In which someone cries like a baby and it isn't Micah

Perhaps the name of this post is enough to tell you that we're not going to be home as soon as we'd hoped. Today was our embassy day: a day I've been preparing for by reading other peoples blogs, downloading forms, and obtaining documents for months. The embassy was about an hour away; our day got off to a bad start when I told our drive that we were going to the US embassy and he hadn't the faintest clue where it was... turns out that here it is always referred to as the American Embassy, and he didn't equate the two. But we finally arrived, right on time at 8:30, and we were only 2nd in the queue. Without going into too many details, the end result was that we sat in the waiting room (dimensions: 6" x 12"), with only a quick trip to a restaurant for lunch, until after 4 pm, long after all their other customers had left, and left without having provided them with the evidence they needed to forego the DNA test.

Micah was an absolute trooper through all of this, sleeping quietly in his pouch almost all day, except for 2 bottles. Thank God he's an angel baby so far. He showed his displeasure by offering the embassy his two messiest diapers to date. Mommy didn't have that option at her disposal, and by about 3:30, she was crying hysterically in the now-empty office. The situation was so frustrating; it really felt like we were suspended in the 9th circle of pergatory. Making it worse was my realization that this was a VACATION day for me. So not. Adam was a real trooper, too, despite the fact that we didn't bring along quite enough calories to sustain him all day.

Although DNA tests are usually only collected on Thursdays, the embassy was able to finagle an appointment for us tomorrow morning. The DNA test needs to be fedexed to the US for processing and an e-mail response sent back. If we're REALLY lucky, we'll have everything we need by the end of next week, but if any link in the chain takes longer than it should, it may mean staying through the following weekend. Right now we're debating whether we have the chutzpah to take Micah to the Taj Mahal while we wait. It would be making the best of a bad situation as far as we're concerned, but we're not sure about all of the logistics of it from the baby perspective. We're going to talk with Amit tonight to see if we can figure out something to make the time pass more easily.

On the plus side, we did get to meet Rob, who was there to collect his twins' passports, and we'll definitely look him and Tricia up if we ever get to Singapore again. Right now, the idea of another exotic wandering vacation isn't sounding very appealing, though, and we're starting to have fantasies about renting a cabana on a beach somewhere and spending our days building sand castles. We're also eagerly awaiting word from Nik, who is camped out at the Ramada waiting for the birth of his twins. His wife Lisa is due to arrive on Sunday night, and we just hope the twins wait for her to arrive.

Thanks to everyone for your well wishes; we'll certainly need you to keep hoping and praying that things happen more smoothly and the time passes quickly.