James - 2 years old!!!

James had his 2nd birthday on August 22nd. The orphanage does one birthday celebration each month, and celebrates all the kids that had birthdays that month together. Their account of him enjoying the party:

James had a great time celebrating his birthday with three other little boys. He spent a little time playing with balloons, and then came over to check out the cake. He got his own piece of cake on a plate, and started working on eating it. He had some help for a little while, and then he fed himself some cake. At one point, he dipped his head down level with the plate so that he could get a mouthful of the fluffy, sweet treat!

And some photos of him from the party:
I'm so thankful that they celebrate with the babies and toddlers, not just the bigger kids. It's awesome to have these photos of his early childhood, even if we can't be the ones to share the moments with him.

As far as the adoption processing goes, I asked for an update on August 17th. We had hoped we would be in MOI a month earlier, as when we exited Parquet, we were told that they expected our files to pass through courts, attestation, and 2 legalization steps in a month total.

Monday, August 20th, we got a response that our file had passed through courts and attestation - which means James has an adoption decree! However, apparently our adoption decree has to have a stamp from Parquet (yes, back to Parquet - we had no idea! - but it must usually be a very quick thing because it's not listed in the steps. The stamp is required before it can got through the 2 legalization steps. The Parquet Commissioner had been out of the office much of the summer (after we passed through the first time), and now there's a new Parquet commissioner. At that time, we were told that GLA did not have confirmation that he'd begun signing out dossiers. GLA's lawyer was hopeful that we'd have the stamp "within the next week or so", and then would submit our dossier for legalization.

We're now praying that, since it's been two weeks since that update, that we did indeed get that stamp from Parquet and that both our legalization steps are complete, and we hear this week that our files have been submitted to the Ministry of Interior. Will you pray this with us this week?

Furthermore, we have heard on a couple adoption groups on Facebook, that one family went into MOI on August 13th, and was out by Sept 1. Another family confirmed that files from their orphanage were being approved through MOI very quickly as well. We're hoping we can get in and out of MOI just as quickly!!! After MOI, they'll print James' passport, then double-check all his documents (for errors or anything needing a re-do) before submitting to the US Embassy. :)

We'd LOVE to have this little guy home in the next 2-3 months, which seems possible if we get into MOI and it moves as quickly as it appears to be currently.