I have become a stalker.

Of our mailman, that is.  We're awaiting our fingerprinting appointment notification from the USCIS, so several times a day I look to see if the mailman's come and hope to find a nice letter in our box from the Department of Homeland Security.  (We received one from them just last week, letting us know that our I800A application had been received.  I sometimes wonder if our mailman thinks we're up to no good, getting all these official-looking letters.  That and the fact that I probably appear to be a little nuts.)

Once we have our fingerprinting invitation, we can go to the local immigration office and have our fingerprints taken (for the 2nd time since we started this journey).  After the USCIS runs our fingerprints and determines that we still don't have criminal records, they will approve our I800A ("Application for Determination of Suitability to Adopt a Child from a Convention Country" - the "Convention" being the Hague treaty governing international adoption, to which both China and the U.S. are signatories).  The I800A basically means that the U.S. government has examined our home study and performed a background check and determined that we are fit to adopt a child.  Immediately after being notified that we've received our I800A, our agency will submit the I800 application we recently filled out ("Petition to Classify Convention Adoptee as an Immediate Relative"), which specifically gives us the U.S. government's permission to adopt our daughter.  At the same time, our agency will submit our "Letter of Acceptance" (already signed by us and waiting at CCAI's office in Beijing), which is the Chinese government's official document matching us to our daughter and giving us their permission to adopt her.  Once China receives our signed LOA, they will issue a travel approval (TA) for us to go to China and bring our daughter home.  Travel approvals typically are received 11-15 weeks after the LOA is sent to China - but everything has been moving so fast on the China end since we were matched with our daughter, I think it will be faster than that.  And then we'll travel 2-4 weeks later, once our agency has been able to secure an appointment for us at the U.S. Consulate in Guangzhou, which will issue our daughter's visa to return to the U.S.   Immediately after we arrive in the U.S., she will be a U.S. citizen.  The adoption itself will be legal and permanent sometime during our first week in China, while we are in Zhengzhou (the capital of Henan Province, where our daughter was born).  There's a process we can go through after we return to obtain a U.S. birth certificate for our daughter, but she will be legally ours before we come home. 

Whew.  You need a scorecard to keep up with all this.  Thank goodness for the wonderful CCAI ladies in the Waiting Child department and at the Georgia office.  They're keeping it all together for us.  As for me, I'm going to check the mail.  Again.