Our 2nd & 3rd visits

Our 2nd visit with the kids went pretty well.  We had the initial crying with them when they came into the room but after a few short minutes they were fine.  It was raining out so going outside was not an option & we had to make due inside.  Angelina warmed up to Dennis very well and Anthony warmed up to me.  Such a change from our first meetings back in November.  She seemed like she was going to be the harder of the two yet she has warmed up to us very well.  Dennis was saying Momma and point to me, Poppa and point to himself and then point to her and say Angelina and she got that really quickly.  Anthony was also calling us by name when prompted.  Angelina was giving kisses and was very playful with Dennis and Anthony was rather shy.  He is cautious with Dennis, always peeking out of the corner of his eye watching what is going on and then looks down quickly when Dennis makes eye contact with him.  It is kind of adorable!

Our 3rd visit on Saturday morning we needed to find the kids outside with there group and when we did and the caregivers told them we were here they both smiled and ran to us together - I didn't have the camera ready for that and missed a magical moment.  They went with us pretty easily with Anthony still being very cautious.  I went to pick him up and he cried.............Angelina actually motions for Poppa to pick her up - she is already working him to be a daddy's girl.  We brought bubbles with us and they both enjoyed them - again Angelina picked it up quickly and of course wanted to hold the bottle and make bubbles with Poppa.  Anthony was his cautious self but got the idea and was having fun with us as well - still peeking out to check out what Poppa was doing but wanted nothing to do with really going near him - he will go near Poppa to give him the ball or get a cookie but with hesitation.  Angelina was all about hugs to Poppa and having him carry her around.  Anthony was happy to hold my hand and walk.  As we walked around at certain times we would run into the caregivers walking with other children & both Angelina and Anthony were saying go away we are with Momma & Poppa (this being translated to us by our coordinator) and it was quite funny especially Anthony he would wave his hand and speak saying something and then say Momma.  Angelina again was all about Poppa and actually was reluctant to walk with me or let me hold her or let me play with her - she would give me the ball but still was really only interested in her Poppa.  We did bubbles again and after they both spilled the bubbles I started giving Anthony twigs and pebbles to fill his bottle, Angelina quickly wanted in on the action and of course neither would let the bottles go and walked shaking them to make noise.  Now the very interesting part of our visit today was when it was time for us to bring them inside, Anthony walked right to the door and motioned for me to let him put his bottle in our bag.( I was surprised by this thinking he'd want to keep it).  Angelina was having a meltdown as she did not want to go inside.  Anthony came back out the door and spoke to his sister which translated to her to not cry we are going inside now.........she was not happy and continued to cry all the way up to her room, I feel sorry for ever tries to take that bottle from her!  My how  things have changed.  At first it was crying when they saw us and now crying for us not to leave................... PROGRESS!!!

So some things to note.  The orphanage is almost identical to the one in Kaz.  The building itself is the exact same layout and the funny thing about that is the twins group's room is exactly the same room that Nicholas' group was in both buildings.  The orphanage is well kept and clean.  No strong food smells or anything like in Kaz but the grounds outside are not well kept like in Kaz.  The weeds are so overgrown and almost as tall as the kids themselves and although they have more kid stuff outside then Kaz but again everything is overgrown with weeds.

We have seen many other kids and they are adorable..................yesterday when we dropped them off after our visit the little ones were all in undershirts and underwear with socks and sandals - summer garb.  The condition of the undergarments were so old....it was heartbreaking to me and it makes me sad that this is all that these children have. 

The restaurant in the hotel has an English menu - thank goodness although we don't need to worry about that for breakfast - breakfast is included with the room and you don't get to pick what you want to eat they bring it over the breajfast.  Yesterdays was good - hot porridge with bread and salami and a small pancake with sour cream and it was very tasty.  Today it was porridge again, salami and bread and 2 sunny side up eggs with what looked like a hot dog but I'm sure it was some type of sausage.  So I am eating pretty light in the morning. Dinner last night was good - I had a chicken dish with french fries but for an appetizer I ordered calamari and it was tasty - I'm sure that will be the staple for me at dinner.  Funny they have no pasta or pizza on the menu (in Kaz I ate pizza most every night).  I'm thinking we will at least one night venture out to eat but it doesn't seem to be much around restaurant wise and not having anyone with us makes us a little less reluctant to travel around.  The coordinator with us everyday really doesn't understand English very well and when we do ask her things most of the time she doesn't respond so we are feeling a bit lost.  The main person who we feel should be here with us is not arriving until Thursday morning - the day of court so I'm guessing our court prep is not going to be very intense since we won't have much time for prepping beforehand.

