Silver Lining...

For those of you who read my earlier post in full, you noticed that they were accepting unlimited referrals for "handicapped children". We have just heard from our agency that their definition of a handicapped child is very broad. They have said it can apply to severe cases (HIV) to asthma. If America defined an asthmatic child as "handicapped" many more people would be classified as such. We also have learned that Eastern European countries are quick to diagnose a "handicap" that we would not necessarily consider a problem at all. Many children are actually misdiagnosed. Sad for them, but good (I guess) for the people who want to adopt. Our agency remains optimistic about our upcoming travels and that is great news to have this time of year. I guess you could say we are going up, up, up on this roller coaster ride. Thanks for following along!!
Love,
Su & Tru

Agency Response

Our agency finally got back to us regarding these new quotas. Here is an excerpt from their response:
"Another point is that the SDAPRC has been known to change its procedures and policies since its incorporation in 2006. It is important to remember that the quota system is not a law but just the arbitrary numbers adopted by the organization. There are possible exceptions to the rule, not yet publicly announced."

The agency is remaining optimistic, as are we, that this program will continue to operate and that we can still envision our trip there next fall. We did receive our very first apostilled document back from the State of IL. Whooohoo! That was the only document that needed to be mailed out of state, all the others are done in Frankfort (one bonus of living near the capital city!). We also started our Parent Education last night. It's an online course with some questions attached, but I think it will be a good avenue for discussion for us.
In the meantime, we continue to keep up with other families who are either in country now or are preparing just like us. Some are very inspiring stories of children & parents finding each other and others not so much. All we can do is stay patient and flexible and know at the end of this journey we WILL have a child to call our own. Merry Christmas!!
Love, Susan & Truman

Setback

Well, this just sucks!

December 12, 2007
Dear Members of the American Adoption Community Interested in Ukraine:
On November 22, 2007 the Ministry for Family, Youth and Sports issued Decree #4137. This Decree approves the numbers of the new adoption dossiers from foreign countries that can be accepted by the Ukrainian State Department for Adoption and Protection of the Rights of the Child (SDAPRC) during calendar year 2008.
The result of the decree is that 460 dossier submissions have been allocated to parents from the U.S. for calendar year 2008. This number was arrived at using a special mathematical formula devised by the SDAPRC, based on the number of delinquent post adoption reports and the number of Ukrainian children who will be eligible for intercountry adoption in 2008. The total number of the dossier submissions is divided among five categories of children, so a specific number of dossiers can be submitted for each category:
• children under six years old (with no siblings) - 32 dossiers
• children from six to nine years old (with no siblings) - 83 dossiers
• children ten years or older (with no siblings) - 115 dossiers
• sibling groups (in which one of the children is younger than 6 years) - 92 dossiers
• sibling groups (in which all siblings are 6 or more years old) - 138 dossiers
The U.S. again has the highest number of allocations for foreign countries adopting from Ukraine, followed by Italy (381 dossiers) and Spain (285 dossiers).
The dossiers for the following categories of children will be accepted without any limitations and out of the regular line:
• Children who have been abandoned or are currently residing under the legal custody of their relatives
• step-children
• handicapped children, who suffer from a disease listed with the Ministry of Public Health Protection (the list of these diseases is posted at: http://kyiv.usembassy.gov/amcit_adoptions_eng.html.
The SDAPRC will accept the new dossiers from foreign citizens beginning February 4, 2008.

Hopefully we will hear back from our Case Manager to see what our options are.

Changes

That is the nature of international adoption - "...parents must be flexible and willing to accept change..." We have been told this is pretty much inevitable right from the beginning, but it's still a shock to the system when it happens. So, what has changed? Well, nothing yet, but it could in a big way. Ukraine issues quotas on how many American dossiers they will accept in a years time. Currently they are not accepting any new American dossiers, but have to reopen that process come January 15th. We knew that and it's no big deal since we are shooting for somewhere around March. However, we have heard via our Ukrainian rumor-mill that quotas for 2008 are very low - 32 to be exact, for a child under 5 yrs. Under 500 in total for children of all ages/needs. These numbers have not officially been determined, so we are still holding out hope that this is not the case and they will allow many more American dossiers to be registered. If these numbers are the case, we may need to re-evaluate where we stand - do we wait longer? do we open up our age range? do we think about another country? (the last one is a last resort I think). Regardless, we are still pursuing all of our paperwork as planned. I am Fed-Ex'ing out our fingerprints today to the FBI and am hoping they are quick at processing everything. Other than that, we are on the ball with everything else and will be hovering over the mailbox for the next couple months waiting on those very important documents that should be arriving. Have a great week!!
Love, Susan & Truman

