Ratified!

On Tuesday the United States and Russian governments ratified the long awaited bilateral agreement regarding Russian adoptions from Americans.  This agreement was put to the government because of few adoptions gone horribly wrong.  According to an article I read from the Washington Post, the Russian government has stated that 19 Russian adopted children have suffered abuse or death at their hands of their American adoptive parents.  When that crazy woman in 2010 sent her adopted son back to Russia alone, there was outrage within Russia at the adoptions that take place between the two countries.  This agreement, now in place, requires all adoptions to go through a certified Russian agency and requires that agency to monitor the child's upbringing in the US.  This doesn't affect us at all because we were already in compliance with those laws.  It also requires the Russians to provide more medical and social history to prospective adoptive parents.  I am not sure how much this will change as much is unknown about these children's backgrounds.  But what we do think this will mean for us is that things should speed up again.  We have now been waiting 6 months for our referral and we began this process 1 year ago.  We continue to wait...hopefully we will receive news soon of more referrals being handed out as a result of this agreement.

In June we went to the picnic for our adoption agency.  It was encouraging to meet the families who have adopted and see their children.  By and large, the Russian kids were as I expected.  Most were seemingly normal with reported issues from their parents such as attachment problems, sleeping problems, and difficulty controlling emotions.  A few kids I saw had noticeable fetal alcohol syndrome (and by a few I mean 2 out of probably close to 75 to 100.)  But, other than that and one child with an impressive hearing aid, no other health issues were obvious.  I think what was so encouraging about all this was seeing that my expectations for our daughter are reasonable.  Of interesting note, probably 60-70% of the adopted Russian kids were boys, and of those boys, over half were named either Alexander or Andrew.   I think a lot of families adopt older kids so they keep their Russian names. We may keep one of our girl's names as a second middle name but we have a very American name awaiting her.

And now we begin month 7 of waiting...