We made it!

Both home and through the first 24 hours or so of being a family of 6! LOL

The flights home went really well. The girls did pretty good on the flights, although Emily spent about 3 hours crying on the flight from Frankfurt to Chicago. She was supposed to be resting and had no real desire to do that. She didn't seem to be disturbing any of the other passengers so we pretty much let it go. By the final flight to St Louis, both of the girls were getting pretty loopy. Not too surprising since they had been up for 20 hours!

Waiting at the Kyiv airport
Waiting at the Frankfurt airport

The newest US citizens in our house (check out their cute bows!)



My mom and the boys picked us up at the St Louis airport. We got the girls home and the biggest problem was getting the boys to leave them alone! We fed the girls a small dinner then put them to bed. Bedtime actually went pretty well, all things considered. The past few nights with the girls they had been doing a lot of rocking side to side. We had been hesitant to try to correct this because it is common for children who have been institutionalized to do these types of self-stimulation/self-comfort behaviors, but this didn't seem to be the type of rocking that I had read about and seemed to be more designed to keep them awake. So our first night home, when the girls started rocking, I went in and told them no. When it continued, Danielle was disciplined and then a little later Emily--twice. Not only did the rocking stop, but tonight when they went to bed Danielle did not rock at all and Emily stopped after one verbal reminder. I think my hunch was right that this is not a subconcious behavior. We'll see how it plays out as things go on. I don't want to expect them to change behaviors that they literally cannot, but I also don't want to allow them to continue behaviors that they can change. We're just playing it by ear right now to see what they need.

Today we went to the playground twice and the girls had a really good day. We had a couple of meltdowns but very mild compared to the boys' after we brought them home. I seem to remember that the boys' tantrums increased in intensity after a little while home as they started testing more boundaries and that may be the case with the girls too. All of the kids have been playing together really well which is great.

We'll be staying pretty close to home and not entertaining any visitors for the first month or so home just to help solidify our relationship with the girls, in particular Emily. That girl would gladly go to anyone who would pick her up--not because she's searching for a new mom but because she loves to be held! We're encouraging her to do a lot of walking. Both of the girls have very low muscle tone and need a lot of exercise and play.

Tomorrow I will be calling the pediatrician and hopefully we will be able to get in this week or next to get things started. We've already scheduled Emily's team meeting (end of May) and cleft palate surgery (end of June) and we need to get a jump on Danielle's strabismus (crossed/lazy eye). We don't think her strabismus is too severe but I think it may be giving her problems with her depth perception, which also increases her difficulty with walking. One thing at a time, right? :)

Oh, for Mother's Day one of my presents from Mark was the movie "Cheaper by the Dozen." I asked him if that was a hint... ;)

Clearing up confusion

There have been several people that have asked about the girls' names so I wanted to clarify.

The girls' given Ukrainian names are Bogdana and Ivanna.

The girls have never been called or named Dana and Eve. Dana and Eve were nicknames given to the girls by Reece's Rainbow to protect their privacy.

As we did with the boys, we gave them new first names (Danielle and Emily) and kept their Ukrainian names as their middle names, so we have Danielle Bogdana and Emily Ivanna.

Now, if you really want the nitty-gritty on our family and keeping everybody straight, check this out...

Our boys are alphabetical all around--no matter what name you use...Alexander Dimitri (Dima) and Timothy Evgeniy (Zhenya). Dima is older and comes first alphabetically. He is also blonde versus Zhenya's brunette (again, alphabetical).

Our girls are also alphabetical all around no matter what name you use...Danielle Bogdana (Dana on RR) and Emily Ivanna (Eve on RR). Danielle is older and comes first alphabetically. She is also blonde versus Emily's brunette (again, alphabetical). Not only that, but their diagnoses are also alphabetical--cerebral palsy for Danielle and cleft palate for Emily.

Just trying to make things easy for you all. ;)

Adoption costs for the girls' adoption

We started the process for the girls in September 2008 and brought them home in May 2009. Because we did not need to update many documents as our process went so quickly, that helped cut down on our costs a lot compared to the boys' adoption. Here is a breakdown of our costs:

• Homestudy--$1000
• Passport renewal ($75 ea)--$150
• I-600A--$830
• Marriage license--$55
• MO background checks--$66
• Medicals--$48
• Apostilles--$100
• Shipping dossier to UA--$28
• Facilitator fee--$10500
• Travel to/from Ukraine #1--$4000
• Lodging in Kyiv #1--$360
• Travel to/from region #1--$250
• Lodging in region #1--$475
• Travel to/from Ukraine #2--$2315
• Travel to/from region #2--$120
• Lodging in region #2--$105
• Lodging in Kyiv #2--$210
• Girls' medicals--$220
• Girls' visas--$800
• Girls' flights--$1170

Obviously the list does not include food while in Ukraine or other souvenirs (although we really didn't buy much!).