Home Study Ending

This morning I submitted the final paper needed for our home study. It's a relief to have that under our belt, but now begins the waiting on other paperwork to be returned to us. I have to send a huge "Thank You" to my friend & co-worker, Dana, for accompanying me to my dr.'s office to notarize some papers. Also to my awesome friends, Rachel & Melissa, for offering to use their teacher book club bonus points to help start a book collection for our child. Thanks for making this process just a little easier! Now we just continue to work on some dossier paperwork and hopefully in a month's time we will be complete with stuff on our end and just be waiting on others. We're thankful we can take this holiday season to spend with our friends & family, but we're hoping next year our new addition will be able to spend it with us too. Thanks again for following along and keeping up with this crazy process of ours!
Love, Susan & Truman

Fingerprints

Another step is out of the way! We got our fingerprints done - the old fashion way with ink - at our county police station. Next step with that is to send them off to WV to the FBI and *hope* they come back clean. :) Shouldn't be a problem though. Please pray they move fast there, it could take from 1-10 weeks to get the clearances back. Today is the day we both go back to pick up our medical forms, please also pray that these are filled out correctly as that is all we are waiting on to have a completed home study. I dreamt last night about our trip to the orphanage; it started with selecting a girl, but ended back at home with a boy. Wonder what that means?!? Other dossier documents are coming along, several are ready to be notarized. I hope this post finds you well, thanks for checking in. And if you have time, please follow along with some other families who are currently in country - either awaiting their first SDA appointment or who are finalizing their adoptions and making travel plans home. Please pray for their smooth process & their trips home.

Quick Update

Yay! I heard back from the IL Secretary of State's office. We have officially sent in our first document to be apostilled. What a milestone!! Should have it back in about 2 weeks.

Progress

We had a fun weekend, complete with a Christmas party at the distillery and a visit to the Ukrainian church. This coming weekend we are hoping to get a Christmas tree up and decorated. Only TWO more documents are needed for our home study - the medical forms. I should have mine on Wednesday and hopefully Truman will have his by Friday. So - the goal is to be complete with that this week! That will be a huge step completed! We are now digging more into the dossier - if anyone knows how to get someone at the State of IL to call you back - please let me know!!! Our marriage certificate is the only thing we need to send out of state to be apostilled, yet no one will call me back and tell me where to send it and what the fee is. I guess I will have to be persistant. We have also started talking about what to pack for our 2-month long "camping trip" (as Truman put it). So, my question is to the families who have gone through this - what are the things on the "must pack" list and what kinds of stuff should we just buy when we get there? Yes, I know it's a long way off, but it's something to keep our minds occupied in the meantime! Thanks for keeping up - check back soon!!

We keep on going...

I haven't posted in a while because there's not much to say really. We continue to have some paperwork trickle in and get us baby steps closer to completing our home study. Provided our doctors can complete our medical forms in a reasonable time (namely, MY doc's office) we should be completed with our home study by Dec. 10th. Once that's completed we'll dig further into our dossier paperwork. Kentucky is one of the few states that requires documents to be certified in the county they were notarized in before the documents can be apostilled (Apostille: the legalization of a document for international use under the terms of the 1961 Hague Convention Abolishing the Requirement of Legalization for Foreign Public Documents) We are hoping to be completed with our dossier at the end of February. I have added links to other families blogs who are adopting from Ukraine. Some are currently traveling in country and it's quite interesting to read what they are going through. I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving - Christmas is right around the corner!

