That's a really good question, without any kid of definitive answer. There are lots of theories and contributing factors, but it is all speculation.
The referral of children from China is now at a crawl.
1/ It is possible that fewer babies are being abandoned because there is an emerging middle class who can now afford to pay the fines to have 2 children.
2/ Domestic adoption is now allowed and encouraged (although since 2001), even to families who already have a biological child.
3/ Many familes are blaming the Olympics, saying that China does not want to be known as the country that exports its children. In 1980, as Korea was hosting the Olympics, Bryant Gumble did an expose' on Korea's main export, their children. Korea was thought to 'lose face' over this and shut down their international program shortly afterwards. They eventually re-opened it as well. Many feel that China is trying to avoid the same kind of negative press, or 'losing face.' Others feel China does not need adoptive families over there now because they have all of the pre-Olympic work to fill their hotel rooms. I'm not so sure we will see a speed up after the Olympics.
4/ There was also such an increase in dossiers sent over there from
2005 to 2007 that China couldn't handle the numbers. Their International Adoption program was the 'world model' for its efficiency and healthy babies. Instead of putting in quotas on how many dossiers to accept, they put in new rules drastically restricting what kind of parents they would accept. We filed before the new rules went into effect, and would have met the new requirements anyway, but that is neither here nor there. The drop in dossiers sent happened after we sent ours so that won't help us with the wait.
5/ The Hague: This is an international agreement designed to protect orphan children. However, many people are not happy with the way this agreement reads, as it lists International Adoption only slightly more favorable than spending an entire life in an orphanage. With an estimated 143
million orphans worldwide this policy is absolutely criminal. With the Hague comes a tremendous increase in paperwork, an increase that many orphanage directors in rural China do not have time to complete. So, there are less 'paper ready' babies available.
6/ Special Needs Children vs. Non Special Needs: China may have an unpublished quota of total babies referred each year, with a dramatic increase in special needs and a decline in non special needs children. People can move from one line to the other. So, theoretically, I can have people in line behind me, switch to special needs and get a baby years before I will.
So, where does that leave us? We have exactly 14 months of people ahead of us. Our paperwork went to China in February 07, and it took them a month to 'log us in.' That is when the clock started ticking for us, 3/19/07. When we started the paperwork, China typically referred a month of people waiting during each month, so that the line moved along steadily. At the time in July 06, when we started, they were beginning to see a slowdown, but nobody really thought anything about it. Wait times were increasing from 6 to 9 months. Now, each month the wait increases. Right now, people from January 06 are waiting between 26 to 30 or 31 months. China went from processing an average of 30 days of people a month to 6 days, and decreasing, with some months only giving out referrals for 2 days. It's like getting on a huge line and having 2/3 or 3/4 of the cashiers close their registers.
So, since our paperwork was logged in, people from October 05 through January 25, 2006 got their referrals. We are coming up on sixteen months of waiting and the line hasn't even moved a full 4 months. So, we keep waiting. There really isn't anything else. Either we wait or we don't.
Monday, July 7, 2008
Thursday, May 8, 2008
Some Numbers
The numbers below are from a post on "Rumor Queen." This is a site for current and future adoptive parents of children from China. After lurking on the site for about 9 months, and doing my own almost daily research, I have found the information posted there to be amazingly accurate and reliable. The following explains the drop in children placed and the shift from Non-Special Needs to Special Needs. It doesn't explain the "why" behind the drop. I'll post my opinion on that soon.
First, let’s look at what we know:
State Department numbers:
2005 7,906 (per month, 658)
2006 6,493 (per month, 541)
2007 5,453 (per month, 454)
CCAA Numbers:
2006 (Jan - Aug) 6,690 (per month, 836 : per year, appx 10,035)
2007 8,600 (per month, 716)
I’m going to use the “per month” numbers for comparison since we don’t have the total numbers for 2006. That per month total is likely off a little bit without the final four months, but it’s the best we have.
Let’s look at percentage of US numbers to worldwide numbers:
2006: 541 / 836 = 64.7%
2007: 454 / 716 = 63.4%
If we then use those numbers to extrapolate what the CCAA total numbers must have been for 2005, then 7,906 / .64 = 12,353 adoptions total in 2005, or 1,029 per month. To look at the special needs side of things, we know 100 of those per month were a special needs adoption. Less than 10% of the total.