Last post from Kyiv

A few pics of our last few days here:

Leaving the orphanageIn Independence Square:





Kyiv in bloom! (we've never seen it this way before)

Change in plans

Alternative title: "I Am A Big, Fat Liar"

Wednesday was the great paperwork chase. And that it was. We started out at 7:30am and we literally went either 0 km/hour or 200 km/hour (yes, that would be 124 mph) all day. And I do mean LITERALLY.

We survived. :) :)

The most interesting event of the day was being told at 7:30 in the morning that there was a chance we might be able to get the girls' passports in one day. Um, what?? As the day went on, it went from being a small chance to 30% to "if we're lucky" to 80% to "here are your passports; we're picking up the girls and going back to Kyiv tonight. Go pack."

Yeah, it hit us probably about like it just hit you. So as I'm typing this--from KYIV--we are completely done with our adoption process except for picking up the girls' visas, which will happen tomorrow morning at 9am. We have already changed our flights and will be leaving on Saturday morning at 5:30am on Lufthansa. We'll be home Saturday night. Can you believe it? Neither can we, and we're living it. ;)

Our time with the girls has been good. Danielle is already very attached. She's been waiting for a mama and papa for a long time and she gets concerned anytime one of us goes somewhere without everybody (into another building, out of the apartment, etc.). Emily is behaving pretty much as I expected. She was the pet of her groupa, and anytime she cried they gave her a cookie or a toy or whatever she wanted to get her to stop. Let's just say she's not receiving the same treatment now. ;) We had a long episode this afternoon that lasted for a couple of hours and was not pretty. Lots of self-stimulation behaviors--hand-flapping, hitting herself in the head--and just general disdain for doing what I wanted her to do (which was put her slippers on). Funny thing though, I asked her if she wanted to put her slippers on or go to sleep (neither of which she answered) and she continued with her behavior. As soon as I started to get her sleeping pallet out, she reached out and took hold of one of her slippers and put it on. ;)

Emily was pretty much an angel the rest of the evening and had lots of hugs and kisses for me before bedtime. She was not happy about having a bath but I bathed the girls together and she had decided it was okay by the end. Danielle is pretty self-sufficient in the bathtub--she does better than our boys do! They both had a hard time falling asleep tonight which is not a surprise. They are so over-stimulated just from all of the changes of the past few days. It took our boys a few months to really settle into a good sleep pattern, and I'm sure the girls will have a similar adjustment to make.

We are thrilled to be coming home so early; I had really anticipated that if we needed to change our flights it would be to extend our trip. We've got internet in our apartment in Kyiv now so I should be able to blog over the next couple of days. Sorry for the lack of pictures--we haven't had time to take any!

First day back

We visited the girls twice today. They were thrilled to see us and Emily was none too happy about going back to her room after the first visit. I think she thought we were there to take her out for good. Not yet, but hopefully soon.

Unfortunately, we were not able to do any paperwork today. The main person that we needed to get started on everything was out of the office today. Completely understandable, as they just had a 4-day weekend. I probably would have extended it too! But it did cause us to lose a day. Mark and I picked up our court decrees on the way to the orphanage this afternoon to help speed things up tomorrow, and we're starting at 7am tomorrow on the great paper chase (mainly birth certificates and passports). Please pray that we are able to get both completed quickly and without incident. The region we are in does not do one day passports so we know we will have a few days' wait on those. But it would be great to get them by the end of the week.

So today, we walked 9.4+ miles, ordered pizza correctly (and without mayo), and ordered desserts at a place we'd never been to (Winnie the Pooh, Mom). I watched a lot of dubbed TV (90210 and Melrose Place, anyone?) while Mark took a long nap this afternoon. Tomorrow will be mostly sitting in the car so it was good we walked so much today.

Okay, so if you get carsick DON'T watch this video. This was taken on our drive to Khmelnitsky yesterday. But I have good news--they repaired one of the streets in Khmelnitsky today! They scraped off and then relaid all new asphalt. It is beautiful and super smooth. Anyone heading this way, be sure to stop by the courthouse to check out the new road. I took pictures. ;)

We're here! (again ;))

Updates on the last three days:

Saturday: Mark had a base ball game so I left the boys with him and ran a few errands. I picked up a few things we needed for the trip and went to work to finish some things I didn't finish on Friday but needed done before I was gone on FMLA. My mom came up that evening and we all stayed up way too late. Between doing laundry and overwhelming my mom with information it was a very short night. ;) Thankfully we didn't have to get up too early. I also spent several hours on the phone with AT&T, who still hadn't connected our internet. Grrr...

