So what's been going on since the referral?

In a word? Waiting. In fact, we are getting really good at waiting! If you want to learn the meaning of patience, try adopting :)

Since the referral, there hasn't been much we can control. We had to get an update to our home study and had to get re-fingerprinted by Immigration. Other than that, we're just trying to keep ourselves distracted. Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, our case is going through the Taiwanese court system. Much like our own illustrious court system, I would imagine the courts over there are taxed and move at about the pace of molasses in winter. Yes, you would think that the fact that a child is sitting in an orphanage growing older by the minute might set off some kind of special alarm or something but it doesn't. I don't know much about the specifics of the courts, but from what I gather the few judges they have assigned to these cases are very overloaded. Undoubtedly, there are many steps to make sure a legal and mutually beneficial decision is made in regards to the child and the adoptive family. We have to believe that they are moving as fast as humanly possible and just try to be as patient as we can. It's really in everyone's best interest that the judge thoroughly examines everything. We don't want to run into any troubles with the finalization of the adoption. Considering we will be triple checked by immigration, we want to make sure all the "I's" are dotted and the "T's crossed so we can bring Quentin into the United States legally. Many people ask us if he will be a citizen. Yep-- he will. The moment we step foot on American soil, he is a legal U.S. citizen with all rights, privileges and responsibilites hereto appertaining :) We can change his name and even get a new birth certificate.

Speaking of the name, let me explain (we get asked about this a lot, too). His birth name is "Ke-Hao." We are not sure if that was given to him by his birth mother or the orphanage or a combination of the two. Either way, we are going to make that his middle name as a way to keep a link to his birth mother and the first several months of his life. We will give him an American first name (Quentin) and, of course, he'll have our last name. So all together, in the proper order, he will be named "Quentin Ke-Hao Tsui." (side note: his initials will be "QT"-- i.e. "cutie". Get it? We thought that was adorable!). But I digress...

To sum up, pretty much the name of the game these days is wait as patiently as possible. The next big thing we should here is that there has been a final ruling from the courts and that we can make travel arrangements. From what I gather, we'll have about 2-3 weeks notice to get our plane tickets and get over there to pick him up. It would be really hard to sit and wait in the dark, not knowing when we will travel, but luckily the orphanage throws us a bone every month in the form of photos and developmental updates.