Education Progress .and Stuff

Adam and I are getting through our last leg of the education. Yay!

To date we have finished readings, a quiz and 2 video Skype sessions. We're currently doing our last reading and then we'll finish things up - hopefully this weekend!

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We've had a lot of people asking how much longer the process will take from this point.

At this point, the honest answer is that we don't know.

But here's what we're hoping for:

Our file will soon be sent on it's way. We hope it will make it's way through the various channels and have us registered by early July. Once we are registered we will officially be waiting.

Yes, waiting.

Waiting for the call that says we're going to be parents. To tell us the age and gender of our beautiful child.

Once we do receive that wonderful phone call it will be approximately 6 months before homecoming. During That 6 months we will make 3 trips to Russia.

• Trip #1: To officially receive the referral, meet thing child, have a medical assessment of the child done and decide if we will accept the referral.
• Trip #2: Our medical assessment with 8 specialists, and our court date.
• Trip #3: Bring our LO home!

We look forward to it :)

National Infertility Awareness Week

This past week is known to be NIAW. Only here it's more International :)

I am not going to preach and I am not going to lecture. I am not going to recount our woes of tribulations.

Instead I will only say:

1. Please educate yourself.

2. Infertility is all around you - you have no idea.

3. Allow family plans to be announced at the discretion of the expectant parents. Don't ask when someone will start trying and don't ask when to expect a baby to arrive. If it was any of your business, you'd already know.

4. Be kind. Cut some slack for those that deal with infertility. It's hard, it's painful and it destroys a person from the very core of their humanity.

5. Remember those with infertility and pregnancy loss on Mother's Day and Father's Day. Those who are infertile deserve love and affection, and those who have lost children are parents.

Every Time A Bell Rings . . .

A family is born.

Do you remember my dear friend Candice? She's a Mom now.

Congratulations Mommy Candice!

What The Nay-Sayers Say

In every journey you are faced with opposition. Sometimes it's an obstacle, sometimes it's an annoyance.

When you have a public blog everything you write is open to the world. Any person with internet access on the globe can see it. It can be a wonderful connection to far away lands or it can be an unfortunate opening for an attack.

How you deal with the opposition is a choice. For us and our adoption journey, we choose to provide correction and truth when needed.

Yesterday, at 6:30 pm (or so) we received 2 comments on our blog. Both from the same person, both highly suggestive and negative, and both very insulting. The author, KateK, is obviously not a reader of our blog and didn't actually read the screens that she posted on. Her posts were ripe with inaccuracies and falsehoods that were hidden behind a persona that can not be contacted or found.

While we don't need to respond to such an unprompted attack, we want to make matters clear so that anyone who reads our blog and follows our journey knows the truth.

As we said when we started the blog, we wanted to keep a record of all our financial expenditures so that others considering the same adoption path could have an idea of what to expect. We keep our Money Matters page up to date and explain where all the payments are going.

So, let's look at the posts:

The first post was on our most recent post "Stuff." We deleted it as a reflex, before we could decide how to handle it. But luckily the blog sends us emails of all comments.

The post said:

It's great that you're spending money on lil trinkets for your future child -- wouldn't that $$ be better spent on your adoption? Seeing as you don't want to adopt badly enough to do the responsible thing and spend YOUR hard-earned pennies to procure a Russian child? As opposed to fun little toys??

No, of course not! You're totally entitled to someone else's kid! It's acceptable to spend YOUR cash on fripperies and OTHER PEOPLE'S on adoption fees. Because adoption is clearly not worth YOUR money.

I feel sorry for the poor kid you will eventually be matched with - growing up unwanted is bad, not TRULY wanted (like a down payment or college tuition) by even your adoptive parents is worse. More so for years to come, so family and friends can tell the kid that they gave amommy n daddy cash to buy you!!

Classy, isn't it?

At first glance it's just something to brush aside, but the suggestions that our child is not wanted is too much to dismiss.

Additionally, the post suggests that international adoption is like buying a child. Not cool.

Obviously the people who follow our blog, and who have actually read it, know how ludicrous this entire comment is.

Then there's the second comment, which was made on our Money Matters page. It's still there.

It said:

It's so very responsible to be unwilling to spend YOUR money to adopt. I'm assuming you've saved up and paid for stuff that was really important to you -- a down payment, university education, maybe a car??

