Hold Our Horses

Well... it turns out we won't leave as soon as we were thinking.

There was a chance we could make trip #1 on or before September 5. Why specifically September 5, you wonder? Well, all Russian orphans must be available to be adopted in-country before they are ever made available to hopeful pre-adoptive parents internationally. It makes sense, I suppose. Russia--ideally--would like their children to stay in their county and to be adopted domestically. However, as many know, this is not always possible.

The amount of time children must be available to Russians only varies by region, but it is at least 8 months. September 5th would have been the 8-month mark for our littlest one. However, it was decided late last week that our littlest one would be put on a final regional registry for one more month. So we are to wait one more month from that decision.

So while we won't travel as soon as early September, it still looks like we could travel earlier than we first thought. Two weeks ago we both thought that we would start trip #1 in October. At the present, it looks like we may meet our little ones face-to-face in late September.

I've never felt that a week or so could make that big of a difference... but it sure does.