Little Footprints

Yesterday evening, we got a FedEx package from our agency. Inside was a piece of paper with an outline of Lan's feet. Her feet are about 16.5 cm long from the tip of her big toe to the back of her heel. I have no idea what size the correllates to - I'm going to take the outline of her feet with me shopping next weekend.

To buy a pair of shoes.

For Lan.

Let me say that again:I am buying a pair of shoes. For Lan. This is real. There is a REAL child with REAL feet on the other side of the world and I am going to go out next weekend and BUY SHOES FOR THOSE FEET. I'm not sure why this makes this seem so much more real, but, it does. The piece of paper also contains new measurements. She is 107 cm tall (42 inches, roughly). This puts her at the 87 percentile in height for a child - making her only about half a head shorter than her big brother. She has lost some weight since her last measurement, and is only weighing in at 15 kilos. That's 33 pounds. Which puts her at the 34 percentile for weight. I worry about the weight loss - is it an actual loss, or has their been some other issue - perhaps she was weighed with more or fewer clothes on, perhaps she was weighed on a different scale. Nonetheless, it worries me. A half a kilo is a lot of weight, when you only weigh 15 kilos. I am overwhelmed by the things that I need to take care of, before travel can occur. Overwhelmed that travel could happen at "any time" or weeks and weeks from now. OVER WHELMED. Excited. Terrified. Nervous. But, mostly, overwhelmed. Tempted to crawl under my desk and hide from the world, a la George Costanza in the napping episode of Seinfeld. Resisting the urge to do so, and going off to take care of some things...

The Phone Finally Rang

The phone finally rang with our agency on the other end, calling to tell me that Lan's dossier has finally been approved by the provincial authorities in DaNang. We are officially waiting for a travel call. A travel call that could come, "any time". In reality, most families from our agency have received a travel call 30 days after the call about their child's dossier being approved. So, in all likelyhood, we will get a call on December 15, telling us to be there on 31st. After I got off the phone with my agency I sat in my office chair for a full five minutes, shaking like crazy.The bad news is, we will not be able to file our I600 petition at the USCIS office in Cleveland. (Our agency had been having families file the I600 in the US, but, they have switched, and now we will file in Vietnam. The downside to this is that I need to file an I824 form in Cleveland, and pay them $225, to process this request and send our pre-approval to Hanoi. I am pretty sure I could overnight a FedEx envelope to Hanoi for less than $225, but, I don't have any choice but to send the US government more of our money.)

Happy, nervous, excited and generally freaking out,
Gretchen