Pediatrician jackpot!

Yesterday I took a half day off work to go see a local pediatrician who specializes in international adoption. My goals were to a) see if this would be a good pediatrician for our future child b) get a professional opinion about a special need we are considering and c) find out how the referral evaluation process works.
And I am so excited! I hit the jackpot with this doctor! It was sooooooo nice to sit in her office and NOT have to explain the process of intercountry adoption, because she already knew. In fact, she could speak to the conditions in orphanages in Ethiopia and the procedures for vaccinations in Ethiopia. She currently has 300 patients who are international adoptees, and her own sister adopted from China. She spent 45 minutes answering my questions, and gave me some questions about medical tests to pass on to Wide Horizons. I emailed our case worker as soon as I got home, and once we get the answers, we will be making our final decision about the changes to our homestudy.
I feel really lucky to have found this doctor.

A first

I did something today I've never done before - I made an appointment with a pediatrician!

This and that

We've been on the waiting list about a month now. Not a whole lot to report, but there have been a few updates from our agency and Ethiopia. This is for family and friends who don't live and breathe adoption - everyone in the adoption community already knows this stuff.

• The slowdown in cases processed in Ethiopia is confirmed, but no one knows how long it will last. 
• We have been told to expect "significant delays" in the wait between a referral and clearance by the Ethiopian courts. As of now the wait for a referral hasn't changed. No clue what a significant delay will be. Right now the wait between referral and court is 3-7 months. Whatever the increased time is, it means additional time that our child will be living in an orphanage.
• The official reason for the slowdown is still "increased scrutiny," which is good. However, cases from before the slowdown are being expedited to clear the backlog, so it seems the increased scrutiny is still to come. I'm eager to hear what additional procedures will be implemented.
• The U.S. embassy and USCIS are considering implementation of a pre-approval for issuing a visa. This would be good. Right now a case passes the Ethiopian court, the adoptive parents become the legal parents, and THEN the case goes to the U.S. embassy. This creates a lot of pressure on the embassy to approve the case - they know that if they don't, the parents will be stuck in limbo with a child that is legally theirs but cannot come to the United States. With pre-approval, or with cases being processed simultaneously by Ethiopia and the U.S., there would not be that pressure to approve a less-than-valid case.
• Our agency has stopped accepting applications for children under the age of 3. They say the waiting list is already long enough and they don't need more people waiting. This doesn't affect anyone already in the process.

That's all we know right now.
Have a super evening!