Well I'll try to keep up the momentum and and write again tonight, but I promise to go a little lighter on length.

For all that we hear about the horror stories that others have experienced as they journeyed through their adoption, ours has been relatively straight forward to this point, though I am mindful that there is still a good bit of our journey ahead. KJ did a really great job this fall keeping all of the paperwork on schedule and tracking the progress on what seemed like hundreds of documents.

For those unfamiliar with some of the requirements for international adoption, let me introduce you to a potentially new verb - to Apostille. Going beyond creating every document in duplicate and then getting each notarized, the process of getting each document apostilled requires that they be sent to the Secretary of State in which the notary is registered, and having that office sign off on the legitimacy of the notary - for a fee of course.

As an example - Kazakhstan requires that we meet with a licensed psychologist to ascertain our mental capacity to parent safely and lovingly. Following that meeting, not only does the report need to be notarized and apostilled in duplicate, but also a notary needs to sign off that the accompanying photo copy of the psychologist's licence is valid, and then the Secretary of State needs to validate that the notary who attested to the licence validity was in fact valid. It can be dizzying to track, and as I said, KJ did it flawlessly.

So initially there was a flury of activity, and really since the holidays, we have just been in a waiting mode as we prepare to become parents.

So what do we know. We know that we have requested a daughter and that we have requested 'as young as possible' and 'as heatlthy as possible'. In the application process there is a sheet with a long list of deformities, conditions and illnesses to which you are asked to check a box indicationg either yes, no or maybe you would consider this child. It is a real challenge to answer.

On the one hand you want to be compassionate and understanding and in some ways say yes to everything, for surely birth parents don't have the luxury of filling out such a request, though on the other hand there was a feeling that if I say yes to something, am I all but requesting it? I feel willing to take the same odds that birth parents do when they have a child, but felt reluctant to say yes to too many things for fear that all my yes boxes would be present in our child. It seemed against my spirit to indicate that I would not consider a child with something, but in the end we did. Our adoption agency helped us to feel better about this, but the shame of this still affects me to some degree. Moving on!

'As young as possible' will most likely mean a child somewhere in the range of 8-14 months old. In fact many of the children that we read about coming home from Kaz lately seem to be in the 8-11 month range. The reality is that we won't know until we meet her. In fact that goes for most everything about her. It seems most likely that we will travel to Kaz without any information about a specific child and may in fact be shown more than one. Again it seems a strange concept for those that want to believe the fate aspect of the one child being meant for you.

Do I think that there is a girl in Kaz right now as I sit here writing that is our daughter - yes I do. I think both KJ and I will know right away that she was meant to be with us, but the idea that it may not be the first girl we see is very strange. Is there a chance that we would see a child and feel nothing, or at least not be sure and ask to see another child. I suppose it is possible, but again, what a surreal idea given that these are humans. It is not in our natue to 'select' a child, though perhaps the same could said of our decsion not to have our own children but to adopt instead.

Unlike many who go through the adoption process we feel confident that we could have conceived children but felt a greater desire to adopt. It has long been my feeling that there is no shortage of children in the world such that I needed to help create my own to put the world in balance, but instead that there is indeed a shortage of willing and capable parents to raise these children. That our first daughter will come from Kazakhstan will always be important, but that she is a aware of her place in the greater whole of humanity will be equally important.

I feel myself beginning to get get carried away, so I will call it a day and go spend some time with KJ and the dogs. More later. Take Care.