I'll start with updating you on our Citizenship issue. We got word from our MP office on Tuesday that our application was found, had not been lost, and been approved! We should receive the confirmation in the mail soon! Fabulous! This feels slightly bittersweet. I'm so relieved that everything worked out but we shouldn't have been put through that worry in the first place. An 8 week wait jumping to a 27 week wait without notice is absurd, then to be told our file doesn't exist was ridiculous! I shouldn't have been told that to begin with. I should have just received the approval on time. The Citizenship office gave the MP the excuse of poor workers with a high turn over rate at the call center where I got my information. This is completely unacceptable! If they have people working for them, they need to train them properly and put in some sort of process to talk with a superior or complaint center!
The same day we got the phone call about our good citizenship news, we also got a picture of Sofie! We were so excited! I had to hold my emotions back a little bit because there were some in-discrepancies with the birth date and age of the child in the picture.
Originally, when we first got the two mini-referrals of two little girls in November, we were told we could review both files without pictures and choose from there. The next day we were told we had to choose one girl to adopt from the small amount of info provided on the mini-referrals. I was happy to not have to read both files. Making that kind of choice is just so difficult! From the minimal info we had, we chose to go ahead with the girl that we had more info on and trust that we would get the girl we were meant to get. On Tuesday we got her picture... but it wasn't for the girl we had originally requested. This didn't deter us at all... It doesn't matter which little girl is ours, we just want to make sure that there are no issues with the paper work. We want to ensure the paper work matches the child we bring home.
After a few phone calls and emails between our agency and the Bulgarian agency, we found out what's going on. Basically the Bulgarian MOJ and agency think we are crazy for doing a blind adoption for a child with Down syndrome. They also found out we are planning to skip the first trip to meet our daughter, which is extra crazy to them! The first trip is only put in place for the parents protection. The MOJ wants the parents to feel as confident as possible that they know what child they are adopting, in hopes to avoid adoption disruptions. We feel very confident that we are in for some really amazing and difficult times with our new daughter and we know this is what we should be doing. Adoption disruption is not an option, so the first trip seems like an emotional (because we'd have to leave her in the orphanage), expensive, and unnecessary trip that we can avoid.
Because they don't understand how we can blindly want this child, they want us to thoroughly review all the information they can get us on both girls and choose from that. They are sending us both files, all the pictures they can get, past and present, and updated videos. They want us to read and watch everything before with actually commit. I'm really excited to get so much information on my daughter before I meet her but how do we take one child over the other?! We wouldn't get to pick if she was our birth child! This is crazy. Plus, it pushes our time line back a little bit. We won't have all the information on both girls until mid January. Which means we can't commit until the end of January, which means we can't start all the paperwork until after that. I was hoping to have started it all by now. I'm still hoping to bring her home in the spring but it will probably be the end of spring now, instead of the beginning.
The girl who we have the pictures and video of right now is already working her way in to my heart. I don't know exactly how this is going to play out but right now we are thinking that she is our Sofie. Before we found out all about this, we announced her in our Christmas cards as our daughter. She very likely is our daughter... this is just very confusing. I'm trusting that God knows how this is supposed to work out and will get Sofie to us soon, even with all this little bumps in the road.
The same day we got the phone call about our good citizenship news, we also got a picture of Sofie! We were so excited! I had to hold my emotions back a little bit because there were some in-discrepancies with the birth date and age of the child in the picture.
Originally, when we first got the two mini-referrals of two little girls in November, we were told we could review both files without pictures and choose from there. The next day we were told we had to choose one girl to adopt from the small amount of info provided on the mini-referrals. I was happy to not have to read both files. Making that kind of choice is just so difficult! From the minimal info we had, we chose to go ahead with the girl that we had more info on and trust that we would get the girl we were meant to get. On Tuesday we got her picture... but it wasn't for the girl we had originally requested. This didn't deter us at all... It doesn't matter which little girl is ours, we just want to make sure that there are no issues with the paper work. We want to ensure the paper work matches the child we bring home.
After a few phone calls and emails between our agency and the Bulgarian agency, we found out what's going on. Basically the Bulgarian MOJ and agency think we are crazy for doing a blind adoption for a child with Down syndrome. They also found out we are planning to skip the first trip to meet our daughter, which is extra crazy to them! The first trip is only put in place for the parents protection. The MOJ wants the parents to feel as confident as possible that they know what child they are adopting, in hopes to avoid adoption disruptions. We feel very confident that we are in for some really amazing and difficult times with our new daughter and we know this is what we should be doing. Adoption disruption is not an option, so the first trip seems like an emotional (because we'd have to leave her in the orphanage), expensive, and unnecessary trip that we can avoid.
Because they don't understand how we can blindly want this child, they want us to thoroughly review all the information they can get us on both girls and choose from that. They are sending us both files, all the pictures they can get, past and present, and updated videos. They want us to read and watch everything before with actually commit. I'm really excited to get so much information on my daughter before I meet her but how do we take one child over the other?! We wouldn't get to pick if she was our birth child! This is crazy. Plus, it pushes our time line back a little bit. We won't have all the information on both girls until mid January. Which means we can't commit until the end of January, which means we can't start all the paperwork until after that. I was hoping to have started it all by now. I'm still hoping to bring her home in the spring but it will probably be the end of spring now, instead of the beginning.
The girl who we have the pictures and video of right now is already working her way in to my heart. I don't know exactly how this is going to play out but right now we are thinking that she is our Sofie. Before we found out all about this, we announced her in our Christmas cards as our daughter. She very likely is our daughter... this is just very confusing. I'm trusting that God knows how this is supposed to work out and will get Sofie to us soon, even with all this little bumps in the road.
2 comments:
Oh my goodness. I'm sorry that the timeline is turning out to be so much longer. Also, will pray that your Sofie will be clear to you. How difficult to have two girls presented to you at the same time! I hope you guys have a wonderful Christmas together..next years Christmas will certainly be a lot different!
I got your card today. Thanks. I can't imagine how hard it is for you guys right now with so much up in the air. And what a tug and twist on the emotions. I hope that you have a good Christmas in spite of it all.
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