How This All Works

I have come to realize that I am typing my blog posts assuming everyone knows all the lingo and the process for international adoption. Since I'm getting asked the same questions from different friends and family, I realized I need to explain what is coming up in the next week for us.

First of all, this will be visit number one and we will only meet the baby on this visit. We should meet them on Monday and have 4 days to spend with them. On Friday Randy and I will be at the hospital in Moscow to complete our 8 doctor physical. I can't remember all the doctors we'll be seeing but people say it goes quickly that day. Moscow likes to make sure we are really, really healthy before they send one of their children to live with us and to top it off they charge $740 each for the appointments. Saturday we will leave to come home. We are flying out of Killeen to Atlanta, Atlanta to Moscow. Atlanta to Moscow is only a 10 hour flight which will be a walk in the park after flying both of us flying to Korea and Randy flying to Iraq.

Second, the Visa applications I refer to are not credit cards. We must have a Visa from Russia that attaches to our passports and allows us entry into the country. Since we had such short notice we had to pay $200 each for next day service and the cost to expedite the Fed Ex process cost us another $115. These Visas will only allow us to get into the country this one time. The second trip will require us to apply for new Visas and pay the fees all over again. We did have to contact our credit card company to let them know that we would be in Russia and not to put a security alert on our account and block our charges once they see Russian charges coming in.

Third, we have requested either a boy or a girl under 18 months old and said we are open to twins. Most likely the referral will be for a boy, but you never know what God has in store for us. The youngest the child could be is 9 months old. We have the option to have a Russian doctor exam the baby before we accept the referral. We could have a lot of background information on the child and we could have very little.

Fourth, we are not permitted to post pictures of the child on our blog. We can share pictures to friends and family but the Russian government does not want us to post pictures until we go to court and the adoption is finalized. We are allowed to take as many pictures and videos that we want when over in Russia, we just can't post them on the blog.

Lastly, the court date should be 4-6 weeks after our first visit. This is what the Moscow region is running right now. Of course there are always things that change these dates but it is a good rule of thumb. After the court date there is a 10 day waiting period and we will not have the baby with us. After the 10 days is up we have our "Gotcha Day" where we get to take them home from the orphanage and they are all ours!!

Lastly lastly, :-) we have a for sure name picked out if we are referred a girl. We have part of a name picked out for a boy. We want to see what their Russian name is as we are not opposed to using their Russian name for their first name or as a middle name.

I think that is it for now and I hope this helps with some of the confusion. We are making great progress on getting ready to go. All we have to do is pack. My friend Wanda and future sister in law Amy are hosting a shower for me two weeks after we return so I've had to get my list together for them along with addresses but those women are on a mission and when they say "jump" I say "how high?" :-)