From this, we can come to the following conclusions:
Total CCAA Numbers (shown per month : per year)
2005 1029 : 12,353
2006 836 : 10,035
2007 716 : 8,600
Special Needs CCAA Numbers (shown per month : per year)
2005 100 : 1,200
2006 174 : 2,088
2007 200 : 2,400
Non-Special Needs CCAA Numbers (shown per month : per year)
2005 929 : 11,153
2006 662 : 7,944
2007 516 : 6,200
How accurate are these numbers?
The 2005 CCAA numbers are extrapolations, though they jive close enough with what we’ve heard in the rumor mill for a long time (around 13,000 total worldwide adoptions in 2005). The special needs figure of 1200 total in 2005 is a hard (rounded) number that I’m sure of, it should have been in yesterdays numbers but was omitted.
The 2006 CCAA yearly numbers are projections based on the first 8 months of the year. Without data for the final four months we are likely not exactly right for the year, but should be in the right ballpark.
The 2007 CCAA numbers are not “to the exact number” correct, but are round figures designed to give us a rough idea of the actual numbers. Which means that each yearly number is “give or take 50″, since they rounded to the nearest hundred. And that means that each monthly number is “give or take 4″ since 50/12 is 4.16.
In other words, I believe that all of the numbers should be very close to the actual numbers.
First, let’s look at what we know:
State Department numbers:
2005 7,906 (per month, 658)
2006 6,493 (per month, 541)
2007 5,453 (per month, 454)
CCAA Numbers:
2006 (Jan - Aug) 6,690 (per month, 836 : per year, appx 10,035)
2007 8,600 (per month, 716)
I’m going to use the “per month” numbers for comparison since we don’t have the total numbers for 2006. That per month total is likely off a little bit without the final four months, but it’s the best we have.
Let’s look at percentage of US numbers to worldwide numbers:
2006: 541 / 836 = 64.7%
2007: 454 / 716 = 63.4%
If we then use those numbers to extrapolate what the CCAA total numbers must have been for 2005, then 7,906 / .64 = 12,353 adoptions total in 2005, or 1,029 per month. To look at the special needs side of things, we know 100 of those per month were a special needs adoption. Less than 10% of the total.
From this, we can come to the following conclusions:
Total CCAA Numbers (shown per month : per year)
2005 1029 : 12,353
2006 836 : 10,035
2007 716 : 8,600
Special Needs CCAA Numbers (shown per month : per year)
2005 100 : 1,200
2006 174 : 2,088
2007 200 : 2,400
Non-Special Needs CCAA Numbers (shown per month : per year)
2005 929 : 11,153
2006 662 : 7,944
2007 516 : 6,200
How accurate are these numbers?
The 2005 CCAA numbers are extrapolations, though they jive close enough with what we’ve heard in the rumor mill for a long time (around 13,000 total worldwide adoptions in 2005). The special needs figure of 1200 total in 2005 is a hard (rounded) number that I’m sure of, it should have been in yesterdays numbers but was omitted.
The 2006 CCAA yearly numbers are projections based on the first 8 months of the year. Without data for the final four months we are likely not exactly right for the year, but should be in the right ballpark.
The 2007 CCAA numbers are not “to the exact number” correct, but are round figures designed to give us a rough idea of the actual numbers. Which means that each yearly number is “give or take 50″, since they rounded to the nearest hundred. And that means that each monthly number is “give or take 4″ since 50/12 is 4.16.
In other words, I believe that all of the numbers should be very close to the actual numbers.
Adoption Rules Tighten Abroad : The Washington Independent
By Mary Kane 05/07/2008 802 Views -->
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For the first time since international adoption began growing in popularity two decades ago, so many countries have either shut their doors to adoption, tightened their rules or increased domestic adoption that it's now far harder to adopt overseas. This is changing the course of a "revolution" in which Americans flocked abroad to bring home orphans in record numbers and create a new and different community of adoptive families.
"Everything's not closing down, but there's no question there's a constriction happening," said Adam Pertman, author of "Adoption Nation: How The Adoption Revolution Is Transforming America" and executive director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, a research organization. "I haven't seen anything like this in 15 to 20 years."Tom DeFilipo, president of the Joint Council on International Children's Services, which represents international adoption agencies, said that for the first time in his organization's 35-year history, there are more U.S. families willing to adopt children than there are children legally available for adoption. "This is a transformational period for international adoption," DeFilipo said, "there's no question about it."Vietnam is the most recent country to pull back on adoptions, announcing last week that it will close it doors to U.S. adopters once an agreement with Washington expires on Sept. 1. Vietnam shut down temporarily in 2003, after allegations of corruption and baby selling plagued its program, then reopened in 2005 to a rush of new adoptions. Vietnam's announcement came after the U.S. embassy in Hanoi released a report detailing new corruption allegations, and citing a suspiciously high number of children listed as abandoned, which makes it impossible to prove they were truly orphaned or that their parents knowingly agreed to relinquish them.
