Weighing In....

Breaking news! Chad and I are moving to Russia. We've heard that you can finalize adoptions in less than three months if you actually live there! Since we are planning on being over there for 1 month anyway, we thought what's two more? Can someone pick up our mail while we are gone?


April Fools!!!! Anyway......

Since unfortunately I have no new news to report tonight about waiting for our home study to be finalized..... argggg....... don't get me started........ I came across this article last night. I am not usually "news savvy" but this story has been splashed all around, celebrity adoption. For the thousands of families waiting for a child and the families I've been in contact with whose home study agencies have been "black listed" and they are having to redo their home studies, costing them precious time, energy, and money I'm sure that this topic strikes a nerve. On one hand, you know that any child waiting to be adopted by any person is sitting in an orphanage and no matter who adopts them, celebrity or not, at least they will have a forever family to love them. AND these children will live in the lap of luxury, beyond anyone's wildest imagination, it still begs the question- what about the rest of us? What about families that are unable to have children and desire a child more than anything else in the world but financially cannot foot the bill? What about the families that are being delayed months or even years because of a technicality or a misprint in a document? When it boils right down to it, I think what infuriates me more than "celebrity fast-track adoption" is the flawed system in general. If America had more of a working relationship with these countries, the rules for adoption were consistent across the international board, if money was not the key to providing children homes.....then Madonna and Angelina would not be the exception, they would be the rule. Every safe and loving home could give an orphan a home after a reasonable amount of research and time and adoptive families would be able to do so within 9 months time. Period. Regardless of the country or age of a child. Here's the story..... what do you think?

Are Adoptions Fast-Tracked for Angie and Madonna?
Today 2:00 PM PDT by Leslie Gornstein
Is it easier for celebrities to get approved for adoption?—Queen of Shoes, via Twitter
If you're assuming the answer is yes, you're not alone. (In fact, you just may be cynical enough to be a tiny me. Hi, tiny me!)
Human-rights groups in Malawi—Madonna's adoption country of choice—are also saying that Madonna is getting fast-tracked in her efforts to adopt a 4-year-old girl to keep little David Banda company.
Madge is denying any star treatment, of course. And Angelina Jolie, who has adopted three foreign-born moppets, also has said she got no special handling in those cases. But some facts seem to contradict that...
• Child advocacy groups have lined up against Madonna's proposed adoption of a girl named Mercy. "We feel Madonna is behaving like a bully," Undule Mwakusungula, chairman of the Human Rights Consultative Committee, told the Associated Press. "She has the money and the status to use her profile to manipulate, to fast-track the process."
• Malawian law on foreign adoptions is vague and largely untested. Regulations state only that would-be parents undergo an 18- to 24-month assessment period—but that rule was essentially thrown out the window when Madonna was allowed to almost immediately spirit her first Malawian child, David, to London.
• Yes, that's unusual. "It's not the way it's ordinarily done," says Dr. Howard Altstein, an international adoption expert at the University of Maryland. "An ordinary person would not have that kind of experience. It would take them much longer."
• Regarding La Jolie: Vietnam requires potential adopters to be either a married couple or a single parent—no shacker-uppers, like Brangelina. But when Jolie—arguably one half of the most famous unmarried couple on the planet—applied to adopt son Pax as a single mother, no one blinked.
• Again, that is just not normal. Says Altstein: "I don't think, if a noncelebrity would say 'I'm single' and actually be living with someone—I don't think they would get a child in Vietnam."