Happy Birthday, Christina!

Today is Christina's 4th birthday.  Our family is going to celebrate with Haitian chicken, rice and beans and a Haitian cake.  But Christina won't get to have any of it.  Because our paperwork, while finally in the Haitian system (we received our IBESR file number November 22) is in the black hole of the Haitian government.

I have heard rumors that President Martelly signed a few dossiers when Oprah visited Haiti the second week of December.  Then he supposedly signed another 100 dossiers on December 23.  I got an e-mail from a friend who said she heard (don't you just love how Haitian adoption news gets spread like gossip?  Because there just doesn't seem to be any sort of informed communication flow, we all cling to I heard this or I read that but none of us really knows the truth.) that Martelly still has an additional 400 - 400! - dossiers waiting to be signed.  Ours is most likely one of those 400.  So if he signs 80-100 every 3-6 months, which seems to be his modus operandi, he is a year behind, not including the dossiers that get added to the pile each month.

I was clinging to the thought that next year, on Christina's 5th birthday she will be here and we will celebrate together.  Now I am not so sure.  And that makes me really sad.  And angry.  And frustrated.  But all I can do is pray to God that He move mountains (literally, mountains of paperwork!) so that Christina can be home by next January.

I don't know if the orphanage celebrates birthdays.  I do know they celebrated Christmas, with a present for each child (donated by a local charity) a festive Christmas tree, and a feast served on special plates.

But will Christina blow out 4 candles today?  Will she get a piece of birthday cake?  Our family has always celebrated birthdays with parties, presents, cake and ice cream, a special dinner for the birthday child...sometimes our birthday celebrations end up being birthday week celebrations.

I pray that she knows today is a special day for her.  I pray that next year she gets to celebrate with her family who loves her and misses her and wants nothing more for her to be home.

Christina opening her present

Such a sad face!