Change of Heart

We haven't updated our blog in a couple of months. A few things have happened. In December our USCIS (immigration) paperwork came due for renewel. This requires an updated homestudy and new fingerprints. I always thought that fingerprints didn't change. However, immigration feels different and only keeps records on file for 15 months. The homestudy was easy. Our social worker visited us at our house and wrote up our homestudy, but changed our approval from siblings 0-5 to 0-6yrs old. We didn't ask for this, but it has been a year now since the original homestudy, and our youngest girl "Bree" is now 6 instead of 5yrs old. Most international countries require you to keep the birth order when adopting, so now we could get a child a year older. We sent our update and got re-fingerprinted and sent all into USCIS. A month later we got our USCIS approval for another 15 months. This time the paperwork stated approved for 0-6yrs old. Again we didn't ask for this, and usually this costs an additional fee. We talked about this together and with our agency social worker and decided to change our request to Colombia to consider us for one to two children upto age of 6yrs instead of 5. The current wait time for 0-5 is 36 months from approval, whereas, 0-6 is about 22 months. We are currently waiting for Colombia to approve this and start our new official wait. Also, we have moved up the list for any "waiting child" that falls in our approved category. If this were to happen, we could be traveling much sooner then the 22 months. I know this is all as clear as mud, but i'm sure it will happen as intended.