Three Times A Mom

Good news and bad news. The good news is we received a new picture of Reagan today! I’m not sure exactly when it was taken but she already looks so much bigger! Her little arms and legs have really filled out and we can finally see her hands. All of the families who have traveled to her orphanage thus far have mentioned they were very impressed with the care the children receive, but it’s reassuring to see for ourselves that our baby seems to be thriving.
The bad news is that there is a problem with our paperwork. Back in May we each had a physical, and later came back with a notary to have medical clearance letters signed and notarized. Unfortunately those letters expire next week and there’s no way they’ll be translated and “logged in” at the Vietnamese Dept of International Adoption before then. In anticipation of this problem we went through the whole process again in November – new exam, new notary, new letters – which is a bit tricky considering Dan and I have different doctors, neither of them have a notary in the building, each require a real appointment to sign the letters, and traveling notaries are expensive! But we got it all done and sent in to the Secretary of State in early December. They should have been returned by now, so our agency checked into it and determined that the letters would be rejected because our notary neglected to fill in the dates properly! They probably won’t be able to start processing the rest of our dossier until those letters are fixed, authenticated by the Secretary of State of California (which, by the way, is apparently the worst one of the 50 to work with), consularized by the Vietnamese consulate in San Fransisco, approved by our agency in Tulsa, and then finally forwarded to Vietnam. When all is said and done, this will probably set us back at least two weeks.

Okay, reading back over what I just wrote I imagine you’re probably all bored and overwhelmed with way too much information. Let’s just sum it up by saying, please pray that this will all get worked out quickly, that the translation process can be expedited, and that we’ll be able to catch up to the other two families we hope to be able to travel with. Maybe too this has given you a little glimpse into what we all go through to get these babies home! Thanks in advance for your prayers, and enjoy the new photo of our little peanut!