Waiting Nine Months and Counting

Today, we have officially been waiting nine months to see our little girl's face for the first time. Its been a long nine months and we are preparing ourselves for a much longer road. Although we hope to know more about our daughter soon, we will not be able to hold her and bring her home for a long time. It took me a while to post this because we needed time to process some news we received from our adoption agency. On August 3rd, our agency informed us that any referrals received between July 15 and January 4, 2010 (that should be us) should expect to wait up to 10 months for our travel call. When we first started our journey to our daughter, the wait to travel after referral was 10 to 14 weeks, and now we are faced with a long 10 month wait. Instead of bringing home a baby around 8 to 10 months old, we will be bringing home a toddler around 16 to 18 months old. In case you are wondering why that is, the basics of it are that Korea only issues so many emigration permits (EPs) per year (aka visas allowing children to leave the country) and they have already run out of them for this year. In addition, they do not process paperwork at the start of the new year due to staff change over and training. The hardest part for us is that she will be growing up without us and we will be missing so much with her - so many firsts. But we do know she will be extremely loved and cared for in Korea by her foster family and that we will have other firsts with her and a lifetime to share. We love you baby girl!