No Early Christmas

Although we still have so much to be thankful for, there is no longer any chance that we will be spending the holidays in Kazakhstan with our new little love. We've just been notified that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) is now taking a minimum of at least four months to process dossiers and sometimes as much as six to eight months. This is up from an average of four to six weeks, when our dossier arrived in Kaz. Oh, the wild world of international adoption! The upside is that our dossier has been in Kazakhstan for almost three months already, so we have at least one more month (probably closer to two or three months) to wait before we hear any word on when we might travel. So I'm putting my gorgeous new stroller safely in the garage, because it looks like I won't be using it for a while and I'm off to tell Calvin, who only wants to talk about being a "big brother" to "baby Garrett," that we'll have to wait a while more. I know that we'll bring our baby home when the time is right, but this does feel like a punch in the gut. Love to you all. Paka. Becca

Thank You!

I just wanted to say a quick but very heartfelt "thank you" to all our wonderful family and friends for the beautiful baby shower this evening. It was great seeing everyone and really getting a chance to celebrate our new little love. I want to send an extra special bit of love to my wonderful sister (excited aunty) Caroline for giving the party. Everything was so beautiful, and put together with such care. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for all you hard work, Car. I appreicate all of the love you put into tonight.
And I can't say thank you enough to each of you for the amazing big brother quilt you made for Calvin! It is so beautiful and obviously crafted with such love. Calvin is sleeping snuggled up tight in it right now. He was so excited when I gave it to him. We must have looked over and explained each of the squares three times before he let me put him to bed. He was really interested in knowing who made which square. I think it is safe to say that he loves every bit of it.
Finally, thank you for Calvin and Garrett's sweeeeeet new ride. What a stroller! Wow! I am still reeling! Honestly, that thing is so cool, I may just have to stroll it around the house until Garrett arrives. I won't be able to wait!
I think I officially have all of the baby accessories... now I just need the baby!
Come on, honey, call you mother!

Still Waiting...From Tim

Becca and I are still waiting...could be any day now! We are finishing up several other misc. items including 1. Selling our catering company (closes escrow Nov 17th!) 2. Celebrating Halloween (only 3 days to go.....) and going to Disneyland with Calvin (the day after Halloween!). So....we have our hands full but still check utube every day for new adoption videos, research new Kazakhstani info and continue to hope that our baby comes soon....Lots of love to you all, especially anyone checking in on this blog daily (Caroline :) and we hope to have good news on all fronts soon! Cheers! - Tim

Waiting? What Waiting?

I can't believe I'm writing this post in early September, but here goes... OUR DOSSIER IS IN KAZAKHSTAN!!! Whoa! I honestly can't believe it. Our agency has been telling us for months that things are slowing down, that Kazakhstan is tightening the reins, that we should expect to wait. But no! The wonderful people at the NY Consulate must have known how terrible we are at waiting because our dossier moved through at lightning speed, a full 2 months faster than we expected!
So here is how it will go down from here - Our dossier is in Kazakhstan at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It'll stay there for 6-8 weeks and then move on to the Ministry of Education. I'm expecting about the same wait there. And, if I understand things correctly (and I'm not sure I do), some time along the way we will get our region assignment. After that, we wait for a Letter of Invitation to travel. Then we go! That's right, within the next couple of months, we will know, with a little more precision, where in the world our child is and then we'll go get him! Can you believe it?!!! O.K. I'll stop using exclaimation points... after this last little victory dance!!!! Yea!!!
Hang on baby, we're coming!
Love to you all,
Becca
P.S. - Oh, and here is another wonderful thing about getting our dossier to Kazakhstan - this means that no other changes in the law can effect us. From here on our there will be no new rules!

Fun with Homestudies!

