Baby Update

Still no baby.

Our fingerprint clearances for immigration were about to expire so we went down to the USCIS office in St. Louis last week to be fingerprinted again. Shout out to the USCIS office in St. Louis where -- almost -- everyone is super-nice. (I have never seen the woman who took my fingerprints the first time -- in Dec 05 -- since that first visit. What happened to her? Did she screw up everyone's fingerprints as bad as mine and get fired?) Since the remodeling, they have a spiffy new room just for fingerprints; it even says "Fingerprints" on the door.

Our other immigration document expires in August. Thankfully, we don't have to take the day off work and travel anywhere to renew that -- just get more copies of our birth certificates, marriage license, his divorce decree, and have our homestudy updated, then send it all in with another fat check. I wonder if all those insane a&*h*(^% people who make remarks about international adoption and "buying" children have any clue how much of the money an international adoption costs is spent on paperwork right here in the U.S.A.

Last word was, if we are very lucky, we might hear something in October. December is probably more reasonable. Next Tuesday marks one year since our application documents were logged-in in China. This sounds a little grim, but, at the moment, I feel pretty good. We're a year and a half into this now; we are over the hump. As fast as the months go by, October is just around the corner.