steps toward africa

Today was a BIG day. Since the beginning of our journey, I've made it a point to celebrate the small things. Since the journey can be looooooong I decided it was something I needed...to remind myself that we were in fact making progress. You know, to keep my sanity as we trek through the "paper pregnancy" as we draw closer to the day we will hold our little man in our arms, and today was one of those days.

Today we celebrated with cookies! Oatmeal chocolate chip cookies that were hot out of the over after dinner. yum. It's something so small but it's good to know we are taking steps toward Africa, toward Amos.

Today we sent off our I-600A application to USCIS!! In order to adopt internationally, families must be approved through US Citizenship and Immigration Services. Soon we will be given a fingerprint appointment + after that is processed we will receive our I-171H form. The I-171H is the approval that allows us to bring a child born overseas into the US and is a required step for a child to gain US citizenship. That approval, the I-171H is the LAST piece of paperwork we need for our dossier!!

I realize this might seem very anti-climactic, but we are thrilled! Even though it could take up to 6 weeks to receive this last piece of paper, we have just about reached the end of our paper chase and that is a HUGE relief.

Once our dossier is submitted we then go on the waiting list, where we do just that....wait. Wait to be matched with our little bit.

To know we are [this] close is surreal. I can't wait to celebrate sending off our dossier! I'm thinking we will celebrate that one with a little shindig! Sounds fun right? Ooooo maybe a backyard movie night...