For Want of a Nail

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.

For want of a shoe the horse was lost.

For want of a horse the rider was lost.

For want of a rider the battle was lost.

For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.

And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

No go. Despite our best efforts to gather every required document and send them to Peru to arrive two days before the October consejo, another day slipped in somewhere between Alabama and Lima, and we missed it. Our application was not reviewed again in time for the consejo.

What now? It's looking like we will let things ride for now, hoping to get the referral in November or December, and then request an extension of travel until after Spring semester is over. At least that way, we might not have to pay to update our home study, medical exams, FBI clearances, and other forms. That would make approximately two full years from the time we decided to adopt until we have the children in the U.S. and their adoption re-affirmed here in Illinois.

This is very frustrating. Chrissy has tried to steel herself by just not believing that anything good is going to happen until it does. I generally try to avoid dealing with bureaucracy, because I don't have much patience for systems that don't work right. I can count a half-dozen things that could and should have happened differently such that we would have three more kids by now. But overall, we've gotten service as good as one could expect from all the professionals and agencies involved in the process. Sometimes, things just don't go the way they should. Most people who try to adopt internationally don't have large chunks of the year when they can't take off work, and there's just no way to speed up the process for exceptions.

Maybe one reason it's good that we got to write a letter of intent for specific children is that we now have them in mind as we make decisions. If the adoption were more abstract, we would be tempted to just give up at times. Instead, we can imagine that it might actually work out better for the children to arrive at the very start of the summer, and have a few months when Andrew is home from college and the rest of us are off school before they have to start a busy schedule. If our intended children were not in a good orphanage, we would be more upset, but they're in as good a situation as we could hope.