ta-dah!

Three little letters for you:

F

B

I.

Despite the fact that I knew they were going to show up (eventually), I was still a bit startled when I saw enveloped from the Federal Bureau Of Investigations in my mailbox.  For a split second, I thought they were junk mail; in the next second I panicked, and a second after that, I praised God.  Thank you to those who gave us suggestions on how to speed these along.  It ultimately worked.  Now we are pressing our home study agency to do her job and finish our home study.  I scanned the results to her - "No Record Found" thankfully! - and am waiting for her to email me with some notification that she's done something with the home study. 

It's like molasses in January, it seems so slow.  Yet, I am grateful that we are one step closer to our I800 A...one step closer to submitting our dossier...and one step closer to our first trip!!

We just spent time filling out what we could of the I800 A form, including making the copies required.  It is all ready to go, except for a few things we will add when the home study is completed.

Today is a day when it actually seems real.  Today is a day when it feels like we are not that far away.  There are other, darker days when it feels as though nothing is happening and everything will take forever.  But then we see things moving, and we feel hopeful and panicked all at the same time. Hopeful because we are drawing closer to adding to our family, but panicked because everything is moving even faster than we thought and we worry about finances.  The last thing we want is to be in a position to move forward, but be unable to do so because of finances.  We've received support already, and we're grateful for that.  In the meantime, we continue to think about ways to fundraise and draw attention to the cause we face, even as we work to save money and sell the various extra things that seem to populate in our garage.  We continue to stand strong, step out in faith, and shout to the rooftops for our future son. We do not need help for all of it, but we do need support for some of it.

I am also preparing for my daughter's evaluation for the next level of her therapeutic services.  This will be great practice for when I am doing this for our son, so I am paying even more attention.  I'm already learning all I can about the process of evaluation as Chelsea exits the birth-to-three Early Intervention services and transitions into the 3-5 age range.  It's important that her therapies remain intact, as she's responded so wonderfully to them.  Autism is challenging, which is why good therapy is vital.  Our Little Dude may have autism too.  If he does (and we won't know this for a long while) we must prepare ourselves for that eventuality by learning as much about the process of securing services now.  We believe that this experience better prepares us to be his parents.  If we didn't feel ready to deal with his challenges, we couldn't in good conscience proceed, no matter what his need was or where he lived.

But the truth is, he is in The Bad Place, living without the basic nutrition children need, and without the stimulation that children deserve. He lacks the love and support of committed parents, which I believe is his basic right as well. 

We are working to change that...as quickly as we can.