New Ticker

I added a new ticker to the top of my blog to count the days we have been waiting for our LOI. For the benefit of my non adoptive parent readers, the LOI stands for "letter of invitation". It is the final document we need in order to travel to Kazakhstan and finally meet our daughter. When we started this process we were told the wait in Kaz was less than one year. We were advised that we would likely be traveling late summer and that we would definitely be home with our baby by Christmas. In hind sight I am a little surprised that anyone would be so adamant about the time table but perhaps that is an indication of how unstable the program in Kaz has become.

Well clearly we will not have a baby this year and while that is disappointing I have to take solace in the belief that we are close. I am very glad that we chose to pursue a concurrent adoption and not put all our eggs in the China basket. By my calculation in the more than 12 months since we were logged in, China has only processed about 70 days worth of dossiers. If things don't improve substantially then the odds of us even completing an adoption in China are slim. I have to maintain perspective. The wait for Kaz is longer than I had hoped but it is far better than China and the longest part (I think) is behind us.

Such is adoption hurry up, wait, rush to complete, wait, update and fed ex overnight, wait, cross a milestone, wait. So today I start to mark the time served, waiting...again.

***the picture to the left of the ticker is the baby house (orphanage) in Ust-Kamenogorsk