Updates

Our DNA results were on the truck for delivery at 3:06 this afternoon Guat time. Another family whose DNA arrived in Guat on Monday got pink for Aug. 19th. The Embassy only does Pink appointments certain days. We may have our appointment on the 20th, the 22nd or the 25th. Or, our renewing our fingerprints will delay everything and it will be September before we can go.

Tomorrow I am going to force Chris to wear pink, even if it is only his underwear!

PBJ's case is still a mess. The case is stuck in investigations again and the investigator originally assigned to the case left/got fired/went to work for the circus or something. No new investigator has been assigned yet. In the meantime, the new Central Authority in Guatemala, which was formed to oversee the adoptioon process under hague compliant rules, has thrown a monkey wrench into the works. Although all open cases as of Dec. 31st 2007 are supposed to be grandfathered and able to continue under the old system, the CNA has continually interfered with this and caused problems. First, they stopped all cases while they got their act together (even though they have nothing to do really with the old cases) Then they decided that all of the grandfathered cases had to be registered with them, but they changed the registration process no less than 10 times. If your case did not get registered under the final version, it was over. Then, they decided that no case could exit PGN (the gov't authority who processes adoptions) without an additional interview of the birthmother. These interviews ended up being very adversarial to the birth mothers and essentially terrorized them in an effort to end adoption cases. Now, the CNA has ruled that any case that does not have the birth mother interview completed by the end of August will 'be turned over to a competent judge'. Leading adoprtion specialists in Guat say this means the children will be awarded to the state, the current adoptions cancelled, and they will have to be submitted to the new system whenever it comes on line.

So I was freaking out. We can't get INTO PGN, how are we going to get the interview done and not get the case tossed out? I e-mailed our agency and in a not-so-friendly, fairly panicked way, I told them they had to do something. NOW! (I was not very polite, which is not like me and should have clued them in on how upset I was)

Here is what they came up with. they talked to investigations and got them to release our file for a day when they can schedule the birth mother interview. Then the case will go back, finish in investigations and go back to PGN to complete, meeting all of the new CNA demands.

So today we are dodging the bullet on the newest CNA crappola. Tomorrow may bring other demands. But today, we are good and our little Princess Bump is still ours!