Interesting that a child isn't important enough to save up for. Planning is soooooo important - and you're too lazy (or uninterested) to bother!!

This post was less troubling as it was blatantly obvious that KateK didn't even read the page she was writing on. You know - the page that says how we're paying for the adoption.

We responded to this post by saying:

This is the only comment from you, whoever you are, I'm not deleting - not sure where you get the idea that we're not spending our own money. We have saved and scrimped and are paying for this ourselves. We put the costs out there for the information of others. We've passed on many other things to pursue this. I have no idea what you're going on about.

We took a look around the internet to see if this is just someone who spams adoption blogs, and found a few posts that are similar in nature - outward attacks on the Adoptive Parents, based on nothing.

So now that we've shown the world what fools are amongst them, let's make a couple things perfectly clear.

1. No one else is funding our adoption. We are funding it. It is hard, we have no money to waste, and we have sacrificed a lot to be able to do this. There are times when we're not sure we can pull another $30,000.00 out of the air but it's all us.

Yes, we sold vanilla for a few weeks while we were figuring things out. But the exchange of goods for payment is not spending other people's money, it's simply earning more.

We've been asked time and time again why we don't own a house, when we plan to buy a house, why we don't travel more, etc. We set our priorities and having a family is our priority.

We are paying the fees on our own.

And no, we have not received monetary gifts or donations to help us.

2. International adoption is not buying a child. It is not child trafficking.
Anyone who would suggest such a thing is an embarrassment to mankind.

The fees associated with our adoption are clearly laid out on our Money Matters page.


As for the shopping.

We have every right to buy things for our family. Whether it be toys, clothes or tickets to a show. It doesn't matter if it's for Pam, Adam or our future child. The right, and the decision, is ours and ours alone.

And we have more than earned the right to enjoy buying things for our child. We have been through a lot to get where we are and no one, NO ONE, is going to take these precious moments away from us.

Stuff!

The last few weeks, we've been picking up some things for the child. Here are some pictures:

Pam with the cup stacking set we're planning to take over when we first get to meet them. Should be good for their motor skills and the like, hopefully they manage to hold onto it between visits.

Peg puzzles - both of us were looking for these, and we found them! I'm pretty sure I remember playing with these. I can't wait to see what is hiding behind the puzzle pieces!

We got quite a few bath toys, to hopefully make the transition to taking baths more fun; apparently they don't get to take baths in the orphanage, which makes sense given the number of kids that would be there.

A peg set for smashing with a mallet.  If the kid doesn't play with it, I (Adam) will. I loved those things. They also explain how I learned to drive spikes into the kitchen floor at age 3 (or so the story goes). Another couple of bath toys, including a very cute Sherlock Holmes Rubber Ducky. Pam fell in love with the BBC Sherlock Holmes series, so it seemed appropriate.

An owl theme is emerging for some decorations - we got a little pillow and a nice little picture for the wall.

Here's a bunch of things at once, including (top centre) an animal book with a squeeky mouse at the end. Pam wasn't sure about the book until I accidentally squeezed it and it made the little noise.

Preemptively buying the noise-maker set ourselves. This set will almost certainly be popular, and also drive us crazy at some point.

All in all, a great set of stuff. We're mostly done buying things until we know more about our child (gender, size, age, etc). Getting this sort of stuff is a lot more fun than paperwork, and makes it a lot more real for us too. Now I just have to figure out how I can play with the mallet set and get it back into the plastic wrap before Pam finds out (Pam doesn't read this blog, right?)...

Education Has Begun!

Skype, Skype, what a wonderful thing!

Skype has kept us from having to travel to another province for our mandated, Russia-specific education. It's glorious! And Skype is free. Free is good. We like free.

Our education sessions started on Tuesday. So far we have had two things to do, and tomorrow is our first of 3 video conferences.

The first day our big assignment was . . . to read a single page introduction/welcome letter, and a 2 page glossary.

It didn't take long.

The second day our assignment was to answer some straight forward questions about why we chose Russia, what we knew about it and the adoption process, and what our expectations were/are.

Questions like these have been asked frequently in our journey so far; both in professional/official capacities and in social situations. The questions are important so that you (and everyone else) know where you stand and how much you have to learn. Our home study included them, our psychological assessment included them, and our provincial education training included them (you can read about those days: Day 1 here and Day 2 here).

Tomorrow we have our first of 3 Skype sessions. There will be a total of 5 hours, made up of a 2 hour, a 1 hour, and another 2 hour.

