medical forms

So we switched countries which means, all new paperwork. I took our medical forms to our doctors' offices today. I got to Bill's doc's office, in the same hospital as mine, and they made me fill out a whole "walk in patient form" and the woman was just not nice. So I fill out the dumb form and only then will she look at the forms. I just wanted her to take them to the doctor. So she's looking at them and the instructions and reads the part about everything needing to be signed in blue ink and she cops this attitude "well we don't even have blue ink around here, that's the first problem" so I told her I would buy some blue pens and bring them to the office if that is what is necessary to get the form signed and bring my kid home. Luckily, someone else is the one that actually took the form and has to deal with getting the doctor to fill it out. My doc's office was luckily much much nicer.

I am hoping to get all the forms done next week. Our homestudy is complete, our placement agency is just looking it over. Once it is approved I have to get an official copy from the homestudy agency and send it off to immigration so we can get permission to adopt a child and bring them into the US. Then we just wait for that approval and wait for our homestudy agency to finish some more paperwork. At that point, we pay alot of money and all the paperwork goes to Kyrgyzstan and then we travel after that. I think that is how it goes anyway...

Update

We are still proceeding with our new agency KTA. Our homestudy agency should be done making the changes soon and sending the draft of the report over to KTA. I spoke to another adoptive mom who lives in NH and she was wonderful. She adopted her son from the same orphanage we are hoping to adopt from. I might actually meet her today since she only lives 4 miles from my job. Small world!

Still looking into houses, we found a Plan B house that is just lovely!

On a totally unrelated note, if everyone could keep the soldiers and airmen in your prayers that would be great. We lost one soldier last month and we had more injured recently. They are taking mortar hits very regularly.

Elizabeth

New Agency

We sent off our application to our new agency yesterday, Kids To Adopt. They are GREAT! I have been speaking alot to Kate and she is just wonderful so far. Our homestudy is being changed to reflect Kyrgyzstan and a draft is going to be mailed for Kate to review. Once that happens we can file it with immigration and they will hopefully quickly approve us to adopt.

On another note, we are still trying to buy the house from January. We are praying that we close this week so we can move this month and be settled before a kid gets here.

Elizabeth

Kyrgyzstan

Kyrgyzstan, officially the Kyrgyz Republic, is a country in Central Asia. Landlocked and mountainous, it is bordered by Kazakhstan to the north, Uzbekistan to the west, Tajikistan to the southwest and China to the east. The capital is Bishkek. Russian is one of the official languages along with the Kyrgyz language. The country is slightly smaller than South Dakota.

Tons of info can be found here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyrgyzstan

and here https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/kg.html

Big Changes

So everyone tells you that the adoption road is long and windy with many roadblocks and detours along the way. Bill and I have already figured that out!

Early on I had some concerns about our placement agency but I basically ignored them and moved forward anyway. Now I know we shouldn't have. They aren't bad people or anything, just don't do the handholding I need. Not to mention, the whole reason we went with them was because of their Liberia program. Well the Liberian adoption program is frankly a mess right now. I was hearing things back in January about all the issues agencies were having. When I brought my concerns up to our agency they basically said not to listen to everything I hear/read.

2 weeks ago our director was stopped from escorting children home and the agency has had some major issues with staff stealing from them and not doing what needs to be done. There are rumors, that I feel confident believing, that Liberia will put adoptions on hold for awhile while they sort out how they want to do business. Once the new rules are established I wouldn't be suprised to see an in-country stay as a requirement. Since we hadn't sunk any money into the Liberian program yet, we decided to check out other options.

After careful consideration we have decided to adopt through Kyrgyzstan and we are specifically looking for a waiting child. She will have minor-moderate special needs, we probably won't have specifics until she is here. We will get medical reports and can have them reviewed by a US doctor, at the International Adoption Clinic. We will have to redo some paperwork and may have to obtain more but it shouldn't be too bad. We will have to travel twice and we could have a kid here by the end of summer. Totally not what we were planning on but things change!

We have pictures of a few girls who are available but we won't get a definite referral until we travel.

We will keep you all posted!
Elizabeth