Lol! I just told my friend that Russel Crowe was to Les Mis what Pierce Brosnan was to Mamma Mia.....but you're right. Crowe is not as bad in Les Mis as Brosnan was in Mamma Mia. At least he CAN sing, though he doesn't have a strong enough voice for Javert.

I couldn't find a book I liked. DS was 5 when we had the talk (he'd been asking me since he was 3 and his questions became increasingly more pointed). He took it well -- very matter-of-factly. I explained that he was not to discuss this with his sister or any of his friends because a child has to show they're ready to know by asking their parents, and it's the parents' job to tell them. He never told DD. DD was 7 when she started asking very specific, pointed questions. I explained it to her and she was HORRIFIED! "You mean....you....and Papa.....did THAT? Ewwwwwwwww! That's disgusting! Don't tell me any more about it ever again!" and she covered her ears and didn't want to hear anything else about it! :rofl:

The shy thing, no. I don't think that's weird. Some kids are like that, and if you throw them into a situation where they're at a party with a bunch of strangers, I can see it. Your son is 3 so there is a bit of an age difference. My kids tend to look at anyone under 4 or 5 as a baby (though they will make an effort to talk/play with them). The mom not making her children respond -- that's weird. Shy or not, manners count for something. I would have coached them to respond politely, even if it was just a "No thank you." It's rude not to acknowledge someone when they're speaking to you.

I did see this coming, but knowing there are people out there who will take advantage of such a tragedy doesn't lessen my revulsion.

First off, there ARE children being abused in the American foster system. I don't think anyone would deny that. Second, when we're talking about deaths of Russian adoptees, I'd again like to state that it was 19 out of 60,000 adoptions over a span of 20 years. Any death is one too many, but statistically we're not talking large numbers. I'm sure compared to the number of orphans who die in orphanages or children adopted by Russians who die each year, the numbers are miniscule in comparison. And again, agencies that work with Russia are NOT using unscrupulous methods to get the children (though there are definitely unscrupulous American agencies pushing through adoptions of unhealthy, mentally impaired Russian children and not being forthright with the potential parents). The children are already in the system and have to go through many hoops before they are made available to foreigners. They are first offered to family members, then have to be refused by potential Russian families a certain number of times (3 or 5, I believe) before they are even offered up for adoption to foreigners. These are generally not healthy kids. Most at the very least are malnourished and have developmental delays. These are not children who are bought and sold into the system. These are children who are willingly relinquished by their parents or children who are taken from their parents due to neglect and abuse. If they were going to sell kids in Russia to Americans, they would be healthy, gorgeous children. I don't understand why you keep bringing up this argument when it doesn't. happen. there. Yes, there are known cases of this happening in India and other countries, but Russia isn't one of them. If you want to start a thread about children being adopted who are not legally clear and free for adoption, please do, but it truly belongs someplace besides a thread about Russian adoptions. Does Russia have the right to do this? Obviously. They can do anything they want, even if it's pig-headed and immoral. If you believe that they are doing this because of these few cases of death and abuse, I've got a beautiful bridge to sell you in Brooklyn. They're using these deaths as a convenient excuse to put pressure on America, retaliate for the Magnitsky Act, and stir up anti-American sentiment (stirring up anti-American sentiment is a needed distraction to keep the people's focus off of the atrocities and human rights violations their own government is committing). There are plenty of people in Russia who see through it and know the truth. DH still keeps in contact with all of his friends in Russia. They all know what the government is doing is a big load of crap and are totally ashamed that their country is doing this. There are plenty of sheeple there who do believe that Americans are buying and selling children for organ donations, adopting just to murder children, and other atrocious things, but anyone who is intelligent and has half a brain doesn't believe the media hype.

Do it! Our kid was meant to be ours. We have one of those stories, Sparrow.

:grouphug: :grouphug: :grouphug: No advice. I'm thinking good thoughts for you and I'm so sorry you're going through this.