But the very popularity of international adoption also drew greater scrutiny to its practices and abuses, as wealthy Americans and foreigners descended on impoverished countries with available children, paying fees that could reach $30,000 or more -- money that sometimes wound up in the pockets of corrupt local officials and adoption facilitators rather than orphanages in need.The Vietnamese government strongly denied the accusations, saying it will shut down rather than deal with what it described as disrespectful U.S. officials. The two countries remain at an impasse. Guatemala, also a popular county for U.S. adoptions, said on Tuesday that it would suspend the adoptions of 2,300 children by U.S. citizens for at least a month to investigate whether they were handled legitimately. On April 1, the State Department announced a total halt to new adoptions in Guatemala, as its government works to address longstanding problems with corruption and charges that women were enticed to put their children up for adoption for money. Other countries are changing their policies for different reasons. China may deny travel permission for adoptions during the Olympics this summer because of traffic congestion, and waiting times to adopt children has increased from nine months to more than two years. In recent years China has moved to limit the type of families who can adopt, excluding from its program single parents and people who are obese or take anti-depressants. Russia is working to encourage domestic adoption, and last year, for the first time since it opened its doors to foreign adoptions, more Russian children were adopted domestically than internationally, DeFilipo said. Korea -- the trailblazer of international adoption after poverty engulfed the country in the aftermath of the Korean War -- also has fewer children available for adoption as it has grown more prosperous and has encouraged Korean families to adopt. As a result of all the cultural changes, restrictions and shutdowns, international adoption began to decline beginning in 2005, and its numbers are expected to keep falling, Pertman said. Adoptions had grown from 7,000 annually in 1990 to a peak of almost 23,000 in 2004, with Americans accounting for about half of all adoptions worldwide. The total fell to 19,411 in 2007. Last year, despite declining adoptions, China still ranked as the top country for adoptions, followed by Guatemala and Russia. The influx of adoptees comprised the "revolution" that Pertman spoke of: playgroups for children from Asia, families with a mix of biological children and babies from overseas, culture camps to connect children with the heritage of their countries and the greater acceptance and high visibility of adoptive families. Celebrity adoptions only fueled the popularity, with New York magazine declaring blended families with children adopted internationally hip and trendy, thereby offending many adopters. But the very popularity of international adoption also drew greater scrutiny to its practices and abuses, as wealthy Americans and foreigners descended on impoverished countries with available children, paying fees that could reach $30,000 or more -- money that sometimes wound up in the pockets of corrupt local officials and adoption facilitators rather than orphanages in need.
Adoptions ended in Cambodia after numerous scandals, some involving birth mothers placing their children temporarily in orphanages so they could be fed and cared for, then returning to find them "adopted" by foreigners. The Irish Independent in 2006 caught on tape a Vietnamese-American facilitator talking about how she forged birth certificates, paid off local officials and passed off children with parents as abandoned in order to put them up for adoption. She grossed $1 million for handling 150 adoptions. To Pertman, international adoption is now at a turning point. The next phase of the adoption revolution, he believes, will be smaller countries with fewer children opening up to adoptions, like Ethiopia, while larger countries begin cutting back. He predicts fewer international adoptions, and more adoptions domestically of children in foster care. he scrutiny, Pertman explains, is a natural part of the growth of international adoption and the process of moving to its next phase.
"We want to get adoption to the point where it's as ethical, as thoughtful, as humane and as efficient as we can make it," he said. "We want to make sure that adoptions are done right, and done for the right reasons, because kids need homes. We want to see that adoption is done not because demand drives the process, but because the need drives the process."
The changing nature of international adoption can be for the good, as agencies open programs in countries where they haven't been before, DeFilipo said. Ethiopia has grown in popularity as an adoption source, and other countries in Africa, Latin America and parts of Asia are considering programs.But the world still has 143 million orphans, and the fact that so few are available for adoption "is a tragedy for the kids," he said.
