Poor, Poor, Papa...

Papa tangled in cords

More prep for the home study!  Well, another child means another room needed for keeping said child...which means Ken's office/music room is officially bye-bye.  Not that he gave it up begrudgingly (sweet, wonderful man that he is!), but the part that was a struggle was going through all of the stuff that needed to be relocated.  Hard drives and motherboards and tangled chords, oh my!  My guy is a collector of all things techy, so the good news is that he found LOTS of good garage sale fodder in all of his stuff.  And hey, what we sell means adoption money, but equally important is that we don't have to find space to store it. :)  Don't worry, I'm doing my share of pitching of clearing out and making garage sale sacrifices, as well, to be fair!  Of course you could hardly call it a "sacrifice" compared to what we are gaining... won't she be so cute peeking over the edge of that crib at us?????  :)  And by the way, the music and computer things are not all gone... we now have a drum set, etc., etc. set in our master bedroom...

Sweet Cheeks on the train with wonderful Blue Sippy

Oh, the adventures that await you, Green Sippy!

On another note we made a trip down to REI today, almost entirely to look for sippies.  Yes, I know Target carries them, too, but we found the cutest Nalgene sippy there when we were waiting for Mikhail to come home and thought how cute he'd be hiking with us with his own little hiking bottle like ours.  Little did we know that first night we received custody of our boy and whisked him away on the Trans-Siberian Express, that blue sippy would become one of the greatest forms of entertainment for all three of us.  The idea of full access to his own little pint-sized, spill-proof water source was just too good to be true!  Blue sippy barely left his sight until we got home and he opened the cabinet to reveal a whole HERD of sippies all just for him!  Anyway, we felt the need to repeat the REI trip in hopes of finding just the right sippy for little Miss Ana.  Yes, I know it's green and green is my favorite color, and yes, there was a pink one to choose from too, but honest, we let Mikhail pick.  And no, I wasn't disappointed.  Oh, how I can't wait to watch her enjoy Green Sippy!

Interesting week...but decorating helps! :)

Ana's Nursery Fabric

Some of you may have seen the articles posted on multiple major news networks about Russia suspending all adoptions to the US.  On Monday our social worker told us to postpone our home study because of all of this.  After spending a very stressful Monday wondering what lie ahead, we found out that it was untrue.  Tania Griasnow, the Russia Program Coordinator from Carolina Adoption Services told us to proceed "without delay!" on Ana's adoption process. :)  O.K. by me!  All three regions (including the region where Mikhail is from) that CAS is currently working with are running smoothly and processing adoptions consistently.  In fact, two families with CAS are traveling for their court dates as we speak.  It sure was a thrill to hear all of that!  As soon as I can get my incredibly handsome IT guy to help me figure out how, I will post a map of the three possible regions it sounds like Ana may come from.

Such a good reminder that it's so silly to pretend like we are in control of this whole thing.  God alone can orchestrate such a complicated process to bring our child home from half way across the planet.  "The king’s heart is like channels of water in the hand of the LORD; He turns it wherever He wishes."  Proverbs 21:1

In the meantime, all this week's uneasiness has been made better by day dreaming about Ana's nursery...  fabric arrived last week, paint to come on Thursday. Ahhhhhh......  nesting is good for a Mama's soul. :)

We are gathering documents to give to our social worker for our home study that has now been scheduled.  Yeah!  Big step!  March 3rd will be our home study, so no one call us on March 2... we won't hear the phone, we will be vacuuming. :)

Alas, one of the documents required our doctor to sign off that Mikhail was up to date with all his immunizations...except there was one guy we missed, so...  his first opportunity to be BRAVE for little Ana!  Seeing Mama get allergy shots twice a week has done a world of good for him to be not so nervous about getting one himself.  He handled it like a champ!  Ken and I got off much easier- no shots, no additional co-pays.  Whoo hoo!  Thanks, Dr. Hughes!

Ice cream for a brave boy, and three more checks on my list of home study documents.  Good day!

