. of Homeland Security.  I was so nervous that we'd gotten an RFE (Request For Evidence) and that there was some delay we'd have to address, but turns out, it was our APPROVAL NOTICE!  I was so thrilled!  

Yesterday, the kids and I took a photocopy of the approval notice to be notarized ($10) and then ran it up to the Secretary of State's office to be certified ($26).  Now, all that's left is authentication.  Paul will run it down to the consulate on Monday, and do same day service ($50) on this one piece, and pick up the rest of the documents that are waiting for us there.  

Once copies are made, we'll send off the whole thing (13 documents, plus photographs of our family, passport photos, and photocopies of our passports) to our agency on the East Coast.  They'll take a look at it and make sure it's perfect, and then send it off to CHINA!  

The paperchase this time around has been harder, emotionally, than last time.

I absolutely cannot wait for that dossier to be out of my hands.