Now the hard part - a.k.a. "hurry up and wait...and wait and wait and wait"

Now we were on a mission.  With time ticking by too quickly, I began gathering all the documents we would need to put our dossier together in record time - not only for Emma's health but also because the adoption rules change October 1, 2011.  But that wasn't gonna be an issue.  We were gonna get this done.  I was on it!  I ran all over metro Chicago getting everything signed, sealed (almost everything needed to be notarized!) and delivered.  In one month, we completed our 5 required homestudy interviews/meetings, completed 12 hours of online adoption education seminars and finally had all the required documents finalized and in hand.  Yippee!!  We did it all in record time and we were right in line with our expedited schedule! Everything came together beautifully.  All we had to do was wait for our social worker to write up our homestudy so we could take the next step of submitting our I-800A to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) for their approval that we are fit to be adoptive parents to a child.  That's when things came to a terrible, screeching halt.  Oh, the homestudy....  The homestudy was the one thing I had no control over and was at the mercy of our social worker - who unfortunately beats to a different drum (and tempo) than me.   While wringing my hands endlessly, we had to wait and wait and wait for the homestudy to be written up.  Clarifications, vacations (3 of them), miscommunications within their agency etc. delayed the finalization and endorsement of our homestudy.  We ended up having to wait another month before our social worker was ready to send the homestudy to our placement agency.  But finally it was done!  Yeah!!  Or so we thought.  Since the homestudy took so long, we were now behind our expedited schedule and now it looks like we won't make the October 1 deadline after all.  :(  And remember those changes to the adoption rules I had mentioned earlier?  Well, guess what those changes entail?  Revision to our homestudy! Aargh!  Now we were told that, in addition to more hours of adoption education (which we don't mind) and 2 extra post-adoption home visits (costly but unavoidable) , we would need reference letters from Madelyn' s and Luke's school teachers and those reference forms would need to be included in our homestudy.  That means our homestudy had to be revised so we were back to square one.  Sigh...  Thankfully M and L's teachers were wonderful and incredibly supportive and were willing to complete the reference forms asap.  The only problem (again) was that since this was a new requirement, our homestudy agency had not developed a teacher reference form so they needed another week just to come up with the form.  God was definitely teaching me patience and I was failing miserably.  You'd think I would learn by now... Double sigh... They finally got the forms to our teachers and revised the homestudy and finalized it again.  Our social worker sent the newly finalized homestudy copies to our placement agency and we also got a copy to take to the Secretary of State in Chicago for certification (to make sure that all the notaries are indeed notaries and in good standing) and the Chinese Consulate in Chicago for authentication.  Whew!!  We were done with the homestudy stage of it!  Finally!  Or so we thought...again.  :(  :(  :(  When I looked at the homestudy, the medical conditions of the potential adoptive children need to be listed.  Although she was general on the other possible conditions (ex. orthopedic issues, infections diseases, cranio-facial problems) our social worker wrote that we were approved to adopt a child with a "congenital heart defect including ..."  The problem was that she didn't list the entire condition that Emma has.  Even our placement agency agreed that the social worker's wording may be a bit limiting if it was interpretted literally.  So we asked our social worker to revise the wording.  Simple enough, right?  Wrong.  Our social worker said that if she did change the wording, she would need to rescind the previous finalization of the homestudy and resubmit it to the state of Illinois for endorsement - which would probably take another month or so. What?!  Why is this so difficult?!  So now we wait to see what our agency wants to do.  Thankfully they were able to submit our I800A on 8/9/2011 so at least our application is still moving forward but with the homestudy still an issue, I'm learning to relinquish control and leave things in God's hands - where they should be anyway.  Lord, please help us get this done quickly and correctly and please keep our little Em healthy until we can finally get her home...Oh, and please be patient with me as I'm learning how to be patient...Amen.