Bummer of an update

Well, we finally have an update. And we have not gone through court yet, 12 weeks and the wait continues. Apparently, a family from our agency had run into some issues over in Congo in trying to bring their son home. Our country coordinator and lawyer had to focus pretty much exclusively on them and were unable to do anything else. So no court for us. The good news is is that family is now home. But of course I am hugely bummed that things have not moved forward for us. Can't you hear me chanting "all in God's timing?"- both from necessity of how very true that is, but also to keep myself from breaking down into tears.

I have tried to do some tentative time schedules on when I think we might travel. It goes something like this:

Hopefully in 4 weeks we will have passed court
30 day non-objection period
30-45 days to get non-appeal letter
file I600- take about 6 weeks to get approval (current time frame by others waiting)
apply to embassy for appt. 3-4 weeks
not sure if there is a second appt. after this, or if that is when we would travel
get exit letter from DGM 2-3 weeks
travel

So in my theoretical scenario, we are looking at possibly traveling by June. Our agency does not allow travel until all of the documents and things are ready to go. (new policy) This will have us stay very minimally once we are there to pick up our kids.

June. Our children will be almost a year old by that point, and we knew about our son at 5 days old. This time frame, I will admit, makes me sad. So much time is passing and we know about our kids but cannot get to them.

Truthfully, I am trying to keep it as realistic as possible with time frames it is currently taking for all of those things to happen. Of course, we could move faster, but we could also move slower. I try not to think about the idea of moving slower. I am already feeling like things could not move at any slower of a pace than this.

The bummer thing is that adoptions were moving at a very quick pace just 6 months ago. But I know that the program has grown by leaps and bounds, and the fact that it is new for the country and all of these things add up into more time. Also, when I consider even if we do travel in June, we still would only have been in this program for 13 months, still pretty quick when it comes to adoptions. (Total time including a country switch and waiting to see if another country would re-open, would be almost 2 years pursuing adoption) Of course, certain people in my life have more than once said "you could have had your own baby in that time" I honestly don't have the energy to respond to that question. Mostly I just want to say something not nice in return, and I know that will not help anybody.

Our kids ARE worth all of this.