Dear Mr USCIS & The State of Illinois

This is my daughter, you may not recognize her, but I do. Her face is engraved already on my heart. And I Just need you to know, I am not happy. In fact, I am MAD! In china sits my Mavery. Who has now waited almost 30 months of her life for a mommy. And in your office sits you. Doing what? I know it is not sitting and processing my I-600 to turn it into an I-171, which of course is what you should be doing. I have tried to be patient, I really have. But I am now to the point of frustration. Do you realize I am not proud to live in Illinois at this moment? My friends in a neighboring state? They had their I171 back in less than a month. They also did not have to have their home study go through that silly extra step that made me wait even LONGER for you to begin to process my I-600. And Idaho? They are the smartest state ever, 2 WEEKS! And I just don’t understand. We had to WAIT for our fingerprints to get back, which held us up in the beginning. THEN we had to WAIT for our HS to be approved by the state of Illinois, which held us up. We had to WAIT to get our 2nd set of fingerprints, so we could WAIT some more. And so now here we are stuck WAITING. 24 weeks ago I laid eyes on my daughter. 18 weeks ago we had our first fingerprints done. It would be different if we waited on ME to do anything. But oh no, I KNOW why I am doing this. I know that this child is more important than anything else I could be working on. I have a few ideas on how you could make this process better.

**Put a woman in charge. (no offense men) AND the rule should be, she MUST be a mother and she must have adopted. Because only then would she understand the heartache of waiting parents.

**We are paying you A LOT of money to process this piece of paper. And these are CHILDREN we are talking about. Children who wait w/ no families. I would think if anything deserves it’s own job, it would be this. One person who simply approves children to come into the US as a citizen. How hard is it really, we already had all these other steps approve us, what else has to be done?

We are good people I promise. Maybe you have heard stories such as we let a hamster run loose in our house for months. But that should just go to show, how much we believe in freedom of speech! And how NICE we are! We COULD have let the cat run in the basement. The cat who we took in who just showed up on our doorstep. See, we are so nice we take in stray animals! But did we let that cat eat that hamster? No, we just cut off all of his food supply till he was forced to come out of hiding. But that was GOOD. We caught him! That is of course till he died in the cage from being locked up.

Or maybe you have heard that we have no control over our youngest daughter. That we had to install a “cage” on her bed at night to keep her from crawling out. It is not really a cage, honestly! It is just a tent, that zips and I promise you, she loves to remind us to “zip it mamma”. And all those stories of her running races on the dining room table or covering herself in marker or toothpaste or singing her new favorite song nobody’s perfect? Well we really do believe in creative expression. We believe she is going to grow up to be something big, I promise. And we DO have control over her, in a roundabout sort of way….

We DO love Jesus, does that count? Hmmm, maybe not, you are the State.

Oooh, how about this one. I HOME SCHOOL my children, doesn’t that count for ANYTHING? I mean come on, you should KNOW I am insane to keep FOUR Kids home with me all day EVERY day. Well, not insane, I AM sane, so you should trust me to parent another child. But you would not want to drive me over the edge by keeping that little tiny piece of paper from me any longer would you? Come on, do it for the kids?? By the way, I am thankful to Illinois for good home school laws. BAD adoption laws, but home school laws good. Keep up the good work! ;-)

Well no matter what you may have heard, China has approved us. So if you don’t get it in gear soon, I am moving to China, that is it. That is my final offer. And if I go, I am leaving the animals behind, so THERE!

Sincerely,

A mommy who wishes she lived in Missouri or Idaho right now…

**For those wondering, we applied for the I-600 and our reciept said we filed on 2/11. We found out they did not start processing it till 3/10. So the counter actually began w/ the 2/11 date. Our home study was held up in Illinois when it went through dcfs. I guess I need to change the counter to reflect the 2nd date. We have not been able to locate any number we can contact w/ out a receipt number, which we were not given. Our Social Worker told us we are not allowed to question it till AFTER we have waited 12 weeks. She says we can expect it after May 5th.

**Will update on the diving fundraiser soon. Want to gather a few more pictures and such.