Sunday: Mom and the boys drove Mark and I to the airport at 8am. The boys did great with us leaving (at least the part we saw). Mark and I made it to Chicago without any problems, although we had to wait to board our plane while they fixed a broken overhead bin. We had about a 3 hour layover in Chicago, and we still almost missed our plane! We were sitting next to our gate but at the next gate over. We were checked in, had our boarding passes, and had actually already gotten new boarding passes as they had switched our seats. We were waiting and waiting and waiting...I knew they were supposed to start boarding at 3:15 (for our 3:45 flight), so at 3:25 I looked up and noticed that the large crowds of people were gone from our gate. Just then we heard:

"Final boarding call for Lufthansa flight ... to Frankfurt"

Aahhh!! We jumped up and ran over to the gate and made it on just in time. There was no one else in line when we went through--everyone else had already boarded (although a couple of people did get on after us). How we missed all of the previous boarding calls is beyond me. I'm just thankful we heard the last one!

The flight was good although neither of us slept much. There were a lot of kids on the flights; 2 of whom were seated on either side of us in the four middle seats. They both did great but Mark and I spent most of the flight watching movies instead of sleeping. We haven't been to the theatre in awhile so it was a great "date." We watched "Last Chance Harvey" and "Inkheart", both of which I enjoyed (Mark enjoyed "Beverly Hills Chihuahua" on the previous flights more ;)).

Monday: We arrived in Frankfurt for another 3 hour layover (except we arrived early so it was longer). We didn't have to take a bus to our terminal which was nice. We hung out in the McDonalds until our flight had a gate assignment then headed to the gate. We did get bussed out to our plane for the flight to Kyiv. The last leg was good and both of us slept. I woke up long enough to eat a few bites of "breakfast" and then went right back to sleep.

When we arrived in Kyiv, we went through immigration and customs without any problems and were thrilled to see Nikolai waiting for us on the other side of the glass doors. He took us to a spot where we met up with a guy to drive us to Khmelnitsky. We slept pretty much the entire 4 hour car ride as well (except when I was taking pictures of random scenery while playing with the camera settings). We're in the hotel now and Mark's thrilled since we have a room with a balcony overlooking the soccer stadium. ;) We've already been to the market to pick up the essentials--chocolate, Nutella, cheese, and Sprite.

Oh, and our home internet is fixed! Yay! While we can't enjoy it yet, it will make things a little nicer for my mom while she's home all day by herself. :)

We'll be going to see the girls first thing tomorrow morning! :) :)

Supported on all sides

One of the things that many parents who are adopting kids with special needs struggle with is lack of support from friends and family. Sometimes it's not intentional, but people asking questions like "Why would you want to do that?" or commenting "Glad it's you and not me." don't help support a family as they are in the process of bringing their children home.

Thankfully, we have never encountered any comments or questions like that although I know of many other adopting families who have. We have had nothing but support from all of our family and friends, which I am so grateful for. And thank you that even if you do not support us that you haven't said anything to our faces. ;)

But today I received one of the sweetest notes of support from a co-worker and I wanted to share it with you. I hope she doesn't mind since I didn't ask permission, but I'm not sharing any names. :)

"Courtney-
My whole family has been praying for the girls and the rest of your family. D picked out these clothes for the girls. He especially liked the watermelon skirt! :) We have been using this as an opportunity to teach him about families and how they are all different, but the important thing about families is the love in them. He is understanding this more every day and often asks about "Mommy's friend from work who is going to get her babies." I hope the next phase goes smoothly for you all! God bless!"

This simple note of encouragement brought me to tears and is such a great reminder of how many, many people we have praying for and supporting us.

Thank you to all of you who are such an encouragement to us and to other adoptive families. It is a big, scary journey at times and it's so nice to have the love and friendship that you share with us.

We leave in 2 days to bring the girls HOME!! :) :) :)

A busy weekend

Saturday morning we all walked over to the local doughnut shop. It's maybe a mile from our house and quite a nice little walk. We all got doughnuts then sat outside on the curb eating them. It was fun and may be something we try to do regularly as a family.

