Patience, Grasshopper...

It has been 23 days since we last saw Vitalik and Lera.  For about the last 2 weeks, we have been expecting that any day we will hear our court date and set in motion the flurry of activity that will be required to quickly purchase tickets, prepare for my sister and niece to move back into our house, and head to Ukraine for our adoption proceedings.  I have joked that throughout the entire adoption process, I keep hearing Tom Petty singing in my head...  The Waiting is the Hardest Part... at least, we certainly hope that it is!

Late last week, we learned that there has been another document that our handler in Ukraine has been waiting for before he can request our court date.  We had previously thought all papers were in, so this must have been a request from the court for something additional.  We don't understand exactly what this is, but we trust that he knows what he is doing and is taking care of it.  It seems that he expects to receive this document today and will be able to call and get our court date.  So again this Monday morning, we wake up thinking, "We REALLY expect to hear our court date today or tomorrow."  

Throughout this process, we have been asking for prayers for sanity, and all-in-all I think we are managing pretty well.  I recently heard someone say that adoption is not for wimps!  It's just stressful, no matter how you slice it, and on some level, we won't be able to really exhale until all five of our children are under one roof.  Still, we are doing our best to experience this part of our journey as a great lesson in patience.  We are TRYING to just enjoy the blessings of each day while we wait, trusting that whenever our court date finally comes, the timing will be exactly as it is supposed to be.

We were recently asked whether this is more or less difficult than a biological pregnancy.  It is a really interesting question, and I am sure that anyone who has been through both processes will have their own opinions.  For Eugene, this is unquestionably more difficult!  I (who never loved being pregnant) think the processes are both difficult (and rich and beautiful) just in different ways. 

Our adoption timeline of maybe 7-8 months seems remarkably short compared with pregnancy, and certainly compared with many adoption timelines that many people experience.  As such, it sometimes feels a little silly feeling so impatient.  Still, we have realized that the timeline is a little different when waiting to adopt teenagers who totally understand what is going on, and who are growing up on the other side of the world while we wait.  In some ways, we already grieve the years of their childhoods that we have missed, and that they have missed having a family.  Recently, something made me have the poignant realization that I will never be able to pick these kids up and swing them around in a circle or hold them upside-down by their ankles and tickle their tummies.  I mean, I know this is obvious, but realizing that those opportunities have already been missed just made me grieve a little bit.  Of course, the important thing is that, beginning very soon, we WILL be there to love and support them for the rest of our lives, and I know it is going to be awesome!  I guess my point is that every day counts, and the sooner we get to begin being their parents, the happier we will be.

What's in a Name?

Well, yesterday was our last day to visit the orphanage before we return in a few weeks for our court date.  We visited as usual, except that this time we were in Lera's classroom instead of Vitalik's.



The first few days, Lera was holding our hands and they would both cheerfully interact with us as we walked down the stairs to leave after each visit... and now THIS!  I think that they will make GREAT American teenagers!!  I have to laugh at my love-sick self, because even from this angle, I find them both just breath-takingly gorgeous!  

 I was kind of nervous the whole time knowing that at the end of the visit, we would be telling the kids what "new names" we have selected for them.  It is just such an odd thing to be telling a teenager what their new name will be.  Anyone who has had the privilege of naming a child knows the special energy that goes into this exercise.  It is almost sacred.  But of course, most of us name our children when they are babies, and we don't have to worry what our children will think of the names we have carefully selected for them. 

Thankfully, our translator was here for this visit, so with his help, we told the kids about their names.  Before we began, they started having a discussion with the translator, and he cheerfully talked back and forth with them for several sentences while Eugene and I stood listening, lost as usual.  Then he smiled cunningly and explained, "They asked, 'Can we keep at least part of our names?' and I teased them, saying, 'Oh, you need to have veryAmerican names.' ..."   ACK - don't tease them!  And so we began.

I put my hand on each of their heads respectively and said, "Vitalik" and "Lera"... "Good Names" ... so that they wouldn't have to worry about that part any more.  And then with the translator's help, I told each of them the rest of the story.

LERA ANNE
Lera First... I think that you know that my mother's name is Laura.  My grandmother was named Anne; she was very special.  All of my life, I thought that I would have a daughter named "Laura Anne" ... but we never had a "Laura Anne" ... and now, God has given us "Lera Anne" instead ... this is even better.  She offered to be Larua, and we said, "no, Lera is a beautiful name.  We love your name."  The translator then explained to her that there are a couple of specific sounds that don't translate exactly into English.  So with the best English translation, Lera will rhyme with "Sarah" ... which will be a little different than the Russian pronunciation than she is used to, but she seemed pleased. 

