Hello all!! :) Well, it's been a busy week thus far and we have some news to share with you!!! This is somewhat of a long story but I thought you might like to hear about the journey to our recent decision.
As you may remember, the week or two before Easter we were made aware of a potential domestic adoption possibility of a baby girl. Unfortunately, that didn't work out for us but it did get us thinking about how ready we are for our family and how open we truly are to other adoption alternatives that we hadn't considered. After that, we started discussing IF we should pursue a concurrent adoption (meaning another adoption while we are amidst our adoption for Vietnam). Neither one of us felt STRONGLY about it. We BOTH realized we were absolutely ready to be parents right now but didn't want to run with our emotion. We have been praying about it and doing lots of talking and thinking. All of this to say...We contacted our adoption agency about 2-3 wks ago to see what other alternatives we have and our facilitator asked us if we had ever considered Russia. I told her, "yes" but we decided against it for various reasons. After talking with her, I felt more at ease about our concerns and thought I'd share what she told me with Brandon. We talked and started to both feel our hearts "might" be open to this as an option. We gave it about a week and then contacted her again with some additional questions...This time I explained to her that we felt strongly about having a diverse family so that our children would never feel like they were "different" or didn't fit in with us (being Caucasian). In our eyes, the more diverse we are as a family, the less likely the child is to grow up truly looking at the physical differences. She then explained that in Russia there were many children close to the Kazakhstan and China borders that looked very Asian and were likely a mix of Russian and Chinese or Kazakh. This of course made both Brandon and I perk up!!! At that point she told us that we might want to talk to the Russian coordinator. So, I called her. She was very informative. I asked her what I thought would be the "tough question"...."Would we be able to request that our child was of Asian decent?" I thought for sure the answer would be NO, so I was prepared for that. Much to our pleasant surprise the answer was, "YES". Brandon and I perked up even more and started to feel the doors opening more and more. Our last concern was timeframe. We didn't want our children to come home too close in age and in time. We wanted to know that our children would both have a good amount of time to adjust. So, our final question early this week was..."How much longer till our daughter comes home from Vietnam (meaning our referal). The response was one that we both expected but neither Brandon nor I was quite ready to hear. We were just hoping that we might have our lil one home in summer- fall of 2009. We were told that we would likely not get our referral for 17 more months and then we would not travel for 5 months after that....22 MONTHS! I have to say that I think that was the toughest moment for me during this entire adoption process. Reality set in. We are 14 months into this process and 22 to go. That shouldn't have been a surprise because we new what to expect based on how upfront our agency has been but it still was tough. I called Brandon and was in tears, I told him about the 22 months and he said, "don't be sad Robin, I take this as good news...This tells us it's time to move forward". What an AMAZING husband I have!!! We've both been pretty level headed during this process but when I caved, he was there to make sense of it and pick me up!!! I hadn't thought of that.
We've made our decision, we are going to adopt from Russia!!!! We are both VERY excited!!!! We are going to continue on with our adoption from Vietnam (our hearts are still very much there) and in the interim, we will adopt a lil one from Russia. The other tid-bit that I left out is that if we decide to adopt a boy, the wait is 3 months and if we decide to adopt a girl it's 3-6 months!!!! This seemed incomprehensible based on our timeline from Vietnam. We haven't made a decision yet as to a boy or a girl. I'm wide open to either and have left it up to Brandon. He's saying..."60-40 for a girl" But we'll see! ;-) So, stay tuned. It's unbelievable to us that we will very likely have met or have our child home before Christmas!!!!!
The other thing that occurred to me today is that our child has already been born! In Russia, the youngest you are referred a child is 10-16 months, which means he or she could be 4-6 months right now! He/she is very likely living in an orphanage right now. We are asking that you PLEASE-PLEASE keep our lil one in your prayers. I was thinking today, who is holding him/her, feeding, loving, changing, etc. That's a tough reality to get your head around. There have been some other amazing ironies that have taken place during this time that I'd love to share but for fear that you all might be falling asleep already, I'll save those stories for another time.
Last but certainly not least...Our paperwork returned from the Vietnam Embassy yesterday and I immediately Fed Ex'd it to our agency. It is now going to be sent to Vietnam for translation and log in. Just when I thought the paper chase was coming to an end....It's time for me to get back in the saddle and hit the ground running again. Paperwork, paperwork and more paperwork!!! :) But it's going to be worth every single minute of it!!!!
Everyone have a wonderful weekend!!! :) Sending big hugs your way!!!
