Great News

We received great news today. We got verbal confirmation my fingerprints are to be sent to us later with week. This is one of the big hurdles we are trying to get over.

On a side note, today is my third year anniversary with Dee Dee. I am definitely happier than I have ever been, and my life is finally coming in to focus. I feel so blessed to have married her three years ago. I am now looking forward to the 4th year in that we will begin raising our new baby boy.

Now that our home study is done we can continue work on finishing our dossier. I look forward to updating you all on more information as I get it.

Brad

Small World

A friend of mine told me the other day that a coworker of hers told her she was adopting from Russia. It ends up that her coworker is using our same adoption agency and the same home study agency and had our same social worker come to their home the day after she came to our home. There are many many more similarities in the stories, but I won't go into detail. If we keep on the same track, we all could be traveling to Russia together. My friend plans to introduce us so that we can compare notes since we are going throught the exact same things. Who knows maybe their child and our child will be friends???

We still have not received Brad's fingerprints back, so please pray we get those back soon b/c we are stuck until those come back in.

That is all for now. Have a wonderful weekend!
DD

Final Home Study

Tuesday night we had our last home study visit from our social worker. She asked us a lot of personal questions, like how our childhood was and how we met and our relationship and how we solved problems and all of that fun stuff. She said that we passed w/ flying colors, so now she is going to write up the report. She said she will have that ready for us next week which is great considering she has a month to write it.

I went ahead and sent in the I600A today and once the government processes that they will schedule us to be fingerprinted by the FBI. Once all that comes back then we can send the mounds of paperwork to Russia and then they will send us a referral for a child.

The social worker said that if everything goes as planned, then we should be traveling around Dec/Jan. She is going to also handle our post placement visits. (If you adopt from Russia, you have to have 5 post placement visits that last up to 3 years once you return w/ your child. They require this b/c they want to make sure the child is doing ok.) The first visit is 45 days after you return from Russia w/ your child, so she said she will probably see us again around Valentine's Day.

We are excited to get yet another thing checked off our list. We will post again the next time something interesting happens!

DeeDee (This is my first post...I will try to be more on the ball in the future.)

Learning Russian

WOW!!! Tonight Dee Dee and I started our Russian lessons online. I just don't have the words to describe how hard it was. I will tell you that Rosetta Stone is pretty cool. I really think in six months we will be able to speak a enough to get around. The Russian language isvery interesting I will say that.

Well tomorrow night is the last night of the home study I will let everyone know how it goes.

Brad

Home Study Part I

Last night went great. Our social worker came over about 7 o'clock. To date it was probably the most informative meeting that we have had. She not only has three biological children but also has an adopted girl. She was able to give us a lot of information about international adoption and to tell us the differences and similarities between her own children, which we found very interesting.

We found out that the first meeting is more of her giving us information and the second meeting with her is more about her asking us personal questions, like how we are going to discipline. We learned that adopted children can have attachment issues, so it is good to have the child sleep in your room for a while and it is good to give him a bottle, even if he is too old for a bottle, so that the child will get attached to the parents. This is the opposite of what you would do for a biological child.

Another point to our meeting was to make sure we did not live in a card board box. Also, to make sure that we did not leave all of the shotguns, pistols and machine guns out. We don't want our little boy coming home and starting a cold war. Just kidding.

I guess in retrospect there were a lot of things in the meeting I had just never thought about that could be issues in raising an adopted child. I look forward to the challenges and the honor of raising this beautiful child in America. Dee Dee and I both are excited and nervous about the next couple of months but we are definitely looking forward to the plane ride home with our new son.

We have one more meeting with the social worker next week were it will be a little more one on one. We will keep you updated as things go.

Thanks

Bradford

Big Week

Monday night is a huge night for us. We have spent all weekend cleaning the house and getting things in order. The first of two visits from the home study social worker starts tomorrow night. We are looking forward to it with nervous hesitation. We know that all is well and that we are doing everying right but this is just one of the final big steps before we send all of our paperwork off. I will let all of you know how it goes on Tuesday.

Thanks again for your prayers and continued support.

Brad and Dee Dee

Meeting

This weekend was great. We met with a rep from the Adoption Agency. We learned quite a bit. A few local parents brought their adopted children to the meeting. They were so cute. We were able to ask a lot of questions and got a lot of answers we were looking for.


Next week is the home study. Please keep us in your prayers. I hope everyone has a good weekend.

Brad

Slow Week

This week has be rather slow in regards to the adoption. We are still completing yet more paperwork and trying to get things together. When I say we of course I mean Dee Dee. I am just there for signatures, I evidently don't have the greatest handwriting.

We did however finish all of the painting for the house. The baby's room is painted and the hallway upstairs. The new carpet should be in this time next week and then we can move on to ordering the furniture. This weekend I did find out that the company we are using, is having a 1 hour seminar at the Vestavia Library around 1:00 for those that might be interested in adoption. We will be there.

I hope everyone is having a wonderful week and we will talk to you soon.

Brad