We got so much done this weekend I hardly know where to start! I guess I should back up a little...several months ago (maybe even a year ago or more!) we picked up a dining room table off of Craigslist for $20. It didn't come with any chairs and could stand a good refinishing, but it could easily seat four or six, plus it has the mechanism to pull apart and put leaves in (the leaves were not included when we bought the table) to add another 30" to the length. We never used it in our old house because we didn't have space to set it up, so it stayed in our basement. Now we have a dining room, and room for a real table! Unfortunately, the chairs we had would not work for Emily as they are folding chairs and we couldn't safely put a booster seat on them for her. Thursday we found two wooden (non-folding) chairs on Craigslist for a great price which will work for Emily. Mark and Zhenya picked them up while Dima and I were at therapy.

Friday night Mark and I set the table up with the new chairs plus the folding chairs. Saturday we went to Walmart to pick up a booster seat for Emily. While we were there I decided we might as well get boosters for all of them as I though it would help the boys to be a little higher at the table too. Saturday night I put the boosters on the seats for the boys and they are great! I love the extra lift it gives the boys plus they can't slide back in their seats and slouch now. ;) The boosters do work with the folding chairs, but not in a way that could have been used for Danielle and Emily (I don't have the back strap around the back of the chair) but the boys are stable enough in their chairs that it's not a problem. The girls will be using the boosters in the new non-folding chairs.

We also went to Lowes and picked up stair treads for Mark to make leaves for the table and snagged a great deal on a dishwasher. Energy Star appliances were 10% off this weekend and had no state sales tax, plus we had an additional 10% coupon for our entire purchase. We also bought a manual lawnmower (you know, the ones without a motor? :)) and a medicine chest for the upstairs bathroom since Mark's been shaving without a mirror for a few weeks now. ;)

Today Mark installed the dishwasher (his first time doing that--and it works!! Isn't my hubby awesome?!?), mowed part of the lawn, and hung the medicine chest. I helped where I could but mainly did laundry, vacuuming, and other necessary cleaning. :)

It was a busy weekend but we got so much done and a lot of the little "to-dos" off of our list. Tomorrow Mark's going to be demolishing a wall in the downstairs bathroom so that he will hopefully be able to put in the toilet and sink this week. I really want that toilet in before we get the girls home--I'm thinking potty training while having to run the girls upstairs will be no fun! LOL

The search for a van

With the addition of two more little ones, we have officially run out of room in our car (or will, as soon as they're home). In the decision for what type of vehicle to get next, it was decided that our best bet was a minivan. While some of the SUVs seat 6 (4 of whom are in carseats!), most of them do not then have any room for the 2 dogs that travel with us on many of our road trips.

Thus, the minivan search began.

We (really, Mark) researched several different vans, test-drove a few, and decided our top choice is a Toyota Sienna, with seating for 8 (just in case, you never know ;)). Since our decision, we've been hounding dealerships and Craigslist looking for our new van (which will not actually be new, but new to us). We've found a couple of good candidates (one of which sold yesterday and we were supposed to go look at it tonight! :( ) but have yet to find the one.

If we can find an older one at a good price, we can buy it before we go back to get the girls. If we have to buy a newer one (2007 or 2008) we'll need to wait until we get back since we're not willing to shell out the cash before our second trip. While we're pretty sure we know about how much money we'll need for the upcoming second trip, it would be horrible to get to Ukraine and find that we are a few thousand short because we bought a car!

We're not completely limited to the Toyota Sienna, but it meets our needs, plus it has a few bonus features, one of which I'm in love with. :)

It has blue dashlights.

What?!? I can hear all of you saying that, by the way. See, the problem is that I've gotten a little attached to the Volkswagens which have blue dashlights. Now I'm a little too partial to that feature, and since I look at the dash quite regularly when I'm driving I'm having a hard time reconciling myself to another color of dash lights. But hey, if it drives and it fits our family, I'll adjust.

I have been highly amused by some of my calls to the dealerships regarding postings on Craigslist. I called two different dealerships yesterday to find out if the vans they had were 7 or 8 passenger. Both of them had the same response:

"How can you tell if it's 7 or 8 passenger?"

In general, you can count the seats. ;)

Ice cream and school

Yesterday we took advantage of Ben & Jerry's "free ice cream cone day" promotion and took the boys for ice cream after school. They had no idea where we were going so it was a complete surprise, and they loved it (of course). We picked their flavors after they told us what kind of ice cream they wanted. Dima wanted chocolate ice cream so I ordered him Chocolate Fudge Brownie and Zhenya wanted banana ice cream (huh? since when?) so Mark ordered him Chunky Monkey. Both the boys liked their flavors and that was the fastest I've ever seen Dima eat ice cream. He's usually our slow "sweets" eater.

We're still working on the flights back to Ukraine. I think we've got flights booked on Lufthansa through Golden Rule travel, but I don't have a confirmation on that yet. The flights we booked will have one extra stop but they'll work and they don't have any crazy layovers (several of the flights we were looking at had over 20-hour layovers in various airports, and all of those were on the flights back).

