Post placement report number three has come and gone. Well almost: Our social worker came to the house last week for a visit, but there are a few bits of paperwork and photos that still need to be gathered before everything can be shipped off to Russia.

As I have written before, Russian authorities view the post-placement reports as being as critical--or more--as any piece of paperwork that preceded it in your child's adoption. I have been told, many times during the long, long wait for re-accreditation,... more

There were no new accreditations of adoption agencies issued this week, but plenty of news in business, politics and sports. I'm going to start with the latter, because there was a sporting event in Russia this week that included children in orphanages.

According to the RIA-Novosti news agency, there was going to be a soccer tournament today in the western Siberian town of Nefteyugansk involving teams made up exclusively of orphans. City officials said 65 children would take place in the matches, which were to... more

Worries about pre-natal exposure to alcohol hover over just about every adoption from Russia. We worry about how much the birth mother drank, and at what point during her pregnancy. We worry about the trauma children suffer as a result of being exposed to an alcoholic parent. We worry about how lasting, and how severe, the effects of that alcohol consumption will be on our children. For many parents, the worry and uncertainty is too overwhelming. They simply walk away from considering Russia as an adoption destination.

On Sunday, September 9, the National... more

Children in Russia orphanages can often spend long hours in play with meager resources: No crates of building blocks, no bins of art supplies, no dress-up clothes, no grown-ups directing or scheduling the activities. It doesn't sound like an ideal environment.

And yet, I think there's a flip side to orphanage life. A side of creativity and inventiveness, an ability to create entertainment almost out of nothing. I read about it over and over again in the e-mails that Rose Alaimo sent back from... more

Adoption is a private journey that can sometimes find its way into public forums. I write often in this blog about my trips to Russia to adopt my two sons and their lives since they have come to live in America.

And just about every day of every week, I read what many of you have gone through and are going through to welcome children born in Russia into your homes. Through your writings, I travel to parts of Russia I have never seen and experience adoptions that went both more and less smoothly than my own. In reading the writings of those of you already home with your families, I've... more

There was a heartbreaking story in The Moscow Times at the end of last week, a story about Moscow's street kids and what has brought them to a life on the streets.

It is not a happy or even particularly hopeful story, though the writer does say that President Vladimir Putin is trying to draw Russia's attention to its demographic and social welfare problems. You can read it in full here, though you will need a subscription to the paper's archives, since the Moscow Times quickly moves its... more

Move over Disney and Nickelodeon: Russia has launched Bibigon.

Bibigon is a new children's television channel, that was launched on Saturday, by the Russian TV and radio company VGTRK, with--as several news reports were quick to point out--key backing by Russian President Vladimir Putin. You can see the channel's Internet home page here (or read through a lumpy English translation, courtesy of Babelfish.

The channel is named for a character created by the Russian children's poet... more

There are three Russian cultural festivals on the calendar in September. The first will be on Saturday, Sept. 9 from noon to 7 p.m. at Penn's Landing in Philadelphia. The Russian Mosaic Cultural Festival, organized by the Philadelphia Russian-American Chamber of Commerce, features folk, classical, and ballroom dance performances, and Russian, Jewish, Georgian, Moldavian and Middle Asian food.

If you're in Silicon Valley on Saturday, Sept. 22, try the Russian festival at St. Nicholas Orthodox Church... more

Early in the week, Russian authorities announced 10 arrests in the murder of a Russian newspaper reporter last October. But the government's contention--that someone outside Russia had ordered the murder of Anna Politkovskaya--was met with a large amount of skepticism in and out of Russia, according to news reports. And on Friday. Both the BBC and Voice of America were reporting that two... more

The other day, I wrote about people who were putting some part of their adoption journey into video format. But I realized, as I was poking around YouTube afterwards, that video sharing sites can serve another useful purpose: As part of the process of educating the child you adopted from Russia on the country of his or her birth.

I started, of course, by searching for videos on the Russian cities nearest and dearest to my heart: Vladivostok and Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, on Sakhalin Island.... more