That reality is likely to prompt more international disputes like the one in Vietnam.DeFilipo's group and other adoption advocates are launching a campaign next week to pressure the State Department to settle its dispute with Vietnam and restart adoptions. He pointed out that Washington said last December, prior to the embassy report, that it planned to end the adoption agreement with Vietnam. Then it turned around last week and leaked the report about corruption to the press.He and other advocates contend the State Department is bullying Vietnam and shutting down all adoptions, when it could work instead to end the abuses while allowing legitimate adoptions to continue. Vietnam remains open for adoptions from other countries."What the U.S. is doing is just another example of 'The Ugly American,'" DeFilipo said.He's not the only one pointing the finger at the State Department. Thomas Atwood, president of the National Council for Adoption, an advocacy group, contended that frequent turnover among State Department staffers assigned to adoptions is behind some of the problems.In Vietnam, staff come and go every two to three years, and officials don't understand the psychology and culture of adoptions, he said. A woman might list her child as abandoned on paperwork out of shame, not because the adoption is tainted. "They'll go through the paperwork and find something nefarious there when it's not," Atwood said.
The State Department has said it stands by its findings. Steve Royster, spokesman for consular affairs, said it's just not true that the U.S. government opposes adoption in Vietnam, or that it opposes international adoption in general. The U.S. is working closely with countries to comply with the Hague Convention, an international adoption treaty aimed at reforming adoptions and ending abuses. Royster said the Hague agreement will put all countries "on the same page" when it comes to adoption rules and regulations, making the whole process more uniform and less vulnerable to exploitation. "We're fully committed to international adoption when it's the best way to get families for these kids," he said.
The fight over adoption in Vietnam is likely to be mirrored elsewhere, as more countries work to comply with the Hague agreement and as U.S. adoption agencies begin operating in countries establishing international adoption programs for the first time. As Atwood pointed out, "America is not exactly at the height of its popularity right now," ensuring that longstanding charges of bullying and "American imperialism" when it comes to adoptions in other countries will persist.Even as international adoption moves to a new phase, old controversies will no doubt follow along. And that leaves the fate of the world's orphans as unclear as ever.
-->
For the first time since international adoption began growing in popularity two decades ago, so many countries have either shut their doors to adoption, tightened their rules or increased domestic adoption that it's now far harder to adopt overseas. This is changing the course of a "revolution" in which Americans flocked abroad to bring home orphans in record numbers and create a new and different community of adoptive families.
"Everything's not closing down, but there's no question there's a constriction happening," said Adam Pertman, author of "Adoption Nation: How The Adoption Revolution Is Transforming America" and executive director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, a research organization. "I haven't seen anything like this in 15 to 20 years."Tom DeFilipo, president of the Joint Council on International Children's Services, which represents international adoption agencies, said that for the first time in his organization's 35-year history, there are more U.S. families willing to adopt children than there are children legally available for adoption. "This is a transformational period for international adoption," DeFilipo said, "there's no question about it."Vietnam is the most recent country to pull back on adoptions, announcing last week that it will close it doors to U.S. adopters once an agreement with Washington expires on Sept. 1. Vietnam shut down temporarily in 2003, after allegations of corruption and baby selling plagued its program, then reopened in 2005 to a rush of new adoptions. Vietnam's announcement came after the U.S. embassy in Hanoi released a report detailing new corruption allegations, and citing a suspiciously high number of children listed as abandoned, which makes it impossible to prove they were truly orphaned or that their parents knowingly agreed to relinquish them.
But the very popularity of international adoption also drew greater scrutiny to its practices and abuses, as wealthy Americans and foreigners descended on impoverished countries with available children, paying fees that could reach $30,000 or more -- money that sometimes wound up in the pockets of corrupt local officials and adoption facilitators rather than orphanages in need.The Vietnamese government strongly denied the accusations, saying it will shut down rather than deal with what it described as disrespectful U.S. officials. The two countries remain at an impasse. Guatemala, also a popular county for U.S. adoptions, said on Tuesday that it would suspend the adoptions of 2,300 children by U.S. citizens for at least a month to investigate whether they were handled legitimately. On April 1, the State Department announced a total halt to new adoptions in Guatemala, as its government works to address longstanding problems with corruption and charges that women were enticed to put their children up for adoption for money. Other countries are changing their policies for different reasons. China may deny travel permission for adoptions during the Olympics this summer because of traffic congestion, and waiting times to adopt children has increased from nine months to more than two years. In recent years China has moved to limit the type of families who can adopt, excluding from its program single parents and people who are obese or take anti-depressants. Russia is working to encourage domestic adoption, and last year, for the first time since it opened its doors to foreign adoptions, more Russian children were adopted domestically than internationally, DeFilipo said. Korea -- the trailblazer of international adoption after poverty engulfed the country in the aftermath of the Korean War -- also has fewer children available for adoption as it has grown more prosperous and has encouraged Korean families to adopt. As a result of all the cultural changes, restrictions and shutdowns, international adoption began to decline beginning in 2005, and its numbers are expected to keep falling, Pertman said. Adoptions had grown from 7,000 annually in 1990 to a peak of almost 23,000 in 2004, with Americans accounting for about half of all adoptions worldwide. The total fell to 19,411 in 2007. Last year, despite declining adoptions, China still ranked as the top country for adoptions, followed by Guatemala and Russia. The influx of adoptees comprised the "revolution" that Pertman spoke of: playgroups for children from Asia, families with a mix of biological children and babies from overseas, culture camps to connect children with the heritage of their countries and the greater acceptance and high visibility of adoptive families. Celebrity adoptions only fueled the popularity, with New York magazine declaring blended families with children adopted internationally hip and trendy, thereby offending many adopters. But the very popularity of international adoption also drew greater scrutiny to its practices and abuses, as wealthy Americans and foreigners descended on impoverished countries with available children, paying fees that could reach $30,000 or more -- money that sometimes wound up in the pockets of corrupt local officials and adoption facilitators rather than orphanages in need.