PART 2: How It All Works... sort of

(So sorry, been feeling icky.  Better now!)  So after we receive our referral with info about little Ana, here's what comes next.  I know, it's long, but you guys have been asking! :)  The process really is this complicated.

• First Trip to meet Ana.  This is a bit hard to say because different regions in Russia handle this part differently, but we will assume for now it will be similar to Mikhail's process.  We were required (by the Russian gov't) to meet Mikhail in person before continuing on with perusing his adoption.  We expect this will be the same for Ana.  This was a quick trip for us with Mikhail's adoption and we only got to see him for an hour or so on two days.  We were able to speak to the orphanage director (also an MD) and find out a bit more info about his general health and any during this time, for instance this is when we found out he would need hernia surgery as soon as we got him home.  We will be so excited to get to see Ana for the first time on this trip and learn more about her, but it will no doubt be one of the most difficult parts of this process- meeting her and then leaving her there for however long is necessary until we can return for our court date.  A torturous 7 weeks with Mikhail.
• Second trip to bring her home!  Again, this is sketchy because of differences in regions, and there is even the possibility we could only make 1 trip, or it could turn into3!  After the first trip, we will be notified of when the Russian court for that region has set our court date.  At that point we will head back ASAP in order to be there in whatever region Ana is in for that date.  We will likely have to speak to a judge (through an interpreter, of course) and answer his or her questions about why we want to adopt and some personal info about whether we can afford the child, how we will parent her, etc.  This was very nerve racking for us with Mikhail, but by the end of the time with the judge we ended up standing next to her behind her desk so we could show her a little PowerPoint slide show on Ken's laptop of pictures of us with Mikhail at our visits with him in the orphanage.  I will never forget that mental picture and watching the judge's face turn from stern and serious to all smiles as she saw us interacting in the pictures with our boy. :)  Of course when she said we were approved to adopt Mikhail I cried like a baby.  I'm pretty sure she was a bit misty eyed, too.
• 10 Day Waiting Period.  Russian courts require there to be a waiting period after the adoption has been approved just in case the birth parents or other relative speaks up and has changed their mind about wanting to relinquish rights.  After the 10 days, the adoption is finally considered FINAL for the Russian courts.  We will most likely not have Ana with us during this time.  We will not get custody of her until the wait period is over.  We may get to visit her at the orphanage during this period, though.  We visited Mikhail 3 times in our waiting period before we actually left the orphanage with him.
• Get our baby girl!  Oh, the blessed day when we walk out the orphanage doors with little Ana Fortner, never, EVER to be called an orphan again!
• Citizenship stuff in Moscow.  We will likely leave whatever region Ana is in shortly after we have been given custody of her, then will need to stay in Moscow while her passport, visa & citizenship papers are being processed.  This took a full week with Mikhail.  But we won't care!  We will be having too much fun getting to know our girl, spending all day playing and playing and playing in a hotel room somewhere in expensive Moscow. :)  Even the ridiculous hotel rates couldn't dampen our spirits of having that time with Mikhail.  So many memories and so many firsts will happen during our time together in Moscow!
• Home!  An exhausting 14 hour+ airplane flight with 2 cranky kids, multiple layovers and 2 of the happiest (yet exhausted) parents on earth. :)

WE'RE IN!

Just got a phone call from Carolina Adoption Services and our application has OFFICIALLY been accepted! We are now currently enrolled in their Russia Program.  Whoo hoo!  We didn't think there would be any problem, but hearing it straight from their ears in still very exciting.  Every little step is worth celebrating!

By the way, the CAS representative who called couldn't stop talking about how cute Mikhail was.  We had to send pictures in with our application so we sent the one of him in his train hat that makes his cheeks look extra chubby.  God sure gave us a good looking guy!

Thanks for celebrating with us, everyone. :)  One step closer to Ana!

