This week the U.S. Citizens and Immigrations Services passed a new law affecting how we have to file some paperwork. This change will delay us getting our daughter by another 2 months - tack on some additional time for bugs since we will be among the first group of American families adopting in Vietnam to be churned through this new process. I had been following this law with a vengeance and did not think it would be implemented so soon. For once, the government has moved rapidly the one and only time I did not want it to.

While we previously thought December was a worst case scenario, we now have no hope of having our daughter with us for the holidays. It's a very depressing situation for me. If you know Corey, you can appreciate that he has accepted the news without a flinch since he seems to be able to calmly accept that we have no control over the situation. And he realizes one of us has to stay upbeat or at least neutral or at least composed or at least cloaked.

It's not the waiting I'm agonizing over. If time could stand still for her but not for us I could wait a decade (ok maybe not that long). It's the fact that our daughter is here and alive and growing and while I'm sure the orphanage caretakers are wonderful, I’m painfully aware of the lack of resources as well as the lack of one-on-one attention she is getting. I feel like a horse trapped in the starting gate.

We found out at the end of summer she was matched with us, and we have learned this fall that the road to her just got a lot longer. Now we will have had many wintery snowfalls before we are united with her - we'll have gone through 3 seasons and begun a new year knowing of her yet being without her.

She will be long past the "crucial 6 months" that last summer’s authors' voices still taunt me about. And well-meaning Moms empathizing with my frustration reiterate to me, "So much happens during those months. There's so much development that takes place." I hate paperwork! Especially when I'm not the one pushing it.

We realized going into international adoption that we would be tossing our hearts to the wind – we knew it would not be a romantic journey. Many adoptive Moms have told me that once our daughter is placed in our arms we will no longer be tormented by the time we were not with her because we will now have her for a lifetime. Thanks Ladies! I’ll sleep a little better tonight.