Baby Z is 10 months old!

Happy 10 months Baby Z!  We think of you and pray for you often.  We are working hard to bring you home and cannot wait to meet and hold you.

Adoption update:  We are waiting on a fingerprint appointment with immigration and for our information to be reviewed by HK social services.

Adventures in Urology

Renal ultrasound

Wednesday Anara had her annual appointment at Riley with her pediatric urologist. We were expecting a routine check-up, clean bill of health, and another year between appointments. Unfortunately, Anara has formed several stones in her bladder (conduit urinary reservoir) and will require a procedure to remove them. The procedure should be simple provided her urologist can break the stones with a laser and remove them through her stoma.

After a few years with no stones, this was disappointing. For some reason she is still colonizing stone forming bacteria. This will be Anara's 14th time under general anesthesia. She is a pretty tough kid and such a great patient. She spent almost 2 hours on the procedure table during her cystoscopy while her doctor tried to remove the stones at her visit and never complained. Unfortunately they were too big to remove without risking compromising her stoma (appendicovesicostomy).

Cystoscopy

Adoption news:  We received notification that our I800A has been received by immigration and is being sent to the National Benefit Center for processing. We will then receive a finger printing appt. and after that hopefully an approval notice. With Anara's adoption, this process took 2 months.  

Our social worker reviewed our dossier and sent back a list of questions for us to answer. I answered these questions yesterday and submitted them to our social worker here who must edit, approve and sign. It will then move to our placement agency and Z's birth country.  

Moving forward!

Our dossier was sent to Z's birth country yesterday and should arrive tonight! Praying that everything would move smoothly and quickly. Also, we have a $3500.00 program fee due in the next couple weeks. If you are interested in supporting our adoption, you can use the paypal button or contact us to donate another way. We really appreciate your encouragement and support as we cannot do this alone!

I800A - not quite yet

I wish I could post a clear picture of his sweet, little face but you can kind of see his smile in this pixelated picture.  Our home study took about a month longer than I was hoping it would.  I know this doesn't translate exactly, but it feels like the delay makes Z another month older and the process another month longer.  Yesterday I was getting ready to write a check to immigration to submit our 1800A (requesting permission to adopt an orphan internationally from a Hague convention country) when our adoption agency pointed out an issue with our home study.  We were missing one key signature that would have caused our paperwork to get kicked out of the system.  I am grateful for this catch but it adds another week to the process.  I hate the feeling of lost time when every night I know he is one day older.

I rushed to the main post office yesterday afternoon to find a LONG line of people trying to sneak in before the doors closed for the day.  The kids and I waited and a kind lady behind me helped to entertain the smallest ones.  When I got the counter I had to decide whether to pay $35 for the package to arrive today or $8 for the package to arrive Wednesday.  I chose the $8.00 route and then felt guilty all the way home.  Again, I know it doesn't translate directly because if I could pay the $26 extra dollars knowing that he would come home even 1 day sooner, I would have.  I think I repressed the ups & downs, waiting part of our last adoption process.

Home study ready!

Anara holding the long-awaited home study

Our completed home study came in the mail today! This means that we can now fill out our I800A form requesting permission to adopt an orphan internationally!  It's pretty exciting to be moving forward.

We have begun fundraising.  We found out that the adoption tax credit might not be applicable to our situation.  That was pretty disappointing.  Now that we have our home study, I can apply for grants.  If you know of a grant, let me know. If you have any tax expertise, I would love to ask questions about tax liability.