October's Referral Eve

It’s referral eve!!!! Or thereabouts. You never know exactly when referrals will arrive from China but I do know from our agency that CCAA is busy making matches. Maybe, just maybe they’re making ours! Most likely we will just miss this round of matches but that means we WILL be next!! I’m not going to be excited about the fact that right now a darling baby girl could be matched with our family. I’m going to be calm and not even think about the fact that I could be looking at my baby’s face any time now. I’m not going to dwell on it. Nope, I’m calm and I’m not thinking about it. Not wondering what Baby T will look like, not obsessively checking my phone over and over to see if I missed a call even though the phone is attached to my waist. Not checking the Rumor Queen site every 15.5 seconds. I am having no problem concentrating on my job, finishing my sentences, remembering why I walked into a room…Wait, that’s not true, I always have problems with those things. But I am perfectly calm. DID YOU KNOW I WILL BE GETTING MY REFERRAL SOON???!!!! I WILL BE TRAVELING TO CHINA TO GET MY BABY GIRL IN DECEMBER OR JANUARY!!!! I’m calm. I’m concentrating on whatever it is that I am supposed to be doing right now.

Fingerprinted, Again or Assault with a Deadly Tampon

No we haven’t committed any crimes. At least not lately. But there’s this pesky form called the I171-H that you must have if you want to adopt a child internationally and getting the I171-H involves being fingerprinted and having a home study done complete with other types of background checks, letters of reference, and a clean bill of health. To make things more exciting and to make it even harder to adopt, each little piece of this process has an expiration date and all of them are different! Regardless of the expiration dates, we have been in this process of adopting our littlest T so long that everything has expired. Therefore, we all (me, G-Daddy, and Big T) trooped over to the Jacksonville Homeland Security Office, because only Jacksonville Homeland Security People can be trusted to do fingerprints in this area of the state. We left our liquids, cell phones, and sharp objects (of which the men in my family seem to carry a wide variety) in the car. At least I didn’t throw tampons at the guards this time. Last fingerprinting episode I was taken by surprise by the security measures and had my purse packed with all types of womanly essentials including chocolate, tampons, lipstick, lotion, books, a mirror, unpaid bills, toys, breath mints, hair essentials, a small vacuum cleaner, hand sanitizer, and so forth, very few of which were sharp objects but when combined could probably be made into some sort of weapon. When the hubby gathered up all the non-allowed objects to return them to the car, I handed over my purse. I decided at the last moment to reach over and remove my reading glasses, which, unfortunately, had that granny necklace thing on them that pulled out a dozen tampons with it and flung them all over the security guard. I guess I’m lucky tampons aren’t considered a deadly weapon or I would be blogging from my prison cell. Needless to say the guard was a little surprised. This current visit was much smoother and now we’re back to WAITING for Baby T.