November, wow time flies!

Well it’s November and I haven’t updated in quite some time so I thought I should…

The Agency has finally received their accreditation in Vietnam last month and files are starting to be sent. My DH and I are excited with that news, but have agreed to hold back and wait for a few adoptions to be completed. We know there are never any guarantees but we just want to make sure that a few adoptions go through to try to iron out a few or the hiccups. We are looking at starting the process in the spring. This will also give us a chance to do some work on the house that we have been putting off. We are however anxiously watching the other families who are in line waiting for a referral and hope everything goes smoothly!

In other news…I changed departments and I have taken on a more challenging role…yes I am a public servant. The new role is one with increased responsibility and a heavier work load (although I won’t compare it to the last department, because there was very little work there and I was anything but challenged!). I am still in the adjustment phase and right now I feel like I am getting everything wrong…I hope this feeling will pass.

We are making plans to go and visit my parents for Christmas, they live in the Southern US and I haven’t been down to there place in over a year. My list of things I want to look for is getting long, but I can’t wait.

I don’t expect Christmas to be very big as my sister returned to work yesterday from Maternity Leave and can’t get time off for Christmas. So my parents won’t be seeing her and her husband and my little niece. My mother also got fired for coming to my wedding last Christmas and has only recently found a new job so their finances are in really rough shape…so Christmas is expected to be really small and quiet.

I really hope that 2007 holds good things for the entire family…God knows they need it!

Still no accreditation...and its still very hot!

Well I didn’t have much to update on the Adoption front…the Vietnam Program Director with our Agency is apparently heading to Vietnam on August 8th to try to get the accreditation. With him he will be bringing five dossiers that are ready to go to show the VN government that the Agency is committed and ready. For those five families I’m sure the stress has really begun. We are still waiting to start our dossier, as we don’t want to pay for anything until we know the Agency has the green light to start sending documents.

I have to say that there are not very many adoption agencies in Canada and the one we want to deal with are located in our city, where as there is one two hours away in Quebec and there are two I believe in another city in our province about 6 hours away. So we honestly would feel better dealing with the Agency right in our city so that they are easy to reach. They currently have programs with China (since the early 1990s), Korea, Thailand, Kazakhstan (its new) and they are just starting with India (This is limited to Hindu people of Indian descent). Before Vietnam was closed they also had a program. I think one problem may be that there was an Adoption Facilitator in my city that was directly involved in the whole baby buying scheme that lead to the program being closed. Friends of ours adopted through him from VN in 2000 and it breaks their hearts that they dealt with him, but they love him dearly and N~ is the most adorable, smart and articulate little boy.

This facilitator had and has no involvement with our Agency, but I wonder if the VN government are just being extra cautious. After the program was shut down, our Agency has worked extra hard to ensure that the annual reports for the families who adopted from VN are sent in, not only for their clients but also for his. The Agency also has a charitable foundation that directly supports several orphanages in VN through donations and financial support. I really hope that they can negotiate their accreditation and that the Agency can begin processing files.

In other news This has been a miserable week for me….I have been having a serious allergic reaction to an anti-inflammatory since last Thursday and have been head to toe in an itchy rash. The heat has only made it itch more and since I am covering for 2 people at work I can’t call in sick! By the way we have had weather in the 90s all week and on Tuesday it was 47C or 118F, which has made it absolutely disgusting!

In boating news, the boat finally made it’s maiden voyage and unfortunately we hade big trouble with the rollers on the trailer, it took about 40 minutes and we actually damaged the haul! This was thanks to the obnoxious city employee at the city run launch who felt that the effective method to help us was to threaten us with him calling the police…they never came and I have no idea what we could have been charged with, but the 4 complete strangers who were helping felt that the employee was way out of line…this as my husband was chest deep in the river. The day of boating before this was beautiful and perfect. Oh well, my husband will have to fix the fibreglass before we go out again!
One last point, I would like to add…to the wonderful pharmacist whom I spoke to regarding my allergic reaction…Next time it would be helpful to tell me that the rash is extremely photosensitive ant that I should stay out of the sun at all costs! The burn has been excruciating!

Nothing new except the heat....

Mrs. Broccoli Guy asked for bloggers to update their blogs…I can relate…I am always so disappointed when there are no new posts… so here we go!

