Still Waiting!!!

Well, we are still waiting for our referral of our precious baby girl. We have made some progress along the way. We are adopting from a region of Russia called Kemerovo. The court system there decided we needed to do even more paperwork than was already done. So, we had to go back and get yet more copies of our marriage license, along with 3 other new documents they wanted. Then they all had to be notarized and apostilled, requiring yet another 2 hour drive to the state capitol to get them notarized. We sent them all in last week, August 13, 2007. Adoption Ark notified us they had received them on August 15th. They will have the next family that travels over hand carry our documents over to Russia.

Two weeks ago our caseworker at AA said I might want to get our homestudy report ammended to say we would take an older little girl. She said it was a very easy process that only required a one page addendum. When I asked about the document from the US government which said we were only approved for 9-12 months old, she assured me it didn't really say that, that they never put the age limit on there. Well, I was sitting looking at the form talking to her and assured her it did indeed have the age limits listed. She said to notifiy the USCIS and have them change it, not a big deal. WELL, hah says the USCIS. We can change it by reapplying, waiting 2-3 months and paying another $340. Obviously, this option isn't really appealing to us. So, we decided we would continue to hope for a baby 9-12 months "at time of referral" so we won't have to do all that. It's OK if she's older by the time we get her home.

The big news we got today, is that we are now #1 on the waiting list for a little girl. All along, there has been a couple ahead of us on the waiting list, and they finally got their referral. So, the next little girl between 9-12 months old will be ours!!!