Halloween Pics

Front: Auri, Jasmine, Max, Myles

Back: Cameron, Madeline, Carter
Spiderman - because why should today be any different

Mommy's little stinker

The Sweat Pea

Ariel - the desired costume only because she got to spray her hair red

For Mimi!!

Jaime, these were taken late September. I'll take more soon - I just got a new camera, since Max threw mine off of the porch and it sat out there through a rainstorm. Look at that dimple. He's such a cutie. Oh, and after he talked to you on the phone, all Max talked about was Mimi, Hobbes, and Tom.

Everyone else, this is my gorgeous nephew, Austin.

My kids are falling apart!

OK, not really. . .

One more thing about the court. I consulted a lawyer who told me that we were perfectly within our rights by calling the representative, and it wasn't inappropriate at all. He thinks the judge's feathers got ruffled and he took it out on us. This made me feel much better. We decided to celebrate.

We had friends and family over today to celebrate Max's finalization. Lots of Indian food, and good company. No sooner had our last guest walked in than I hear, "Kris, he's bleeding." Not exactly a phrase any mom likes to hear. Max had run for a toy, and fallen into our train table. A nice cut right above his eyebrow. Here are the results - 3 stitches, and missing his own party, poor little guy. He did so well though. The only time he cried was for a second when they had to use a needle to numb him since the topical cream didn't do the trick. Mommy actually did ok too :)

Madeline had quite a week too. She was playing "puppy" with Myles, bit his shirt and pulled, and got her first loose tooth, which quickly fell out. She was quite proud, and excited when the Toothfairy came.

We also had a dramatic farm tragedy. I don't need to go into details - just saying that will jog my memory enough.

We're ready for some down time. Uneventful down time.

Done

He signed. It was nearly the most humiliating experience of my life. But Max is ours. Legally and officially - Max Gerald Rup Labonte.

The Court

I've expressed my frustration with this plenty on this blog. The thing is there is just no reason for the delay we are experiencing. Last week I wrote letters to Senators and Representatives. One Senator's office got back to me only to inform me that due to ethics they could not be involved with any judicial matters. I don't really understand how that is a breach of ethics, but ok. She did say that if we had any problems with immigration they could assist with that. I wonder if that includes our I-800?

On Tuesday we had a slow day at work. Which is lovely except that I go a little stir crazy. Same desk for 12 hours is bad news with nothing going on. So I got on the phone and called every government office and official that I could find a number for. It was frustrating because none of them felt that they could do anything and several times I was told to talk to the registrar of probate (I can't even count the number of times we've spoken to this person). Everyone kept on saying, the judge sets his own pace. I felt like I was dealing with India again. Then Dan called and told me that there was a message at home that the court was "squeezing us in" on Tuesday! I had no idea what had happened or whether it was a coincidence (which I doubted).

On Wednesday I got a call from our representatives office. She was calling to make sure the probate court had contacted us and to confirm that we did have an appointment on Tuesday. Ahh, someone actually took some action for us! We were already going to vote for this gentleman, but he would have won us over if our votes had been going elsewhere. (John Nutting Rocks!)

We've been told that the paperwork is all prepared and ready for the judge to finalize, but he could still choose to make us come back a second time. We are assuming that he will sign, and we will apply lots of pressure for this to happen. There is no need of waiting any longer. If he does make us come back, it will most likely be a month later. If this happens I will not be a happy woman. I will make my round of phone calls again, and express my outrage to anyone that will listen.

I've had several people lecture me about being nice blah blah blah. I'll be nice until he refuses. At that point all bets are off. I will turn into mama bear protecting her cub. I need to thank my cousin Nicole for role modeling this method for me :) She does this day in and day out, and I'm not sure how. I was exhausted after one round. We all do what we need to for our kiddos.

More info

The "More Info" wasn't quite what I had hoped. It actually isn't much of anything, but I feel more informed. Before I lay it out, I want to clearly state that we're ok with this situation, we trust this agency, and we believe that we will be matched with whatever child God has planned for us.

So, we have one more piece of paper to turn in before we can do our homestudy. This would already be done except that our doctor lost my blood, and then sent us the paper signed but not notarized, and now she is on vacation. And so the frustration begins :)

Our homestudy will be completely done and approved within 6-8 weeks! Then we move on to the new I-800. This has been taking between 90 and 120 days to be approved. THEN we can officially accept her referral.

In the mean time. . . Mehrunissa is in an orphanage that has a brand new international license. They have just started getting the child study reports prepared, and we all know how quickly things happen in India. So whenever they get more information, they will share it with us "unofficially" of course.

It is possible that we won't be matched with this particular little girl. BUT, they don't feel that it will be a problem to match us very quickly with a child that would be a good match for our parameters (we are open to some special needs, and I don't want any lectures or warnings from anyone, thank you).

So that is the new run down. I'm still comfy and doing fine with everything (except the doc messing up) :)

I'll pass on info as it comes.

What we've got going on

Now that I've hinted around and people have been asking questions I thought I'd give a run down on what's going on.

Yes, we're adopting again. We are going through MAPS which is based in both Bangor and Portland. They will do our homestudy and be our placement agency. We would have used Dillon again in a second, but they are currently closed to new applications.

We are going about this a little differently this time. We found a little girl on MAPS waiting child list. There is no picture, no name, and very little information. We will call her Mehrunissa. She is one year old right now. MAPS said that this could move quickly, to which I replied "I'll believe it when I see it."

We were hoping to have more information on her this week, but that did not happen. I'm doing quite well without information. I know once I see that face, I'll be wreck again until she comes home. For now I'm quite content to plug along on the paperwork end. I am a control freak, so I have been frustrated when other folks don't do things on the timeline that I feel is appropriate, and I was irked when the lab people "forgot" my blood, so I had to have it drawn again, and slowed that piece of paper down by 4 days. I'm glad that we know what kind of paperwork we'll be needing soon, so we can have it on hand rather than having to wait for it like last time.

So as soon as we get the paper in from that blood test, we'll start work on our homestudy and our dossier at the same time. The other thing that's different (for adoption folks) is that instead of the I-600A there's a new I-800 that we'll need to do. I haven't really looked that over yet, so I'm not sure what's different about it. I know that's what we need the child abuse clearance from NY for.

That's the run down. That's all we know. Adoption is a journey of faith, so that's what we're flying on right now. We're hoping to have Mehrunissa home by summer, but we aren't counting on it by any means. We'll share information as we get it.