whew!

I am tired. This 2 kid thing is some work. I have no idea how my neighbor raises her 4 kids! It's awe inspiring. Then again each new one came with an older sibling, not the other way around. Forrest has continued to just crack us up. Even though he seems a bit more needy at times, he's just a roll with the punches kind of kid. He'll find something, Skye will take it, he looks so betrayed, then goes and finds something else. It's a reminder to me that moving on is so much better than holding on. Trust me after the process we have had to get Skye home, moving on is such a better place to be than holding on. I won't say that I've forgiven those involved in holding up the process, but I am moving in that direction. It's just so sad that so many entities lost sight of the fact that we were talking about a little boy trying to come to his family, rather than the importance of a t crossed or an i dotted. I still can't believe that I was fighting with someone up to the point that Chris was at the embassy with Skye!

For those who have not heard the story, I'll give you the abbreviated version. Chris arrived at the embassy god awful early on July 27, with Skye in tow to go through all the necessary interviews to get our USCIS packet and Skye's visa. He's in a small room, about the size of a closet, that smells like poop b/c Skye had a major blow out right before entering the room and there was poop on his sweatshirt, and Chris swears coming out of his pores! Let me tell you, the smell of his poop is something you don't want to get too close to, sometimes after washing my hands with soap I can still smell it on my hands. Needless to say not fun! Anyway, the DHS person (that would be department of homeland security, oh thank you w.) is going through a litany of questions. She gets to the one stating our home address and she say, "do you still live at 1204 NE Lenore St?"
Chris calmly says "no we've moved"
She looks up startled and says, "well you didn't get a new homestudy done for this address, so your I-171H (basically the gov't paper that says we are fit parents and live in a good home, and make enough money to support a kid) is not valid."
Chris is bewildered and assures her that his wife is very aware of paperwork and knows I redid a homestudy after we moved, and sent it to Yakima (heretofor called the idiots!).
She assures him he's wrong.
He somehow gets her to agree to try calling me.
Make note at this stage, it's 7:45am here in Portland and I'm running around the house with Forrest, a bundle of nerves waiting to here that the interview is over and we'll get our visa the next day.
She tries calling, tells him she has a strange connection, hangs up and tries calling again. My cell rings with an unidentifiable number. Normally I never answer these, but with Chris being in GT and all the strangeness to this point I answer, warily.
The woman on the phone says "is this Shannon Baker?"
To which I almost hang up, damn telemarketers. I instead correct her with my name.
She proceeds to tell me who she is and there is a problem with our I-171H, and I throw up a little in my mouth. I'm thinking here we are all the way in guatemala and we still can't bring him home?
I assure her that YES I got a new homestudy, YES I told the idiots that we had moved, and YES I actually had the new homestudy on my computer (thank god).
She accepts the homestudy over email and tells me the idiots need to do some research before they can issue the visa. I wait and wait and wait, meanwhile Chris is in the US Embassy in Guatemala with a poopy smelling little boy, who doesn't know him, has no limits and has just beaned some poor guatemalan woman in the face with a plastic car.
About 2 hours later I get an email that the Field Directior, king Idiot, has kindly emailed a new I-171H to the embassy and we have our visa.

Needless to say this has not been a smooth process. So I am grateful that after all this time Skye is finally acclimating to our home and family. He still prefers Chris and that's okay. Today we took our first foray into him hanging out in his crib solo while I put Forrest down for a nap. It was a grand failure, but we have a plan. Problem is, Skye is not used to being alone nor is he used to having to wait for ANYTHING. Tomorrow we will try again, but I will shut his door, make sure the fan and white noise machine are in Forrest's room to drown out the yells and hope Forrest falls asleep before Skye gets too crazy. It's all I can do to prep for when I'm home alone with the boys. I still haven't figured out how I'm going to put Skye down for a nap when Forrest is still wide awake. I'd put them down at the same time, but Skye sleeps for 3 hours and I'm not interested in him sleeping from 2-5, and I can't leave a 10 month old alone for the 30 minutes it takes to put Skye down. Anyone with a suggestion, please share!

Okay time to go wake my sleeping angel, he's been down 3 hours that's a long enough nap.