It's official. I tempted the gods in my last post by claiming that "all I could do now was wait." Apparently that's not so! As of yesterday the Kazakhstani embassy has thrown us yet another curve ball. They've decided that they will only accept dossiers with homestudies conducted by Hague Accredited agencies. Don't worry, you don't have to know what that means. All you have to know is that the agency that conducted our homestudy back in February, doesn't have the little piece of paper that the Kazakhstani government wants to see and unless I find a way to get it, come September 15th, the consulate will reject our dossier!!!
Panic!!!
So now I find myself in that all to familiar position of scrambling like mad to cover all the bases as quickly as possible. I can't get ahold of my coordinator at WPA, who is probably swamped with anxious calls. Also, the contact at my homestudy agency is taking a well earned vacation this week. However, being short on official information/instructions has never stopped me before. In the world of international adoption, it doesn't pay to sit around on your keister! SO...I've called about sixteen new homestudy agencies this morning and left rambling messages for more people than I can count...and... I think I've figured it out.
Relief.
So let's all give a big cheer for Hague Accredited Partners for Adoption!!! They have agreed to update our homestudy with their seal of approval.
Fingers crossed, I'll be able to put a bookend on this one before the month is through.
Wish us luck, again.
Paka.
Becca

New York, New York...And Invisible Pregnancy Angst

Sing with me now-
"If I can make it there, I'll make it anywhere. It's up to you... New York, New York!"

Yup, we are out of translation and our precious bundle of paperwork has safely landed on the desk of a hard working official at the Kazakhstani Consulate in the big apple.

And now... we wait.

And wait.

And Wait.

AND WAIT.

Until we can't stand any more waiting and find ourselves loving stroking the baby pajamas at Target and spending the evenings checking and rechecking the e-mail to see if maybe by some happy accident our dossier got sent out 3 months early. O.K. It won't happen, I know that. But, I'm definitely starting to get edgy. Here the rub. I miss my baby and I don't even know if he's been born yet. Isn't that weird? Not knowing if your child has been born? It is. It is so weird. And I'm finding that I want to talk about him, like he already exists, like he's already mine and that we just have to meet to make it final, which is true, in a way, but it's the immediacy of the connection that gets me. In a way, it is so much like being pregnant, because I think about him all the time, just like I did when I was pregnant with Cal. But being pregnant was easier in that respect because I had a physical connection to match the emotional one. This time I don't have the luxury of rubbing a gigantic belly to tell my little one that I love him. I just have to wait and know that I'm doing everything possible to get to him as soon as I can. I have to remind myself that from the moment he's mine, I'll love him every second for the rest of his life.. and I have to try to believe that's enough.

The other frustrating aspect of this invisible pregnancy of mine, is that even though I want to shout it from the rooftops, no one knows I'm having a baby. I hate that. I want everyone to know, to coo, to fawn, to ask questions about this amazing little person I haven't yet met... but they don't. In all fairness, I can't possibly expect the cashier at Safeway to celebrate my growing family, but can't help but feel a touch of sadness and maybe even bitterness that people closer to my life than that can't seem to remember that we've got a baby on the way. Don't worry, I'm not talking about any of you. Those oblivious, but possible well-meaning people would never think to check this blog... Maybe I should start wearing one of those fake "pregnancy bellies." My love to all of you. Paka.

Translation Please!

No, Tim and I haven't mastered the Russian language... but... drum roll please... we did FINISH OUR DOSSIER! That's right, folks, we are officially "in translation." It feels like a real milestone in our adoption journey and, boy, did it take a lot of effort to get here. Today was a gueling day of paperwork, paperwork, and more paperwork. First, we corrected the one glitch in our notarized document... a fact for which we owe Marty a big honorable mention! (Thanks, Marty, you're the best.) Then we headed off to state capital to have everything apostilled by the secretary of state. We sorted and stapled. We gathered all my carefully organized paperwork into several very confusing piles. We re-sorted them and handed them over. And we held our breath. Tim and Calvin hit the train musuem while I waited (yes, I'll admit, I couldn't bear to leave my precious dossier), then forty-five minutes and one large check later, we had pretty gold stickers on all of our paperwork. Calvin found this part very interested and I was momentarily terrified that he would affix tigger stickers to all our documents. When we got home I headed over to Kinkos and burnt through over 500 copies to make our five complete dossier sets. Then I sent them off to the great unknown to be translated into Russian and sent to Kazakhstan.
We were told that we would be approximately 2 months in translation. Translation time depends on what kind of child you are requesting and since we want a child under one year old, we are in for the longer end of the translation spectrum.
The crazy thing for me is that, from here on out, we have done everything we can to bring our little one home. We have rushed around, bothering the people we love for recommendations and last minute babysitting gigs. We have notarized, apostilled, photocopied, and faxed, and fed-ex'd. But that's all come to an end. Until the moment we accept our invitation to travel, we are done and all we can do is wait.
Wish us luck. We are terrible at waiting.
Love to you all.