Immigration

We got a big step accomplished this morning at the immigration office in Louisville. Being the earlybirds that we are we rushed to L'ville at 6am for our 8:40AM appointment. We had no idea what traffic would be like and we did NOT want to be late for this appt. Needless to say we were very, very EARLY. Good thing there was the fine dining establishment called "White Castle" across the street so we grabbed some breakfast & coffee while we waited. Around 8am we walked over to the courthouse and walked right into the office where our appt. was. The lady went ahead and took our paperwork & payment (of course, they ask for that up front before we can proceed!) then directed us to the basment where our fingerprints would be done. Little did we know, our appt. was only to turn in our paperwork, NOT to get our prints done. We headed downstairs anyway and were told that appts got first priority and "walk-ins" were fit in if they could be. At that point I was preparing myself for a full-day's wait at the immigration office. No need to worry though, in about 15 minutes our names were called, we submitted our fingers to be printed and we were outta there -- at exactly 8:47am. Seven minutes after our appt. I am still in shock that it went so quick.
Just a few more documents are needed for our home study and that will be completed!! We wish you all a happy Thanksgiving - I know we have a lot to be thankful for this year! Love to all!
Susan & Truman

Digging out

Hip Hip Hooray - our home study visits are done! Now we are just waiting on some paperwork to come back to either us or our social worker and that will be behind us. The one surprise is that she recommended we allow her to approve us for two children, just on the off chance something unexpected - say, like a sibling - appears after we've selected our child. It's not likely, but on rare instances it does happen. We would just hate to get over there, fall in love with a particular child and not be able to take them home because we were not approved for 2. However, she IS going to state in her letter that we STRONGLY prefer one child. Let's just hope and pray we don't have to face that decision once we are there. So, I got myself organized with all the dossier paperwork - 3-ring binder w/ sheet protectors. Now I feel like we have a handle on things. Monday is our appt. with US Immigration for fingerprinting - that's a big step - the approval form we get from this fingerprinting is something we cannot let out of our sight!! We have to keep the original of it in order to travel and actually finalize the adoption. The next few months will be spent reading book after book on adoption issues, such as bonding & attachment, trust & potential in country setbacks. Last night Truman bought a couple Russian-English phrase books/cd's. The only one we memorized last night was "ya teebya lyablya" (I love you) -- yeah, I don't really know how to pronounce it either! Even though are traveling to Ukraine, the people there also speak Russian and since we cannot find Ukraine-English books, we settled for Russian. I'm sure it will get us through just fine. Have a great weekend & Happy Thanksgiving!!

Buried in Paperwork!!

Well, our first home study visit is under our belt and our last visit will be tomorrow. That was quick!! But actually the home study wont be complete until we get certain forms back from the government. I'm anticipating the home study will be complete in 2007. Thank you to my dad for running around this morning getting us a certified copy of our marriage license!! It's hard to get all that IL & IA & IN paperwork since we are in KY. We did receive a list of all the documents that are required for our dossier yesterday. It's all very overwhelming and you wonder how in the world it will get accomplished. My plan is to take a few hours each day and see what I can get done and make appts, etc...It's tense because everything has to be submitted just right - every I dotted and every T crossed. So, the next few months will be spent gathering paperwork, having it ALL notarized and then having it ALL apostilled. Which requires most of it going to Frankfort, KY to the Office of the Secretary of State, some other documents need to go to Indianapolis, IN & Springfield, IL. At least here in KY we are able to hand deliver this stuff and get it done right then and there. It makes me nervous to send these important documents and hope I get them back quickly. But...people do this all the time so hopefully these offices understand and are quick about this sort of thing. Our main focus right now is to dig out from under all this paperwork and pray we get it done right!

Paper, Paper & MORE Paper

So many pieces of paper to fill out with the same information it seems! Still - every day we are getting more accomplished and one more thing checked off the long list of to-do's. We have our fingerprinting appt. with U.S. Immigration for next Monday. Darn - that will require a morning off work to get that taken care of. :) Yesterday, I sent in our KY State Police clearance and Child Abuse & Neglect clearance. Yesterday I also wrote the first draft of my autobiography. It turned out to be about 4 pages. Soon we will need to get physicals, and then it's pretty much waiting on other papers to be returned to us with an official stamp that should say "YES! They are good people who should become parents today!". Wonder what would happen if the government made every pregnant woman fill out all these papers each time she had a child?! Maybe I will lobby for that once this process is over and done?! LOL - I doubt it, but it's a thought!
The past few nights I have just not been sleeping well. I can tell I am dreaming about our traveling time in Ukraine, but cannot see any clear pictures of what we are doing. All I know is that I'm constantly waking up during the night and getting no good sleep. I hope this does not continue for the next year! If I'm going to be waking up multiple times in the night I want it to be for a child and not because I'm feeling anxious!!! Last night Truman and I were at Sportsmans Warehouse and saw cute camo/outdoorsy kids clothes. Soon...very soon we'll be able to buy those. Not yet though...
Well, I didn't really have anything specific to report, just felt like writing today. Thanks for checking in today!
Love,
Susan

