I'm sorry for being slow to update these days, but I have 2 excuses for being such a slacker: 1) I've been out of town for 2 weeks, and 2) There is really no news to share, anyway!

We are STILL waiting for our I-800 approval. It is supposed to take 2 weeks to get our approval, but 2 weeks passed on Wednesday and we have nothing. I called USCIS- Hague division on Tuesday and was told that they did not even have our paperwork yet. Apparently it has to go through a few steps before it gets to them, but our paperwork was, of course, MIA (for the 3rd time). I'm really beginning to think that we are being punished for allowing our paperwork to expire. The sad thing is that the one who is really being punished here is a sweet, innocent little girl who is not able to come home and be with her family- just because of some silly red tape.

I mentioned to the agent that I spoke to that I had expected our paperwork to have come by now, since the average is 2 weeks to approval. He said that he had no idea where I'd heard that, but it was not true. I wanted to tell him that not only had our agency told us 2 weeks, but I have seen the charts on Rumor Queen and I know that most families get their approval in 2 weeks (unless they had a Request for More Information, which we have not). I'm so sick of being lied to, but I decided to keep my mouth shut since these people basically hold our lives in their hands right now.

Anyway, I called again on Friday and was then told that our paperwork had just arrived that day, but they had not had a chance to go through it yet. They said hopefully early next week. I reminded them that we had a little girl with special needs waiting for us, and we wanted to get her home ASAP so that we could get her the care that she needs, but I was told that about 95% of the paperwork that they currently receive is for special needs adoptions. I knew that the tide was shifting in that direction, but I had no idea that the percentage was that high!

So I have all but given up hope of traveling in September at this point. Once we get our American paperwork squared away, we still have to wait for our Chinese paperwork, which takes an average of about 7 weeks- plus 2 more weeks until we can actually leave. That puts us at the last week of September, but since we have to be out of China before October 1st (the entire country shuts down the first week of October for a big holiday), it is highly unlikely that we will be traveling in September. It looks like it will be November before Caitlin can come home.