First: if you have a second, go say a great big WOO HOO to Jen, who finally, after god knows how long waiting, gets to go to Vietnam to bring home her gorgeous son Morgan.

Second: Anyone who has read this little blog for any length of time knows that I have a few close friends, practically family, caught up in the nightmare that is International Adoption. We won’t even get into my friend Russel’s ongoing fight with Guatemala. If you know thing one about adoption, you know about Casa Quivera. He’s dead smack in the middle of that crap.

We will however talk about my bestie-might-as-well-be-sister N, the kid’s Auntie N, who has been trying for, um, YEARS to get a baby home. China’s all sorts of messed up, and they switched to Vietnam. Guess what? They have a baby girl there. She’s got a name and pictures of her momma and daddy and grandma and grandpa and they are all set to bring her home except that the US has totally screwed this up for everyone right now. Jen, linked up there, is just barely on the other side of that nonsense.

Imagine being in your last trimester of pregnancy for, oh, a year or so. Imagine your baby sitting in an orphanage a few thousand miles from you and you not being able to go get her because of PAPERWORK. Paperwork that YOUR country has fuddled up.

These parents are sitting with nurseries ready, with more diapers than they’ll ever use, cribs full of stuffies and hearts full of love, just stuck waiting. It sucks. It REALLY sucks in ways I cannot even describe. My baby spent one night in the NICU and I almost lost my mind. I can’t begin to imagine what these parents go through every stinking day.

So, I am going to ask as many of you who are willing to click this link to sign a petition that basically says, ‘Um, get off your duff here and get these babies home to their parents already’. It takes all of one minute, and won’t cost you a dime (they do ask for a donation after you sign, but you can TOTALLY ignore that if you choose.) This is the link to the webpage of the organization behind the petition, Bring Our Children Home.

Basically, the goal here is to bring enough attention to this issue to make someone look into it. And I would really like to meet my niece already. Thanks, kids. We totally appreciate it.