I'm back . . .

It has been a couple of weeks since I've written anything. A lot has been going on, but nothing has really happened as far as the adoption goes. We are pretty much in the same spot we were when I last posted. Apparently they had Noah's visa appointment on Monday. I got an email on Monday afternoon saying that when they (I'm not sure who "they" are exactly) got there they found out that our file is missing a couple of things. What do you know -- another snag with US immigration. Apparently they don't have a copy of our 2006 tax return even though I'm sure that we sent it with the last packet of documents - the packet that also included the I600 that they had misplaced. They also need another form that we never sent because we were under the impression that we didn't need it. We have to meet an income qualification for his visa that basically shows that we are financially able to care for him once he gets here. Phil's income meets the requirement by itself so we didn't include my income on the I864 form which should have made this other form (I864a) unnecessary. It even says right on it that I864a is optional and that we only need to fill it out if we used my income to meet the income requirement. I've learned though that when they ask for something, no amount of reasoning is going to change anything so I am going to fill out another form and ship it off along with another copy of our 2006 tax return. I'm a little worried that our I864a isn't going to match the I864 that we already sent though. As of last week we were thinking that Phil would be travelling to Haiti on October 3rd and returning with Noah on October 6th. That clearly isn't going to happen since October 3rd is less than a week away and we still haven't sent the paperwork that they have requested. The thing that really stinks is that by not going next week we are basically delaying this homecoming by at least two more weeks. Phil has to go to Baltimore in the middle of October so the soonest he would be able to go to Haiti would be the week of October 22nd. I may be completely out of my mind for being optimistic at this point, but I'm still planning on Noah and Adam going trick-or-treating together.

The really big thing that happened in our family was that it became clear that Proxy wasn't going to recover from his illness. He was getting weaker by the day and no amount of praying or hoping or crying was going to change the inevitable. He was no longer able to go up and down the stairs so we would leave him downstairs to sleep at night so that he could go outside if he needed to. The problem was that he would get up in the middle of the night and then not be able to make it back to his bed to lay down. We would often find him just stumbling around or in a weird trance-like state just staring at the wall. When that would happen one of us would pick him up and lay him back in his bed and then he would sleep for hours and hours. There was a couple of days that I didn't see him move at all, but that's just because Phil was the one who had laid him back down after he would get up. In the middle of the night on September 13th I went downstairs to check on him and to lay him back down and I found him wobbling in the corner. I also found a very large puddle of urine in the middle of the kitchen and Proxy footprints all over the place. He had wet on the floor and then wandered through it for who knows how long. The most disturbing discovery though was blood drops and smears all over the kitchen floor. I laid Proxy back down in his bed and then spent the next hour cleaning things up before I showered and went back to bed at about 3:00 a.m. I'm still not sure where the blood was coming from, but it was suddenly abundantly clear to me that we weren't doing Proxy any favors by forcing him to stay with us. The next morning I told Phil what had happened and let him know that I was ready to let Prox go. On Friday night Proxy slept in my lap for much of the evening until I went to bed at about midnight. I held him again on Saturday morning and cried and cried until Phil came and took him away. I felt horrible that I couldn't be with Proxy at the very end, but Phil assured me that he would stay with him the whole time. It was hard for Phil too, and I'm so grateful that he put himself aside so that I didn't have to take that last trip. I'm not sure that I ever would have been able to do it even though I knew then and I know now that we had no other choice. A couple of nights ago Adam's bedtime prayer went something like this "I love Proxy and I miss him. He's in heaven so that he can be happy and chase ducks and rabbits again until Jesus comes again." We all cried a lot for the next few days and I'm actually crying again now as I type this. I thought I had waited long enough that I would be feeling okay to write something. Evidently the emotions are still very strong for me. I want to say more about Proxy but I think a little more time needs to pass before I will be able to do that. Here's a picture of him at a happier time. I'm not so sure that he was having such a great time, but he was always so patient with us.