Perfect!

So we've decided to adopt, now what. How do we go about this? Who do we work with? What kind of child is right for us? Which country will we choose? So many unanswered questions.

Why international adoption? We have decided to adopt internationally for a number of reasons. As an adoptee, I have serious concerns about the way adoptions are handled domestically. I do, however, strongly support the foster program, but with two little guys in our home, foster to adopt is not a feasible option for us at this time.

The big issue is finding an adoption agency. After lots of googling and reading, I found a few agencies that may work for us. A little more research and I've found an agency that will be perfect for us. It's a non-profit agency, run by parents, offers programs for countries we're interested in and gets stellar reviews from anyone and everyone. Perfect! Let's do this!

In the meantime I'm also researching all I can in my post-Parker bedtime hours ... he goes to sleep, I pull out the ipad and start learning all I can about international adoption. Again, I'll leave out the specifics but I've researched enough that I know we want to adopt from a country who was party to the treaty signed in the Hague. A tidbit is below and read more if you care to. Our main concern was adopting from a country whose processes were set and predictable and to adopt a true orphan, for which no family members exist are could be located. i.e. we want to make sure we aren't buying a child. Believe me, it happens, and it happens a lot.

The Hague Adoption Convention on the Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Inter-Country Adoption (Hague Adoption Convention) is an international agreement to safeguard intercountry adoptions. Concluded on May 29, 1993 in The Hague, the Netherlands, the Convention establishes international standards of practices for intercountry adoptions. The United States signed the Convention in 1994, and the Convention entered into force for the United States in April 2008.

Why, you may ask, are we not interested in newborns. It's twofold. We've had the amazing opportunity to become parents to beautiful, perfect and healthy newborns. Sure we struggled here and there. We could get pregnant by looking at each other, staying pregnant was a little tough though. We lost our first at 7 1/2 weeks, our third at just over 10 weeks and our fourth within weeks. Thankfully baby 2 became our older son and baby 5 became our little guy. Those struggles are nothing compared to the years other couples spend trying everything they can to have a "baby." That's reason enough for them to be allowed the opportunity to have an infant. The flip side is that there are so many older children who need families. We've had it easy. Perfect, healthy babies. We don't need perfect and we don't need a baby. We'll take the slightly older, slightly "imperfect" because she'll be just perfect to and for us.

So now we're set. We have found an agency and we have decided on the type of child. Now we need to start cracking. We need to find out how to make this happen. And we need to figure out the country. Coming up next on the colvin 5!