Why we need our own reality show

We have been getting asked a lot lately about the show "The Little Couple" and what we think about it.
For those of you who don't know, The Little Couple are Jen Arnold and Bill Klein (You can learn more about them here or here.) They both have forms of dwarfism and are pretty amazing people. We have been fans of the show for a long time. They seem like really nice people and it's fun to watch how they adapt their lives to their small stature and don't let it become an excuse for not experiencing life. Their new season just started and the season premiere showed them deciding to pursue the adoption of a little Chinese boy with dwarfism.

First let me say, I love love love that they are showcasing special needs adoption and obviously adoption from China is near and dear to our hearts. My issue comes from the fact that it is a little frustrating to watch how "fast" their process is moving. I am well aware of the magic of reality tv and the need for things to move quickly to keep viewers' interest.
The thing is, although you all are very sweet to read our blog and wanting to know about our journey, the reality of adoption is it is A LOT of hurry up and wait. We have been at this for 7 months now and are still probably 5-8 months from getting to bring our child home. It would be nice if they hinted at how long this process actually takes and that even fame and camera crews cannot speed things up.

Their most recent episode showed them deciding to also adopt a little girl from India and in the blink of an eye they were decorating a room and they made it seem as though they would be able to just swing by India on their way home from China and pick her up too. So not true. As far as I can tell, they are now home with their son and they are still waiting to travel to India to bring her home. It sounds like it has been 8-9 months since that video clip where they first heard about her.
That my friends is the reality of the international adoption timeline.

So, we are really happy for Bill and Jen (yes we are on a first name basis. I'm sure they are reading this right now and wanting to become our BFFs) and thrilled that international adoption is getting some tv attention, but if TLC is looking for people to star in a series that truly shows all the waiting, sighing, paper cuts, many trips to the post office and large check writing that REALLY comes with international adoption, give us a call.
We'll be here by our phones. We've gotten really good at waiting.....

WOO HOO!

YAY! Our fingerprinting is DONE!!!

We were a little nervous at first because there was quite a line when we got there at 7:50. And when it was our turn at the desk the USCIS employee gave us MAJOR side eye when we told her that we were told we could walk in early for our appointment. However they just asked us to wait until everyone who actually had appointments went through and then they had no problem getting ours done. These people are SUPER efficient and patient, the DMV folks should take a lesson from them!

We're not really sure what comes next, but this was the absolute last step that we had any control over before we are matched, so now we are just waiting for our paperwork to be processed by who knows how many people before it gets sent to China! We will keep you all updated, thanks for the support!

In case anyone reading is a prospective international adoptive parent, our tips for getting fingerprints done early are to get there at 8:30 instead of 8 to avoid the first rush of people that do have appointments because they have priority. Also don't expect to pass the time by playing on your phone, drinking Starbucks or eating breakfast because they don't allow any cell phones, food or drink and they are pretty serious about it. Other than that just be polite and smile, it was easy!

Tomorrow!

Just a quick update to let you all know that we need massive prayers/good juju/happy thoughts/whatever tomorrow morning as we head to the USCIS office to try to get our fingerprints done earlier than our appointed time. Our real appointment time is only a week away, but if walking in earlier means that we get our paperwork processed a few days faster, then it is SO worth it!

We will let you know how it goes!

Waiting....

It was a huge rush when our I-800A was mailed off. We really felt like we were making progress and things were moving. And then this week comes and we are back to waiting....We received the letter confirming that they received our application. We also received an email from our coordinator, a text message and an email from the government saying the same thing. Nothing like a little redundancy in the process! 

We are now waiting on our letter to let us know when we can go get our fingerprints done. I've never been so thankful that the US postal service didn't cancel mail on Saturdays!  This letter will give us an assigned time to do our fingerprints, but we have heard that if we beg, smile pretty and bring coffee and muffins they *might* let us get them done early. We will let you know when that is so you can send lots of good thoughts our way!

So that's pretty much it. I thought about taking a sad picture of us waiting by our mailbox, but then it snowed 50 feet again so this is the best I could do!

Finally!

Hi all! 

