A Lesson in Overseas Adoption

This weekend we went to a pre-Thanksgiving dinner at my parent's house where Gianna got to meet her aunts, uncles, and cousin Nathan. Nathan and Gianna both have a birthday this week, so there was cake and gift opening along with the turkey. Nathan was clowning around, so Gianna really opened up and was running around laughing by the end of the day. She even let everyone hold her for pictures, which I'll post later this week with her other birthday pictures. We also went to meet cousins Grant and Cayden, our nephews on the Schmidt side. It was strange to hear kids her age speaking English. After spending so much time with Gianna, its easy to forget that not all kids speak Vietnamese ;-)

And now for a lesson in overseas adoption: Vietnamese edition. In Vietnam, we officially became Gianna's parents one month ago at the Giving and Receiving ceremony. We have her Vietnamese birth certificate and an adoption decree, so her adoption is final. She received a visa to come to the US that made her a US citizen as soon as she stepped foot on US soil. She will receive her citizenship papers 45 days after coming to the US, so sometime in December. We don't need her citizenship papers to get her a SSN and US passport, but it makes things easier, so we are waiting. Here is the hitch, on her citizenship papers and Vietnamese passport, her name is still Mai Thi, not Gianna Mai. To get her name legally changed, we have to go through the courts. We can either get her re-adopted in NJ, or get her a NJ birth certificate in her new name. Both routes give us stronger legal authority that we are her parents, especially in the case that her Vietnamese birth certificate and adoption decree are lost or destroyed. Talking with our adoption travel families, the best route sounds like getting her SSN and US passport in her Vietnamese name, then worry about re-adoption later. Did I mention re-adoption requires renewing our criminal and child abuse background checks + fingerprinting? Good grief. Another reason to put it off!