VITALIY MICHAEL
Now for Vitaliy (Vitalik is actually a nickname for Vitaliy).
I have been researching your name - Vitaliy.  It comes from the Latin word, "Vitalis" meaning, "Full of Life."  There could be no better name for you, because you are definitely full of life!  There is a light that shines in you.  You are very special.  (In English, we have several words which originate from the same Latin root - Vitamin, Vital, and best of all, Vitality!)   Michael is Eugene's middle name also.  It is common for the oldest son to share a part of the father's name.  We did not do this with Spencer, because it just did not feel right to us.  Now we understand that Spencer was not to be our oldest son.  It is very right for you to have this name.  Vitalik responded as he often does, saying in English, "I understand." (note for inquiring minds:  Vitalik is pronounced with short i sounds and the a says ahhh.  so it's vi-TAHL-ik)

Then I said, "okay?  good?"  and they both replied in the affirmative.
I also gave them both little notes with their new names written in Russian and English in both printing and cursive, so that they can practice writing them.  It was kind of serious, and then Lera burst out laughing saying awkwardly over and over, "Lera EHNN!"  with the "anne" sounding kind of like an injured animal!  The name sounds hillarious for a girl who is accustomed to Russian female names with many syllables and generally ending in an elegant "a" sound.  It made me laugh too, which was kind of a relief.

We posed for a few pictures and then said goodbye.  The mood was kind of serious, but none of us cried, which I was glad of.  We will be back in a few weeks afterall.  Honestly, I'm not sure which is harder for them... that we are leaving now or that they will soon be leaving for America.  It is definitely what they want and they are excited about it.  Still, it will not be easy for them at all.  Their whole life has been here, and in many ways it's been a good life.  Their teachers, their counselors, their friends have been their family... and then, of course, they will have to learn a new language and a new culture.  Leaving with us will ultimately be a great blessing, but it will come at a great cost to them.  They are both very brave, and very resilliant, and they will have a loving family and community to help them get through the pains of transition.

In the car, I felt really relieved to have those steps behind us.  Whew!  We took the 15-hr train back and really enjoyed a good night's sleep in our car.  Now we are in our Kyiv apartment and will leave tomorrow  before the sun comes up.  We will return home late Sunday night. 

Thankfully, it seems that all has gone very well with the snafu (parental right termination doc correction) that delayed our process.  Our best guess is that we will be home for 2 weeks and will then return for court.

Another Day, Another Set-Back

Aye Aye Aye!! 
It has been funny... well maybe not funny, but it has been something!  There has literally been a challenge or crisis of one sort every day since we arrived, and honestly, since before that!  I've been leaving most of them out of the blog, because, well, it's more fun to write about the good stuff.  But, with each of these, the problem seemed really big and very upsetting at first, and then by the next day, we were pretty much over it.  If I went back and listed them now, many of them would just seem plain silly, so I won't even strain my brain to remember them.

Yesterday's setback was kind of a big one.  We learned that it may take longer than we had hoped to correct the mistakes in the parental rights revocation from many years ago (finding that mistake had been the previous day's bad news).  Our facilitator told us that at this point, our court date is likely to be approximately 3-4 weeks from now.  Keeping in mind that we had hoped to have our court date and fly home about one week from now, this is a real extention to the timeline.  As such, we have decided to begin the trip home tomorrow night (Leaving Simferopol Friday at 8am and arriving at RDU on Sunday or Monday night... it's a long and complicated trip! 

At first I was really sad because I definitely want to spend more time with Vitalik and Lera!  Thinking of leaving made me want to cry!  Now that we've had time to re-think the plan, we are convinced that this setback has led to a far-better overall plan, and we are feeling good about it.  The new plan is complicated, difficult, and expensive, but at this point, what the heck! ;-)

As I said, we will go ahead and travel home this weekend, leaving after our visit with the kids tomorrow.  We expect to be at home for 2-3 weeks before returning for our court date.  The court-date trip will be "quick" - staying in region only a couple of days... which, with travel time, will make that trip about a week.  Then back home for another week during the 10-day waiting period.  Then finally, (this is the good part) we have decided that we will BOTH come back for the trip to bring the kids home.  We will pick them up from the orphanage, bring them to our apartment in Ukraine, and run around together chasing papers for 10 days or so before coming home.  Our guess is that we will finally arrive home sometime in March, though exactly when is sketchy. 

I have talked this plan over with everyone at home, and everyone seems to like it.  Again, having an amazing extended family and supportive community is a major factor in equipping us for this fantastic adventure.

