What's new?

Well, it's clear that I'm a horrible blogger. I'll try to do better, but no guarantees. Since I haven't posted since we got our referral, I will try to summarize what has happened with our adoption since then:

We were lucky enough to receive new pictures of our little sweetie right before Halloween when another adoptive parent with our agency went to our baby's orphanage and was able to see her and take lots of pictures. It was so wonderful to see all the pictures, but a little bit sad to see how much she changed in just one month, and realize how much of her little life we are missing.

We got a bunch of new pictures again in mid-December, this time from our agency. What a nice Christmas present that was!

We finally got the go-ahead from our agency to file our I600 on 1/9/08, so we completed our forms and overnight Fedexed them to our agency, and then they put them together with the baby's paperwork from the orphanage and sent the whole thing off to the USCIS office in HCMC where it arrived on 1/14/08. Now we are waiting for the email from USCIS to confirm receipt, and then we wait for approval. For those who might be reading this who are not familiar with the Vietnam international adoption process, basicially the I600 is a form that, together with several other documents, must be sent to the USCIS (US immigration) in order to receive an immigrant visa for our baby to enter the US. This used to be applied for in Vietnam AFTER the adoption took place, but they changed the process in October so that now adoptive parents must apply BEFORE traveling. This has caused delays in many of our adoptions as agencies and orphanages scrambled to figure out the new process, and now more delays as we wait for USCIS to process the applications and issue approvals.

So when will we travel? Good question. USCIS has stated that approvals will take no more than 60 days from receipt of applications; some have received approvals much more quickly, and others are approaching the 60-day mark with NO approval. We still haven't received our official "receipt" email, even though I know from Fedex tracking that our I600 arrived at their office on 1/14. So I'm *guessing* that, if all goes well, we should travel sometime between late Feb. and late March.