Sunday, July 25, 2010

A Season of Changes

Well, since our last posting, we have made a lot of changes...First of all, we changed agencies to a large international agency that happens to be headquartered here in town. We made the change in February of this year. The new agency is so great...the communication is outstanding. I knew more about our adoption process in the first month with them, than I knew in 2 years with the old agency!

Another change we made was opening our preferences up to either a boy or a girl. In Russia, there are many more boys available for adoption, so we will most likely be matched with a boy. I'm looking forward to David having a little brother (just need to repaint the pink room!)

So....we spent a very busy 3 months preparing our foreign application (our Dossier) for Russia. (and by "we" I mean mostly "me") It included many trips to the doctor's office for paperwork and relying on others to complete forms for us. It was crazy! We are humbled by having to ask so many others to prepare paperwork for us...our future of our adoption was in their hands. Unfortunately, before we finish the whole adoption process, we will once again have to entail physicals and extensive testing and get documents notarized on our behalf.

After completing approximately 150 pages of information, we had to take all the documents to Austin to be apostilled. This is a process that basically certifies the notarized documents. Luckily, everything passed! We then just had to turn everything into our agency, and crossed our fingers everything was perfect...it was!

Our dossier was sent via FedEx to Russia last week! It is such a relief to be in this position (again!). In the meantime, we will complete some required training as well as interview some potential international pediatricians that specialize in Russian adoptions. This doctor will be able to help us in determining health issues in our potential child.

In short, the BIG question everyone asks is..."How long will it be??" The short answer is, "no one knows!" We are anticipating a wait anywhere from 6 months - 12 months from this point forward. Although, it could be shorter. We would love to have our referral (match) by the end of 2010, but realistically it will probably be next year.

Thanks for all your thoughts and prayers. I will try to be better at updating everyone! For now, there isn't much to do but wait!!

Love,
Heidi

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