Here are some photos from our first visit

We have arrived!

We left Nicholas on Wednesday morning with Aunt Chris and Uncle Nick.  Nicholas was excited to start his vacation as he referred to it while driving to their house - School spun it as a vacation since he won't be back for a while and that seemed to make him happy.  When he woke up he didn't want to eat breakfast at home but wanted to eat at Aunt Chris' house. We are sure he will be fine and Aunt Chris, Uncle Nick and David & Michelle have lots of fun activities planned so eh will be kept busy and on the go.

Our travels went as expected..................long, tiring and - long in case you missed it - it is a tough trip - 10 hour flight.........................then we went on to do our medicals in Moscow which  was the first stop on Thursday. What a racket that whole set up is but we got them done so onward to sit at the train station for 7 hours - we rented the room again which was so worth it otherwise you are just sitting and waiting - this way we could rest (I napped for about an hour) we ate and then the train was at 10:00.  We were EXHAUSTED and as soon as we got settled in our little car we went to sleep.....................waking up every few hours but at least we slept.  Train arrived and we were met by our coordinator and driver and off to a different hotel from the one we stayed at the last trip, they changed hotels due the hot weather - this one is smaller and our first room was going to be on the 5th floor (no elevator) so we got that changed to the 2nd floor,  first room had no AC so had to change rooms again which was fine.

We headed out to the orphanage prepared with lighted toys, balloons, balls, kid toy phones, beach ball and stopped at a store for some sweets.  We were prepared and expected the worse and of course the kids came into the room and although Angelina cried she sat right on my lap and Anthony plopped down on my lap as well (to be near his sister) and they both cried - it was decided we would bring them outside even though the weather is dreary they thought that would be best.  Out we went - Dennis with Angelina and I with Anthony.  Dennis and Angelina did GREAT - yeah he was with her and no crying or screaming & they were doing well from what I could see and hear or not hear.  Anthony was a challenge,  he cried, screamed and only wanted to run away back inside and not wanting anything to do with me............................finally I got him to go on one of those kid merry go round type things and he stopped crying.............actually at times he looked like he might dose off but he wasn't crying and wasn't running away so it was progress.  We walked around and met up with Dennis and Angelina who were doing great - he had her calling him Poppa and calling herself Angelina and they were playing together so we tried to get all four of us to play and it went nicely.........he would not go near Dennis but we all held hands Dennis, Angelina, me and Anthony so we have progress going on.  Our visit was over and everyone seemed very happy with our interactions and smiles were abound with our coordinator, the doctor and the kids who blew us kisses and waved when they went inside.

PROGRESS indeed!!!  We are relieved.......................................we will visit with them again at 4:15 this evening and do the same everyday.

DND

We do have a court date!!!

We have our court date for July 26........................we were a bit disappointed on how long we need to be in Russia before court only because we are not bringing Nicholas with us and we did not think we would be leaving him for so long.

We leave on Wednesday July 18th arrive in Moscow on July  19th.  Do our physicals and then go on an overnight 10 hour train ride to our region.  We will visit with the kiddies Friday thru Wednesday (exception might be Sunday as I'm not sure if we can visit on Sunday).  We have court on Thursday and we are expecting a very long grueling grilling court date at which time we get final approval to adopt our children.  We head back out on the night of the 26th taking that 10 hour train back to Moscow and then leave Moscow on Friday around 2:00 in the afternoon arriving to NY on Friday at 5:00.

Nicholas will be staying with Dennis' sisters family who are thrilled to have him for a long sleepover (that is how we are spinning it to the little man).  We will leave Nicholas on Wednesday morning and this will be like summer sleep away camp as he will not be in school until we get home. Nicholas is happy and we have been prepping him about his big sleepover and since he is a easy going kid I don't expect he will be wondering about how many days we are gone and think (hope & pray) he will like all the fun free time & attention he will have with Aunt Chris, Uncle Nick and cousins Michelle and David and the fun activities that he will be doing with them.

We are excited court is finally here, nervous court is finally here, anxious that court is finally here and on edge that court is finally here.  It's a very big mixed bag of emotions but we are ready and we will do it!!

