We get many questions about our adoption and so I thought that I would answer some of the common ones here. If you have any other questions please feel free to ask!
Question #1
When are you going to get your kids?
We don't know yet. Right now Child and Family Services (CFS) are holding us up with asking for more meetings with our social worker to make sure that we understand disrupting our birth order. We have gone through this material before but they want us to do it again.
CFS has no jurisdiction legally in this process but they are required to sign to say that our home study was done correctly. They would like to have the power to deny our adoption because we have "too many children" however they do not have this power according to the law. We are already approved to adopt 2 children under the age of 12. They can however hold up our travel dates by adding all sorts of requirements that are not required by law but it is easier to comply with them rather than take it to court. So goes the red tape of adoption! We are still planning for to travel in the first part of 2014 but only God knows the date!
Do you know if you are getting boys or girls?
We do not know until we arrive in Ukraine and have our appointment to look through files. Once we have picked a file and gone to meet the children, they will still have to say "yes" to the adoption. If the say "no" then we will have another appointment to look at more files.
How old will they be?
All we know is that they will be under 12 year old. Shayla will stay the oldest child in our family. The children will most likely be closer to 12 than to toddlers in age
How many children are you getting?
We are approved for 2 children who have to be siblings. Just because we are approved for 2 does not mean that we are guaranteed to get 2 children. If there are only files shown to us that have 1 child then we may come home with only 1.
Will they be healthy?
Our home study approves us for children who are healthy or who have minor or correctable health issues. All children who have been institutionalized have issues that we don't see in our children. They have been through tragedy in their lives and will need to deal with these issues.
Will they speak English?
No they will not. They will speak either Ukrainian or Russian.
How long will you be in Ukraine?
At first we were told 4-6 weeks but it looks like time lines may be changing and expanding so we may have to complete the adoption in 2 separate trips so we are not gone for that long.
How do your children feel about it?
They are excited but we are making sure that they are prepared that this will not be like having their cousins over. There will be many issues that won't be fun and they may not treat you well. We have explained that they will have to learn how to be in a family. There are a lot of unknowns is adoption!
Why don't you adopt from Canada? There are so many kids here that need homes!
There are many children here in Canada who do need homes. When we inquired on adopting domestically (with in Canada) this is the answer we got. No.
Why? CFS in Manitoba has laws about domestic adoption and one of them is that you may only adopt a child 2 years younger than your youngest biological child. So we would have to adopt a child under 2 years of age because Coden is 4. Another law that they have is that we can not adopt aboriginal children. So there were no children under the age of 2 who were not of native decent for us to adopt.
Domestic adoption is not nearly as costly as international adoption is but CFS's rules also don't apply to international adoptions and that is why we are going this route. It would be nice if Manitoba was adoption friendly!
If you have other questions leave a comment and I will answer!
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