No word from immigration yet…. We are still waiting for our I171-H (the document that gives us permission from the US government to adopt an orphan from abroad). Without this document, we can’t send our dossier (all of our documents) to China, in order to be matched with a baby. This is the only thing we are waiting for. Everything else is done. Mike and I are going to go back to the police department this upcoming week to get new letters of good standing (background checks). We’re doing this, because the letters can’t be more than 6 months old when sent to China. Our last ones were done on 8/1/06, so we are cutting things close (as it looks like it will be at least another month before our dossier is sent to China, since it takes the agency 3 weeks or so to review everything and send it over after we get the I171-H). This is a bit frustrating, as this will be our 3rd time getting letters of good standing from the police department (since our paperwork stage of this adoption has taken so long). Oh well. Every day I come rushing home from work to see if we’ve received our I171-H yet. Maybe we’ll get it for Christmas….? This would be a great Christmas gift. What’s sad is that even once everything is sent to China, we still have about a 14 month wait.
I would be feeling really down right now if it weren’t for the fact that Emily keeps us both so busy, and keeps us smiling a lot. She is so looking forward to Christmas. She met Santa Claus last night and LOVED him! She even drew a card for him. Emily is so excited for Christmas that her teacher, Miss Danni told me that she woke up suddenly from nap time the other day, ran over to Miss Danni and exclaimed “Miss Danni!...Miss Danni! It’s Christmas! It’s Jesus’ birthday!”
Emily is also so excited about the idea of dressing up for Christmas. She’s turned into quite the girly girl. She’s already told me (and Santa) that all she wants for Christmas is a purple necklace and a purple bracelet. Purple is her favorite color. She likes all things pretty. In fact, so much so that while I was doing laundry the other night, she managed to get her hands on some lipstick and tried to give herself “pretty lips”. Below are some pictures of her makeover.