A Delay In Our Adoption Process

We were notified by our adoption agency on Tuesday that there has been a new procedure/policy put into effect that will probably delay our adoption process. The I- 600 form, which is the Petition to Classify an Orphan as an Immediate Relative, is normally filed in country (Vietnam) once we are there. The USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services) now says that beginning 10/29 we have to file it here (in the US) and wait for approval before we can travel (which can take some time). So once we receive our referral we will have to file the I-600 with all of our baby's documents and once we receive approval, our agency can start to work on travel arrangements. This doesn’t seem like it will delay us getting our referral, but it will delay the time between when we get our referral and when we travel. They are saying that now it could take up to 4 months to travel after we receive our referral.

We were hoping for more referrals this month from our agency (including ours) but it seems to have been a slow month. Some families that received referrals in late August and mid September just received their travel plans and this new policy will not affect them since they already had imminent travel plans. We were hoping if we got our referral this month that we would be one of the last groups to travel before Christmas and be home by Christmas, but now it is looking like we will probably travel sometime after the New Year. The latest they are letting people travel is the first week in December. This brings on more delays though with the New Year in January followed by Tet the Vietnamese New Year in the beginning of February.

We have learned throughout this whole process that all we can do is wait and pray. Once we have done our part, it is totally out of our hands and into the hands of God, our agency, the orphanages and the Vietnamese Embassy. New policies will always be coming into effect and changes will continue to be made that may or may not affect people’s adoption processes for the good and the bad.

What we do know is that at the end of this journey, some day in the near future, we will finally have our little girl and bring her home and that is the most important part!

Another Quote

"There is no telling how many miles you will have to run

while chasing a dream."
~Author Unknown~

For The Nursery

This is a piece we are in the process of painting for the nursery, it is an old dresser we are re-painting white.

For The Nursery

This one is my garage sale bargain. I got this toy box/bench for $2.00 at a garage sale because the hinge was broken. It was brown, but with a fresh coat of white paint and a new hinge it will be just like new!

A Nice Quote About Adoption

Not flesh of my flesh nor bone of my bone,

But still miraculously my own.

Never forget for a single minute,

you didn't grow under my heart,

but in it.

~ Fleur Conkling Heyliger ~

I bought this necklace for myself.

It comes from the quote above. It was handmade.

Operation Baby Lift

To the left you will see a video clip entitled "Operation Baby Lift". This is a new documentary that is going to come out in 2008 about Vietnamese orphans that were brought to America at the end of the Vietnam War. The reason it is interesting to us is that there is a woman who works with our adoption agency that will be helping us when we go to Vietnam that actually took part in Operation Baby Lift. Her name is Cherie Clark and she is interviewed in the film and has also written a book about the events called "After Sorrow Comes Joy". I haven't read the book yet but it is definitely on my "to do" list before we go.

We're DTV!

What does DTV mean? It stands for dossier to Vietnam, it means that everything has been completed and our dossier is in Vietnam awaiting a referral, yeah! We are considered DTV as of July 17. On our agencies blog group database we are currently one of 52 families waiting for a referral. Where are we amongst the 52? Probably right around the middle of the group (according to date), but they really can't go by order of DTV date because some families request boys, others girls, others either or, and many different ages of babies are requested so it's really hard to tell in what order they issue the referrals. In the past couple of months they have issued 12 referrals the first week in July and another 10 or 12 the first week in August, and there is word that more are on the way so referrals are definitely coming pretty fast. We still think ours could come sometime in October or November.