Adoption 2.0 -- Operation Valentina

The blog maintenance and fiddling with videos and other things has been with a purpose in mind. I have been practicing blogging for our next adoption. We are in the process of our second adoption, if you did not already know. Once again this site will document the progress as things move forward.

We got started around the March 2007 time frame. Things in Russia were then at a standstill, so it was somewhat of an act of faith to get started then. There was a repeat of the re-accreditation saga which slowed down our first adoption. Unlike last time, we started the 2007 process just as the accreditation saga was ending. This was unlike 2004/2005 when we began the process just as an accreditation saga was beginning.

To refresh everyone's memories, international adoption agencies must be accredited by the Russian Ministry of Education in order to facilitate adoptions. Each agency's accreditation expires after one year. Our agency's accreditation expired in October 2006, five months after Jason Alexei came home.

Once we started we only told a few people what we were doing, consisting of mainly the people who had to complete paperwork for us. It was a conscious decision on our part to keep things low-key. Since there was so much uncertainty with how things were going in Russia (there was talk of things completely shutting down forever) we chose to not share the information with a lot of people to avoid getting people's hopes up prematurely. This also helped us keep our expectations realistic.

All this changed on July 4 when our placement agency, Catholic Social Services of North Carolina, was one of the first six US agencies to obtain their reaccreditation certificates. This occurred just as we completed our home study and were waiting for our BCIS fingerprinting invitation letter. Suddenly, what looked like would be a long and uncertain process became a wide open prospect of traveling as soon as the fall!

During Jason Alexei's adoption, we have learned to expect the unexpected. We never expected our first adoption to take more than 18 months to complete. The prospect of the second one taking less than one year never entered our minds last May. I hate to set timetables, but I really expect we could travel in October and get everything done by Christmas.

One of the most often said things said to us is, "It must be easier this time around." That's only partially true. It is easier in that we can recycle much of our paperwork from last time. Things need updating with current information, but since we are using the same homestudy and placement agencies the paperwork is very similar. This is our third time doing the paperwork (twice for Jason's adoption by the time it was done), so we are very familiar with the forms. However, we are getting no slack in the amount of paperwork. Everything has to be redone from scratch, renotarized, reapostilled, retranslated, reeverything.

So that also means we get fingerprinted and reinvestigated by the ABI, FBI, and the BCIS. We have to be rechecked for HIV, syphilis, and all the other cooties we have never had. Fun! We were reinterviewed by a social worker. Fortunately, she is the same one we have worked with for Jason's adoption and post-placement reports so we have an established relationship.

With all that said, we are going for a girl this time. When we entered the process, the uncertainty in Russia's status made us doubt if we would ever get to go again. We decided if we ever wanted a girl, we should go for one on this adoption or risk not being able to get one if things closed down. The accreditation our agency received is valid for five years, making the prospects of future trips more likely, but after this one I think we will be done for a while.

We do not have good idea where we will be traveling yet. I would prefer to go back to the Moscow region. After spending three weeks in Moscow last year I feel comfortable going back there again. If we went to Siberia, we would have a long plane flight from Moscow and I would prefer to cut out that additional trip if I could. However, the availability of young girls may be better in other areas than Moscow so we shall see.

On my nieces' belly blog there is an active thread on baby names. Feel free to volunteer suggestions for us. We already have some in mind, but we'll keep the serious ones to ourselves for a bit. If you ever heard us mention theoretical girl names before, don't blab them here until we do. If you do, I can always delete them! It will be a nice surprise for some people if we go that direction.

As far as female cosmonaut names there is none more known than Valentina Tereskova, the first woman in space. I often referred to Jason's adoption as going to get "Yuri" so it is appropriate we do the same for "Valentina".

So for now, sit back and watch Operation Valentina unfold.