Sorry for the lack of posts, we've been busy dealing with a typical Colorado spring, 60-70 degree days 1 week and 2 feet of snow the next! After growing up in Fargo, I'm very much a snow person, but even I am ready for this snow to turn into rain so that we can start growing things!

The big adoption news is that both our CBI and FBI clearances came back!!!!!

Not only that, but it then took less than a week for our homestudy to be certified by the state!  

                                               

                    

So what comes next? We filled out another form called the I-800A. It basically says that we are ok to adopt a child from China (of course it takes 10 pages to say that, plus asks us to repeat information we have wrote a million times already). It is also the first step in finalizing our future child's US citizenship, which is pretty awesome. The great thing about adopting from China is that our adoption will be 100% finalized in China and our child will be a US citizen the second our plane touches down in the USA. I'm guessing that is going to be a pretty emotional moment for us, hopefully we will be awake and with it enough to recognize that after the 13+ hours we will have spent traveling. 

The I-800A form should take about a month or a little more to process as we also will have to get another set of fingerprints done. We'd appreciate any prayers you feel like throwing our way for fast processing and government employees with this attitude:

We (meaning Brian and his dad) also finished another pre-baby home project on our list this weekend.

We are anticipating the extreme amount of crap toys and equipment that comes with having a child so we wanted to maximize our garage storage. So we got rid of 4 garage shelves and built this instead:

It's pretty awesome as we were able to fit all of the junk very important garage stuff on these shelves PLUS still have lots of empty space. 

So things are moving again and we couldn't be happier. We are still hopeful that we will be matched and travel by the end of the year, but that will require everything to go smoothly and quickly, so many good thoughts and prayers are needed!

Update to come!

Sorry for the lack of updates! 

Things are moving along (finally!) and I promise we will let you all know what's going on. 

But for now I will leave you with our newest additions to our baby room, courtesy of my awesome Aunt Kristy. Since we're SURE our baby will be a future CSU Ram, they are perfect! 

Furniture!

Once the baby room was painted it was looking pretty empty and we got the itch to look for furniture. We decided to buy a convertible crib for our kiddo. Since we still have no idea what age our child will be, we really needed something that would change depending on their age/size/developmental stage. We also bought the conversion rails to convert it to a toddler bed and a full sized bed so that we would be prepared to change it based on their needs. I have no idea how we will know when it is the right time to change to a toddler bed, but hopefully that is advice we can get from all of you!

We are pretty picky when it comes to picking out furniture so it took lots of searching (which meant lots of pinterest!) to find what we wanted. Or what we thought we wanted because when we went to the store we actually changed our mind and got something completely different. But we are so happy we did, we LOVE the crib we chose. We also bought a glider from the same store and we were really excited when we got the call that everything had come in a month early.
And then this happened and we suddenly found ourselves without the truck that was going to haul all this stuff back up for us. Being the cheap frugal people that we are, we scoffed at their offer of delivery for $300 and said "we can do this!". Brian's dad was nice enough to let us borrow his truck (the smaller, older cousin of our truck) and Brian convinced me that it could easily hold all the boxes.
As you can see, he was right. Everything totally fit.

                                     

Sort of.
It was a loooong drive back home with a few stops to adjust the 500 bungee cords we used, but we made it without anything falling out on the highway.

Then came the part of putting it together, which really wasn't that bad since we have bought many pieces of Ikea furniture. Kona was super helpful as always.

Kenai on the other hand was completely bored with the baby room furniture as it was not something she could eat or something that squeaks and instead found the snow much more exciting.

Yes those are Christmas lights still on our deck. No they are not plugged in anymore, we are just lazy. Moving on.... 

And here is the finished product!

There's still a lot to do, mainly decorating (aka more pinterest), but we are pretty happy with how the room looks so far! We think we will end up buying a matching ottoman for the glider and we are still not sure where to put that cute little table yet. 

Finally a quick paperwork update: We are STILL waiting on our fingerprints to come back so that we can send our homestudy to be certified. It has been 19 weeks people. 

19 weeks. So if everyone could stop buying guns and getting new jobs for a few days so that they could focus on our paperwork, that would be swell!