What's taking so long?

I meant for the text to go with the pictures below, but managed to publish before I finished! Here is the post to go with the pictures.

If I had a dollar for each time someone asks us when we're going to get to bring Sophia home, we could have paid for, well a tiny smidgeon of this adoption :-) Seriously though, it's a common question and I completely understand since it's been two months since we got matched with Sophia. We're waiting on something called a Letter of Approval (LOA) and can't proceed to the next phase of waiting until we get it. Our agency told us it can take any where from 1-4 months to get, but according to the online adoption forum we're part of, the "average" time it takes is 38 days. We're at day 58 today. In adoption lingo, that's pronounced FIFTY STINKIN' EIGHT. Not past the "norm" of what our agency said to expect, and there are others on the adoption forum who are unfortunate enough to be waiting right along with us. We had hoped, and even expected, to get it weeks ago and it's very frustrating having to wait. But, waiting is a huge part of the adoption journey, so wait we must.

From here, things are a bit more predictable, but we're still looking at 10-12 weeks before the rest of our paperwork moves thru all the stages and we get our travel approval.

So, since I have nothing else to report, I thought I'd share more pictures of our little sweetheart. Big Sophia (we call them big Sophia and little Sophia) took little Sophia to have professional pictures taken when she was six months old and again when she was 12 months old. They are precious beyond words and we can never thank her enough for doing this! Here are a few of them ~ enjoy!