USCIS rocks!!!

USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services) is awesome. We didn't get their letter with an appointment for fingerprinting, but instead of "oh well" an officer called us and made sure we could get this paperwork expedited. (Dr. van Bosse in Philly had written a letter to help us speed up this process and they had not only read it, but wanted to help!)

The officer asked why I had missed our appointment if this adoption was special needs and a medical case and all that. What letter? I thought this phone call was going to tell us our appointment date, not that we'd missed it! What to do? I immediately got off the phone and burst into tears... for a long time.

It's hard for me to be on top of everything going on around here. Laelia's IEP is coming up. My husband is just finally getting his brain back (he had surgey and the pain meds make it hard to concentrate so I've been solo on a lot of this stuff) plus there are still a few things Charley can't do physically that I have to do for him until April 17th when he's recovered, plus I have a job (part time) and a house to keep up and all that. It was just getting overwhelming. Charley's job is to sort through our mail, but it's just one more thing that he was doing the best he could but he wasn't at 100%. We also have a friend staying with us who was bringing in our mail for him, but since Charley wasn't doing it he forgot she did it and then it sat in an untouched pile. Along with many other responsibilities this was one I should have taken over for Charley but just didn't think to. I found the two unopened immigration fingerprinting appointment letters under two unopened birthday cards.

Our officer suggested we just show up without an appointment. So the very next morning we showed up at the immigration office after dropping Laelia off at school. Oh and I was sick with what turned out to be a tummy bug. So it was not fun. Charley and I could have combined our physical and mental abilities that morning and still made less than one fully functioning person.

Now you *need* an appointment to even go into the building, and the letters we had in our hands were for four days ago, but everyone was completely understanding. The front desk guy (who weeds out people who don't have appointments, etc.) was super nice. The wait was surprisingly short. The lady who did my fingerprints said she even saw a special on TV about the kind of foreign special needs adoption we're doing and then she told me God would help us. And he certainly was!

The next day after fingerprinting our officer called back to say she got our results that she went out of her way to be watching for and we were going to be approved with immigration! (This usually takes a few days or longer for the results to even get back to her office, but she was waiting for our results and moved quickly.)

We just got our letters with appointment dates today for fingerprinting on April 24th. I laughed because we're already done and approved and don't have to wait the extra two weeks!

This puts us about three weeks away from being completely done with our approvals and paperwork and apostilles and all that. (Three weeks away from Step #15 in the adoption process.) There was some kerfuffle with our state police clearances so that's probably the thing that will make this process take the three weeks. But I see a light at the end of the paperwork pregnancy.

USCIS is awesome.