We can't wait for this part to finally come to and end...............we have had over 8 months of waiting and waiting for court and although it has been quite challenging dealing with this judge and what she has been requesting of us (she hasn't YET asked for a kidney but it is still possible!!).  We are ready, willing and able to get approval granted on our adoption and begin finally living our lives with our 3 littles all together as a family!!

Prayers &  positive thoughts, good wishes and anything thing else you can think of to get us through this next part is all we are asking for!!

DND

The update we received is that our Judge scheduled a pre court hearing....yep a pre court hearing on June 27 and Dennis & I do not need to be in attendance.

At first we were like what, why, WTF? We were told pre court hearings are common in some regions and apparently now in our region with our new judge.  It just keeps on getting better and better!!

The MOE, Director from  the orphanage, our in country coordinator a few other folks are to be in attendance to review our file.

Our only thought is that they scheduled this hearing 3 weeks out which means when the judge schedules our  court date it will be at least 3 weeks out.........................that is our hope, that is what we are praying for.............................we do need positive thoughts and prayers right now so that our Judge grants us a court date on the 27th.

DND

So while we have been waiting

I had decided back in November that I would not rush to complete the twins’ room - I'd take my time so that it would help pass the time until they came home.......that theory worked until about mid March when we pretty much completed everything that we needed to do to accommodate our growing family.

Since our third bedroom upstairs was our office we moved our office downstairs but our third bedroom is the smallest bedroom. I want to keep Angelina and Anthony together - not separate them in different bedrooms when they first came home - Nicholas room was set up from the beginning to accommodate a brother if we were to have a boy (or for sleepovers) if we had a girl. Since my plan is to not separate them yet we needed to work with a very small bedroom to keep them together.......the bedroom is so small I couldn't fit two twin beds in the room and didn't want to over power the room with bunk beds like Nicholas' because it is so small & this room will end up being Angelina's room and I picture a totally girly room (not sure what that will entail exactly) but in the meantime we needed to do toddler beds.......of course since they are boy and girl I decided to keep it multi gender (is that such a thing??) as opposed to gender generic.

Anyway it is hard to see from the photos but Anthony's bed is navy blue - his bed linens are all light blue - again I'm glad I didn't decide to actually make the beds up as it would have been a long time before they end up actually sleeping in their beds - anyway Angelina's bed is pink along with pink linens. Since the room is so small we needed to go with a light color so since green - light green has always been my very favorite color we went with very light soft green paint and the carpet is beige with very gentle specks of colors. I also didn't want to overwhelm, or over stimulate the kids with an over the top theme so went with a small cuddly type stuffed animal decor -bears, rabbits, etc. I again went reserved just to keep it light and airy not too much too soon. We also plan to put up some white wall shelves over the tall dresser and some shelves either over each of their beds or on each side of their beds......I guess we should getting working on that soon in hopes that they are coming home before long.


This is Nick's room - which will end up being both Nick's & Anthonys bedroom - Nick's animals will need to find a new place to hang!!

The small animals on each bed were added by Nicholas as he wanted to help decorate his brother & sisters bedroom....he is an amazing little boy!!

Small closet but it will work short term

Also since we now have the room downstairs we decided to add a playroom to the mix and this is where we started

During this time I have also started picking up clothes every now and again for the littles....but it has been a challenge since I'm not 100% sure on sizes - I am pretty much am starting with 3T but on some things I'm moving to 4T's only because it is so hard to guage from pictures?!

Now this makes me happy focusing on when they come home!


DND

So what are we waiting for.............

We are waiting again..................last time our dossier was returned because the judge wanted some changes - all about a name - Dennis Michael and Dennis yes they could be two different people according to the judge so we needed to re-do about 50 actually it was 52 documents - signed, notarized, county flagged & apostilled She also wanted/needed an extract of NY Notary law....OK my agency get's that done. We then learn our dossier will not make it before Russia has a 10 day holiday - May 1 - 10th GREAT so we wait..........we apply pressure that we want it on the desk on the 10th for the judge. We expected/hoped to hear something shortly thereafter until our Russian coordinator says it might not be until the end of the month - I nearly hit the roof - what@#!!!
We are told they want to give us the worse case but it of course could be sooner........