We spent another 2 hours at the orphanage without a translator today and had a great time.  I am actually coming to understand the crazy Ukrainian cardgame called, "The Fool"... mainly thanks to a good explanation that Eugene found online.  A highlight today was that our driver wasn't busy, so he agreed to come up with us to Vitalik's classroom and play cards with us.  He stayed for at least half an hour - at first a group of 4, and eventually, just Vitalik and the driver (a very jovial Ukrainian man of maybe 50 years old).  They were the two really competitive ones, and were both really fast at this game, so it was really fun to study their technique while they played several games mano-y-mano.  I am not sure which of them enjoyed it more, but they both seemed to be having a great time!  Later, Vitalik and I played several games 1:1 and he said "You understand good!" :o)  I wouldn't go that far, but definitely making progress!!

Lera is learning to charm her father.  At the end of the visit, he had already put away the i-touch and she wanted to use it to watch a movie while we waited for the driver to return.  He tried to say no, but she kept asking and eventually, he really put his foot down, saying, "Skazee puzhalsta." (say please), and then after she sweetly complied, he gave in.  Yeah, I think she's gonna have her way around our house! ;-)

At the end of our visit, with the help of the driver and the orphanage social worker, we let the kids know that tomorrow will be our last visit for this trip, and that we will be back in about 4 weeks or so.  They both looked like they will be a little sorry for this particular party to end, and I could not agree more. 

More of the Same

What a group of goof-offs!

Ok, a little better... Lera's rapper pose I guess!

Vitalik is very silly!

More of the same, plus we got to meet Vitalik's teacher who seems to love him, even though she admitted that he does talk too much sometimes. :o)

A Great Date!

We had a GREAT day today.  First, we left at 7am and chased papers for a few hours.  We got home about 10am and grabbed a couple of French pasteries for a snack.  We rested at the apartment until about 1pm and then went to visit at the orphanage.  Our facilitator gave us the option of visiting while he did some work that we didn't have to be there for (4 hours!) or waiting until after those meetings and visiting late in the evening.  We chose option A and were dropped at the orphanage to fend for ourselves from about 1:30 until 6pm!  YIKES! 



I was stumped about the middle section, but finally figured out this sweet note from Lera... "My family about hundred SUPER."  Could she possibly be any sweeter!?  :o)

 Before leaving the apartment, I had butterflies in my stomach.  Knowing that we had four hours with no translator made me nervous.  It's amazing how much this feels like dating someone you REALLY like!  Eugene reminded me that I am turning 40 this summer, and should be old enough to know that the secret is to just relax and be yourself.  Deep breaths!

In short, we had an awesome day of visiting.  We made great progress in learning how to communicate, and it is not scary anymore.  It's even pretty fun.  Classes had ended so, at Vitalik's prompting, we all went to his classroom - the four of us, plus several droogs (friends).   Over the course of a few hours, we had lots of fun with many many kids coming and going.  Any time that one of Eugene's gadgets is being used for a game or photos, literally, as many kids as can crowd around the screen do so.  At one point, we had maybe 8 kids watching Lera play "Angry Birds" on the IPad, and on the other side of the room, Vitalik and 3 others watching a movie clip on the iTouch - this was so funny.  Eugene managed to find in his little bag of tricks, 2 sets of earphones (each kid got one ear piece) AND a splitter... so 4 ears = 4 kids watching and listening... on a screen the size of a cel phone!

Both Lera and Vitalik and various friends tried hard to teach me a crazy card game called "fool" that makes no sense at all as far as I can tell (Ya ne ponemayou! - I don't understand!)  All of the kids were impressed with my shuffling abilities, so at least I had that going for me. ;-)  At the end of our visit, we asked our facilitator about the game, and he quickly said, "Oh, you will not understand it... American people can not understand that game.  I can try to explain it to you but I have never had an American family that could learn it."  Eugene is online now trying to figure it out!  Just in case, Vitalik said that tomorrow he will bring his Uno cards... we KNOW how that game is played! ;-)

I think the highlight of the day for me may have been Vitalik saying, "You speak Russian good!"  Of course, nothing could be further from the truth, but I was thrilled! :o)  I told him, "Thank you.  You speak English good." (which, while gramatically lacking, is very true!) ;-)  While we waited in the lobby for our facilitator to return, Lera spent a bit of time lost in the H.S. Musical video via the iTouch and Vitalik and I compared flexibility tricks.  Turns out we can both do the splits.  


This is a poster that Vitalik and his classmate did about saying no to drugs and alcohol and cigarettes.  He did the boy half and she did the girl half.  He pointed to the picture and said, in English, "I do, in my classroom...You like?"  I said, "It's Awesome!" and he said, "Thank you."