Well, still waiting on the accreditation from Vietnam for the agency, so we still have not started. As I have said before we will not start till they have this…there are a few people who were convinced to start and they are now running into the problem that they have provincial approval but the file can’t go any further until the agency gets there approval and their documents expire in the next 2 months…I feel terrible for them, this is exactly why we don't want to start till we know they are ready...I have been following Chel and Tom's journey to get Cupcake and I am happy Tom and Cupcake arrived home safely. I have been following as well, the journeys to Corden and Ruby and can't wait till everyone is home safe...

It has been terribly hot here, like many parts of North America. Monday it was registering about 39C without the humidex, 49C with it. (That’s 102.2F without the humidex and 120.2F with the humidex for those who are in the US.) Needless to say stinking hot…It has cooled off to about the mid 90s the last few days and suddenly the mid 90s doesn’t feel quite as uncomfortable as it had been feeling…


Other than that we bought a boat earlier in the spring and hope finally this weekend to get it in the water. Every time we plan to take it out, something happens that causes us to cancels the plan. First we decided to wait until we has the bimini top made for it…that took three and a half weeks when it was supposed to take 3 days, then last weekend there were thunderstorms Saturday when we got up, so e nixed it and then Sunday there was an 80% chance of rain, which for the optimist it meant only a 20% chance it would not rain, so again we decided against it. This weekend we hope its going in the water, otherwise it seems quite depressing…Anyways, I’ll let y’all now if we go out boating this weekend.

Well, I thought it was time for an update…….

We are still waiting for you agency to receive their certification from Vietnam…they have received their Ontario certification. We both agreed not to start anything until we know they are ready to go because I don’t want to waste money on updating documents because the agency doesn’t have their certification yet…

We have made a few decisions however:

We will be requesting a girl between 12 months and 2 years….After careful consideration we decided that we really did not need an infant and that a toddler might be even better for us… When my husband discussed this with the Director of the Vietnam program with the Agency he said referral time would be much quicker as you could be looking at over a year for a young infant girl…..

I am also debating if we should put the nursery on the main floor of the house or on the second story. Our bedroom is on the second, but I am concerned I might have a difficult time carrying her so it might be easier if her room was on the main floor….but I am worried when she gets older or if she is mobile that she could open the door and walk out side at night…though they must sell alarms for that….

Anyways, that’s my update for today…

Why Adopt From Vietnam?

My husband and I long ago started to talk about family and adoption came to be a realistic and good option for us as I have some health issues that may pose a significant risk through pregnancy and childbirth.

We looked at several different countries, but most were out just based on my medical condition. About 2 years ago we settled on China, but were in for a long haul as we first had to meet the age requirement of both parents being 30 years old….but we were comfortable with that. Which is still a few years away.

The rumours began to swirl that the CCAA was changing their restrictions related to parents who have a disability. In my case I may fall under that clause for China. We stressed and worried, then one day I checked the website for a local agency who specializes in international adoption and noticed that they were having an information session on all of there programs. I talked to my husband and he suggested we go to end the speculation and stress related to the rumours and see what they had been told about any changes. I signed us up the next day.

A few weeks later in April we got up early to go to the info session and low and behold about double the people that registered showed up…I have to say at this point we were not impressed. As my husband said they want upwards of $25K and can’t even ensure that those that register got a seat. After we finally got seats…we sat down and listened to the presentation….all along focusing on China. Because of the number of people in the room and the shortage of air we took break….I took advantage of this time to speak to one of the people to ask about China. While talking to her she suggested Vietnam, believing that we would be a good match for the program, although they are awaiting their licences, they expect the program to be up and running soon. (They have since received their Ontario Licence and have applied for the Vietnamese licence) The presentation continued and China and Vietnam were discussed. After considering the information presented for both Vietnam and China, we decided to jump in with both feet and pursue Vietnam.

That was a very sudden decision that we hadn’t planned on making, but we are really happy to be moving forward. After not expecting this for about 3 more years we now are making plans and seeing possibilities.

We decided to wait until the agency has all of their licences before starting the paper work, so we expect to start towards the end of summer/early fall. We have also decide that we will be requesting a girl 12-18 months. We are talking about names and parental leave benefits. It is such an amazing process to be starting….

A Little About us.....

My name is bluefairy and my husband and I recently got married after dating for almost ten years. We have always decided on international adoption (since very early on in our relationship all those years ago).

I am creating this blog to document our journey (with all the ups and downs) through the process of adopting from Vietnam.

We live in Ontario, Canada, so the information presented relating to the process and requirements will be from the Canadian perspective.