One Lousy Digit

With the excitement of Christmas and the feeling of overwhelming disbelief that we had last week, I did not know where to start with this story. However, now that I have regained some semblance of order (yeah, right), here goes the story. You can choose your reaction, laughter or tears or shock. I think Mike and I experienced all of those and then some.

We have been waiting for an email from our agency with an update on Colby. Svetlana was going to the baby home to take some pictures and get the update. I was so hoping to have it for Christmas but alas, no. However, we did get an email from the agnecy on Tues 12/23 at about 2 P.M..

Our 24 updated documents had been received by Lala in Moscow and translated. Svetlana brought them to the judge on Monday and he looked through them. He then asked for 2 more. 2 MORE!! I couldn't believe it. At Christmas! How was I going to get more documents done at Christmas. The first document needed was from my previous job. A letter stating my income from 2007 and 2008 until I left. Of course, I used to teach so how was I going to get the superintendent's office this late in the day and before they left for break? Ugh! Luckily when I called, they were still there and the secretary was able to get it done. She was hoping to get it in the mail that day. I was just hoping to get it by Mon or Tues 12/29 or 12/30. So that wasn't too bad I guess.

The second document the judge requested completely floored me. It seems that when the Mayor's office wrote a letter for us confirming our ownership of and residence in our house (they have written this letter for us twice now), whoever wrote it had a typo. The letter also needed to state our birthdays and passport numbers. Well, on this second letter, they typed Mike's birthday as October 10, not October 11. I never caught the mistake, and no one else did either. The judge did though. It was somewhat ironic because Mike and I had just had a discussion about whether or not the judge actually reads all of our paperwork. Mike didn't think so. I guess he was proven wrong. So because of the one lousy digit typo, we needed to bother the Mayor's office again and ask for another complete document. I was sure they wouldn't be in.

Mike was out when I read the email. I tried to call him on his cell and the phone rang in our kitchen. I was so exasperated that I thought I would cry just because the phone was here. I called his parents though and got him. He raced home to read the email and immediately called the Mayor's office. Surprisingly, they were in for another hour or so but the road were terrible and the traffic so bad that we probably wouldn't make it. He asked them if they would be in the next day, Christmas Eve and she surprisingly said yes. So we spent Christmas Eve morning at the Mayor's office to get the new document. I must say that through all of this, the Mayor's office has been quite helpful. It isn't even their job to write such a letter. I'm not sure who's it would be. But they were the only office that would do it for us. They better have gotten something special from Santa this year as a thank you.

So, we were able to get the one document from the Mayor's office on Christmas Eve morning and more surprisingly the second document showed up in our mail that day as well. I will never understand the postal system. It came overnight in the regular mail. Yeah! So on Friday I trekked up to Hartford to get both apostilled and I sent them on their way to the agency. They should have them on Monday morning. You can't imagine how we both felt reading that email, devestated to have to get more documents and worried that we couldn't get them. I am completely shocked at how everything fell into place and we were able to get the documents.

So another "bump" in our adoption road but we keep going. Perhaps that update will be here tomorrow. We shall see.