All I Want for Christmas is my Libby Doo

I’m going to China in December – YEAH!!!! Libby Doodle Doo will be in my arms by Christmas.

In my post on Friday I mentioned how many agencies had received Travel Authorizations (TA’s) in record time from China. TA’s allow agencies to get Visa’s for their families and schedule appointments with both the provincial authorities (where the adoption is finalized) and the US consulate (where US citizenship paperwork is completed). These other agencies who got their TA's before Thanksgiving had already confirmed all of these appointments and had their clients traveling to China in early December.

Our agency had told us to expect travel sometime in January -- maybe even the 2nd half of January.

When I saw all of these early travel announcements on the web, I felt so abandoned by my agency. I called on Monday when they reopened after the holiday and got a quick brush off and a terse email saying that they didn't have any TA's. They didn’t send any information on Tuesday. I called again today to find out if any progress was being made.

And then at noon, I got an email from another parent in my traveling group saying that she had heard that we would travel in December. A few minutes later the agency sent out this confirmation:

"He says, as many of you are aware, that the Travel Announcements are coming in more quickly than usual and we should have ours any day. With this in mind we would like you to be ready to travel between the dates of December 15th to December 22nd. There is a chance that one group (which one we are not sure) might leave a few days later but it would still be in December. We will let you know when we receive the Travel Announcements."

Such good news. Even though I don't know the exact date, I need to be ready for December 15th departure. I have a lot to organize in the next few weeks – packing, lining up childcare for Little Zo Peep, finishing some big projects at work that I promised I would do, and Christmas shopping and planning.

So much to do -- so little time.

Libby Doodle Doo, Mama is coming soon.