Waving the white flag.

Tad is here, and that is good. Vlora is a very pretty city -I could see this place being huge with tourists someday. It is right on the coast, the water is a pretty blue and very clear. The people are all nice, friendly and helpful. There is a lot of building going on across the street from the beaches (condos, apartments, etc.) and you can imagine that buying property here will likely someday increase tons in value. I could see it being a cruise port someday. For now, it's pretty low-key. There are ferries to Italy and Greece, but we never got to try those out.

We went one day about 10 miles south of the city to have lunch and see some of the coast. That is it for the sightseeing though, too busy with everything else I guess. Tad has been loving the food - lots and lots and lots of seafood. Fish of who knows what kind, calamari, shrimp and I don't even know what all. Not something we eat at home typically as I don't eat any seafood. I think he has had it for almost every meal. Our hotel has one of the best seafood restaurants in town (so they say) - that's also the one that has pasta, so luckily I'm able to eat too. Yesterday we found a restaurant that served grilled steak -or so they said, it was actually a pork chop. We also tried eating a hamburger and french fries once at a fast food restaurant and Tad took one bite and said we're leaving. It was actually about the scariest looking thing and the fries were ice cold! I mean like refrigerated cold. Nasty. We found a pizza place that makes pizza with slices of salami - it's pretty good.

I have tons and tons of pictures from the orphanage today - I will post them later. They are of all the kids on Will's floor. Some of them are hard to get pictures of as they don't like them, others love having their pictures taken. If anyone gets referred a child from Vlora I'll have lots of pictures to send to them. I took a bunch of videos too. We brought a slinky and some bubbles there today which all the kids seemed to like.

Yesterday when we came there were about 4 kids left -actually the same 4 that are pretty much always separate from the larger group - Will, Jenny, Emi & Hava. The other kids color and stuff in the one room, not these four. So yesterday, as near as I can tell, all the other kids went to a playground somewhere, and as it seems to us, the "problem" kids got left behind. Maybe we are wrong and Will was left as they figured we'd come to see him, although I had told them earlier in the week that I wanted him to go with to the playground so I'm not sure what's up with that.

All the kids got haircuts yesterday -if I hadn't known before which were boys and which were girls (especially as their are no "boys" or "girls" clothes -they all wear the same clothes), I would have thought they were all boys I think. They pretty much all got it cut short. They look cute though.

I guess the other family had their court date yesterday for the little girl they are adopting. I'm assuming it went well, however we haven't seen them since Saturday, which is kind of weird. It's just not that big of a place. Hopefully we will see them again tomorrow.

Well, we have taken a number of videos and had a lot of people (many of which are professionals) review them. Most recently we heard back from our pediatrician at the International Adoption Clinic at the University of MN. He obviously works with adopted children and has seen a number of them from eastern Europe. He has reviewed all the videos and the information that I've relayed to him about what I've seen since being here and his opinion is that he is very concerned as the behavior is very consistent with that of autism, and says that we shouldn't proceed if we feel that we cannot parent a child with autism. He said we need to seriously consider whether or not we feel we have the resources to parent a child that would be an enormous amount of work, be an enormous time commitment and have little positive feedback from the child.

So, that was pretty great to hear. Not. We had been very clear with Bethany from the start that we were looking to adopt a healthy child, and that minor correctable types of needs (eyes, hearing, etc.) were fine. We fully expected that any child raised in an orphanage will have a number of delays. We relied upon the information provided by Bethany that described him as a healthy child, friendly, sociable and that outlined things that he could do (point to body parts, play with toys, play among other children, write with a pencil, etc.) This information was as recent as September and was signed by the doctor that Bethany has on staff in Albania. I even specifically asked our social worker before we left to make sure that no one thought he had any problems other than typical cognitive/developmental delays for any orphanage children.

Bethany does an extremely thorough job of screening prospective parents. We were looked into for pretty much everything you can think of - income, our thoughts, our past history, medical, our families, etc. etc. etc. We specifically chose a large, well-respected company as we wanted to ensure that we had a trustworthy organization to work with. We wanted a company that has a presence in the country we were choosing to adopt from as well, as opposed to one that doesn't - we figured it was one more way to safeguard the whole process.

We worked like crazy over the past year and a half to be able to pay the costs upfront so that when we came home with our son, we'd be able to enjoy life with him, not be saddled with a large debt to pay off. Tad has worked more hours a week in this past year than alot of people work in three, so that we could afford to take the required TWO MONTHS off from work, and again, pay our bills and travel costs up front so as not to come home and be stuck with the bills. I've put all my clients on hold, which will require starting from scratch with them, as of course they can't wait to have appraisals done, they move on to the next available appraiser. The business we've built over the past 4 years will be back to where we were in the beginning. Again, as we told Bethany we were working a ton so that when we got home, we could have normal schedules and spend time together as a family.

