Reed's Room

Jason has finished the furniture for our baby's room. It turned out great. The crib and changing table/dresser are made of maple and left the natural color. Reed will use the changing table for a dresser when he grows older. The chairrail was stained to match the wood work in the room. Jason was able to use a large font to cut out letter for his wall. He then spray painted them to match the room. He still plans to add a night stand table and a shelf for the wall. I think he may even make some picture frames for the wall by his crib. It is really nice to have such a handy husband.
I am glad I was able to get it off the camera and onto the blog. Now that I know it works I can get some other photos onto the blog when he gets here.
We haven't had any updates lately. Still planning on May as our month to travel.

Almost 5 months old

We received new photos of Reed today. He is definitely getting bigger. His hair is very curly and growing so long. I hope they don't cut it all off before we get down there. He looks healthy and happy with his foster mom. I think that is her in the picture above. Thanks for all the words of encouragement from all of you. We appreciate the support from our family and friends. I know I have said it before but I want you to know how much I really mean it.

A longer wait than expected

We received some 'not so great' news today. Both Jason and I were thinking we would be traveling soon to get our little Reed. It will not be real soon but closer to the end of May, as speculated by our agency. They had mentioned at the beginning that it might take as long as into the month of May but we didn't want to believe them. We were very much hoping for March sometime.

I will give you a run down of what the process looks like. First of all there are about 6 steps to the adoption process for Guatemala. The first step is the homestudy and applying for approval to bring an orphan into the country. Step two is completing a dossier, which includes many more forms to fill out according to the Guatemalan guidelines. In step three the dossier is completed and it is sent to the Guatemalan Embassy in the US and the Secretary of State which then gets submitted to the Guatemalan rep/attorney. We then wait for a referral. We received our referral in November when we accepted Reed as our baby boy. When we accepted our referral, Reed was given a DNA test along with his biological mother. After the DNA test the case is either referred to investigation or approved 60 days after the DNA results were received by the Department of Homeland Security. Once the case is approved it is submitted to PGN. PGN is the Guatemalan governing body that approves the adoption under Guatemalan law and is an independent government process. This is where our case is currently. Apparently there is only one person handling the cases so this process is rather slow. The representative from the agency doesn't believe our case will be finalized and out of PGN by the end of April. She felt the earliest would be late May. She has no way of predicting this time, however she says it all depends on PGN.

After this step there are two more steps, one being the final approval with the Department of Homeland Security and we will be notified of any further documents that will be needed. The final step is when the case is passed to the Consular Section (in the Department of State). Once the file is received we will be notified when we need to travel. Appointments will be set up for a medical exam and the immigrant visa interview. We will then be able to bring our baby home.

We are both pretty devastated by the news and hope this will clear up some of the questions you may have about why this is taking so long. We do not have very much information nor do we understand all we are given but will keep you updated as more news comes our way. We are hoping they will keep up with the pictures on a regular basis and of course we will post them on the blog.