PART 1: How It All Works... sort of

Lots of people have been asking us questions about this whole "adoption process" thing we keep referring to, and I don't blame them because it is seriously complicated!  I don't dare pretend like I have it all figured out, and we have to be prepared for all kinds of curve balls, like we were thrown with Mikhail's adoption, but here is my attempt to make sense out of what we will be experiencing through out this time while God is working to bring us our little girl.  Hope this helps!

• Choose an adoption agency.  This was easy because we had such a good experience with our agency the first time that we did not hesitate to call them for Ana's adoption.  We are using Carolina Adoption Services (CAS) out of Greensboro, NC.  Precious people who we have never even met, yet helped make our family possible!
• Receive acceptance into the Russia program at Carolina Adoption Services.  We submitted our application (see Post #1!) over a week ago and should receive approval any day now that CAS has accepted us into their program and will proceed in placing us with a child.
• Choose a social worker to conduct our home study.  Often the home study is conducted by someone at the adoption agency, but in our case our agency is out of state so we needed a social worker who was in Texas.  Again, EASY!  Jenna with Adoption Answers, Inc. helped us with Mikhail's adoption as well as all the post-placement reports that Russia required several years after he was home.  So glad to have you on board again, Jenna!
• Have a home study completed.  Our licensed social worker (Jenna) comes to our house and does an interview with each of us, looks at our home environment to see if it is suitable for a child, and obtains copies of our personal information like legal documents, financial & insurance info, autobiographical details, etc.  She talks with us about our marriage, our parenting style, and will talk with Mikhail, too, about his thoughts on having Ana here (he is looking forward to this very much!).
• Begin gathering documentation for the dossier.  Ay yay yay... this is often a very frustrating part.  At this point we will be following the Russian government's requirements for the necessary paperwork to be placed in our dossier.  We will not be given a referral (info about a child) until this collection of paperwork is gathered, notarized, apostilled (another form of verifying a document's authenticity done by the State of Texas), and completed perfectly to their standards.   The info in our dossier includes our completed home study, immigration forms, proof of our citizenship, approval from the US government to bring a child into the country, tons of info and documents from our agency, etc.  One copy of this dossier will be sent to Russia as soon as it is completed and the second copy will be hand carried by us when we travel there.  It is, in a strange but true way, the closest thing we have to Ana until we actually have her in our hands!  This thick packet of hundreds of papers will represent countless hours spent in determination to bring home our child!



Mikhail's referral picture

• Receive the referral!  A referral is information (which sometimes includes a picture) of a child who is available for adoption in the country from which you are adopting.  For the Russia program, it could take anywhere from 1 to 18 months to receive a referral once our dossier has been sent to the country.  With Mikhail it took  less than 2 months... the wait for girls is longer, though. :(  The amount of info we will receive about our child (who will be renamed by us "Ana" on her adoption certificate) could vary from a few pictures or even video, plus medical and family history information to simply a name, age, and location.  We received two pictures of Mikhail and limited developmental and medical info, just a few sentences, really.  But one line on the referral sheet cracked us up, and we still smile and quote it to each other today:  "...he is fond of small cars."  :)  Boy, did they get THAT right!

A Chat with Big Brother

I asked Mikhail this  morning, "What do you think about bringing home little sister, Ana?"

Mikhail:  "It's very surprising to be a brother for Ana.  And I can't wait.  I know I will be a good friend.  And I hope that Gracie won't growl at somebody she doesn't know."

Mama: "What will you do if Gracie growls at Ana?"

Mikhail:  "I will help Ana and Gracie.  I will teach Gracie that this is little sister and she should treat her nicely."

Mama:  "Anything else you want to say?"

Mikhail:  "We are a family and so we will have more family with Ana and the generation will grooooooow.  I can't wait for this day.  It will be exciting.  Love Mikhail (and Ana, soon)."

                                           ________________________________________________

Yes, Mikhail, I have no doubt you will be a good friend. And I have no doubt that you will be trying to teach Ana all those big words you love so much. :)  I'm so proud of my sweet boy.