To adopt Will would mean that I for sure could not work. He will absolutely require full time care. Additionally, there is no way that one person could handle him and not go completely crazy, so we'd have to hire help. There would of course be tons of therapy/medical expenses. Tad would need to continue to work around the clock to support a family that he would never see. I would never see him, he would never be able to be with Will. He would be bitter that all he does it work, and I would be bitter that all I do is care for our child with little positive feedback (as the doctor said).

Tad's health could not take that sort of work schedule for the next umpteen years. I know his doctors at Mayo would say the same thing. And what if something happened to him? He has always told me that he will need heart surgery again -he won't be able to work after that for who knows how long - how would that work? Then we'd have three people living on no income.

Will needs a family that can accept that he will likely need a lot of help. Maybe someone younger than us would be good -we're 41, what if in 20-25 years he's still very much a child -we'll be nearing retirement, how will we take care of him full-time then? If it takes us 10 years to get used to all the care he needs, we'd be well past the point where we could have other children too.

I don't know, maybe this is all trying to justify it, this has been no easy decision. We are pretty much heartbroken about the whole thing and there is no winning. We either take him, which we know we can't afford physically, mentally, emotionally, or financially, or we leave him, which will be crushing. I don't know how we get over this. Bethany is of course, not accepting any blame or fault, which doesn't help either. Alma, another of the Bethany reps here, actually said that we shouldn't have expected him to be OK from the information that was sent. What???

Bob, one of the houseparents in Tirana, has told us that he doesn't think that Will is OK. The workers at the orphanage think he's not OK too. We've met a lady who works for the Italian equivalent of Bethany who knows all the kids too, and she knows he's not OK. Albana who works with Hope for the World has said she knows he's not OK. The director of the orphanage (Olta) also has said so. So that means that pretty much everyone knows that this poor little boy was not a healthy child. Why Agim & Bob wrote a report saying that he was "normal" is anyone's guess. Who knows who at Bethany knew what. Someone needs to take some responsibility though. It has put us in a situation that I would not wish on anyone. This is the absolute worst. I hope hope hope that no other family ever goes through this -I seriously cannot for the life of me, see how to ever come to terms with this.

Someone from Bethany (Bob, Alma, etc.) calls everyday to ask how we are doing -well, guess what, we're not doing well. What are we supposed to say? And let's think about this -what happens with all the money we have invested in this? Are we just supposed to walk away from that? Are we supposed to trust Bethany again, to start over? And now we have wasted 1 1/2 years on this, we're not getting younger. Can we please catch a break?

While we have been here our dog Griff died too, which is devastating too. We are just not meant to be here I guess. We'll come home to miss our dog, and have a bedroom filled with things for a child we don't have, and then what? Think and wonder and second guess about whether or not we did the right thing forever? This sucks sucks sucks.

Tad had been insisting that he wanted Will seen by a specialist, someone that was trained by American standards (there are some of these pediatricians in Tirana for the Americans living here). He had been asking for a week and no one from Bethany made any calls. Tad told them they had until yesterday (so 9 days since he had starting telling them he wanted it) morning to get it set up. They never called to set anything up until yesterday afternoon, by which time Tad had already told them forget it. At this point we pretty much don't trust anything coming from Bethany. He had asked for a doctor to look at his ears and we finally had one a doctor show up last Friday who said he was healthy physically (which we already knew) but that he wasn't qualified to assess him mentally (again, which we knew). His hearing, by the way, appears to be fine. We've tried tiptoeing and sneaking and whatnot and he always turns to look - he is good at ignoring I guess. His eyes are also much better than I originally thought - it's when he gets really tired that they roll and cross more. Most of the time they are actually pretty good. He is an adorable little boy, very cute and it is going to be gutwrenching to walk out of that orphanage tomorrow after saying goodbye.

We are planning on send care packages of toys and clothes to Bledi (spelling?) at our hotel and have him bring them to Will and the other kids at the orphanage. We are going to have Keti (the lady from the internet that works for the Italian adoption group) who already knows him, keep an eye on him and help him when she can. Ideally we will somehow figure out how to send additional money for his care to her. One of the other caregivers (Antonela) also said that she would be willing to do whatever she can for him. I don't know what else we can do.

We've got our return flights booked for Thursday via Vienna and Chicago. I guess we come home and try to put the pieces back together and hope for the best for Will and for us. Thanks to everyone for all the support before, during and I'm sure after we get home.