delicious

I'm not sure which I think is more delicious.

The yummy dumpling being made, or the adorable dumpling making it...

our newest dumpling hand making jiao zi on tuesday of this week for their cny celebration

Daniel's monthly progress report in my inbox this morning was such welcome break from slogging through paperwork ~ and all the holdups we've experienced lately!  Each month we glean just a little more about his personality.  And find ourselves longing to have him home just a little more...

There are days that the paper trail is nothing beyond frustrating.  Like last Friday when I excitedly went to the post office to pick up my two express envelopes from the Embassy.  It was, I thought, our entire dossier ~ minus of course the immigration form that we are STILL waiting on, 67 days now, but who's counting ~ coming back with the final level of authentication done.  What it turned out to be was our entire dossier coming back just the way I sent it.  Apparently by "include copies of your documents" they meant have a copy of the document, which has been notarized of course, with the state authentication on top of it with the state department authentication on top of that and all stapled (in the center at the top if you please) and paperclipped to the original.  Who knew?

So last Friday night while Ian and the kiddos sat on the couch munching popcorn while watching The Cat in the Hat, I had a date with black and white copier number 2 at FedEx.  Pretty funny commentary when my favorite employee there said, "Well hello there.  I almost didn't recognize you without your brood.  Let me know if you need anything, but I know that you can help most other customers by now with your copy experience."  One of these days I'm gonna bring him a dozen donuts or something. 

Then this week I finally got up the courage to call immigration one more time (on day 65) to see if we had been assigned an adjudicator yet.  We had.  Not really knowing what I'd say, I asked if I could be put through to her.  I was.  So she says hello and I start rambling about wondering when we may expect our approval as it was the only thing holding up our dossier heading overseas.  So she takes my receipt number, looks it up and says, "Oh, yes, Kristi, I reviewed your file just yesterday."  I'm thinking "Yee-haw!" UNTIL she follows that by saying, and I sent you a RFE (request for evidence I think) because the NC child abuse registry reopened since your homestudy update was complete and I need new checks run."

Which was frustrating as those clearances arrived about four days after I sent our application and I sent them to the exact same address that is listed on our RFE (which arrived yesterday) back in early December. I had been guaranteed when I called in early January that if I had mailed them to that address with my receipt number on them that there was no way that they wouldn't make it to my file.  But the officer I spoke with then wouldn't check to make sure they had. 

So Wednesday afternoon was spent in phone calls to both our home study agency and our adoption agency getting new copies of the info faxed or scanned to our adjudicator as she very, VERY kindly told me that since she had a working relationship with my social worker at our adoption agency that she'd accept a fax or email scan from her instead of waiting for the hard copy to arrive. 

Hopefully our approval will come by Monday.  Of course it will still have to be authenticated at the state level, the state department level, and the embassy level.  And the embassy is closed two days next week for CNY... 

Doing my very best to trust God that His timing is far beyond better than mine.  After all, the oh so frustrating delays we've experienced in the past have put us traveling with some people that I can't imagine not having in my life.  Some day (when I find the time) I need to sit down and record those delays and the blessings they brought about.  Still though, it's hard when you've got a sprinkle loving dumpling on the other side of the world.

taken back in december on the day the foster home made, decorated, and ate sugar cookies ~ i think he'll fit in pretty well here!

 And two sisters and a brother who ask every night, "Is tomorrow the day we go to meet our di di?"

**Oh, just for the record, I'm not complaining about having spent time feeding a copier.  It is somehow soothing to feel like I'm doing something that will help get my boy home.  I'd jump through flaming hula hoops at this point if it would get him here sooner...