:grouphug: :grouphug: :grouphug: I can't imagine the terror you must have felt! No idea if what the doctor says sounds right or not. I'd maybe take him to the pediatrician and maybe he/she can refer you to a specialist who can give you more answers. ER doctors aren't often equipped to diagnose everything. Our friend is an ER doctor and the stuff he DOESN'T know scares me!

And while that story was horrible, let's evaluate that story a little deeper and pick away the layers the media has chosen to sensationalize. Let's also look at the aspects of adoption you may not be aware of. She didn't lose it and kill him. There could have been 20 dead Russian children in the last 20 years instead of 19. We look at those 19 other tragic cases and ask, "Why didn't they just leave the children somewhere if they didn't want them?" She did. Did she go about this the best way? Absolutely not, but that child is still alive. What were his issues? Of course the Russian government is saying he has no issues and he's a fine, healthy, normal little boy who only NOW has issues and trauma over this incident. I took one look at that kid's picture and said, "Fetal Alcohol Syndrome." He has some mild facial characteristics, and if the adoptive mother is to be believed, he was difficult to handle. I put the blame of this on the Russians. They need to set their pride aside, admit when these kids have problems, and be upfront about them to potential parents instead of pawning off ill children on unsuspecting parents. It's not fair to the parents, not fair to the child, and not fair to the child that could be a better fit that is languishing in an orphanage. The rest, I feel, are largely problems with our end of the system. Instead of being greedy for the money of another placement, the agency this woman went through should never have made that placement. They are responsible for making sure their people within the country are making placements that have the best chance of succeeding. There should be more transparency and there's not. People are lied to all the time and often pressured into taking kids they are not comfortable taking. We decided against one agency because when I asked, "What happens when I get to Russia, meet the child, and have a gut-feeling that something is off and the child won't be a good fit?" You'd think that would be a legitimate question, right? Especially considering after the adoption goes through, that child is legally mine for life. They were clearly uncomfortable answering and said, "You CAN refuse the placement, but if you do we can't guarantee when another placement would be available for you. It could take a year or more." BS -- adoptions were moving very quickly in Russia at the time. I was on adoption message boards at the time and heard many stories of people refusing placements in-country and getting matched up with another child before they returned home. They also told me that not feeling I could bond with the child was not a "legitimate reason" for refusing placement. Really? REALLY? That was a HUGE red flag for me. This agency was very much a "pay us, sit down, shut up, and don't ask real questions" type of place. Agencies like that need to be shut down because they don't care about making the right match -- they care about making money. This woman very well could have gone through an agency like that, and assumed that what they were telling her (if she even knew to ask the right questions) was the truth. The desire to have a child is also a very powerful thing. It's not unusual to go into an agency and push aside the things that don't feel right because that desire to parent overpowers everything else. I've heard many stories of difficult adoptions where the parents say, "What they told us at the agency didn't quite feel right, but....." I don't know this woman's religious affiliation, but another issue in adoption is religious agencies that refuse to adopt out to non-Christians. It was difficult for us to find an adoption agency that would even work with us because we weren't Christian. Apparently their view is children are better off being malnourished and understimulated in institutionalized settings than they are going to non-Christian homes. Yup -- let those brains atrophy because that's so much better than winding up with ebil non-believers! It's possible that her pickings for agencies were slim. We found a whopping 2 in our area that would work with us for a Russian adoption -- the horrible one I mentioned and the one we ultimately went with, which was a Christian agency, but they let non-Christians adopt. The biggest thing our country is doing to fail these children, as I said in another post, is lack of support. If this woman was struggling with her child, there should have been supports in place. There were not. I feel it should be mandatory for internationally adopted children to be evaluated by a pediatrician who specializes in adoption upon entering this country. There should be better mental health resources available, counseling, more mandatory scheduled visits with the social worker (and even MORE visits if there are issues with the adoption). Adoptive parents are for the most part left on their own. It's their kid -- now they can deal with it. Most of these parents aren't prepared for the issues they face. How can they be? If you trust the people you're dealing with and they tell you the child is fine, you believe them. If you don't know what RAD or FAS/E are and you're faced with a child who has one or both of these issues, how do you cope? If you're adopting an older child who has been in an institutionalized setting most of their life, you are dealing with a host of issues that could benefit from support. People often say that this woman should have given up the child and not sent him back on a plane. Many people are unaware that if you adopt and want to terminate the adoption it's extremely difficult. In most cases you are responsible for the child financially until they are permanently adopted, so you have to pay thousands and thousands of dollars/month in support. Some people keep these children because they financially cannot afford not to, even if they are violent or cannot bond. The way this woman handled things wasn't right, but it's entirely possible she felt sending him back was the best option out of a bunch of crappy ones. She was probably living a nightmare. There were two victims in this adoption: the child AND the woman who adopted him.

