A Happy Day....

After several weeks of searching and researching we have determined our next move since we failed in Vietnam. Even though it was hard to walk away, I am so happy with our decision to work with World Assoc for Children and Parents (WACAP). We are planning to adopt a Promise Child. This means he will most likely be a boy 7-8 boy from Ethiopia, but we could also be referred a child from India or Thailand. Now we need to redo our dossier, update our homestudy and change our I-171H. WACAP said this could take 3 months or longer, I am hoping alot less! After a year with Vietnam, we are so ready to have a child now! Once we are done with that step, we will be ready to send our dossier over and expect a referral in 4-10 months....again we hope less! This will be slow updating, but we will be working hard to get everything done ASAP! All is not lost. Hopefully this time will go much smoother, like our first adoption. To follow our new adoption adventure, go to: onemoreson.blogspot.com I will be closing this blog in a month or so. I want to make sure everyone who was following us, still can.

IT'S OVER....

Well, it's official. Vietnam will not consider him special needs. I hope this will change because there are many children who will "age out" of the orphanages to no one and be left to face the world alone. It has been a long and hard journey that should not have ended this way had the province not turned our paperwork away because they feared the US investigations. So many stories I could tell, and maybe someday will in a book. There is wrong doing on both sides that have taken a boy who should have been our son and brother and who should have had the family HE wanted and deserved. Some people think we should take it as a sign that this wasn't meant to be. We will take this as a sign that another child is still waiting to complete our family. He is probably in Ethiopia, but maybe in India or even a waiting child in China. This is a hard leap to make, but it is time and hopefully tomorrow! We will keep our dossier in VN if we can, so if he becomes available and we are still able to, we could still bring him home. Thanks everyone for sharing this journey with us. Stay tuned for part two. Kelly

A change of plans....

As you know we have been waiting several weeks for USCIS in Vietnam to respond to whether or not our son will be considered special needs due to his age. I have contacted the Department of State in DC and they said they cannot say they will consider him special needs because they cannot interpret Vietnam law and that Vietnam needs to make that decision. I have spoken to USCIS in DC and they said that Vietnam has to define what special needs is and this cannot be done on a case by case basis, ie. our son. We were trying to get USCIS to make a decision first, but they said Vietnam has to make the decision first. We are now going to go back to DIA to ask them to make the decision first as a referral to us to be presented to USCIS. He is 12 years old and in most countries, including the US, children 3 and older are considered special needs. In the past Vietnam has not considered age to be special needs. It is my understanding that they are currently working to define what special needs would encompass. So I am calling on all the other people touched by Vietnam adoption for their help in encouraging Vietnam to consider older children special needs through their agencies and connections to Vietnam. If not for our son, but for all the older children who may "age out" of the orphanages during the closure. Even though we have not given up, it is going to be a long and difficult battle. There have been many positive changes thus far and I think we can make more. So as of now, I don't think the US can help us too much. We need Vietnam to act first and then put the pressure on the US to let him come home.

Calling in the big guns?.........

Still no word yet from USCIS in Vietnam. My liason said they told her they were too busy to talk this week and would get back to them next week....grrr...I hope so! I did the only other thing I could think of today and contacted my senators, congressmen, JCICS and Ethica to see if they could help me or offer advise. I am more expecting help from my local government officials; that they get things moving on the US side in Vietnam. They are the only big guns I have left, except for leaving a message with USCIS in D.C.to see if they could help me with USCIS in Vietnam. I will probably contact the Dept of State in D.C. too. If I don't get any results this week, I'll be hitting the phones and email again next week. I may have a career in politics (from a person who hasn't voted in almost 20 years, but I am this year!) before this is over and probably a book too.

17 days feels like 17 weeks....

Once again not too much to tell! Still waiting for a response from INS regarding the classification of the boy we want to adopt. It has only been 17 days, but it seems like 17 weeks. If nothing happens by Monday, it will be time to get back into political gear and try to get some action that way. It would be easier to wait if there was an ends to the means, but right now we are living off of hope and the belief that all the parties will do what is best for this boy and what he and his family wants for him. We have had our hopes raised and dashed repeatedly. Found our son and lost him maybe three times. Sometimes I think it's time to move on to another child where we will succeed and bring them home. But then I wonder what will happen and how I would feel if there came a point where he was offered to us to bring home and could we do it? Should we do it? I don't know if this makes sense. It's kind of like when you're a little kid and you don't want to go to bed because you are afraid you'll miss something. I am afraid to quit, because I don't want to miss out on him or him to miss out on a family of his own. Being in limbo is the worst thing. It feels so hard because we went into this for a waiting child and beat all the odds and timelines and now here we sit.

