Getting Started

Hi Everyone!
As you all know, Sean and I decided to adopt a little girl from China as Josh is such a good boy and we would love to give him a baby sister. Josh is very happy with this decision and can’t wait to meet his baby sister.
As you may or may not be aware we started the process with China and after 7 months of waiting we were advised that the 12 months waiting period we were told about when we started the whole process had jumped to over 4 yrs waiting period. That meant that Josh would not have a sibling until he was 12 yrs old. We were not very happy with this & we decided to switch our program to Kazakhstan. So, we have lost what ever we have spent so far for China and have to start fresh for Kazakhstan.

Kazakhstan, if you don’t know is below Russia and to the left of China. Kazak people are of Asian decent however as Kazakhstan was part of the USSR until 1991, a lot of their population is Russian as well. So, this means that our daughter can be either Asian, Russian or mixed.
We started the process with Kazakhstan at the end of November 2007 and right now, we are waiting for our home study to be revised and for the Interpol and Police records check to be returned from the FEDs and approved (& yes, it will be approved we are not just assuming) then we are to get our medical done & start our immunizations right away. We were told by our independent practitioner (one doing the home study) that she hoped to have this done before Christmas.

Once the Home study is completed and sent to social services for approval and notorization, our dossier will be forwarded to Children’s Bridge (the agency that helps us with our international adoption) for translation and more notorization and then forwarded to the Minister of Education to be sent to Kazakhstan. Then we start the immigration papers right away and the waiting period begins. We were told that it can take anywhere from 6-9 months before we get to travel to meet our girl. Some people have been called anywhere from 17 days to 3 months after the dossier arrived in Kazakhstan. It all depends on what you are asking for.
We were told that currently, Kazakhstan doesn’t have any girls available under the age of 2 yrs old. So where does that leave us. We told Josh that we want a girl so that she will be special because of who she is & he is special because of who he is. But, we also told him that there is a possibility that we have to come back to Canada with a boy instead of a girl and he said he was okay with that. We are asking for a girl of age from as young as possible to age 2 ½ however we are willing to consider a girl up to 3 yrs old if none are available younger than that. We want to cover all bases to ensure we bring back a girl and not a boy. After all, her room is all ready for a girl and she has a wardrobe already.

The problem with Kazakhstan is that you may be called to travel to go adopt a girl that was chosen for you based on your criteria however, once you get there, she may no longer be available. Now that means that if a couple that was there a few weeks before we arrived, for some reason did not like the child they were initially offered, they are offered another one which can be our child and once we get there we are told she is not available anymore and we have to pick another one. Now if they only had one girl and she was offered to us, and the other couple did not like their boy and picked our girl instead, that leaves us with only boys to pick from or go back to Canada empty handed and loose all monies spent so far. Now as you can imagine, we prefer coming back with a boy than empty handed, after all a room can be changed and clothes sold & new ones purchased. I would be disappointed but as I always say, "I can adapt just fine" & Sean & Josh don’t seem to mind either way. We can always consider a girl with cleft palate or lip which is easily repaired by surgery but this is the last resort & we don’t want to tell then that we may consider this or they will offer it without letting us know that there are other girls available without any health problems.
So, for now that is all we know and have in the process. Once our dossier is moving forward, we will post again to let you all know where we are at. We decided to go with this Blog as opposed to write or call each one as this way you can sign in anytime you want to see where we are at and we will continue to update this website while in Kazakhstan so everyone is aware of our progress at the same time.
TTFN
Malory