Monthly Update

Well we got our monthly update call on Friday. I had a list of questions ready for Christy despite the fact we were touring a winery. We found out a lot - some good, some bad. First of all, because of his family history (which we are choosing to keep the sharing of this to a minimum) we had questions as to whether or not our son's birthmother named him or if someone at HH named him. We found out that the staff at HH did not name him and his birthmother did in fact choose his name. Both Brian and I were really hoping this was the case as we feel anything he has that came from his birthfamily is so special and will someday be of a lot of importance to him.
I also asked about the court process. Here's a rundown - as soon as we accepted our referral, our paperwork was sent to MOWA (Ministry of Women's Affairs). It is simultaneously taken to the Federal Courts. We are assigned a court date. MOWA reviews our dossier and then it is sent to the Federal Courts. A few days after we pass court we are issued a court decree and will receive a travel call (usually 2-4 weeks out) with our visa appointment date (when we must be in Ethiopia). I did confirm that we do have a court date scheduled although AGCI will not tell us when it is set for. I asked for a vague clue (like maybe which month) and was given the polite "not our policy" speech. Ugh. At this point my gut feeling is that our court date is scheduled for December although there is a chance it is sometime in November. I was also given a list of reasons why so many people do not pass court the first time around. We are really hoping to be some of the lucky few who pass with flying colors at our first court date.
We also talked about pictures. The last picture we have of our son was taken 7 weeks ago. For some reason I was under the impression that AGCI would send us new photos once a month. I guess I got this "child update" mixed up with "monthly updates." Apparently we only get one child update and it is right before travel. The families who had their referrals during the court closure got photo updates at the end of September but this was a special circumstance. Our only chance of receiving photos of our little guy is from travel groups of families going to pick up their children. Unfortunately, it still might be a while before the next travel group. I had my expectations set really high. I thought since we knew right where he was and they have a digital camera that getting photos once a month wouldn't be too hard and even though we aren't together we would still get to see how our son is growing and changing. I am already trying to imagine how much he has changed in the last 7 weeks of his 12 week life... Above all I am trying to be thankful for the 15 photos we do have at the tender ages of 3 weeks and 5 weeks. Many countries only give out one referral photo so I am working of being grateful for the photos of a beautiful and healthy baby boy rather than focusing on what we don't have. I guess I will just have to try and make up for it with thousands of pictures once we are together!We have a travel call on the 22nd where we will discuss the travel group plans. We probably received our travel packet with all of this information while we were gone this weekend so we look forward to going through that. It will be fun to start planning the details of the BEST TRIP OF OUR LIVES!!!