365 days...

Today is one year since we began our Vietnamese adoption journey. It's been one week since the adoptions there closed and still no word if we can complete our adoption through special needs. Yes, I know it's only been a week, but I am tired of waiting and getting road blocks. Communication is so important! If someone could just say, "yes, we've been trying to contact this person, but haven't heard back..." or something. But instead I just get silence and I can't stand it! I'll give it another week and then we'll need to start seeing results or seriously look at other options. We have investigated Ethipoia specifically and some waiting children in other Asian countries. I am not a quitter, so it will be a hard decision to make, but they might make it for me.

Over for many, beginning for us?

I just wanted to acknowledge all the people who were hoping to get referrals from Vietnam and didn't. Alot of broken hearts, alot of lost money and alot anger at a system that failed them. Now we move onto the next step of special needs. I hope my agency can get some clarification from INS tomorrow, so we can hopefully still adopt this child through special needs. Hope to post alot of good news soon! And best wishes and good look in their adoption endeavors to everyone else!

Never say never again............

OK, so this is how it goes....Everything is going great, everything is falling apart and back and forth. Well, once again there may be an upswing. We were informaed yesterday that we may be able to procede with his adoption after Sept 1st as a special needs adoption due to his age. We will know more late next week since it is a holiday here and in Vietnam (Independence Day there). So keep your fingers crossed because we and he really need this to happen! Hopefully both countries can work together to make this a reality. I have not given up and I won't admit defeat. I have been called tenacious and I will live up to that reputation. It has been a very hard road but when a little hope shines through, I will grab it!

The Fat lady Sings....

Well, I didn't think I would ever say this, but it looks like it's over for us with a healthy boy from Vietnam. Our liason attempted to present our information to the orphanage and was told that they were ordered by the providence to adopt to European orphanages only, not the US. I guess they are really mad at the US because of all the investigations that have resulted in arrests. So even though we or this child had nothing to do with that, we are being shut out. I can't believe it has come down to this. I wish they could see they aren't punishing the US; the US could care less if we brought this boy home. I wish they could see that this boy and his family want him to be adopted. I wish they could see that no European country has expressed interest in him. We may stay in Vietnam and attempt to adopt a special needs child that has mild correctable issues. But we don't know yet. I am looking at other options too, especially Ethiopia and other waiting children. "It ain't over till the fat lady sings"...but I don't want to hear her sing.

Feeling Helpless and Heading Towards Hopeless...

6 business days left and anxious beyond belief! Still being reassured that it will be done and wanting to believe it will. Our paperwork still has to be sent to Quang Nam letting them know we want to adopt from their orphanage. Then they have to send the child's information to DIA to be matched and then they will issue our referral....all in 6 days.:( There is such a heavy feeling upon me, boy do I need relief from this. All I want is our referral and I know everything else will fall in place.

I hate waiting!

I've been reluctant to put up a new post because I keep hoping today will be the big day where we can announce he is ours...but it hasn't come yet. We have been reassured everything will come through in time, but of course we are on edge until we get that official referral from Vietnam. So this will be short, but not yet sweet. 12 days left! Any day now. Waiting....not when of my best attributes.

Finally to Quang Nam....

Just received word from Vietnam that our paperwork for Quang Nam will begin to be prepared today:). Finally moving forward again! The orginal estimate was if our paperwork for Quang Nam was started August 4th we would have our official referral between 8/15-8/19 (about 2 weeks). I do not know if this 1-week delay will affect that a lot or not. If it pushes things back, it would put us at 8/22-8/26. That would be bringing us in right under the wire. We will be thankful to get this to go through, but a little anxious to be working under an even tighter deadline. We are moving closer to making this dream a reality, but still no sigh of relief yet.

Ebb and Flow....

Still waiting for the first orphanage to notify DIA that they have no referral for us so we can be matched with the boy in Quang Nam. It is Friday in Vietnam today, so if it doesn't happen today I will be sooooo disappointed. Another week has ticked away with only 3 weeks left now. My hope is starting to waiver a little as desperation starts to creep back in. This journey has been like the ebb and flow on the ocean shore; excitement rushes in and then it slowly flows back taking a little bit back with it. The water is my excitement and the sand is my heart.

One big step forward, One tiny step back...

