A while back, I asked those of you who are blogging about your adoptions in Russia if I could share your writing with the readers of this blog. Many of you responded in the affirmative, so here is what is going on on the Russia family blogroll now.

I'm going to start with the really good news. Almost two years after Zack and Laura at "The Winding Road to Chelyabinsk" first met their son Dimitry they have finally gotten a court date to bring him home!... more

Many of the longstanding blogs about adopting from Russia have been, understandably, very quiet in the last few months. But even as we all wait for word from Moscow on the re-accreditation (Andrei Aleksandrovich, if you are reading, please give everyone in the Ministry of Education the "hurry up" sign), a handful of parents are beginning their adoption journeys. I'd like to introduce you to some of them today.

First up are Troy and Rachel at "Journey With The Williams Family". I found them... more

As I have noted before, Russia has 86 governing subdivisions that are potential locations for an adoption. The 59 agencies that are now seeking accreditation and re-accreditation from the Ministry of Education each operate in only a handful of these regions. I've given you five tips on choosing a region once you have selected your agency.

But there's a lot more to learn about Russia's regions. Not only for the prospective parents now waiting... more

This is a potentially plot-spoiling post if you have not gotten far in our group reading of Anna Karenina. If you are not yet up to Section Two, Chapter 10 please put down this post and catch up on other adoption blog reading.

For the rest of us, I want to talk about what happens in chapters 10 and 11 of Section Two, or perhaps more appropriately, what doesn't happen.

Section... more

I would love to say that, while I was waiting for my second adoption from Russia to finally happen, I waited with grace. I didn't. I ranted, I raved, I ripped out old bushes and an old patio.

Maybe that's what some of you are doing now as you wait for Moscow to get the accreditations moving again. This slowdown has seemed more nerve-wracking than the one I went through in 2005. But as I was working on another assignment last night, I was reminded of the calming, and inspirational power of an image. Of how looking at the right picture can mentally... more

OK, I have to admit it: I have never been comfortable with the first sentence of Anna Karenina.

"Happy families are all alike," reads my translation, "every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." (Other translations render the first sentence as "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.")

Wiktionary, the dictionary affiliate of Wikipedia, defines "happy"... more

Now, I'm going to deal with one of the more burning questions among families waiting for Russia to begin rolling out the accreditations again: Why did my adoption fingerprints expire? Think about it, folks. Fingerprints are a unique mark of your identity. In adulthood, which is when you are being fingerprinted, they don't change. Before DNA testing became widespread, fingerprints were law enforcement's chief tool for linking criminals to a crime, even... more

You will be fingerprinted many times as you work toward your adoption in Russia, many times. You'll be fingerprinted at the local level, the state level and by U.S. federal authorities, too. And if your adoption drags on for more than a year, you'll discover what I did: You--and every member of your household over the age of 18--will have to be fingerprinted again.

In the 18 months it took to complete my second adoption in Russia, my recurring trips to get fingerprinted became something of a running joke among my co-workers. "You... more

I'm going to ask you today to take a moment to think about aiding the children in Russia's orphanages.

Why? Well, I got a note yesterday from the agency that helped me in both of my adoptions from Russia, and it made the reasons quite clear.

Because fewer children are being adopted from Russia now, there are more of them in the orphanages. Those of you who have been to Russia's orphanages in the past know how their resources were often stretched thin. Imagine how much farther they have to go now.

But it's not just that... more

I finally carved out a few days to get started on reading Anna Karenina (and I see from the forum posts that a few of you have too). And I ran smack into the problem that made it so hard to read the book the last time around: the names.

As I wrote earlier this year, meeting one Russian means having to learn a whole lot of names. There's a first name,... more