Day 51

We have been waiting for our LOA for 51 days now. In some ways it has gone by quickly and in other ways it has been the longest 51 days of my life. I will try to explain it, but, I fear it is one of those things that you have to experience to fully understand. I cannot believe it has been 51+ days since we first saw Sofie's face and our lives were forever changed. That part seems like it happened just yesterday. Then there is "THE WAIT." That seems to drag on forever. I think the holidays helped pass the time as we were so busy. The closer you get to the "average" time for LOA wait and the longer you wait the worse the waiting gets. The average wait is 59 days for someone in our situation.........forever. I keep telling myself to be thankful that we haven't received our LOA yet as I still have so much to do. I haven't bought into that argument yet :)
To pass the time I have decided to start the next round of USCIS Immigration paperwork. There are 3 different forms you need to fill out but they don't get submitted until we have our LOA. Never hurts to start early. The I-800 (not to be confused with the I-800 A) is the petition to classify a Hague Convention Adoptee as an Immediate Relative, the I-864W is the Intending Immigrant's Affidavit of Support Exemption (it is an exemption from proving that Sofie is not going to be a financial burden on the country), and the last one is DS-230 which is the Application for Immigrant Visa and Alien Registration. The last one goes to the American Consulate in China. There are 13 pages in all to fill out. I have been sitting at the computer for 2 days as the instructions for filling out the forms are not really straight forward and neither are the forms themselves. This is what it looked like:

I am almost done. There is light at the end of the tunnel, unless I have completely messed up the paperwork and I have to start over! By the way, I had to fill out her new name on all the Immigration Paperwork so this is how it is going to look....Sofie Lu Jingjing Ducharme.  I think this may be the last little bit of paperwork other than the Chinese Visa Application. We were also fingerprinted again today so our DHS background check stuff is done again for the third time. I am getting really good at that one! Ok, back to waiting again.... :)