Our dossier was set to be taken to Quang Nam to be matched for referral, but DIA forgot that we had already applied to Hoa Binh. So they need to verify with Hoa Binh that they have no referral for us before they can send us to Quang Nam to be matched. I am told that this could take 6 days to complete. We have less than 4 weeks left before the closure, so it was a little disappointing. I still feel we will make it because Vietnam wants him placed as badly as we want another child. I hope to hear from my contact in Vietnam tonight to see how things are going. Of course it was a Friday in Vietnam when this happened. I contacted my old adoption agency and they were going to contact their Vietnam contact to notify DIA that they have no referral for as in Hoa Binh. Oh, so convoluted of a process!

Now we wait again....

We and all other parties involved here in the U.S., scanned in and emailed the necessary documents to the head of DIA in Vietnam yesterday to switch our dossier to our new agency. Now we can finally get going on this adoption! Exciting, but scary after what we have been through. We will hopefully have our official referral in the next 2-3 weeks, which is all we need by the 9/1 deadline. It will be sooooooo hard to wait! I am a get in and do it yourself person, so it can be done faster, so it's hard to sit back and let other people be in charge of our fate. After that the next big hurdle to clear will be approval from Immigration and Naturalization Services to bring him here.

Getting my hopes up...

We got good news yesterday! Finally! Vietnam has agreed to reduce our fees for the older boy we are trying to adopt. They are also acknowledging the $2,000 that already went over with our dossier, so we won't have to repay those fees. We are suppossed to find out what our new fee amount will be later today or tomorrow. So, now that we are feeling much more at ease and the whole situation seeming much more doable,we went ahead and overnighted our contracts to the new agency. The process will now really begin! The first step being switching our file at the Dept of International Adoptions from Gift of Love to ADOPPT. Hopefully will be posting more good news tonight or tomorrow!

Aching for a Solution....

It's been a while since I posted. This journey continues to be a rollercoaster of emotions and tough decisions. Yesterday, I was ready to give up and today I want to push forward. We were trying to switch agencies but have not signed the contract yet because the fees are significantly higher. The agency also never returns my calls or emails and it is so frustrating! And if we want this boy, (which we really do!) we have to work with them. The whole situation is so complex that I struggle to understand it wholly and won't even attempt to explain it here. They are not doing a good job advocating for this boy and are definately not trying to help us as far as I can see. So we don't know what we are doing until we can get a hold of Them. I do know however, that I have this constant feeling of anxiousness in the pit of my stomach and worry in my mind. It won't go away until this is solved and I don't think I am ready to give up....yet

Here we go again....

Well, I was suprised to hear today that the family of the 8 yr old boy did not want him to be adopted. So, it seems the 12 yr old boy really was meant for us and that is where we will go. We have already been in contact with the agency liason and she feels we can get the paperwork done in time. I hope the 3rd time IS the charm, because this has been a difficult journey! We have to pay the remainder we owe to the agency and terminate our contract with them, before transferring to the new agency. Of course it has to be a Friday and they won't have our file switched in Vietnam until they have those two things! Today I shampooed the carpets and began painting the kids' rooms because we have to switch them around so the two boys twin beds will fit. So the pink room is now brown and the green and brown room is now pink. We are going to keep plowing ahead because we are determined to make this happen!

Please Say Yes!!!!!!

We got a message from our agency today that the orphanage is going to speak to the family and the boy to make sure everyone will be OK with him being adopted out. I am a little bit worried, but both parents are deceased and I would think the orphanage would explain to him how much better his life would be if he came to live with us. I hope this won't be a Hai repeat, where once someone wants to adopt, the family comes back and reclaims them. They said they would give the final decision in a day or two. I hope they tell us tomorrow because they are a day ahead of us and then I suppose we would have to wait til Monday! They said as long as everyone agrees on the adoption it should be done by the deadline. I can't relax yet, but hopefully soon! If this falls through, I guess we were meant to choose the 12 yr old :) that we almost did. Wow what a ride this has been! Kelly

Decision time is here...

Today we finally got info on the 8 yr old boy from Hoa Binh (the same orphanage as Hai), his name is Thang. I was almost afraid to look at the picture because we had come to a pretty close decision that we were going to go with the 12 yr old boy. It was a really hard decision, but when I saw his face he looked so scared and sad and no longer has a mom or dad. The only down side is that if this goes through, he will be seperated from his two older sisters. His sisters are too old to be adopted by Vietnamese law. We plan to help them from here as we can with clothes and things and keep in contact if possible. I hope some day we can bring them here, but I've been told that other families have tried to do this but were not successful. We are at peace with our decision, but I still feel sad for the other boy we didn't choose. Now we just have to keep our fingers crossed that everything gets done before the September 1st deadline for referrals. Oh, and I must not forget that today is our 13th wedding anniversary! Couldn't be a better gift!