Our decision

I really didn't mean to leave you in suspense regarding our decision; we were just trying to make sure that we followed the appropriate procedures and informed all of the necessary people before we announced our exciting news.
Most of you know that we've been waiting for a referral for a little girl in Astrakhan for over a year. We felt very strongly that we wanted to return to this region, as that is where our Chipmunk and Monkey are from. Unfortunately, since late summer referrals from this region (for our agency, at least) had slowed down drastically and we were starting to feel very discouraged about this and about our agency's lack of accreditation. We were determined to stay in this region though, despite the constant nagging feeling that we felt that this might not be where we were supposed to find our HotDog. However, as the months continued we started to get the news that the push for domestic adoption within Russia had a major impact on the amount of available girls in our region and that it was most likely going to be several more months before we heard any news. While I was thrilled to hear that many of the girls were finding homes in Russia, my mind was starting to think about other possibilities.
We initially thought about switching to another region, but we would be in the back of the line, behind the other families that had been waiting for referrals, so that didn't help us much.
We talked to several other agencies that were accredited but heard from all that our wait for a little girl would be much longer than we were willing to wait.
We never really discussed switching countries because it seems almost all programs are running so slow right now.
As we were tossing around various options, I received an email from a friend that had previously adopted from Astrakhan last summer. She was just wondering how our adoption was going and if we had brought our HotDog home yet. She said that they were starting another adoption for a little girl and were adopting from Kyrgyzstan, a fairly new country for international adoptions. The more she described the program, the more it sounded like the perfect fit for us.
I took this information and started my research. The more we looked into it, the more it sounded like it was too good to be true. I talked with several of the agencies that operate in the country (there are still very few agencies working here) and was hearing the same information from each: referrals were coming at a fairly constant rate, the waits are considerably shorter than other countries right now, and we had a definite advantage in that we are homestudy ready and can switch almost all of our dossier to the new country with little additional documents needed.
We were still so nervous about pulling our dossier from Russia. We are both creatures of habit and Astrakhan is what we know, what we love. We've been waiting for over a year so we are bound to hear something soon, right?? We love our agency and would hate not to complete our third adoption with them. We would lose a small chunk of money by switching countries/agencies. We had so many reasons to stay where we were. But there were so many advantages to switching too. We went back and forth for several weeks. But we kept coming back to one thing: adopting from Kyrgyzstan just felt "right". For the past 6 months or so, we were struggling with our adoption in Astrakhan and felt like we were trying to force something that just wasn't meant to happen. Every fiber in our beings was telling us that our daughter was in Kyrgyzstan. It was terrifying, but we made the huge decision to leave Astrakhan and CHI and officially switched to Kyrgyzstan. And it was such a relief. All of our instincts are telling us this is the right move for our family. It just feels "right". Does that make sense?
So (very) long story short, we've signed with a new agency and are officially on the list waiting for a referral for an infant girl from Kyrgyzstan. I've almost finished switching all of our documents (the dossier is sooo much easier than in Russia) and our homestudy agency is busy working on the changes to our homestudy. We're moving right along. The process in Kyrgyzstan is a bit different than Russia; there is no central database listing all of the available children. They are referred to agencies as they enter the baby houses. So while there are just a few families ahead of us in line, the wait could be anywhere from 2 to 6 months. Once we receive a referral, we travel to meet her and spend 14 days bonding with her. We'll then return home and go back to pick her up about 6 weeks later. Of course, this program is new to adoptions (just opened last year) so things could change. But this is the way things are working now. Thank goodness for my friend Rachel that told me about the program; since she's several months ahead of me, she's helping me navigate the new twists and turns in our path.
Thank you for all of your support/wishes/prayers during our decision-making. We are so excited about this new chapter in our journey. I can't wait to share it with you all. One thing is for sure, adoption is never boring!

Great news!

I'm thrilled to announce that as of this Friday (Dec. 21, 2007), our agency will once again be accredited! This is huge and we've been waiting for this for a very long time.
Unfortunately, I don't think this is going to change our situation much, but I am so happy to know that other families should begin to receive referrals again soon.
Congratulations!

In the Meantime...

