Kazakhstan is heading for a major overhaul in their adoption process. We believe the timing of this will hit right about the time we were planning to start our adoption process. What this means for us is that Kazakhstan is not really a very reliable option for our adoption. Changes often mean shutdowns (although temporary) and that means we wouldn't be able to move forward as planned. Not only that but it also means that there may be changes that would slow down the process or even create a total road block. We can't take the chance of starting the process and having it all crash on us.

This means that our adoption plans are changing. We are not totally sure what they are changing to just yet. I've gone back to researching different countries. Right now our top choices are India, Thailand and Russia. Another option we are seriously thinking about is adopting from US foster care. There are still things about foster care adoption that make me a bit nervous, but we are checking into it and giving it some serious consideration.

Whenever we make a decision I will be sure to post.

I have recently discovered the artist, Melissa Carter. Her work is amazingly beautiful and it truly speaks to my heart. She is a watercolor/mixed media artist. Everything from the sale of her art benefits adoption and orphan relief.

I love that she has made the decision to use her talent to help orphans around the world.

I have added photos of some of her paintings to my photo gallery here. I hope to attract attention to her work and hopefully someone will love it as much as I do and purchase some of her work. It truly is beautiful art and will help a great cause.

View her website at http://www.melissacartercreations.com/index.html

In the battle between heart and mind... our hearts have won. Although we know how hard it will be to raise the money for a 2nd adoption and how difficult the process is, we have decided to go for it. We will soon be signing on with an adoption agency and will have officially started the process.

We also made the decision of which agency and more importantly which country. We will be going back to Kazakhstan. This time however, we will be adopting an older child. There are so many people waiting to adopt infants and toddlers. It is not important to us to have such a young child. There are thousands of older children waiting for families who will likely never have what they so desperately want and need. So with that in mind, we have decided to adopt a 5 or 6 yo boy.

We are so excited to get this started and hopefully in the not so distant future bring home our new son.

I Dream of Howie

I had an odd dream a few weeks ago. In the dream my husband had traveled to another country (it was not revealed in the dream which country) to adopt our next son. For some reason I did not go at all. My husband did everything on his own. He traveled, met a child, made the decision to adopt him and completed the adoption.

My dream started with him arriving home with a beautiful older boy and presenting him to me as our new son. I knew nothing about this boy. I had to ask him how old he was. He said that he was 9. I don't understand why he would have been 9 since it is much older than we want to adopt and he did not look 9, he looked more like a 5 or 6 year old. Maybe he said 5 and I just heard it as 9. Is it possible to misunderstand something that is said in your own dream? I then asked him when his birthday was and he said January. It didn't seem odd to me that he was speaking and understanding English for some reason. I asked his name and I can not remember what he said. I only remember that it was a foriegn name I had never heard before and it started with an H. My husband told me that he had been calling him Howie for short. The boy said that he liked being called Howie.

My husband told the boy that I was his new mama. I held out my arms to hug him and he pulled back and clung to my husband. That is how the dream ended.

I am not sure what all of this means... if it means anything. I think I get the thing at the end though. Since my husband made the 2nd trip to Kazakhstan alone to pick up Baby Boy, when they got home Baby Boy wanted his daddy to be the one to take care of him. They had just spent 2 weeks together and he was the person he now trusted to care for him. It took a couple of weeks or more for Baby Boy to really start looking to me to care for him as well. I really feel like I missed a lot by not taking that 2nd trip. It was a bonding experience that he and my husband had that I will never get with him. So, in my dream I think the fact that Howie wanted his daddy and not me was a reflection of my feelings on that.

I am feeling more and more drawn to the idea of adopting an older child. It is the option pulling strongest at our hearts right now. Is little Howie out there waiting for us somwhere?

A little background:
I have two biological children from a previous marriage. A teenage daughter and pre-teen son. My husband and I adopted a baby boy from Kazakhstan in 2007.

Where we want to be:
Our amazing son has brought so much happiness and laughter into our lives that we are now thinking of adopting again. We would love to have another child. Also, we would love for our son to have a sibling close to his own age. My older kids are 9 and 11 years older than him. The two of them are really close to each other and I think their close ages are part of that. We would like for our Baby Boy to get to experience that too. So for many, many reasons we would really like to adopt one more time.

Where we are now:
Right now we are realistically just in dreaming and wishing mode. As much as we would like to adopt again we are not certain if we can really manage another adoption financially. We are taking this time to research many things. We are trying to decide on which country we would like to adopt from. We would adopt from Kazakhstan again but the time required to stay in country is just too much. It was so hard for me to be away from my kids when we were there to adopt our son. On the 3rd week I was nearly in tears every day from missing them so much. I do not want to have to do that again. The other issue with Kaz is that there are so many families flocking to the Kaz program that the wait times are becoming longer and longer. Many families are switching from the China program because of it's long wait and this is causing the wait time for Kaz adoptions to start backing up. Really, I am afraid that Kaz will be making some major changes to their program soon too that might cause more issues, delays and possibly a shut down for awhile.

So, we are researching countries other than Kaz right now. China is certainly out as an option for us. Guatemala is having serious issues right now and is in danger of complete shutdown so that country is out as well. The process for Ukraine makes me uncomfortable. I don't like the idea of traveling over to another country and then having to look through books of profiles and try to select a child that way. Also, I have read recently that the youngest children being adopted there right now are 4 years old. We want a child younger than our son and he is only two. We are still considering Russia but really do not feel that is where our next child will come from. There are things I like about the Hungary adoption program, but like Kaz they require a long in country stay. That means Hungary does not fit what we are looking for either. The two countries we are very seriously considering right now are Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. They are both relatively new programs but by the time we would actually be ready to start the adoption process they should be pretty well established. We meet the requirements for both of these countries and they both have fairly short in country time.

We are also researching agencies since we were not happy with the one we used to adopt our son. Also, and this is the BIG one, we are trying to find out a way to afford another adoption.

So, the big question right now is....... WILL I BE A MOM OF FOUR???????