While we are waiting I had asked for an update on our children & I inquire a few times and finally I get some pictures and a note on how the "boy" (I'm sorry you mean our son) has changed so much - oh yes so what I want to hear, really you think 6 months he's changed.........the pictures are interesting and I will share but they are interesting because yes our son has changed and in the few photos they send he is smiling a very happy little smile and that makes me happy - he is smiling - I'm sure because he is outside in the play area (I won't call it a playground as it is far from anything we know as a playground) but he is smiling and outside playing probably after being inside the entire winter............our daughter however in the pictures has that same pained upset look - why she is outside to? She is not smiling actually she looks to be on the verge of tears and is not happy.............I have mixed emotions - yes I'm happy he looks happy and he is a cutie, sad that he is not home with us - they should be home already....now our daughter who looks pained in every photo- gives me more to ponder......it seems she is unhappy and it in these photos it not because she is frightened to death of us - whew that makes me feel better. I know crazy thoughts but it makes me feel better that it isn't just the thought of us that makes her sad as she was when we met her.............but I'm pained because we are here - we are her parents and can make her happy.....we will make them happy, we can make them happy and we can't because our judge. This judge is hearing her first US adoption case - our case (this detail we just find out and our agency has no relationship with the new judge). Yes this really makes us feel confident - just think the US women putting her son on the plane back to Russia - so the judge is cautious and covering herself by covering all basis before granting us a court date.

We heard back on the 10th (Thursday) late in the day..............and it just gets better and better........we are told one document needs to be re-done.... whew OK frustrating but OK......Friday morning we hear not just one but a few more things are needed...........after two calls with our Agency and then with the Director who said we just need to supply the judge with whatever she wants. Again we kick it into high gear....actually Dennis had to kick it into high gear because I am just to overwhelmed with all of it - it is painful and sad and I just can't believe how this is unfolding.

Dennis is amazing and does get the one document we need - our Agency gets the other one one and then we are stuck because neither of us (my Agency) or us can get one document the judge wants. The judge wants a letter from USCIS stating that they (USCIS) does not seal/sign or place a raised seal on our Favorable Determination to Adopt document - they supply this form to every single family adopting from the US and this is what they supply - But since this is something our judge is requesting & because it is not signed/stamped/embossed with an "official seal" how does she know it is a valid/real document from the USCIS???

Our agency asked us to seek out assistance from our congressman’s office to see if they can pull any strings to get such a letter. They tried and they have not had any success either - quite simply because it doesn't really make sense HOWEVER our congressmen’s office did offer and our agency accepted to have the Congressman provide a letter from him that the document supplied is valid. We are getting these few documents Apostilled on Monday and sending back to Russia on Tuesday. What will the judge say or do - we have no idea.

Dennis & I are lost.............we don't know what to think much less feel other then angry (Dennis) and me I’m just so sad....sad that our kids are lingering in an orphanage for over 2 1/2 years and we are here waiting to bring them home and we can't................Please continue to send prayers, positive thoughts & good vibes so that the judge will be acceptable to everything we have done to accommodate her requests and grants us a court date and a favorable decision to bring our children home.

Here are some of the updated pictures we received........

This one I just love....look at his hand........I so wish she was smiling........

When I showed Nicholas the photos he said - wow they look like they are having fun......the next day when he sees the pictures again on the counter as he is walking by, he sat down with me and said "so how are my brother & sister doing?"......................



And so we wait and wait and will wait for however long it takes.

DND

WAITING WAITING WAITING WAITING WAITING WAITING WAITING WAITING

Waiting and waiting.............................

This is what we have been doing and lately it and it is now pure torture! It has been almost 5 months yes 5 MONTHS since we were in Russia & met our children and it is really really really getting to both of us!

We expected it to take a while as that is the norm with Russian adoptions as of late but really we did not think we would be going on 5 months and we don't even have a court date yet.........so we wait & wait.

I did get an email recently......and it was about understanding that Russia is a differnt culture....I need to be sensistive to other cultures...I need to be more patient and not expect things to happen as fast as things move in the U.S.

This was all put out to me because I'm pretty certain the tone of my emails showed that I am losing my patience and my 'tude came out a bit!

So I have been trying follow the path of silence is golden.............

PANIC is starting to lurk it's ugly head...................


I have been reminding myself of a quote I just recently came across...........

This is only a moment of time in my life and will not last forever.

I'm trying....really really really trying..............


WAIT WAIT WAIT WAIT

Here is a picture that Steve & Tamra had snapped for us back in early December...I keep a copy at our home office desk.....a copy by my kitchen window.....2 copies at my desk at work so either way I turn I see this picture.....................

WAITING

WAITING

We are all just WAITING!