Thank you for all of your support while we are making some big decisions about our journey. I think we have decided which path we are meant to follow and we are feeling optimistic that it will lead us to our HotDog. We aren't quite ready to share our decision but I will post with more information soon.
In the meantime, we are enjoying the holiday season. The boys are at such fun ages for celebrating Christmas and all of the events surrounding it. Last week we went on the Polar Express. We boarded a train in a nearby town and went for a ride to the North Pole. The conductor came by to check the tickets, waiters brought hot chocolate and cookies, and Santa Claus even made a special appearance! The Polar Express just so happens to be the Chipmunk's favorite book and the Monkey is absolutely obsessed with trains, so it was the definite highlight of our activities so far.

We've also gone to our small town's Christmas parade where the boys collected more candy than they got for Halloween! We've also made the obligatory visit to see Santa so the boys could put in their "official" request. They both asked for: an excavator, a bulldozer, a tractor, and some books (sniff, sniff...the librarian in me is so proud of the last request). And they made sure Santa knew they weren't asking for toy models of these items; they want the real things, but they are more than willing to share them! I'm hoping they won't be too disappointed on Christmas morning when they look outside and realize their request hasn't been granted. I have a feeling that they will be very happy with the alternative presents that Santa leaves.
From here on out, things get chaotic. Tomorrow is the Monkey's Christmas party at school, tomorrow night is Stu's work Christmas party, this weekend is my annual Christmas party with my college friends and their families, and then Monday is my birthday! I know most people would hate to have a birthday that close to Christmas, but I absolutely love it. I love the Christmas season and having one more reason to celebrate is great to me. (My birthday also has a special place in my heart because it was on my 28th birthday - 4 years ago - that we met Chipmunk for the first time. Talk about an amazing birthday present; Stu will never be able to top that.) Then the next week, Chipmunk has his class party and then our actual family Christmas get-togethers begin.
I LOVE this time of the year! It's crazy and chaotic, but I wouldn't change a thing. Being able to share Christmas with my two little boys is the most amazing and joyous privilege. My family is so blessed. I hope all of you have the happiest of holidays!

Crossroads

Everyone says that adoption is a leap of faith. Lately, it seems that I've lost faith that we will be bringing our daughter home from Russia. I was so hopeful that our agency would be on the newest list of accredited agencies and that things would proceed quickly. However, our agency was not on the list. They still hope to receive accreditation soon, but we've been hearing that for a year with nothing to show for it. It seems we've come to a fork in the road. We are having such a tough time deciding which path to take. One the one side we continue along our current path, waiting for accreditation and for our region to start moving. It feels like our heart is tugging us in the this direction. It is the path we know, having gone down it twice before. We know the journey, the people, the places; it is familiar and comfortable. Looking down the other side is scary and unknown; it means a new agency, a new country, new people, new paperwork. However, our heads seem to be tugging in this direction.
We have some difficult decisions to make and any good thoughts/prayers/vibes that you can send our way would be greatly appreciated.
I'll post whenever we make a decision.

One Year Ago Today

One year ago we sent in our dossier for our third adoption. One year ago we sat back and started dreaming of the little girl across the world who would become our daughter. One year ago we talked about how it would be our last Thanksgiving and Christmas as a family of four. One year ago we anxiously began to wait for the call.
Now, one year later, I really don't feel like we've made any progress at all. We are still dreaming of a little girl across the world, still anxiously waiting for the call, and still talking about how this will be our last Thanksgiving and Christmas as a family of four.
The past year has brought us so much joy too; I'm just feeling a little melancholy today as we hit the one-year mark.
I'm praying that one year from today we'll be holding our sweet little girl in our arms and reminiscing about how quickly the year has gone.

