I think the hardest part is not knowing what is going on. I have made the unintended decision that I have unfortunately or fortunately approached much of my life with. I have chosen to not educate myself on this whole process anymore than necessary. I didn't realize I was doing this until I started reading postings in a yahoo group I belong to. Everyone has timelines all written out, and know exactly where all of their paperwork is located, and are using all of these crazy acronyms for things that I've never even heard of. The scary part is that more than half of them are using the same agency as us. My friend Heidi told me that being a mother is the most humbling job..... it is the first time that no one is there evaluating you, telling you if you are doing it right..... perhaps this is the beginning of that feeling? When I approached this it was like this, "Okay, I KNOW that I'm going to have a baby at the end of this, so all I can do is leave it in God's hand from here on." That seemed wise at the time, and I still believe that things will only happen at God's pace, but I'm starting to wonder if I need to make the same calls to the NVCthat everyone else talks about making daily (I don't even know what that is..... another one of those crazy acronyms).
Okay, enough lamenting...... The real reason I'm writing is because in my Korea planning day yesterday I took some photos that I can share. This first one is of all of the diapers that I washed and put together. I just think they're super cute. For those of you not familiar, they have little absorbant inserts that come out when you wash them, and they are completely waterproof - no plastic pants!
Also, in January we sent Miles a little care package when we found out that another couple was leaving soon for Korea and would be able to deliver it to him. In the package we included a stuffed monkey that Rachel and Isaac bought for him as soon as we got our referral (it was our first baby gift!), and a photo album of all of my family and Dustin's family so that he could look at the pictures, and we also included a card. Now the card is an interesting story because we were trying to think of something that we could record our voices into. Someone mentioned a Build-A-Bear, but the one in Peoria just closed - little did I know they opened another one at a different location. Since we couldn't do that, someone else mentioned the Hallmark Cards that you can record your voice into. I thought that was a great idea, so I went to Hallmark after school and picked one out. I explained to the women what I wanted and so we looked at Valentines Day cards. There was a perfect one sitting there that talked about being a family and loving each other and such. So I bought it and paid. I took it all of the way home and then Dustin and I proceeded to say a little message to Miles. It only took half a dozen times because Dustin kept getting all sentimental. :) Finally we saved our message and played it make to ourselves....... only to find out that the end of the message was met with a loud and boisterous rendition of "We Are Family" by Sister Sledge. We laughed SO HARD. After these well-thought and sentimental words that we had left lovingly for our son, there is an obnoxious top hit from 1979 blaring out of the card. There is no way Miles' foster mother is going to play that for him more than once, and will probably worry about the sanity of his future parents. Anyways, this is a picture of the stuff that we sent to him. Just ignore the junk around the image...for some reason I didn't think to clear off the table. :)
Tiffany
1 comments:
Tiffany,
I can't remember if I have commented on your blog, and I have no idea how I found your blog, but we also used Lifelink so I am sure it was through one of the boards.
Anyway, I know what you mean with all the time lines and phone calls. I wanted to tell you that we made exactly three status checks. 1. to check our USCIS after 4 weeks to make sure they got it, 2. one e-mail to the Visa center after 2 weeks to make sure they got our paperwork, and 3. one call to the consulate in Seoul after 2 weeks (because I will admit, by that time I was curious where we were with our paperwork.)Each time we got good news that our paperwork was on track or approved. No wailing and gnashing of teeth for us because we called to soon or angered the workers processing our son's papers.
I did not keep a really detailed time line, and I certainly did not keep tabs like a lot of people did. In fact, a lot of these things (like the P3) I had no idea even EXISTED until after our son was home and I started hearing about it on the boards. Dealing with the wait like that works for some people, but it would not have worked for us.
The bottom line is that as long as your paperwork isn't lost, there isn't much you can do. Knowing some of these little steps doesn't make your son come home any faster, but it might drive you nuts. I honestly think my husband and I had an easier wait because we didn't drive ourselves wild with the tiny details that we could not control.
Anyway, I just wanted to say that you shouldn't stress about not following your process super closely...Miles will be home whether you have his I-171 file date or not. :)
All the best. Waiting sucks, but it does end.
Cori (www.midwestmohrs.blogspot.com)
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