First Immigration letter and Chinese Consulate

This week has been pretty exciting! First,we got our first letter from immigration on Monday. This was to notify us that they received our application and let us know that we should be receiving directions for fingerprinting shortly.

Also, I had to send Yu Ping (our China liaison through WACAP) some pictures for our dossier. She responded to my email and let me know that our dossier documents are already at the Chinese Consulate. It has only been a couple of weeks since we mailed them out to Washington so I was very surprised (happily, of course) to learn that. That means that our dossier documents had already traveled from Washington State to Washington D.C. to be verified by the Secretary of State (thanks Hil!) and made the trip to Dallas to be authenticated by the Chinese Consulate. From here they'll go back to WACAP in Washington and be ready to send to China. The last document to complete the dossier will be our final immigration letter. Unfortunately, this is a few weeks away (4-6).

Yu Ping also explained that once our dossier reaches China it will be logged in and from there we can start looking for a match. So exciting!

On a different note, I got to catch up with a former co-worker today. She rattled off about 3 other past co-workers who are much younger than me and all having/had babies. She also let me know that she is expecting number 2. You know, that is still tough. It is not that I'm unhappy about our path...I actually couldn't imagine a more special route to parenthood. However, constant reminders of the path not taken are painful. I wish the hurt was completely gone. Maybe one day. I do know one thing though. Even when those situations become less painful, they will never be less memorable. I hope I'll be able to use my experiences to help those struggling with infertility or the choice of adoption.