Yes I've heard the rumors--paperwork on several adoption agencies has been approved by the four key ministries and they are waiting for the Ministry of Education and Science to issue their re-accreditations. I've even tried to confirm that the e-mail circulating on the chat boards that purported to come from the head of one adoption agency was actually sent by that agency. I'm waiting for a call back.

So now what? Folks, I hate to say it, but we just have to keep on doing what we've been doing: wait. Because the slowdown in adoptions in Russia is not going to be over until Mother Russia says it is over.

I know, I know, we've been waiting a long time. And the children who have been waiting in the orphanages have been waiting even longer.

But the wait, for me at least, has gotten harder since a key official with the Ministry of Education and Science came over in late April to meet with counterparts at the United States State Department and the National Council for Adoption. As I reported, Alina Levitskaya, Russia's director of the Department of Youth Policy, Upbringing and Social Protection of Children, said then that accreditations were expected in the "imminent future". And not long after that, I began to hear rumblings that there was going to be a lucky agency very soon.

Remember, I am not one of those who ever thought Russia was closed for good to international adoption. (In case you missed it, I blasted the poor reporting in USA Today, The New York Times and The Associated Press on the subject back in April.) For the good of its children, Russia needed to put some order to its international adoption procedures. It needed to weed out the bad agencies and intermediaries and yes, even bad prospective parents. I'm not a fan of everything Russia has put in place now, and when all the accreditations and re-accreditations of the 59 waiting agencies have been issued, I'll tell you about the five things I want to see changed about adopting in Russia.

But those accreditations aren't going to be out until they are out, and we just have to wait for them. How are you waiting now? Maybe you've set the start page for your Internet connection to the "International Adoption" page set up by the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. Maybe you prefer the home page for Russia's adoption databank, which you can check here in a Google-supplied translation. I fire up both sites several times a day now, hoping, hoping that there will be news that I can quickly push out to all of you hoping to be the adoptive parents of a Russian child. And I confess that I have already written the basic lines of the big accreditation day announcement so that all I have to do is drop in the names of the lucky agencies and hit the publish button.

Hopefully, soon.