Oh and P.S....Where else in the country can you live and have spring weather, daffodils blooming, green grass AND SNOW FLURRIES THIS WEEKEND!!!!!
As you may remember, the week or two before Easter we were made aware of a potential domestic adoption possibility of a baby girl. Unfortunately, that didn't work out for us but it did get us thinking about how ready we are for our family and how open we truly are to other adoption alternatives that we hadn't considered. After that, we started discussing IF we should pursue a concurrent adoption (meaning another adoption while we are amidst our adoption for Vietnam). Neither one of us felt STRONGLY about it. We BOTH realized we were absolutely ready to be parents right now but didn't want to run with our emotion. We have been praying about it and doing lots of talking and thinking. All of this to say...We contacted our adoption agency about 2-3 wks ago to see what other alternatives we have and our facilitator asked us if we had ever considered Russia. I told her, "yes" but we decided against it for various reasons. After talking with her, I felt more at ease about our concerns and thought I'd share what she told me with Brandon. We talked and started to both feel our hearts "might" be open to this as an option. We gave it about a week and then contacted her again with some additional questions...This time I explained to her that we felt strongly about having a diverse family so that our children would never feel like they were "different" or didn't fit in with us (being Caucasian). In our eyes, the more diverse we are as a family, the less likely the child is to grow up truly looking at the physical differences. She then explained that in Russia there were many children close to the Kazakhstan and China borders that looked very Asian and were likely a mix of Russian and Chinese or Kazakh. This of course made both Brandon and I perk up!!! At that point she told us that we might want to talk to the Russian coordinator. So, I called her. She was very informative. I asked her what I thought would be the "tough question"...."Would we be able to request that our child was of Asian decent?" I thought for sure the answer would be NO, so I was prepared for that. Much to our pleasant surprise the answer was, "YES". Brandon and I perked up even more and started to feel the doors opening more and more. Our last concern was timeframe. We didn't want our children to come home too close in age and in time. We wanted to know that our children would both have a good amount of time to adjust. So, our final question early this week was..."How much longer till our daughter comes home from Vietnam (meaning our referal). The response was one that we both expected but neither Brandon nor I was quite ready to hear. We were just hoping that we might have our lil one home in summer- fall of 2009. We were told that we would likely not get our referral for 17 more months and then we would not travel for 5 months after that....22 MONTHS! I have to say that I think that was the toughest moment for me during this entire adoption process. Reality set in. We are 14 months into this process and 22 to go. That shouldn't have been a surprise because we new what to expect based on how upfront our agency has been but it still was tough. I called Brandon and was in tears, I told him about the 22 months and he said, "don't be sad Robin, I take this as good news...This tells us it's time to move forward". What an AMAZING husband I have!!! We've both been pretty level headed during this process but when I caved, he was there to make sense of it and pick me up!!! I hadn't thought of that.
We've made our decision, we are going to adopt from Russia!!!! We are both VERY excited!!!! We are going to continue on with our adoption from Vietnam (our hearts are still very much there) and in the interim, we will adopt a lil one from Russia. The other tid-bit that I left out is that if we decide to adopt a boy, the wait is 3 months and if we decide to adopt a girl it's 3-6 months!!!! This seemed incomprehensible based on our timeline from Vietnam. We haven't made a decision yet as to a boy or a girl. I'm wide open to either and have left it up to Brandon. He's saying..."60-40 for a girl" But we'll see! ;-) So, stay tuned. It's unbelievable to us that we will very likely have met or have our child home before Christmas!!!!!
The other thing that occurred to me today is that our child has already been born! In Russia, the youngest you are referred a child is 10-16 months, which means he or she could be 4-6 months right now! He/she is very likely living in an orphanage right now. We are asking that you PLEASE-PLEASE keep our lil one in your prayers. I was thinking today, who is holding him/her, feeding, loving, changing, etc. That's a tough reality to get your head around. There have been some other amazing ironies that have taken place during this time that I'd love to share but for fear that you all might be falling asleep already, I'll save those stories for another time.
Last but certainly not least...Our paperwork returned from the Vietnam Embassy yesterday and I immediately Fed Ex'd it to our agency. It is now going to be sent to Vietnam for translation and log in. Just when I thought the paper chase was coming to an end....It's time for me to get back in the saddle and hit the ground running again. Paperwork, paperwork and more paperwork!!! :) But it's going to be worth every single minute of it!!!!
Everyone have a wonderful weekend!!! :) Sending big hugs your way!!!
Oh and P.S....Where else in the country can you live and have spring weather, daffodils blooming, green grass AND SNOW FLURRIES THIS WEEKEND!!!!!
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