Laundry is caught up and I think we're all back to a normal sleep schedule. The boys have had a couple of really good days at school which has really surprised Mark and I. After a week and a half off (in another country) and jet lag, we figured we'd be in for some behavior issues. It's been a pleasant surprise to have them readjusting to school and a normal schedule so quickly. I can only hope it will continue while Mark and I are gone. ;)

In other news, we're a little unsure what to do with Dima for next year. He's quite capable of doing the kindergarten and (next year) first grade level work, but he's figured out that if he begs for help people at school will help him so he's not doing the work on his own. I finally laid it on the line last night and told him that if he could not do the work on his own that he would not be going to first grade next year. From his perspective, you are always moved up into the next level class (same as in the orphanage) so I don't think it had occurred to him that there was a possiblity he wouldn't be going to first grade. He's excited to go into first grade, so I'm hoping this will help motivate him to change his behavior and do the work. He's only got a month left of school so I'm hoping we can see some improvement in this area before summer. AND...he starts speech therapy tomorrow!! WOOHOO!!

A few more random pictures

I apologize to those of you who think you are going crazy because all of sudden there are pictures in the posts! :) :) I went back in and edited the posts over the time we were in Ukraine to add some of the pictures, so if you haven't checked you may want to skim over the last couple of weeks' worth of posts.


And a few more pictures that didn't quite make it into the old posts:

Blue skies in Kyiv

One of the results of my infamous pizza-ordering skills

A large playground in Khmelnitsky

The boys outside the SDA appointment door

(they have no idea of the significance of the door; we just asked them to stand here and get a picture)

Okay, this last picture needs a little explaining. Those of you who followed our first adoption journey may know that we spent some time at a playground in Kyiv close to our apartment while we were waiting for our flight home. At this playground Zhenya launched himself off of a playground tower apparently expecting to be caught (even though no one was waiting to catch him). It was our first parenting experience of "oh no, we just injured our child" although he wasn't actually injured (although pretty shaken up, as were we!). Here is Zhenya a little over a year later, going down the exact pole that he had tried to go down (but neglected to actually grab hold of) the last time we were in Kyiv. This time he didn't fall. :)

Home again (even if only temporarily)

We made it home late Saturday night. Many thanks to our friend Trent who was able to pick us up at the airport, especially since our flight arrived about an hour late.

Our last apartment in Kyiv is better left unmentioned (small mosquito infestation!) but we did have a great day on Friday wandering around Kyiv...and I do mean wandering. We had no idea where our apartment was located other than that it wasn't close to the city center. But we could see tall buildings and we knew we'd be on a plane all day Saturday so we started walking. We wandered into a small market and exchanged some money, then we walked past the circus arena and up a big hill and found Kreschatik Street and Independence Square. It was a good 1 hour+ walk from our apartment to the square.

We ate at Mister Snack for lunch, then hit the internet cafe and took the time to check in for our flights. We walked back to O'Panas and visited the playground where there were a whole pack of kids speaking English. On the way back to our apartment, we found a pizza place underneath an English school (close to the University metro stop) and stopped in. Nope, no one spoke English, but they did have an English menu. ;) I swear I'm going to perfect the art of ordering pizza in Ukraine by the time this adoption is through, because yet again I didn't get it right (two pizzas, each with one topping turned into two pizzas each with two toppings). There's apparently some phrase or word that I'm getting wrong (huge surprise, I know!), but the pizzas are all still yummy and we eat them regardless.

We finished the walk to the apartment with a stop at the little market again to pick up some snacks for breakfast in the morning. Saturday we were picked up at 7am so that we could get to the airport in plenty of time, which we did. Even without a printed e-ticket itinerary, they sent us straight to the check-in counter since we had already checked in online. That was when we were told that Mark and Zhenya were on standby for our flight from JFK to STL. :) :) We had a 4-hour layover in JFK, so we figured we'd work it out when we got there.

We were in the airport for a little over an hour before our flight started boarding. We had seats all the way in the back and I loved it. We were close to the bathrooms so it was quick and easy to get the boys there. We watched Quantum of Solace, something else that was obviously very memorable since I can't remember what it was, and Beverly Hills Chihuahua (cute). Thankfully the boys don't watch the movies because I don't think I would have wanted them watching the first two. The food was okay, although on the flight over to Ukraine they served chicken or pasta and ran out of chicken meals, and then on this flight they served chicken or pasta and ran out of pasta meals. Weird.