♥♥ ♥♥ ♥♥ ♥♥ ♥♥ ♥♥ ♥♥ ♥♥ ♥♥ ♥♥ ♥♥ ♥♥

Remember the other day when I mentioned that we'd been shopping? Check out the awesome bedding we found! Perfect for a LO to curl up in bed in!

 

Notice the adorable parent-baby animals? It grabbed us right away.

Back To Learning The Language

We finally have the chance to pick up where we left off in Learning The Language.

Head on over there to start learning the alphabet!
*Tip: Just press on the 6th tab above!

Another Day, Another Memory

Last year, Adam and I disclosed our fertility issues, via Facebook, to our world. Since then, we have had some people show immense amounts of support, and others have disappeared and not said a word.

After we shared our struggles, it became easier to bare the weight of the grief of the trials and losses we have endured. We no longer had to hide away in pain. Instead we were able to recognize and grieve openly for our losses.

Our openness lead others to confide in us the struggles and pain they have had to endure, and a beautiful community of support was created. I long for the day that everyone will be able to grieve openly, and have their pain recognized, not minimized. Validated, not hidden in whispers.

Adam and I have lost 3 pregnancies, and today is the due date of the third.

Lest we forget.

Financial Update

As mentioned on the Money Matters page, we are tracking our expenses through out our adoption process.

At the beginning, when we were researching the adoption,  we couldn't find any accurate Canadian estimates/specifics for expenses. We want to be able to help others be better prepared for their journey.

It is important to understand that the cost affiliated with our adoption is not the cost of a child. Children do not have a monetary value. It is a cost associated for facilitating international governments, contracts and legalities on behalf of the adopted parents.

So, our new running total is:

All the details can be found on the Money Matters page, and if you're looking into adoption, or have reasonable questions, feel free to ask. 

Education Update!

So we finally have some resolution for the education conundrum . . . phew!

On Friday we heard from our agency that they are now ready to deliver the education course. It will be done via online learning and video-conferencing to eliminate the need to travel to another province.

As soon as they receive our addition payment ($350) for the course (they'll have it Tuesday), they'll give us all the info to get started. There will be assignments and 2 tests which will span 45 hours of online training and 5 hours of video-conferencing time.

So we will FINALLY be done our file soon. We are so ready to be done. Really, this adoption process may have been quick so far in the grand sense of time, but it feels like much longer. And the waiting hasn't even really started yet.

Soon. We will be done soon. Finally!

Paperwork Update

The other day we posted about needing 3 final things (that we know of) for our dossier, and today we crossed two off the list!

We will hear more about the education details later this week.

We're almost there! It's so exciting, but not moving nearly fast enough!

Aunty Tasha

Aunty Tasha, whose name you may recognize from comments on some previous posts, is making knitted hats for the Baby Home!

She's been working at it for awhile now, and today she had a little help.

Thanks Auntie Tasha! They're wonderful :)

Second post of the day!

Quick paperwork update:

The paperwork from the social worker has been sorted out, and is now handled. Thank goodness!

However, the psychological report needs to be divided into 2 separate reports (one for each of us). And the agency needs a copy of the psychologist's license.

We also got 2 invoices today, totally $10,500.00. So we're getting things together for the next round of money orders/cheques.

Summing up, our file is now pending:

• Education,
• The amended psychological report, and
• The psychologist's license.

Hopefully it'll be done soon!

I'm Not Crazy . . .

Our psychological assessment is done! After all was said and done, we paid $1135.00 for it, which is just fine with me if it means we get to be parents!

We met with the psychologist on Monday, and went over the final details. We couriered the paperwork to the agency that same day, so that part is done!

So the next step is to get the education squared away. If you remember our post from the other day, you'll remember that we're facing 3 distinct possibilities. Travel to Vancouver, waiting for the agency, or working with the same psychologist here.

We've eliminated the trip to Vancouver, and are now working on the other two options. We hope to know more in the next couple of days.

Is it just me, or does it seem like nothing in adoption is fast?

There is one other detail that is holding us up at this point, a piece of paperwork from the Social Worker who did our home study. We're hoping that we can resolve that today or tomorrow.

Also, we now have this beautiful photo everywhere: the blog title, Facebook and now in our home.

Can you see the little heart over Vladivostok in the bottom right corner?
We can't wait :)