In a holding pattern

In Russia, the formal court petition to adopt a child requires a list of paperwork.  Medical forms, financial forms, legal forms, government forms, in duplicate or triplicate, signed, notarixed, apostilled, and current within some certain date.  Some 30 different pieces of information in all.

And it's all required.  Every last bit of it.  We have everything in hand now, except for one last piece: our US Citizenship and Immigration Service Form I-171H, the Notice of Favorable Determination Concerning Application for Advance Processing of an Orphan Petition (received after filling out Form

I-600A, the Application for Advance Processing of Orphan Petition) has an expired fingerprint clearance.  We were re-fingerprinted three weeks ago, after applying for an appointment weeks before that (after being rejected for an appointment before that, because we correctly followed the old procedure, not the new procedure, for requesting a re-fingerprinting).

So we're waiting for that.  When we get our updated Form I-171H, (Notice of Favorable Determination Concerning Application for Advance Processing of an Orphan Petition), we'll send it, and the rest of our dossier, off to Russia, where it will be translated and the Russian court system will set a court date for us.

Our court date will probably be in early August.  If we're lucky, it might even be in late July.  If we're unlucky, it'll be later in August.  If we're really unlucky...well, let's not dwell on that.