Loss and a Silver Lining

Just a quick message to update you all on the status of the ongoing adoption trials and tribulations....

As we have shared with many of you over the past couple of months, we received a call in late July informing us of two sisters (15 months and 30 months) ready to adopt. We began preparing for immediate travel when we got a follow-up call two days later informing us that there was a hitch and that we would need to wait for the results of a court proceeding scheduled for August 20.

August 20 came and went with no further word. It wasn't until late last week (three weeks later) that we finally got the good news/bad news that the older of the two could not be adopted until late February (due to a mandatory six-month hold following the birth mother's release of custody), but that we could proceed with the adoption of the younger (resulting in an additional two costly trips to Moscow, another four weeks away from home and work, and major disruption for a little one attempting to understand the concept of "home").

We made the difficult decision to move forward with this despite the challenges and were waiting for further word from the agency as to when we should expect to travel. When the agency called Monday morning, the news was again both good and bad.

As it turns out — nobody quite knows exactly why — the younger girl is now no longer available for adoption either. It may be to keep the sisters together (despite the fact that they currently reside in two different orphanages), it may be politics, it may be the harvest moon in Scorpio — we will probably never know. We have yet to fully grieve this sad situation — it's amazing how attached you can become to the image of an individual without benefit of photos, birthdates, or names.... The only silver lining is that the agency happened to know of another little girl ("between the ages of 1 and 2") who is available for adoption. We are once again waiting for a call from our agency with our travel date (although there is now a sense of dread when the phone rings), but we suspect that it will be before the end of the month.

In terms of process, the first trip would be just two weeks, after which we return home, hopeful that things proceed on track. The second trip — one to three months later (Christmas in Moscow?!) — would be to jump through three weeks of legal hoops before bringing a living, breathing little one home to California.

Please keep us in your thoughts as we wait and hope that the worst of this intense ride is over.

Larry & Renee