More joys of bureaucracy...

Well it's been a week now since we've last seen the little mouse. The more I look at his pictures and video the more I just want to get him home asap and fatten him up :). It is very hard not knowing for sure when we'll be back. The process with our new agency has been everything we were told it would be (great!) so I have no reason to start doubting now. But it is also difficult not to remember the process to bring Alexander home...meeting him at 13 months old, watching him get excited about having someone to help him walk around, being told we should be back within 3 or so months, then waiting and waiting and paperwork and more paperwork, and then finally 8 months later returning to see him walking and running on his own and nearly 2 years old.

We did check-in with our agency earlier this week and the good news is that all of our dossier paperwork for Russia is current and nothing needs to be redone at this time. Yay! We had brought our FBI clearances and updated medical reports on our trip and these are the most time sensitive. We'll hope that when our dossier is reviewed by the judge in Russia that there are no additional requests.

The not so good news is that our US approval, which allows for us to adopt a foreigner and for him to become a citizen upon landing on US soil, requires our fingerprints to be redone asap. The overall approval, which we received last Feb 08 (just a couple days before Lucas was born), is valid for 18 months, thus expiring in August 09. This is good and *hopefully* we will be home for a couple months by then. But because this of course can't be SIMPLE, the fingerprints and subsequent clearance portion of the approval, are only valid for 15 months, thus expiring next month. In the preparation for last week's trip and everything else, I had neglected to look at this beforehand and realize this was close to expiring. So what's the problem? We have a month or so to take care of this right? Well, in theory yes, but it typically takes a while to get an appointment to be fingerprinted and then another 2-3 weeks to have them processed and cabled to the US Embassy in Moscow. We don't need this done before court as it has nothing to do with the Russian process, however we wouldn't be able to outprocess through the Embassy and get Lucas' visa until our approval is completely current. With a court date *hopefully* in May, there is not much time here....

So, after discovering this on Sunday, I called the local citizenship and immigration office on Monday and was told I need to make an appointment to go into the Boston office in order to make an appointment to be refingerprinted. Ok, an appointment to make an appointment. The earliest appointment I could get was for yesterday and left work at lunchtime to head into town. Finding inexpensive parking in downtown Boston is nearly impossible but somehow I got lucky and got a metered space just a few blocks away. But that is where my luck ran out. After waiting about 20 minutes or so, my number was called and I proceeded to the window to beg for the earliest possible fingerprinting appt. The person behind the window said 'hold on a minute' and proceeded to go through a back door. Ok. He comes back about 5 minutes later with a pink form saying I need to complete the form, write a short cover letter and mail it in to the office to get an appointment. WHAT? I made an appointment and drove all the way here just to get a form? Why didn't the person on the phone on Monday tell me this? Why wasn't this on their website? I asked if I could complete the form right then and GIVE it to him. 'No'. They are only accepted from the mail. I asked to speak to the adoption supervisor. 'She just went to lunch'. Hmm. I tried a couple other pleas but wasn't working...

I raced back to my office, wrote a cover letter explaining the situation and begging for an asap date, and then overnighted the darn paperwork to their office. They should receive today and hopefully we'll hear something next week. More fingers crossed again...

Most people talk about the crazy paperwork involved with Russian adoptions and for sure this was the case with Alexander's adoption. This time around though our biggest issues have been stateside! We'll I guess we wouldn't have much to talk about with Lucas someday if this was all too easy :). I know it will all work out fine, one way or another, and we'll look back and say this was nothing...but sure would be nice to know that now :)

Laura