One Step Forward, One Step Back

Wouldn't you think that doing a dossier for the fourth time would be a piece of cake? I really didn't think it would take any time to update all of our documents, considering most of them were already on our computer. And after a little nagging at Stu to get our financial documents together, we had our part finished pretty quickly. What I didn't count on was our homestudy agency's (different agency than our placing agency) ability to screw up anything that I ask them to do. I'm not sure why their continual incompetence continues to surprise me, but it does. Our social worker (whom I love!) came to our house to do the homestudy update. After that, I contacted the agency and told them the list of documents I needed and how many copies of each I needed. Easy enough, right?!? Well, they couldn't find our old documents (probably in one of our closed files from the boys' adoptions which they continue to lose our new documents in) so I offered to send them templates of the documents. All they would have to do is fill in their information. A week later we received an email asking if we needed them to do those documents. Um, yeah. That's why I sent you the template. So another week later I received the documents in the mail. Unfortunately, they only sent one copy of each when I asked for, and needed, two of each. So another week later and they send the extra copies. Later that night, as I was gathering all of our documents to get certified and apostilled I noticed that on EVERY SINGLE ONE of the documents from our homestudy agency, they had used the wrong passport number for Stu!! Arrghh!!! Even more frustrating is that we paid them to do an addendum to our homestudy this summer because Stu's passport expired and he had been issued a new number. SOmehow this new number never made it into their system. I am still, impatiently, waiting on these updated documents. This level of incompetency just infuriates me. They are a large agency and it's hard for me to believe that this type of paperwork should be anything other than routine for them. We've been having these type of problems with them since beginning the Chipmunk's adoption over 4 years ago! We've stayed with them because they do our post-placement reports and we really do like our social worker. But as soon as this adoption is finished, we're changing.
Once we get these new documents in, along with our new state background checks (which listed a wrong birthday for Stu), our new dossier will be finished. Yeah! I'm also very excited about the rumors I'm hearing regarding reaccreditation happening very soon! Should make for a very happy holiday season for many families (including ours, hopefully).
Other than that, not much happening here. We've been the house of sickness recently. Poor Chipmunk ended up having a virus by the end of Halloween night and was so sick for a few days. He thinks his belly hurt because of all of the candy he ate and refuses to touch another piece of candy. Of course, I'm not going to try to change his mind on that! And then a few days later, the Monkey ended up with this stomach virus. And the Monkey is very much like me in that when he gets sick, he gets very sick for a long time. After a week of high fevers and hundreds of trips to the bathroom each day, I think he is finally on the mend.
Looks like things are looking up around our household.
Now we can look forward to celebrating the Chipmunk's 5th birthday on Sunday!

Has It Really Been a Month?

I can't believe that is has been over a month since my last post. I've gotten so many emails from readers asking if everything is okay. The answer is yes. We are great; just busy with fall activities and trying to keep up with the boys. The boys had fall break the first two weeks of October and we had such a good time. We didn't do anything exciting but had a lot of fun just lounging around the house, going to the library and the park, etc. The Chipmunk missed his friends, though, and by the end of the two weeks was definitely ready to go back to school. Monkey, on the other hand, thought that school was finished forever and was heartbroken when we realized that he had to return. Luckily, they've had lots of fun events since they've been back so that has helped a bit.
Now the boys are super-excited about Halloween! We went trick-or-treating at our zoo a couple of weeks ago (they do trick-or-treating several weekends leading up to Halloween) and they've wanted to wear their costumes everyday since then. The Chipmunk is going as a cowboy this year (since his first choice as a princess was nixed by his mom and dad!) and the Monkey is a dragonfly. I've never been a big fan of Halloween, even when I was a child. However, I'm having a blast with Halloween now that I have kids. It is so much fun to watch the boys' eyes come alive with the magic of the holiday. I'll include a picture of the boys with our niece. She decided she wanted to be a stick of butter for Halloween and her dad made the cutest costume I've ever seen!
*Photo removed*
As for the adoption, there is absolutely no news at all. We've almost finished putting the new dossier together so I'm happy about that. We need to get a new FBI background check and a new state police clearance. Never in a million years would I have thought that it would be the end of October and we still wouldn't have heard about dates for our first trip. It's been almost a year (in two weeks) since we turned in our original dossier. Surprisingly, we seem to be doing okay with the constant delays. We know that our HotDog will find us when she is ready. There is not a doubt in my mind about that. In the meantime, we have our hands full just trying to keep up with the Monkey and Chipmunk.
I've seen a lot of other families switch to different agencies recently. I can't blame them. If we weren't at the top of the list in our region and still had a big wait ahead of us, I probably would consider switching too. However, very few agencies work in our small region and we are absolutely committed to going back to Astrakhan. We love our region and feel such a connection to it and the people. We've developed such special relationships there and are looking forward to seeing our friends when we travel back. I think the only thing that would make us change regions is for Astrakhan to completely close to adoptions. Also, I know our agency is really doing everything in their power to get us moving forward. Unfortunately, nothing is going to change until we get reaccredited, which I'm praying happens soon.
I hope everyone has a Happy Halloween and I promise that I won't let another month go by without a new post.