Fingers crossed

That's me right after handing over our I800a renewal application (and home study) to the FedEx lady. I overnighted that sucker to arrive by 10am tomorrow. Let's get this show on the road!

So, there are back-logs for the background check process (which we need in order to complete our home study...so we could mail it off with our I800a renewal). We have to do state, federal and child abuse registry annually. Normally it takes 2 weeks and it is taking 9+ weeks currently. The delays would have put us getting those background checks finished after our I800a would have expired. Leaving a lapse in approval the entire time we applied with USCIS and redid our fingerprinting.

My agency agreed to go ahead and finalize our home study so we could send it off to apply for our I800a since our background checks are actually currently valid until December. Our new background checks will be in well before that so our agency is still complying with keeping those current. The question is whether USCIS will look at our home study (submitted with our renewal application) and say, "Uh...no, your background checks expire too soon" and submit an RFE (request for evidence). We would be able to satisfy that RFE, but that would result in a period of lapse for our I800a approval and therefor a period where we are ineligible to accept a referral of a child.

Sidenote - we applied to have our background checks expedited and were denied (since they don't expire until December), but they reconsidered based on our circumstances...however with them being expedited they were estimating them being done in 3 weeks. At least if we get an RFE we'll have quick turn around being able to satisfy it I guess. Hopefully if that happens USCIS is still willing to submit our fingerprint appointment while they wait for that to be satisfied so we aren't waiting on that afterward too. *sigh*

So!! The fingers are crossed that they don't care about the upcoming fingerprint expiration that is written in the home study and that they go ahead and submit our fingerprinting appointment (I'll never understand why we have to physically go in and re-do those)...and that we get our I800a renewed before November 2nd when it expires.

I'm also crossing my fingers that we get our referral SOON dang it! We're nearly 26 months officially registered with IBESR in Haiti, and almost 3 years into the Haitian adoption process (not 2 mention the 2 years with Ethiopia before that). We are ready to see her face!!