Lawyers, Tigers and Bears.. oh my

I have had much consternation over this re-adoption vs registering adoptions debate. I am a "1 traveling parent" family so I always believed that my husband/we would need to readopt our daughter when we got her home. When I returned home from China I got a letter from FTIA saying that Keith could register adoptions for a small fee and there was a note at the bottom of the letter that started IR-4 families could "either" register their adoption or take the more costly and time consuming route of readopting. I called the agency and was told that was a misprint and that I had to go thru the re-adoption process. I knew of several families on the FTIA thread who had filed themselves and had even gotten copies of forms off the Internet. I called the Lawrence county xx office and a very rude person told me she didn't know how to file it and she didn't have the forms, I told her I had forms but she insisted that I needed to go thru a lawyer. I should of called Keith back right then and there but I assumed that more costly and time consuming also meant face time with somebody so I opted to use a local lawyer in my county. At my appointment I took everything I had and after 10 minutes the lawyer decided that since I had the power of attorney, everything was filled out as if my husband had been right there in the room with me. THERE WAS NOTHING SPECIAL TO DO. All I had to do was file a petition to register the adoption in the state of Indiana. I had to include the following exhibits...Chinese and translated birth certificate, translated abandonment certificate, original and translated adoptive registration certificate, a copy of her permanent resident card and a copy of the original and translated Chinese decree of adoption. Then I had to fill out an additional medical form for the health department. I filed a petition to waiver a home study (I included a copy of my existing one)I filed a petition to waiver the punitive father registry fee AND then I got a bill for.... ouch $$1250.00 It took one month to get the court decree. The lawyer sent that on to the Health dept. for a birth certificate. The Health dept. informed me that foreign births had to wait 90 days from the date of the court decree. Once I get the birth certificate then I can go to the Social Security office and get a SS number. Some time after that I can apply for her certificate of citizenship, finish up the I-600 forms and I should be done.