Our adoption story

I realized I jumped into this blog without ever giving much background on our family. Warning - This is the condensed version but it's still long. Here goes:

We tried for many years to have a baby on our own or with a little help from doctors before we turned to adoption. We didn't really care how became parents as long as we got to become parents. We turned to international adoption mostly because domestic adoptions scared me. What kind of contact would we have with birth families? Would someone want our child back? I know better now and don't think I'd be as scared anymore. With China and Russia being the countries where most adoptions were coming from, we started there. Although we personally know families that have adopted from China we decided on Russia. Mostly because we wanted the opportunity to adopt boys or girls. We began with our application to KidsFirst Adoption Services in April 2006. Since we knew we wanted more than one child we decided just to go for it and adopt two at once! We requested two children of either gender under the age of three. Next we began the paperwork (called a dossier) and that took us several months to complete. Our paperwork was complete and we were officially waiting for a referral in September 2006. Here comes the long part. Due to changes in Russia rules all agencies had to apply to be re-accredited. This used to happen yearly but in 2006 they decided to make it longer (permanent I think?). This meant it took longer to get too. So every agency in the country had their accreditation's expire and referrals and adoptions slowed way way down. We had a few close calls but finally got "the call" about our boys in September 2007. We traveled blind. This meant that we knew almost nothing about the boys - no pictures, no medical information, nothing. We accepted anyway and traveled to Rostov-on-Don, Russia to meet them in October. We met them three times each and took a doctor with us from Moscow to evaluate them since we didn't get any medical info ahead of time. We accepted, in writing, the referral of the boys and came home to wait some more. Luckily we didn't have to wait long. We traveled back to Russia only three weeks later to appear in court for approval of the adoption. Our court date was Alex's 2nd birthday. Russian law requires that all court decisions have a 10 day appeal period so although the judge ruled in our favor we couldn't bring them home just yet. Instead of coming home and making a third trip, like some do, we decided to stay and visit the boys. (They had to stay at their orphanages.) At the end of our 10 days we picked up the boys from two separate orphanages in two separate towns and flew to Moscow for another few day. Here we had to apply for the boys visas and have them checked out by an embassy doctor. Finally on Thanksgiving day we flew home!

Although we now have a hectic life (like anyone with two toddlers) we've had a fairly easy transition. We are so blessed that our boys have been healthy and have had minor, if any, adjustment or attachment problems. They picked up English very quickly, eat well, sleep well (for the most part) and get along with each other. We could not have been matched with two more perfect for us children. We love them to pieces!