As you can imagine, my life has been crazy busy with immunizations, paperwork, preparing the home and travel arrangements. Oh, and that ever so important full time job I have. For those of you who are unaware, Lucy was born with a cleft lip and cleft palate, which to us, is not an issue and easily fixed. In China, this placed her as a "special needs" child. This cleft lip and cleft palate is a blessing, because had Lucy not been born with them, she would have proceeded through the regular channels and been placed with a different family. The challenge has been that because she is considered "special needs" I had to have all of my paperwork redone and resubmitted to the USCIS before we can travel to get her. My original paperwork was not marked for special needs which meant I had to resubmit everything. This involved, getting a Doctor update approving me as a suitable parent, a letter from my employer stating that I do have a job, a social worker interviewing me to make sure I would be a fit parent ( 4th interview in 4 years) and filling out new paperwork. Prior to getting this completed, our travel approval came in. Yeah! Well, kind of. Before they will give us dates to travel, we have to get the approval back from USCIS. I was hoping to tug at some heart strings so I submitted my paperwork with Lucy's photo hoping whoever opens my Fed Ex package will want to expedite the process for us. So now we wait....
I am attaching new, updated photos of Lucy with her Foster Mom! I just got these today and I am so grateful that she has such a special family in her life right now. You can clearly see the love this lady has for her. I am hoping to get an address for her foster family while we are in China, however, China has some strict policies and I am not sure if that will be possible. We still have our eyes set on the end of March as a likely travel time to China but I will keep you posted.
