2012

The end of the year went by in a flash. We spent Thanksgiving at home and volunteered for the annual Turkey Trot to benefit Ryan’s Boys & Girls Club. Christmas came and went just as fast. I had school and finals right up until the 23rd and then we traveled home to Kenosha to visit with family for the holiday. Ryan was also busy finishing his MBA degree and presenting his Integrated Research Paper. Lucky for him, he’s all done with school!! I’m still plugging away :)

Earlier this month Kyrgyzstan finally accredited one agency and it is now legal for them to do inter-country adoptions. Our original placement agency, Adoption Alliance, informed us in December that they were closing their business and we were on our own. They dumped us right before accreditation. The AA adoptive families are all pretty close, and I was lucky to have them to get through the last couple of months. We now have the opportunity to sign on with CWA, the agency that has been accredited. Unfortunately, this means we have to re-pay agency and international fees (we did NOT get a refund of our fees from Adoption Alliance).

With this good news also comes some really sad, heartbreaking news. In the last few weeks, many families have lost their children to Kyrgyz domestic adoption. All of a sudden there is a big push for domestic adoption and many of the waiting families have been affected by this. While I understand that it is best for children to be in families rather than in an institution, I just think the timing sucks! Why wasn’t there a push two years ago? Three years ago? Why now? It just seems so unfair. After four long years of waiting, we are finally getting the chance to move forward only to get a kick in the gut. After such a long fight for our children, at the last minute the children are ripped from us. It is devastating. We have held these children in our hearts and they have been part of our families for all these years and now that it’s legal, these families won’t be able to bring them home.

At this point, Akyl is still waiting for us to come and get him. It’s so hard to describe the feeling I have though, knowing that any day we could also be getting that devastating phone call. How would we survive? Ryan and I have been practicing the power of positive thinking. We are envisioning him home with us. We continue to talk about him and talk about the funny things he’ll do when he gets here. We talk about him taking soccer on Saturdays at the YMCA. We have play dates planned. We are going to continue to maintain this positive thought energy.

That being said, we have to start all over with our paperwork. We sent in the CWA agency fee and application about two weeks ago. We have spent the last week compiling our dossier (international paperwork) that needs to go to Kyrgyzstan to officially register us. At that point, they can re-instate our referral to Akyl and it will be legal. We don’t know exactly what the process will look like, but we should be able to travel really soon. It’s going to take a minimum of two trips to get him home (or one long trip, possible 45 days). I don’t know how if I will be able to go there for the first trip and leave, especially after everything that has happened in the last month. Problem is, I don’t know if I have a choice. Starting over also means repaying all those fees again. We may not have the financial security to be able to pull off one long trip. Everything is so uncertain and that’s a really scary feeling. It’s hard not to be in control. Right now we’re doing what we can and praying everything will work out.

Please continue to keep Akyl and the other waiting children in your prayers. Help us with the positive energy and visions of him being home with us, playing with his cousins and chihuahuas. Post your visions, we’d love to read them. Hopefully we will have more news to share soon!