Interstate Compact woes

Hi, everyone, We are struggling with a very frustrating situation and I'm wondering if anyone out there has any advice or has run up against a similar situation... Our son, M, has been in our home for over a year now, he is 3. He was placed by our church's adoption agency (they did the home study and M's birth mom chose our family from a selection of profiles, contact was facilitated through the agency and the agency paid for the birth parent's legal fees.) Because M was older than 18 months when he was placed with us, the agency stepped back to allow the adoption to proceed as a private adoption, thinking that this would be quicker and less costly for our family. (They usually only place very young infants and apparently the laws are different in the placement of older children?) Our counselor from the agency kept in touch for several months and has always been available if we have a crisis. Here's the problem... Our lawyer submitted Interstate compact papers on August 14th LAST year and we have heard NOTHING about it since then. Our lawyer has called, e-mailed and written the NY office that is supposed to be handling our paperwork all to no avail. The surrogate court judge in our county has written two letters asking for information about the processing of the paperwork which have received no response. I believe that the paperwork had to go through NH and Rhode Island as well as NY. (By the way, we have been able to have M at home with us all this time because the courts were able to grant us legal custody of him last year when the parents signed over their parental rights.) Our lawyer has been handling local, domestic and foreign adoptions for 30 years and has never run into a problem like this. Our agency counselor has never heard about a problem like this. Our surrogate court judge is getting frustrated and I am becoming very worried that this situation could get very costly and messy. My biggest concern is for M. He is fully integrated into our family, is happy and safe here with us and is thriving after overcoming attachment issues and is making great progress in some of his slow development areas. I do not want to have anything happen that could hurt him or hinder his progress. I want to adopt our son and have this thing finished! Has anyone out there had a similar problem? What would you suggest? The lawyer feels that our paperwork has landed on someone's desk who is just incompetent and who, at this point, may be trying to avoid the entire issue. I've asked if we should contact our congressman or someone else with jurisdiction over state employees, but we're hesitant to make someone at Interstate Compact angry with us. What if our paperwork is lost? Is there somebody out there waiting for a bribe? It is just ridiculous. Thanks for any feed back you all might have. Ginny B.