We made it to JFK and got to our gate to sit and wait out the next 4 hours. We got everything straightened out with regards to getting all of us on the flight (which Mark was particularly happy about). We made a few friends along the way, including a newly adoptive dad and his son Mitchell (hope the Dramamine worked!) and a guy who works in the Donetsk region with the kids who are aging out of the orphanage system. We let the boys sleep for about an hour in the airport. They were wiped out (it was a few hours past their bedtime on Ukraine time at this point).

I didn't manage to sleep on the flight home so I ended up being awake for 24 hours straight, but my amazing husband managed to fall asleep before our plane left the gate! We sat on the runway for about an hour as we were 30th(!!) in line to takeoff. Our flight attendant was fantastic and passed out food and drinks and let people get up to use the restroom as needed. As soon as we were in the air I told the boys to "lay back and rest" and they were both asleep within minutes.

Yesterday we all stayed up all day to try to avoid jet lag. We stayed out and about with grocery and miscellaneous shopping (by the way, Steak and Shake is having a kids-eat-free promotion on the weekends in the St Louis area--the 4 of us ate for $6 yesterday! It was like still being in Ukraine!) and the boys went to bed at the regularly scheduled time last night.

We're having a hard time finding flights to get back to Ukraine (around May 4) so please pray for that. We need to get those set up as quickly as possible to go get our girls!!

Tips for other prospective adoptive parents

If you are going to be making a critical phone call, such as changing your flights, be sure you have enough grivna on your phone. Otherwise, you might end up getting cut off in the middle of your conversation with Delta. You might also not be able to call anyone since you don't have any minutes on your phone, leading you to make a long-distance phone call on the hotel phone. Which in turn connects you to your facilitator who has to give you directions on how to get a phone card to add minutes to your phone. You then have to run down to the market, buy a phone card using broken Russian and pantomime, rush back to your hotel, and add the minutes to your phone.

If you shop enough times at the local market, they will give you a frequent shopper card, complete with registration packet, even though you clearly don't even know enough Russian to fill out said registration packet.

If you stay at Hotel Podillya, you do not need to bring any soap or shampoo. Because no matter how many you leave on the counter, you will always get two new soaps and two new shampoo packets every day.

Hotel Podillya makes up for their excessive use of soap with internet that costs 5 grivna per hour from 9am to 9pm, and 3 grivna per hour from 9pm to 9am (yeah, that would be like $0.25 per hour).

New York Street Pizza does not have any employees that speak English, even though all of their signs are in English. They do, however, have an English menu. And it is quite sufficient to order with, although if you are not good enough with your Russian instead of getting 3 pizzas, each with one topping, you will get 3 pizzas each with 3 toppings. Said pizzas will turn out to be so delicious you will return for 3 more the next day (this time with only two toppings, intentionally).

They're ours!

I am happy to introduce Danielle Bogdana and Emily Ivanna, new members of our family as of April 16, 2009! :)

I will post when we get home with pictures. I'm in an internet cafe in Kyiv and the boys are being occupied outside with ice cream. :) They've had a lot of that this trip. We're confirmed on our flights and will be home tomorrow night!

We will be returning in a couple of weeks, and in the meantime will get everyone resettled with school and work. See you soon! :) :)

Coming home!

The paperwork issues are resolved, we have court tomorrow at 2pm, and we're flying home Saturday morning!

Yesterday was the boys' first visit with the girls. To minimize all kinds of potential issues, we left the boys at the orphanage playground outside with my mom while we went in to get the girls, then took the girls out to the playground. Dima is absolutely in love with Eve. He follows her everywhere and wants to hold her (nevermind that she's got to weigh 2/3 of what he does). Zhenya and Dana immediately hit it off and spent the entire time playing on the slides and swings. They are definitely two peas in a pod. The boys didn't seem to have any issues with the orphanage, so this morning we took them for a second visit with their sisters and took them inside to see where the girls live.

Zhenya went with Mark to get Eve and Dima went with my mom and me to get Dana (her room is closer to the entrance so it's a shorter amount of time to be in the orphanage) then we switched it to take the girls back, so that both boys have seen where each of the girls lives. Neither of the boys seemed to have any issues with the orphanage or being there. It has brought up some interesting discussions, but so far no negative reactions. In fact, this evening when Mark and I went to visit the girls again, as soon as Dima heard we were going he went to put his shoes on so he could go too. :) The three oldest spent the entire time today playing on the slide and going down together. Mark got some great video that I will post when we get home--right now I'm too tired to fight with the computer to get it on here. :)




We changed our flights today and will be coming home on Saturday, arriving in St Louis about 10pm. The flight change went smoothly enough except for a small hitch early on that I will rehash in another post. I'm very pleased with Delta's service and we only had to pay the change fees--no fare difference. Tomorrow we will get to visit with the girls in the morning, have court in the afternoon, and then be headed back to Kyiv. We'll have one extra day of sightseeing in Kyiv (we're planning on eating at Mister Snack and going to the Embassy). The current plan is to return to Kyiv on or about April 27. We should have about a week and a half of paperwork to wade through and then we'll be coming home for good--with the girls!