Adoptions ended in Cambodia after numerous scandals, some involving birth mothers placing their children temporarily in orphanages so they could be fed and cared for, then returning to find them "adopted" by foreigners. The Irish Independent in 2006 caught on tape a Vietnamese-American facilitator talking about how she forged birth certificates, paid off local officials and passed off children with parents as abandoned in order to put them up for adoption. She grossed $1 million for handling 150 adoptions. To Pertman, international adoption is now at a turning point. The next phase of the adoption revolution, he believes, will be smaller countries with fewer children opening up to adoptions, like Ethiopia, while larger countries begin cutting back. He predicts fewer international adoptions, and more adoptions domestically of children in foster care. he scrutiny, Pertman explains, is a natural part of the growth of international adoption and the process of moving to its next phase.
"We want to get adoption to the point where it's as ethical, as thoughtful, as humane and as efficient as we can make it," he said. "We want to make sure that adoptions are done right, and done for the right reasons, because kids need homes. We want to see that adoption is done not because demand drives the process, but because the need drives the process."
The changing nature of international adoption can be for the good, as agencies open programs in countries where they haven't been before, DeFilipo said. Ethiopia has grown in popularity as an adoption source, and other countries in Africa, Latin America and parts of Asia are considering programs.But the world still has 143 million orphans, and the fact that so few are available for adoption "is a tragedy for the kids," he said.
That reality is likely to prompt more international disputes like the one in Vietnam.DeFilipo's group and other adoption advocates are launching a campaign next week to pressure the State Department to settle its dispute with Vietnam and restart adoptions. He pointed out that Washington said last December, prior to the embassy report, that it planned to end the adoption agreement with Vietnam. Then it turned around last week and leaked the report about corruption to the press.He and other advocates contend the State Department is bullying Vietnam and shutting down all adoptions, when it could work instead to end the abuses while allowing legitimate adoptions to continue. Vietnam remains open for adoptions from other countries."What the U.S. is doing is just another example of 'The Ugly American,'" DeFilipo said.He's not the only one pointing the finger at the State Department. Thomas Atwood, president of the National Council for Adoption, an advocacy group, contended that frequent turnover among State Department staffers assigned to adoptions is behind some of the problems.In Vietnam, staff come and go every two to three years, and officials don't understand the psychology and culture of adoptions, he said. A woman might list her child as abandoned on paperwork out of shame, not because the adoption is tainted. "They'll go through the paperwork and find something nefarious there when it's not," Atwood said.
The State Department has said it stands by its findings. Steve Royster, spokesman for consular affairs, said it's just not true that the U.S. government opposes adoption in Vietnam, or that it opposes international adoption in general. The U.S. is working closely with countries to comply with the Hague Convention, an international adoption treaty aimed at reforming adoptions and ending abuses. Royster said the Hague agreement will put all countries "on the same page" when it comes to adoption rules and regulations, making the whole process more uniform and less vulnerable to exploitation. "We're fully committed to international adoption when it's the best way to get families for these kids," he said.
The fight over adoption in Vietnam is likely to be mirrored elsewhere, as more countries work to comply with the Hague agreement and as U.S. adoption agencies begin operating in countries establishing international adoption programs for the first time. As Atwood pointed out, "America is not exactly at the height of its popularity right now," ensuring that longstanding charges of bullying and "American imperialism" when it comes to adoptions in other countries will persist.Even as international adoption moves to a new phase, old controversies will no doubt follow along. And that leaves the fate of the world's orphans as unclear as ever.
