Day in court ... and more "oh, by the way" news we are coming to loathe

We 3 went to court yesterday. The paperwork process to legally adopt Alexandra is officially underway. It won't be finalized for about 6 months. And we found out that it may not be until JANUARY that we get her birth certificate! That's news. We're getting kind of tired of getting news like that.

While in Georgia we had "Oh we just need to fax you paperwork." This is once we've left the hotel & are at a location with no fax. We got the pediatrician to receive it for us ... and it turned out we had to notarize it & fax it back. THAT took 2 hours.

Then we had "Oh, yeah, you need to be in court as soon as possible." once we'd returned from being gone for 2 weeks. Uh, people ... that would've been good to know ahead of time. We were just GONE for 2 weeks from work. Taking off more time is difficult AND costs us money!!

Day before court it was "Oh, and you need to bring an itemized list of all adoption expenses." Oh, sure. Yeah. I've got nothing else to do for the afternoon. (Thankfully I am genius & did find it squirreled away under a section of our budget!) Still ... really?

Yesterday we found about the delayed birth certificate, and also that the ICPC permission thing has nothing to do with traveling with Alexandra out-of-state before her adoption is finalized. We have to beg permission from the courts & from our overseeing agency. Really???? Come ON!! When are we going to be entrusted to parent this little girl & just get all of the documentation to do things like, oh ... open a savings account, file our taxes, allow her to be cared for by a licensed agency, start a college fund ... all manner of things require a birth certificate and/or a social security number. We won't have either until next YEAR.

We had said we wanted 2 kids ... but I really don't know if we can tolerate constantly being evaluated & judged like this. There's a reason I'm self-employed.