More Paperwork

Today we turned in our actual agency application, along with our contract, our express shipment authorization and some other consent forms. We also have our first home study visit scheduled for next Tuesday (Nov. 13th). Can you guess what I'll be doing this weekend??? Truman did alot of cleaning last weekend and this weekend will be my turn, so he can enjoy his time out in the woods. So, once I turned those papers in, I was given MORE paperwork to be done for the home study. It's nothing that has to be done by Tuesday, but just for the whole thing to be approved. So, in the near future we will be each be writing our life story for our bio, getting fingerprinted in Louisville so they can be sure we are not ex-cons or anything of the sort, send in our immigration paperwork, getting criminal clearances for other states we've lived in in the last 10 years, having physicals and collecting our reference letters. I assume we will be hearing from our Case Manager in the next week or 2 to get started on our dossier. I know it may seem like we are moving fast, but believe me, once the dossier is done our patience will definitely be tested. :) We're very happy that everything is progressing and getting accomplished. Ukraine did add one new "fee" that we were unaware of, but it's one that will better the life for the orphans so I'm A-OK with it. Tonight will be spent reviewing the new paperwork and hopefully getting some ready to send out tomorrow and others ready to be witnessed and notarized tomorrow. At least all that is making the week go by fast!

You may notice the new elements we've added to the page. I admit, we saw it on someone else's site and stole it - but it's a good idea!!!
Thanks for checking in! We love you all!!

Susan & Truman

Step 2...

It's funny how one phone call can put me in such a good mood! (I'm sure when we get THE important invitation phone call, it will be nothing compared to this though!). Anyway, I just received an email & phone call from our agency. Seems we submitted our home study application instead of our agency application - Whoops! No big deal though, she is sending me an agency application to fill out, along with our contract and more specifics on payment & the Ukraine program. She also said Julie, another social worker, will be contacting us soon (hopefully today) to set up our first home study visit! Yay!! I've never been so excited to have a stranger come into our home and tell us if we're safe enough for a child! Hopefully later today I can post the date of our first home study visit. Anyone out there know what we might expect from this first visit?

House Prep

A big thanks goes to my good friend Tony, his dad and brother. They came by the house yesterday and built a closet with a deadbolt lock in our bedroom. The purpose of this closet is to house the accoutrement's of my hobbies and keep them safe from small fingers. I would like to say I helped, but I was mostly just engaged in carrying heavy stuff and ordering lunch. The closet looks great and after a bit of mudding and paint it will look like it has always been there. I fabricated some racks and installed shelves which now hold all of my hobbies in a clean and organized manner. Susan is thrilled to get most of our bedroom floorspace back. Our next step is to THOROUGHLY clean the house top to bottom. Everyone tells us that we don't need to do this for the home inspection, but as anal retentive as Susan and I both are we wouldn't feel right without making sure.I finally feel like we are moving ahead and getting things done. It is busy work to keep from going crazy thinking about what is to come. However, it is productive busy work.

Truman

Seuss Pics

my beautiful wife, 1 puppy, The Lorax, and my sweet Truffula trees!
The brown barbaloots eating truffula fruits in their brown barbaloot suits
Singing swammi-swans

one fish, two fish... Can you guess the theme of our child's bedroom?

As per Truman's request (or should I say demand?!) :) I have taken some pictures of the furniture I painted for our future child's room. One I did a while ago, the other I just finished yesterday. Enjoy!

Truman's Note: For those of you who think these look familiar, you are correct. The "one fish" dresser is the Salvation Army purchase I inherited from Fondue in C101 and the Lorax Dresser is/was an FIT Dorm Dresser I brought with me from Roberts Hall to C-building. How did they ever survive this long?!?!

What Not To Say...

So, I came across this today and I wanted to share it with all of you. Some of you may know EXACTLY what this means, others may need some education. This is meant to be funny, please take it as such. :)
Things that are NOT to be Said to People Who Adopt:
1. How much did she/he cost?
2. Why did you go and adopt--couldn't you have your "own" child?
3. Did you buy that baby?
4. Maybe now that you adopted, you'll have "your own" child.
5. She/He looks nothing like either of you.
6. What are you going to do when she/he looks for their birthparent?
7. Do you know her/his "real" parents?
8. I sure hope he/she fits into your family!
9. Why didn't his/her real mom want him/her?
10. Don't even tell him/her they are adopted, they'll never know.
11. Too bad you had to adopt!
12. Whose fault is it you can't get pregnant?
13. You're doing these kids such a favor.
14. S/he is so lucky to have your family instead of his/her own.
15. An older child is damaged goods .
16. She's your daughter?
17. What about your own kids? What do they think about this?
18. She might come from a cursed background.
19. What are you going to do when you have kids of your own?
20. Do you think you love them as much as you could love your real kids?
21. You got kids the easy way you never even had to be pregnant.
22. What if the real parents come back and kidnap them?