Oh, Cindy :grouphug: I remember following all your posts about your adoption journey. I'm so sorry things aren't going well. It does sound like RAD to me as well, with possibly some sensory stuff mixed in. You've got to get some help for her and help for you. You must be under an enormous amount of stress.

I'm a dog person and said I wouldn't have a problem with a dog at McDonald's, but I do have a problem with this. That's rude. You don't bring a dog to someone's house without asking first, and then if the host or hostess is gracious enough to allow the dog, you do not get a say in where the dog stays. I may refer to my dogs as my babies and love them to pieces, but they are not children. Even if they were, there are times and places where children aren't appropriate either. The girl should have had some manners.

I made rag quilts for both kids and 5 Disney princess dresses for DD. I'm currently working on modifying a pattern to make the Little Mermaid.

This is a good idea, but please be careful you don't fall into the same trap we did. I didn't used to handle any of the bills -- DH did it all and kept me shielded from our budget (or lack thereof). He kept telling me we could afford all these home improvements because this card had no interest and that card had no interest, and it was all good. When we finally started using budgeting software last year (YNAB) and started working together, I saw how much those interest free credit card payments added up to -- a lot! Yes, we paid them off in time so we didn't have to pay interest, but we couldn't do anything else. The payments for all the various cards ate into all of our excess money each month. It's very tempting to get everything done at once and have that instant gratification, but be careful it's not too much of a strain financially. It was for us and it's been a very difficult, stressful year digging ourselves out of that hole so we wouldn't be slammed with CC interest. As Wendy said, carefully consider if you can EASILY pay off these cards within the free period. If it's going to be a struggle, don't do it, or limit yourself to maybe one card.

I read through about half of this to see if you would answer the question in my head (what kind of home repairs?) and you did. If you're talking about bathroom and kitchen remodels, you're talking about a LOT of money, even if you do the work yourself. Trust me -- we've been living in our almost-finished fixer-upper since 2000. Pay off the debt -- especially the card that's over 20% interest. Hopefully you'll be able to do that within 6 or 7 months. After that estimate how much you'll need for renovations and save up that plus 10% before you get started. I know it's hard to live in an ugly house, but the stress of owing a ton of money can be worse. We spent the last year digging ourselves out of that seemingly-endless cycle. Now we're saving the full amount plus extra to cover any overages before we begin any new home improvement projects.

ILs have been asking to take our kids away for 2 weeks since DS was 2. I held out until this past year, and then compromised at 10 days instead of 2 weeks. They were almost 8 and 9 at the time. 10 days was too long, so if they want to take them this year, I'm holding firm at 1 week. Personally, I think 5 is too young. My mom started taking them at 5 for 4 days at a time, one state away, but I trust her. She is better at reading and listening to the kids and said as much as she'd like to take them for a week, she feels it's too much for them DD starts getting homesick and weepy.

Cons are that people could copy your pictures and use them. Also, your kids might be embarrassed by your blog when they're older, but I feel if that happens, I can always take it down or delete specific posts. I think pictures add a lot to blogs. They make them more visually appealing and I want to see the people I'm reading about.

