Hi all who’s reading this.

It’s morning here and I’ve already taken my son Peng to the nursery where he spends half of the day so I have some time to continue writing.

As soon as we determined that we’re going to pursue international adoption, the very next step was choosing a country for adoption.  The very first country we decided to inquire was Colombia. As I’ve told before, my wife is of Colombian origin, so it was quite logical to go back to her roots and to adopt a Colombian child. It took me a few days to surf on the web and to learn details of Colombian adoption process. I’ve found out that currently Colombia has a moratorium on healthy children under 7 and the wait periods are quite long. I’ve registered on a few forums and got acquainted with people who are already in the process. Some of them are waiting for a match for more than 5 years! This information really upset me. No-no, I wanted it to be A BIT quicker. So, Colombia was no longer on our list.

The next thing that was running through our head was adopting a European child. Taking the political situation into account, it was quite logical to pursue adoption from Eastern Europe. It was a surprise for me to find out that Russia has recently closed all adoption programs for American citizens. What a wise decision of Russian government! (sarcastically, of course). As far as I know, a great part of Russian orphans during last 20 years was adopted mainly my Americans. Do you imagine how many children got a chance for better future, having family and are well-cared for? These are thousands of children. Now kids in Russian orphanages don’t have such a chance any more. I’m not sure if Europeans adopt Russian kids as willingly as Americans did. This issue really upset me and I decided to make a more profound research of it. Yes, there was a very very sad case of Dima Yakovlev who was adopted by an American family. His adopted father left this boy in a car on a very hot day for 9 hours. He thought that the boy was at the nursery.  He just forgot about him! Of course, this poor little boy had no chance for survival being left closed in a vehicle on a burning sun. This story is really hair-raising. I’m convinced that this father should have been imprisoned for such a bad care of his adopted child. He wasn’t.

This story was aggressively discussed in Russian society and finally the government decided to prohibit American citizens adopt Russian children. Russians widely supported the decision having forgotten the fact that the majority of adopted children from Russia are placed happily in American families and live happily. Moreover, most Americans were open to adopt children with severe health conditions or special needs who haven’t been lucky to find parents among Russians.

This situation took me a while to figure out. Who’s right, who’s wrong? Why should prospective parents pursuing adopting a Russian child be stopped by the government because of a crazy guy who did a TERRIFIC thing and has no excuse? Even this very guy whose name is Miles Harrison publicly asked Russian government not to judge ALL Americans through the prism of his story.   

Moreover, my further exploring of Russian adoption process lead me to a conclusion that Russia nowadays has a very complicated process for international adoption for all foreigners no matter Americans or not. Currently, Russia allows international adopting only by France, Italy and Spain citizens. What a variety!

It’s very sad when authorities decide for those children that it’s better for them to spend the rest of their life in orphanages or boarding schools rather than being taken to a foreign family where kids are welcomed and will be cared for. It puzzles me.

Such limitations make those prospective adopters who were pursuing Russian adoption to regard other post-soviet countries that doesn’t have bans for international adoption. The next possible option was Belorussia and Ukraine. These two countries are neighboring Russia, have very similar culture, religion and language, and children there are also Caucasian. Of course, I’ve made an inquiry as to international adoption in these countries as well. Belorussia currently has a ban on international adoption for foreigners but for Italian citizens. Ukraine also has certain limitations on international adoption but hopefully not as strict as in neighboring Russia and Belorussia. These limitations mainly refer to healthy kids under 5 – these kids would rather be placed in Ukrainian families. From the other hand, adopting a child of any age with health condition or a child 5+ is no problem in Ukraine. The process of adopting such children will be simplified and much quicker. The same refers to adopting siblings. If you’re open to adopting a “conga-line” of siblings, you’ll be welcomed in Ukraine. By the way, if one kid of a sibling group is at least  5, others may be younger and more importantly – healthy.

You know, it seems to me that child’s health is probably the most discussed topic considering international adoption these days. And it is quite understandable. Unfortunately, not all the people are ready to place a child with special needs, HIV positive, or with Down syndrome. Most families want to adopt a child with whom they will be ready to lead an ordinary way of life with no considerable limitations. Herewith, correctable health conditions are usually no problem. Yes, for some countries this is a real problem, because all healthy children are placed domestically. Since we were also searching a child with severe health condition, we made a great research in order to find those countries who allow adopting healthy and young children.

As you already know, our choice of a destination country was China. Firstly because I have Chinese roots. My grandmother and her family came from China to the USA many years ago. And even though the connection was almost totally lost because no relatives were left there in China, I regarded adoption of a Chinese child as a great chance to reunite with this culture. Legislature is also quite reasonable in China. Especially if you want to adopt a boy – welcome! There are much more boys than girls available for adoption so it’s quite possible to be matched with a baby boy as young as 3 months old. The strictest Chinese regulation regarding prospective adopters is total family asset. In other words, you need to earn well to be found eligible to adopt from China.  China has minimum income requirements of $10,000 per family member currently in the home (including the child to be adopted), and a minimum $80,000 net worth (total assets). So, if you put up with that, welcome to China.

Hopefully, after collecting all the documents and completing home study, we were found legible to adopt. It was a MESS of papers and forms to fill in. Fortunately enough, we dealt with a highly professional agency that guided our adoption process and made it much easier and clear for us. It took 18 months from the time of dossier application to bringing our son home. This time was a combination of hope and fear, and waiting, waiting, waiting. When you’re waiting for the call, it seems that minutes are stretched to ours, days to months. You count every moment. And when finally we received the call telling that there’s a match for us and we may come to meet our son, this was something so special, so delicate, so thrilling, that I even have no words to describe it. It has much in common with that feeling I experienced 23 years ago when I got to know that I’ve become daddy. After that very moment, time began to fly much quicker and all that paper work paled into insignificance. So many thoughts were running through my head. And my wife – she was overwhelmed with emotions. Our flight to Beijing was quite long and tiring and we both were figuring out how this first meeting will pass. This was a cutting edge of emotions. When we met Peng, my heart squeezed. He had that terrifying rough haircut and was dressed in closes and shoes that seemed to be two sizes smaller than needed. But his eyes sparkled when he saw us. He was a little bit embraced and didn’t know what to do or to say. In any case, he was very sincere. He just told that he wants home. A wish of a child is above all. We did it. We took him home. He now has everything he wants.

When we came back home, we faced first problems, which were not actually problems but inevitable part of such a dramatic change in our lives that now were united into one. We devoted as much time as possible to him. We tried to explain everything in a very simple way for him to understand how he is living now. He changed a lot. He started to smile. He loves hugs. Sometimes he can’t get of my neck like a little baby monkey is riding on his dad. And this is so sweet of him.