One step down...

a million more to go! I just had to report that our adoption application is in the mail today, along with our very first payment! WhooHoooo! I do feel a sense of relief, however now everything seems more real. I think over the next year I will ask myself, "Am I crazy?!" several times. Of course, the answer will always be YES, but in a good way. :)
As soon as the agency receives everything and says we're approved we will be able to move on to the home study. I'm hoping we hear from them in a weeks time.
Thanks for reading!

Webinar Report

Wow - so last night we watched the online webinar for the Ukraine program. The time in-country has increased to 6-8 weeks. That's a long freakin' time in a foreign country!! After seeing that, all sorts of thoughts come flooding into my head, mostly to do with work and the house and the dogs. How will we pay our bills while we're gone? How can we leave our dogs for 2 MONTHS?? How will we save the money to support ourselves while we are both off work for 2 months (and longer for me)? Somehow we have faith that it WILL work out and that this is meant to be. So...our application is complete and I am calling the agency today to see how they prefer it to be submitted.
So far, lots of friends & family have asked what they can do to help. Each one of you can help in your own way. Whether it's praying for a smooth process & trip, donating money to the cause, being there to lend an ear during those frustrating times (which we KNOW there are sure to be some of those!) or whatever else you can think of. We know you are all here to support us however you are able to. As Truman says, "I have no pride" - so we will take all the help that is offered!
Also, please don't be offended if we don't travel & visit much over the next year. We are attempting to save as much money as possible - but you are all welcome to travel to Kentucky and visit us!

Thank you all for following along with our story! We love you!

Ukraine Webinar

Hello again! Each day we get closer & closer to getting this process going. We have filled out our application and are just waiting to hear back from some friends on their information to list them as references for us. I anticipate us turning this application in this week sometime. We have already begun doing some minor things at home to get ready for the home-study. We needed to have more smoke detectors and a CO detector and a couple fire extinguishers handy. Truman got all that installed on Saturday. Yesterday we cleaned out some closets and got a good start on a garage sale box(es)!
Tonight we are scheduled to watch a "Web"inar on Ukraine and the entire process. I'm sure it will just make us more excited and ready to get this started!
That's all for now, we'll post more after we have officially submitted our application.

Before Getting Started

We have wrestled for months with the idea of adopting. Should we adopt internationally or domestically? If international, which country? Do we want to adopt siblings? How long are we willing to wait? How much can we spend? If domestic, do we want to adopt via foster care or through an agency and wait for a phone call (that may never come)? Little by little, things started falling into place. After months of research on countries and agencies, we have decided on the Ukraine program via Commonwealth Adoptions (www.commonwealthadoption.org) .

This program's wait time is much shorter than other countries we considered, but also costlier. In the end, time was the deciding factor for us. We hope to travel to Kiev, Ukraine in about 12 months. Our stay there will be 4-6 weeks, and we will begin the process of "selecting" our child. No worries...we will have a Ukrainian guide & translator with us at all times to help us get from one place to another. Our worry right now is...Who will we get to house-sit & keep an eye on the dogs??!! Any takers??!

We are hoping to get some final questions answered this week before we formally submit our application into the program. Once that is submitted, our home study process will begin. Before, during & after the home study process, we will begin assembling paperwork for a dossier (pronounced "dos-e-a"). This is a packet of information all about us & our background (eg...criminal, medical, bio's, etc..). If we are organized and on the ball, we can get all this completed in about 3 months. Once it is submitted & approved in Ukraine, we get the "invitation" to travel 3-6 months later. I think we'll have about 3-4 months to prepare for travel, then be in Ukraine for 4-6 wks.

We will update this more once we have actually submitted the application. Wish us luck on what will probably be the most exciting & frustrating & nervewracking & wonderful time of our lives. Please leave comments &/or ask questions! We'd love to hear from you.