I voted no for all, but technically DS has a game system (he has a Nintendo DS, but where it's hand-held I wasn't sure if you were counting those). He also has a Nook tablet, which is like a computer. We do confiscate his Nook after he's done reading at night because we've had too many incidents of him sneaking up and using it all night. The best one happened recently when he e-mailed DH, "Papa, you forgot to take my Nook," and then e-mailed me, "Mama, I'm thirsty. Can you bring me up some water?" Little stinker! I won't do TVs in their room. I grew up with one and cannot sleep without a TV now. I'm afraid the same thing would happen to them. I'm not anti-TV. We have 3 in the house and as long as school is done, I don't limit screen time too much. I don't want them in their rooms because I can see them becoming a problem. DS has already proven he has very little impulse control when it comes to having electronics at night so I know it will be a battle, and I don't want to deal with it.

Gymnastics.

It wouldn't bother me, but I love dogs. It's no more disgusting to have a dog at McDonalds than it is to have one in my kitchen (and they're always in my kitchen when I am).

Okay....then why is it a good thing that Russia will no longer allow international adoptions if they're not participating in child trafficking? That makes no sense, unless I'm misunderstanding what you're saying.

I have never heard of child-stealing in Russia. There is a surplus of children. Russia has this whole national pride thing going where they don't like to adopt out their healthiest infants so often doctors have to lie on the forms just to give these otherwise healthy kids a chance because Russians don't want to adopt them -- healthy or otherwise. Our son supposedly had a heart condition that didn't exist. By "didn't exist" I mean that the type of heart condition they said he had was a made-up term --not a real diagnosis. There is a lot of money changing hands in Russia with adoptions, but there is a lot of money changing hands in Russia for everything. The entire system is corrupt and always has been. DH's friend is a business owner there. It is virtually impossible to live to the letter of the law in that country. You have to break the law to survive. It's hard to understand by American standards, and I imagine it's equally difficult to understand it by Australian standards, but that's truly the way it is over there. Banning international adoptions is in no way going to fix their system. It's going to prevent children from finding homes, and more likely than not, these children are going to grow up to be criminals or victims of crime. There is a greater chance of the children left in Russian orphanages growing up and being trafficked in prostitution rings than there are of the children being adopted out in some shady way.

My son bonded with us just fine. DD's best friend was adopted at age 2 from the American foster care system. She has RAD. It is an ongoing struggle for her to bond with her parents. RAD can happen anywhere. Another friend raised her niece for several years who also had RAD -- and she was never in the system, but had a very neglectful mother. I'm glad Russia didn't "save me the trouble" of adopting my son. How empty my life would be!

The story about your sons really touched me. It's so similar to that of my son with the bottle feedings. He was still on a bottle when we adopted him at 6 months, and he LOVED his bottle. He would slurp it down, and tears would be rolling down his cheeks the whole time. I wish we'd hear more about the good stories. I wish the Russian government would hear more about the good stories too.

Also, as far as sticking it to the families in the pipelines, we just got word from our agency (they still send us updates) and they said that because of whatever adoption agreement was signed prior to this, Russia had promised in that one that if they ever did close adoptions with the US that the families already in process would be grandfathered in. It's still dicey whether or not that will actually happen, but I hope for the sake of those kids and families that it does.

You are absolutely right. My son's orphanage was actually pretty nice. The staff was overworked, but it was obvious they loved those babies -- there just weren't enough staff members to go around. They all gathered in the room to say good-bye to our son when we came from court to pick him up, and many were crying. I will say that even though the people were wonderful and the facilities had been updated, more money needs to be allotted for food. I fed DS the same diet he was used to in Russia (that's what they told me to do and I was a brand-new mom with no other babies) and I learned when I brought him to his check-up the day after we brought him home to the US that what we were feeding him was a "starvation diet." Talk about the mom guilt! I could have been feeding him so much better in those 10 days, but I didn't know :( At 6 months old he only weighed 12 lbs. He was up to 15 lbs 2 weeks after that initial appointment.