We're Leaving in 3 Days!

Bright and early Thursday morning we are leaving for China. Our flight leaves at 6:00 am -- UGH! I am not a morning person. Leaving the house at 4:15 is not at the top of my list of fun things to do but leaving at 4:15 am to go get my little boy is!

We fly from Kansas City to Dallas, Dallas to Los Angeles, and Los Angeles to Hong Kong. We leave LA at 1:25 p.m. on July 10 and arrive in Hong Kong on July 11 at 6:55 p.m. Crazy! What's even crazier is when we leave China on July 26 we arrive in LA about 3 hours later the same day. If only the flight was REALLY 3 hours long!

Our plane tickets arrived this morning via FedEx and our visa's also arrived this morning via FedEx. The only hold up was my fingerprint issue.

Contrary to my original belief, it IS humanly possible to contact someone at the National Visa Center. You just have to call at really odd hours. Last Thursday night at 10:30 I actually made it into the queue waiting to speak to a customer service agent. About 5 minutes later I spoke to a really nice woman (and she works for the US government???) who ultimately told me that my Visa 37 had NOT been sent because they had not received it. Back to square one. And it was a holiday weekend so I had to wait until Monday morning to even begin to resolve this issue.

So this morning (I had to think a minute, yes its still Monday night) I emailed both my old social worker in Nashville and my new social worker here begging for their help. My agency, CCAI, told me that the FBI fingerprint results were most likely sent to a USCIS office but the question was "Which one?" Were they sent to Memphis where my I-171H was issued or Kansas City where I was fingerprinted.

The wonderful news is that my social worker here, Nancy Bean, saved the day!!! This afternoon she told me not to worry about it, that she would track them down and sure enough, this evening I had an email from here with my approval from the Kansas City USCIS office attached. Nancy is my hero! I was sure last week when I met her for our home study visit that she was wonderful but now there's no doubt whatsoever!!!

Fingerprint issue: resolved
Airline tickets: arrived
Passports with Chinese visas: received
Packing: ..... working on it. My goal is to be completely packed for myself, Ryan, Julia, Jenna and Emma in 3 suitcases and 1 carryon bag. I think I'm going to make it.

The issue at hand (because there's always something to deal with. I say my life if full of "fires" and every day I have to figure out which ones need to be put out that day) is Emma's ear tubes tomorrow morning.

The ear tube procedure is a piece of cake. We show up at the hospital and check in, she is taken back and given Laughing Gas, 5 minutes later she has her ear tubes in place and then she's taken to recovery to be reunited with her mommy. The hard part is the night before.

Emma still wakes up every night for a bottle. Not only does she take one bottle, but lately she takes 2. Emma can't have a bottle after Midnight. That means Mommy has one very long, sleepless night ahead of her. The Adoption Mommy worries that Emma will think that Momma will suddenly no longer meet her needs, hence setting back our attachment. I know this isn't likely, but its a Mommy's job to worry. Nevertheless, a sleepless night is ahead. Let's just hope it begins later, say 3:00 am, rather than sooner, like 1:30. If you see my new Minivan driving around the Kansas City area in the wee hours of the morning, its just my desperate attempt to put her back to sleep.

Now if I could just find a 24 hour Starbucks!