Pics from our afternoon visit with the girls (without the boys):

Pictures from today's visits:

Sunshine!

We woke up this morning to sunshine, and it was very welcome. It still isn't warm yet, but it's getting there and it was a great encouragement to see the sun. We went to the playground twice and visited the girls twice. The second visit we went outside with Dana's groupa and spent about 45 minutes with her, then went inside and played one-on-one with Eve for about 20 minutes. It was great to get to spend time alone with each of them. We're working on teaching Eve sign to help her communicate, and she's picking it up pretty well for someone who's only ever used screeching to communicate. :)

Eve reading books with Papa

Dana had her second run-in with Mama today and once again, Mama won. The girl is stubborn and I have a feeling we're going to be in for a few good temper tantrums when we get home. However, she clears up pretty quickly and becomes obedient when she realizes we won't give in so I think she'll be a quick learner. ;)

Dana with our photo book

Tomorrow the boys will be going with us to the orphanage. The plan is to have them and the girls play outside on the orphanage playground so that they can meet before the girls come home. Hopefully it will be sunny again tomorrow and even warmer!

And, just in case you felt things were going a little too perfectly, we've come upon a small hitch. I'm not going to go into a lot of details, but we've hit a paperwork snag. Right now we're still scheduled to have court on Thursday, and if that happens we will be doing our best to come home this weekend (and will then come back in a couple of weeks and get the girls). But if the paperwork problem cannot be resolved, we might not be able to have court when it's currently scheduled. Our facilitators are working very hard to get this resolved (one office is holding everything up, and everyone else is okay with the paperwork from what we understand) and hopefully it will be taken care of in the next day or so.

Please pray for our visit tomorrow and our paperwork glitch to get cleared up! :)

Another chilly day in (the girls' region)

It was cold and rainy again today, but the weather is supposed to start picking up in the next couple of days. We had a good day today, and not much to report other than laundry is done. :)

I've shared a bit about our travels, but I haven't shared much about our adventures. Yesterday was a very adventurous day! Early on, we were coming back from a walk and Mark broke our hotel key off in the lock. Now you have to understand that it's not as simple as walking down and telling the front desk. We've got to get our translator on the phone, who has to talk to the front desk, who sends someone up, who has to call someone else....and we were told there might be a "small charge" for fixing the lock. Yep, all of 18 grivna (yeah, a little over $2). I'll take that little charge any day of the week!

Lately, my mom and I have been doing the grocery shopping for dinner at night. I go by default as I have the most (and it's not very much) Russian, and then Mom usually comes since she has the boys in the afternoon during our visits with the girls and she needs a (well-deserved) break. Last night, when we got to the deli they had pre-cooked pizzas available for purchase...so I got 7 (they were small, about saucer-size). They had chicken, and cheese, and bacon, and...mayonnaise! I thought they were fine, but apparently I'm the only one who likes mayonnaise on my pizza. :) :) They did not send me grocery shopping for dinner tonight. LOL We went out to a pizza place instead, and I was instructed to ask if they had mayonnaise on their pizza (I didn't ask, but it didn't).

We walked back from the orphanage once, and it wasn't bad but it's been pretty cold and it makes for a very long walk. So we decided it's worth the 11 grivna each way to get a taxi. We call our facilitator and she calls a taxi for us, then calls us back to let us know what car to look for. Today when we got in the taxi, we handed the address to the guy and he gave a dismissive grunt. He seemed a little put out to be hauling two foreigners around. Then he couldn't find the orphanage, and we had to show him where to go. :) :) He was laughing by the end of the ride and a good time was had by all.

Our hotel overlooks a soccer (football) stadium, so last night Mark and the boys got to watch the end of a local match from our hotel. The home team lost, 2 to 1, but it was pretty exciting as it was tied almost until the end of the game. The boys loved it and have gone around talking about the green and white team all day.

Dramamine works wonders on Zhenya--as in, it's the only thing we've ever found that can make him stop talking. However, there is a small drawback. Apparently Zhenya has a word allotment per day, and when he doesn't use it up in one day it gets transferred to the next day. The child did not stop talking for a solid 14 hours. It was amazing.

