And We're Off!

Most PAPs (Potential Adoptive Parents) like to put out a timeline for when they expect everything to happen. I’m feeling like it’s a little to early for that.

Ideally, we would like to travel to Kazakhstan next July, August, or September. But that is so dependent on so many outside factors, like the Government and our homestudy Social Worker, that who knows!

Tuesday we mailed off the application to our chosen Adoption Agency. Even that took a bit longer, because Husband and I really wanted to make sure we had done our research on the Agency for this country (checking references, the Better Business Bureau, independent groups, etc).

We’ve also been reading lots of blogs from families that have recently traveled to Kazakhstan. That has been really helpful, as we’ve seen many different experiences and have been able to extrapolate the commonalities. Husband and I will go back and read some again, after we get our Letter of Invitation and we know what city we’ll be traveling to.

One of the rather unique aspects of Kazakhstan is that we’ll be traveling blind.

That means that we won’t know who our child is before we leave. We will be invited to come to a city and visit their Baby House. At the Baby House we’ll be presented with 1-5 little girls, and we have to choose one. This is the part which scares me the most, but every single person I’ve talked to (or read about) has said it’s not once it happens. The child God chooses for you is plainly obvious.

Traveling blind means, also, that there is a small possibility we won’t have a girl in our age range. We can then either adjust our age range or adopt a boy. Husband and I are comfortable adjusting up to 4 years old, and if God chooses another son for us, that’s okay also. (We have his name picked out, too!)

This isn’t as likely, because the reason most issues crop is that the infants haven’t been in the system long enough (Kazakhstan requires a 6 month time between being entered into the system and being “adoptable”.) Children who are already 2-3 years old tend to have been in the system since they were infants, so the 6 month wait has long since past for these little girls.

So – from here, where do we go?

First – the Agency will contact us.

Second – we’ll begin our homestudy. This is at least 3 visits with the Social Worker. One in her office (both Husband and I), one in our home (includes the Caterpillars), and another in her office (separate interviews for me and Husband).

Third – we’ll begin collecting our Dossier documents and get fingerprinted by the FBI (ooooo – fun!)

Even though we are still at the beginning, it’s nice to be able to DO something. I hear it gets much harder when you’ve done all you can, and you’re waiting on others to move your documents along.

Keep us in your prayers!

~Lone Butterfly )i(