The Big Update

So finally the big update that everyone has been waiting for..... we have decided to switch from Bulgaria to China (for a variety of reasons) and have a boy waiting for us. He is from the China Special Needs program - he has already had surgery to correct his special need. We saw him listed on an agency waiting children's list and requested his information and received it on his 3rd birthday!

His name is Sun Zhong Qiu and he was born on 5/25/2007. Sun would be the equivalent of our last names. His first and middle names (Zhong Qiu) were given to him as he was found during the autumn festival. His American name will be Maddux Samuel Bush.

Multiple pictures below for our cutie.

The first picture we ever saw (taken in March 2010)













New Pictures Taken in October 2010:

Where's the News...

So you are asking where the update is. We have been silent for awhile but should have some news by the end of August. It may not be the news you are expecting from Bulgaria....we are researching some other countries and children, will have more definite information coming shortly.

But....we have not been bored. We have had 2 sick cats in the last couple months - Monster with pancreatitis (yes, we managed a feeding tube for a few days) and Mickey had to have 3 inches of his intestines and his entire appendix removed!! Everyone back to healthy for now, hoping it stays that way!

Stay tuned....more to come!

Introducing Mickey....

We brought home our new kitten on Friday night. He is doing really well (except for slight eye problem - going to vet today). He was terrified of the greyhounds the first night, but is doing much better as you can see from the second picture.

He is very very tiny - can fit into the palm of one hand. Even the adult cats that were at the cattery when we picked him up were much smaller than we thought. He'll probably grow to 7-9 pounds and will be very long and very very skinny!

1 Year

It seems hard to believe, but today we have been registered and officially waiting for a referral from Bulgaria for one year!

Good News: We did speak with our adoption agency last week and they are still saying 18 months for a referral. The MOJ has been meeting weekly and referring approximately 10 children per session. The children that were identified in January should be on the international adoption registry shortly - approximately 4500 children.
Bad News: We know of at least one other person who has been registered for 24 months and does not have a referral yet. She also requested a child up to 24 months old at the time of referral.

We continue to wait and still hope that we will have a referral by 18 months. 18 months of waiting (going by week numbers) will be exactly our wedding anniversary date of September 20th, so maybe 18 months is what is meant to be.

Wait Times for Referral (Bulgaria)

This week we had some good news, or at least progress news from our agency. We emailed to ask if they still thought 18 months was reasonable time for us to receive a referral, based on how others waiting in line were progressing. We can see that the MOJ is meeting weekly, but it is hard to tell where they are at in the line of referrals - some are for paperwork in 2005, some in 2009, so very confusing!
Our agency received a referral for another set of parents that had been waiting 17 months at the time they received their referral. We think they also only requested a girl. They were registered only 6-7 months ahead of us.
The other good news is that between 4000-5000 children were recently added to the registry of children available for adoption, based on the work the MOJ did late last year with adding children if they had been in orphanages and parents had not requested to pick them up by December 31, 2009.
So based on this, we were told that 18 months or possibly shorter is still realistic. We are hoping this is the case. It is hard to believe, but in 2 weeks we will already have been waiting for 12 months.

Questions & Answers

Some answers to questions we have received from our blog readers:

Why are there no girls names to vote on?
Two reasons:
1) We have requested either a boy or a girl, but have been told that 90% of the people who adopt only request a girl, so we should expect a boy. There are always more boys available for adoption.
2) We have a girl's name picked out already. The captial of Bulgaria is Sofia, so that is what we would use for a girl's name.

What will use you for a middle name?
We most likely will use Jacob's middle name of Samuel.

Why is it taking so long?
Wish we knew the answer to this one! There are alot of reasons - as Bulgaria has started to move forward with adoptions again with their new MOJ representatives, they are prioritizing certain children first. These are primarily children over the age of 7 and children with special needs.
Before the new MOJ was in place last year, very few adoptions were processed through Bulgaria each year. There are a number of dossiers that were registered before ours that need referrals. Some countries have a policy of lifetime dossiers so people do not have to keep updating paperwork. Some of these families have moved on to other countries or no longer want to adopt, but their paperwork is still on file. The last referral meeting we saw from the MOJ in January, people who had their dossiers registered in the middle of 2006 were receiving referrals. We have been told there are very few (less than 30 dossiers) registered in 2007. Don't know the numbers for 2008, but have heard anything from 100 to 800. We are #78 for 2009 (we believe, based on our registration number).

No News

We have been quiet for a few days because there has not been any real news to share - other than update pictures of our new kitty (if anyone's interested). Last Friday, there was a meeting of the MOJ in Bulgaria for 10 hours, but this was primarily to discuss how children identified as special needs were being referred. The MOJ website has not been updated since December, so we do not know if they are continuing to meet to refer non-special needs children and if they are possibly what month/year of potential parents being registered they are up to. I think we will be asking our agency for any updates they have this week since it has been awhile since we have heard anything.
Hanging in there!!