Our visit today with the girls went really well. Eve is starting to interact a lot more, and we're beginning to wonder if she's not just really delayed. She is the highest-functioning child in her groupa, so she has not had a lot of peer interaction or age-appropriate stimulation. She was "talking" and asking Mark questions today which was a really good sign. We got some good video of her running and also going down a slide. The concerning behaviors we've observed the past couple of days seem to be diminishing and hopefully that will continue with increased interaction.

Eve playing with Papa

Dana playing with Mama

Eve mimicking Papa's silly faces

Today

Today...we all way overslept. Mark was the first one up at 9am, and I dragged myself out of bed at 10:30am. Thus, we missed our morning visit with the girls. Instead, we wandered around in the rain (it is raining and cold at the moment, but it has been nice and sunny most recently. If you're coming soon, bring a few light layers and an UMBRELLA.) and visited an outdoor market and then stopped in to warm up and have lunch at a Ukrainian cafeteria. We are eating a lot for very little money here--lunch for 5 of us today was less than $10 and that included desserts. This was the first meal we've eaten out since we got here. We've just been buying food in the stores and eating in our apartment or hotel, which has saved us a lot of money.

This afternoon, we left the boys with my mom and went to visit the girls. We were a little more prepared for Eve this time and were able to really interact with her. We played with both girls for about an hour, and it went really well. Both girls seem to have good attention spans and good motor skills. Dana is amazing with her ability to repeat English words--she can repeat new words better than our boys can. Dana loves to scribble and color and Eve's favorite activity today was mimicking Mark when he made faces--she's really good at it! Size-wise, Dana is about a 5T both top and bottom and Eve is about a 3T.

Eve getting ready to come play!

Right now the plan is for us to come home during our 10-day wait, if we can find flights home. From doing some checking on Delta it looks like we should be fine, but I will be calling them on Monday to see what we can make happen.

Yesterday

Yesterday we left our apartment at 4:30am and headed for the girls' region. It was not a bad drive, especially since I gave the boys Dramamine before we left and they slept most of the way there. ;) Serge drove and Marina and the rest of us pretty much just slept.

As soon as we arrived, Marina went to the social worker's office to get permission for us to meet the girls. We then went to the orphanage, knowing we wouldn't get to stay long as we had a notary appointment at 11am. The goal was to get all of our pre-court paperwork done in one day so it could be back on its way to Kyiv that night with Serge and Marina.

When we got to the orphanage, we ran into Dana in the hallway. She was a little bit shy but very cute and happy to see us. She was on her way to music class, so we went to see Eve first.

Eve was a surpise. While we were prepared for her cleft palate, we were not prepared for the neurological issues that she appeared to have in our very short visit. We played with her in her groupa for a few minutes and then went to see Dana in her music class. We didn't get any pictures of Eve today as we weren't in her room for very long.

Dana's class was preparing some sort of musical program and they were dancing to music played by one of the caretakers (at the piano--she was quite good!). Dana was dancing and running around with the rest of her class. Although her gait is a little off, she is very functional with both walking and running. We got some great pictures and video of her and her class (and no, I won't share them until after court ;) ).We were in there for a few minutes and then headed out to the notary. Even though Eve's issues are more than we were prepared to handle, we feel that we are already committed to her and Dana and that God has chosen us to be their family.

Dana and her bed

After the notary, Marina ran across the street to the social worker to try to get that paperwork moved forward, and then after a few more stops we headed to the hotel to get our rooms. Unfortunately, we had to get two rooms because they would not allow more than 4 people in a room, but this turned out for the best. We got settled in our hotel room, only to be told that we needed to move because they had accidentally given us a room that was already reserved. We moved up two floors and shaved 200 grivna off of our bill in the process. :) Two rooms are costing us 600 grivna per night, and the exchange rate right now is 8 grivna/dollar (so about $75/night for two rooms--not each, total). We got settled in our new rooms and got a call from Serge and Marina that they were outside and wanted to show us to the cafeteria they had mentioned earlier in the day. While we were driving around, they got the call that our last document was done so we went and picked that up and then they dropped us off at the playground. I feel like we have a new goal of playing on every playground in Ukraine. :)

Along with that phone call we got the news that our court date is next Thursday, April 16! :)

We let the boys play at the playground for awhile and then went back to the hotel rooms. We've got a couple of stores right next to the hotel so we're able to pick up groceries easily, and they have precooked meats so it doesn't matter that we don't have a kitchen. We're pigging out on great chocolate, my favorite soda (Schweppes Bitter Lemon which I can't find in the States), and lots of different types of cookies (we just found the cake section today--be prepared for some cake reviews over the next few days)!