I should mention that reports from home are glowing as well.  Words cannot express our thankfulness at how our family and friends are pulling together and not just getting by, but having a really special time together while we are here getting to know our newest kids and letting them get to know us. 

By the way, we had a major setback with our adoption today - not a show-stopper (thank you, God!), but it will add at least a week to the process.  It turns out when the parental rights were terminated years ago, there were mistakes in the document and so our facilitator spent all day working on having it redone.  It is in the works but may add TWO WEEKS to the process.  We will know more in a couple of days and decide then what to do.  If it delays our court date by a ton of time, we will go home and return for court.  However, after some discussions, we realized that going home takes about 40 hours one way (train and plane).  When you add in a day or so of buffer on the return trip to ensure that we wouldn't miss our court date due to a delayed flight, it is looking likely that we will stay and visit and play.  We will figure it out around the end of this week.

It's so amazing though because we don't even care!  I mean of course we care, but we are on cloud nine after a great day of visiting... we know it will all be okay - God will handle it!

Coming home tonight felt so much like coming home after a super date in the early stages of the romance that will change your life forever.  Eugene and I were exhausted and happy and just reliving the whole thing.  I even got to call my sister and give her the glowy debrief, telling her every detail of the day that I could remember, while Eugene listened and chimed in.  We are having the exhillerating privilege of falling in love with our newest kids.  What a great blessing to be living through this miracle!

A Nice Day, but a Terrible Dinner!

Another nice day.  Looked at pictures, played and visited.  Vitalik is WEARING Eugene out!  That kid will play sports all day and not run out of energy!  This adoption may turn out to be a good get-in-shape plan for Eugene!  We won't be visiting them tomorrow - chasing papers all day so maybe Eugene's old tired body can get a rest. :o)

Last night's dinner was a bit of an adventure.  There are a lot of types of pasta here any varieties of frozen tortalini.  We buy the frozen stuff not really knowing what will be in the middle of the pasta since we can't read the lables.  The real kicker is that anything we consider normal pasta sauce is very hard to find.  Yesterday we brought home some sauce that looked promising.  Our goal was to have tortalini (sp?) and red sauce plus canned corn.  Well, we are not good boyscouts and don't really know how to safely use the very basic handheld can opener tool that is provided here.  As Eugene man-handled the can of corn, we both were quite nervous that he might slice off a finger or something and we both decided that we are finished with canned goods for this trip unless they have the easy-pop top. :o)  Still, we managed to get the corn out without a major injury.  We boiled the mystery pasta, and the next challenge was opening the jar of sauce.  The lid was one we are totally unfamiliar with and had no idea how to open it.  When Eugene finally pried it open, it (of course) splattered all over the floor and chair, but we persevered.  Next came the big (though not totally unexpected) problem.  This was a jar of SALSA!  ARGH!  We both laughed and decided that pasta goes with corn, sort of, so we poured it all together for a scrumptious meal... well, not so much... but we ate it and laughed till we cried and decided we're finished with pasta sauce too.  Thankfully, our facilitator went to the market with us today and helped me choose some italian pasta sauce, so now we are good to go for next time. :o)  As for tonight, we bought some precooked chicken and enjoyed it with some left-over bread.  Not necessarily a well-balanced meal, but it was easy! :o)

MMM MMM!  There are left-overs in the fridge, but we're gonna have to be pretty hungry to eat them!

This is funny!  I just tried to check my spelling on this post - which I usually don't do, but it was irritating me that I didn't know how to spell tortalini.  Anyway, the spell checker in this region is obviously in Russian (duh!), and it highlighted every word.  Oh well! :o)

A Good Day

Today was a really good day.  It was Saturday, so there was not much going on.  We visited the orphanage from about 10:30-12:30am.  It was a sunny and not-so-cold day, so we played outside for the entire time we were there.  Our handler left us there alone with the kids for almost the entire time.  Amazingly, it wasn't all that hard to communicate using our few russian words and their few english words plus good old hand motions.  It helped a lot being outdoors.  We gave them some candy, which they shared with us and many friends.  They were happy to show us some of the grounds.  Vitalik pointed out some landscaping he had helped with, and showed us an old abandoned castle on the grounds.  Lera and I climbed on monkey bars and slid down firemen's poles.  Eugene and Vitalik played a game of pick-up basketball with several other kids, and when Eugene tried to show Vitalik the "porper shooting form," telling him, "practice," Vitalik returned the favor, showing Eugene how to make a two-handed throw-up and saying, "practice."  :o)   Lera and I spent a lot of time with her friends, eating twizzlers, looking at pictures and listening to music on Eugene's IPad.  It was a good day, and we are expecting to go back again tomorrow for more fun. :o)