moving right along

CIS Fingerprints are rescheduled!!

I still can't believe we never received the notice telling us that we had an appointment a few weeks ago. Things have changed too - when we were adopting Simon, we actually missed our CIS appointment as well. The notice came while we were on vacation and the date of the appointment was either the day we got back or the day before or something like that. Anyhow, that letter told us if we couldn't make our appointment, we could just show up any subsequent Weds. (Thurs.?? - I can't remember now) between certain hours. Easy. No rescheduling or explanation required.

Seems things are a little different now.

CIS (at least our local CIS) now views your appointment as binding and if you need to reschedule, you need to promptly mail back the notice letter with an explanation and reschedule request for their consideration. And if you don't do that and you don't show up on your appointment date, they will view your case as abandoned.

So we are very grateful that our local CIS office thought it was worth calling us to find out why we had not shown up or contacted them before throwing our I600-A in the trash as an abandoned request! And I am even more grateful that they gave us a new fingerprint date of May 4!! Yup, we are to be printed this week!! And finally, I am feeling like adoption round 2 is actually happening.

For sure the second time around has been a completely different experience than Simon's adoption. Not just because we have been more laid back (although I do admit, news of a CIS fingerprinting appointment did get my heart racing just a bit)... but the paperwork process has generally been easier, less eventful - i.e. got the right form of my birth certificate on the first try (last time: 5 tries)... same for my employment letter. And while I am not in any way complaining about that, it can sometimes kind of make this adoption feel more like something that's happening in the background, rather than one of the most significant things affecting our family - which it is. So hitting a milestone like our CIS fingerprinting appointment, which is totally outside of our control, is all the more exciting.

And so after Tuesday we will be one giant step closer to the waitlist.

Coming soon: Gladney approval (should be this week), more adventures in banking, and FBI clearances (I really, really hope).

So to the 4-5 of you still reading this - stay tuned. Good times are ahead!