Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Still Russia?

Yesterday we received the news that the process of adopting from Russia will become longer and harder. This is happening because a Russian child who was adopted by an American family was abused by them and then died. Therefore, Russia is pissed off - and I think they have all the rights to be! The bad thing is that people that have good intentions, like us, will have to pay for this. It looks like we'll be left with only one region that we could adopt from: Kaliningrad and they will take longer, too. Right now, we are not sure if we'll keep going along with Russia or maybe we should switch the country. Next week I'll meet with the head of our adoption agency to talk about our options. At this point, we are also thinking Armenia, Bulgaria, India or Guatemala. Honestly, I hope we can stay with Russia but we'll see. Whatever it's meant to be...
Will keep you posted.

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Us and adoption

I've read many adoption blogs and thought they are helpful for people trying to adopt, just like we are now and I also thought it might be interesting for our future "little Miels" (will explain this later) to read it when they grow up. I want them to know how much their mommy and daddy wanted them. Mommy and Daddy are Ioana (Cristina) and Brandon, 35 and 40 at this time, waiting for our agency to find our future kids, the "little Miels". Miel means lamb in Romanian and this is what my mom calls me. After I got married to Brandon, we became the "Miels" (Brandon's assumption of the plural for "miel" - the Romanian plural is "miei"). Since we are "miels", it only makes sense that our future kids would be "the little miels", or "mielutii", in Romanian.
We sent our dossiers to 2 regions in Russia: Kaliningrad, an exclave at the very West part of Russia, next to Poland (Kali used to be part of Germany before) and Vladivostok, far East, near N. Korea. Our papers got to Russia at the end of August 2009 and we were told by our agency that it might take 1 year, maybe even 1 1/2 years until we receive the referrals. It's only been 6 months so far and last time when we spoke with the agency, we had 5 families ahead of us in Kali and 7 in Vladi. It seems that there are more children available in Vladivostok though. It ultimately doesn't matter where we go, we just want our little ones home, with us. Last week I cleaned the closets in our home office, as this will become the kids' room. I don't know where the office furniture will go but we'll figure it outlater, after we receive the referrals and meet our kids. It is between the 2 trips to Russia that we'll actualy arrange their room. I can't wait to see the little beds/cribs in this room! I like the office furniture, don't get me wrong but I will like it better when there will be children furniture here.