Friday, April 11, 2008
Adoption Problems in Other Countries
Adoption problems in other countries
By The Associated Press
Article Created: 04/09/2008 11:32:24 AM PDT
NEW YORK—The slowdown affecting adoptions from China coincides with unrelated complications in several other countries that have been major sources of adopted children for American parents. Some examples:
—GUATEMALA: Irregularities and suspected fraud have cast a cloud of uncertainty over many of the 2,900 pending U.S. adoptions from Guatemala, which is the second-largest source of adopted children—after China—for the United States. The State Department on April 1 advised potential adoptive parents not to initiate new adoptions from Guatemala.
—RUSSIA: Laws affecting adoptions by foreigners have become stricter, while Russia has been trying to expand domestic adoption. Last year, 2,310 Russian children were adopted by Americans, down from a peak of 5,865 in 2004.
—VIETNAM: Renewed U.S. concern about possible baby selling, fraud and corruption—the same fears that led to suspension of Vietnamese adoptions from 2003 to 2005—are again holding up visas for some babies adopted in Vietnam. The U.S. embassy has confirmed more than a dozen problematic cases, and Vietnamese adoption officials have said roughly 20 American families are affected.
—KAZAKHSTAN: Officials of Kazakhstan, the eighth-largest supplier of adopted children to the U.S. in 2007, informed the State Department last month that it was reviewing its adoption process and would suspend its normal handling of applications during the review.
By The Associated Press
Article Created: 04/09/2008 11:32:24 AM PDT
NEW YORK—The slowdown affecting adoptions from China coincides with unrelated complications in several other countries that have been major sources of adopted children for American parents. Some examples:
—GUATEMALA: Irregularities and suspected fraud have cast a cloud of uncertainty over many of the 2,900 pending U.S. adoptions from Guatemala, which is the second-largest source of adopted children—after China—for the United States. The State Department on April 1 advised potential adoptive parents not to initiate new adoptions from Guatemala.
—RUSSIA: Laws affecting adoptions by foreigners have become stricter, while Russia has been trying to expand domestic adoption. Last year, 2,310 Russian children were adopted by Americans, down from a peak of 5,865 in 2004.
—VIETNAM: Renewed U.S. concern about possible baby selling, fraud and corruption—the same fears that led to suspension of Vietnamese adoptions from 2003 to 2005—are again holding up visas for some babies adopted in Vietnam. The U.S. embassy has confirmed more than a dozen problematic cases, and Vietnamese adoption officials have said roughly 20 American families are affected.
—KAZAKHSTAN: Officials of Kazakhstan, the eighth-largest supplier of adopted children to the U.S. in 2007, informed the State Department last month that it was reviewing its adoption process and would suspend its normal handling of applications during the review.
Saturday, April 5, 2008
Referral History
This chart depicts the slowdown in referrals. We can't predict the future, but can just see the trend toward an increasing wait. (Click the chart for an enlarged view.)
The first column shows when the families were notified about their child. The second column shows when their paperwork was logged in with the China Center for Adoption Affairs. The next 2 show the wait time, and the last shows how many days worth of families were processed in the batch.
Saturday, March 8, 2008
The Wisdom Page by Alex
Even though you get discouraged, and times get rough waiting for your baby, don't worry because when you see your baby you will be astonished by how much you love the baby. So even if the wait is long, you will feel as happy as you can get as soon as you see your baby!
Friday, March 7, 2008
The Greatest with Alex
In the end we knew it was going to be good, but it is going to be great. Just seeing my young sister will be astonishing. I can picture it. Her face will light up in happiness as soon as she sees my parents and my brother and knows that she's going to have a long, enjoyable life when she gets to know us. I can't wait.
Waiting for Megan
Ryan's Corner:
Even though it has been a very long wait, I am sure it will be worth it in the end. If there is anyone out there considering adoption, I think you should but be prepared to wait.
Even though it has been a very long wait, I am sure it will be worth it in the end. If there is anyone out there considering adoption, I think you should but be prepared to wait.
Wisdom with Alex
Alex's Words of Wisdom:
Even though the wait is long, it is worth it, because you get something so beautiful in the end that makes it all worthwhile. So just remember to think about what is going to make it great in the end.
Even though the wait is long, it is worth it, because you get something so beautiful in the end that makes it all worthwhile. So just remember to think about what is going to make it great in the end.
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