Charles Dickens never wrote about adopting from Russia, though his stories featured plenty of orphans. Still, I am tempted to sum up the year 2007 in Russian adoptions by borrowing from the opening of one of his greatest books, "A Tale Of Two Cities":

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, …..

We had started out the year hopeful that new accreditations would quickly be handed out to the agencies that had worked so diligently on their paperwork during 2006. But it was not to be, and by early April, every old accreditation had expired. I launched into a quixotic series of diversionary tactics, writing about many of Russia's 96 regions and even trying an online book group about that great Russian novel, "Anna Karenina".

Russian officials were slow and U.S. bureaucrats got in the way--more than once. Accreditations finally began to appear in July, but the delay had taken its toll: Referrals were lost, and some parents gave up hope.

There was some light with the darkness. Though the total number of Russian orphans adopted by Americans seems likely to fall this year to its lowest since 1995, just over 2,300 Russian children began new lives as United States citizens in 2007. I have told you about some of those children; you have, through your own blogs, told people of many, many more. Russia has re-accredited 28 American adoption agencies and more than a dozen agencies based in other countries.

I'm going to begin 2008 with renewed hope that we have "everything before us". Last week, I read a blog entry written by new adoptive parents after their day at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. It seems that there were 80 parents waiting for paperwork that day and the Embassy staff, which had become accustomed to handling only three or four exit visas a day during the slowdown, was overwhelmed. It's probably too much to hope for that volume going forward, but even 20 visas a day could put Russian adoptions back near 2005 levels.

If you completed a Russian adoption in 2007, congratulations. If you are still waiting to bring your child home, here's hoping the wait will be short. And if you can share your adoption story to inspire more parents to create forever families for Russian orphans, please do.

Image credit: ppdigital at Morguefile.coom