A new name and a new life

We just returned from court to become the parents of Oksana Valerie Loraine! As I was typing out my Facebook status it occurred to me that what we just went through was adoption childbirth. We walked in parents of 2 and walked out parents of 3! And my pants still fit :). I told Larry that each birth involved pain...physical pain with the boys and emotional with Oksana. It's been a hard journey and it's not over yet.

Court was very...interesting. This is what the court house looked like:

I had these ideas in my head that it would be this very formal...well...court room. Nope, it was just the judges office. She sat behind her desk, we sat behind another desk piled with papers. Nadiya and the social worker were there with us as well as 2 other people who I'm sure had some sort of job that I didn't understand. Anyway, the judge began by reading off everyone's name, birthdate, and address to verify that they were the right person. Then she read information about Oksana. She asked if we knew that she was abandoned at the maternity house and told us that she had never been visited by any family member since then. I almost cried at that point although I'd suspected as much. She then said "You are young and beautiful. Why don't you want children of your own?" We almost started laughing but managed to answer her. She asked if we believed in God which I thought was interesting. Nadiya said it's because most of the people who adopt special needs children are believers. She asked if we understood how severe her disability is and wanted to know what our plans were for her care after we get home. She wondered if we had already spoken to a doctor and/or therapist about her and if we had insurance that would cover any future surgeries. Throughout this time she would often pause and look as if she was thinking very carefully. I had to remind myself that she had no good reason to say no to us because she sure was pondering this quite a bit. Finally she said something and Nadiya said "She says congratulations you are now the parents of 3 children. I wish you luck. This is a good thing you are doing. This girl needs a family." WHEW! As we left Nadiya said the judge was very cranky today and at one point she was actually scared because of how she kept stopping and thinking. She said she'd probably just had a bad day.

Nadiya and Oleg then told us that they were taking us to Vorzel. They had some things they needed to do there. When we got there the doctor said she screamed for 40 minutes after we left yesterday. Great. We didn't think we'd get to see her but then she said the would bring her out for about 15 minutes. We were surprised since we all now know what happens when she leaves us. Nadiya looked in her room to ask for her and I bet you'll never guess where she was....in her bed of course. They brought her out and she was so excited to see us. They said she'd been asking for us all morning. She immediately wanted us to take her outside but no such luck today. I hadn't been prepared to see her and she was looking for fun stuff to do so my sunglasses became the toy of choice.

After our time was up they told her it was time for a nap and let Larry take her to her bed to lay her down. Of course she started crying again. The doctor commented that it was best that we not stay for the 10 days because this was getting difficult for her. We couldn't agree more. Since we got that time with her we won't be visiting her tomorrow as planned. They took our photo book and promised us that they would talk to her about us and reassure her that we are coming back.

We aren't sure what we are going to do tomorrow but we head out at 11am Friday!

Going to Court and Going Home!

We heard from Nadiya this morning. Our interpol did come in and court will be tomorrow at 11:30! We will visit Oksana again on Thursday and then we will be headed home on Friday. I can't wait!

Today's visit was "interesting" as usual. When we got there we found that yet again all of the kids were out except Oksana. She was in the same room rocking herself on the same bed. Grrrr.... We started walking with her and began going towards the playground where the older kids were when one of the workers came running after us telling us we couldn't go over there. I was SO mad. First of all the area we are allowed in has NOTHING to play with. And WHY NOT? Why can't she go over there? I've heard at some orphanages they are very particular about not mixing kids from different groupas together. Maybe that's way. Maybe they don't want us letting her crawl around like we did the other day. Regardless, we were beyond frustrated. So we walked with her for awhile and then laid out a blanket and played with the toys we brought. Just like a typical kid, guess what the favorite toy was? The plastic ziploc bag that I was storing things in! We would blow it up and she would try with all her might to pop it! She did this for a LONG time. We were really having a wonderful time with her. Then as we've learned is true with Oksana, when she gets bored she gets ornery :). She decided she wanted to grab handfulls of dirt and throw them all over the blanket. We had to stop her and of course she was not happy with us. She started throwing a fit and by this time the other kids were going in for lunch so they came and told her it was time to go. That did NOT go over well. She did not want them to take her from Larry and had a screaming fit all the way into the building. Not exactly the best way to end our visit. While I truly am thankful for the opportunity to get to know her better each time we visit do you see how sometimes we wonder if it causes more harm than good? Well, we did get some good pictures and video!

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This afternoon we took a death defying taxi ride to the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra which is a famous underground monastery. Monks lived in these underground caves for many years and then it became a burial ground. We got a tour guide that spoke English and she took us all around to the different churches on the grounds, explaining their history and the amazing paintings in each of them. Then she explained that to go into the underground portion I would need a headcovering so I was able to buy a scarf there. We went in and had to buy candles which we lit and then had to hold a certain way in our hands as we walked through.

I couldn't take pictures but basically you went through these dark, cold, underground caves where there were a bunch of glass coffins with mummified monks, saints, etc in them. They were covered up in all kinds of fancy cloths but I did see one guy's hand sticking out. Gross! People walked around in these caves holding their candles, praying, and kissing the coffins...BLECH! It was a bit strange but really something to see.



I'll let you know how court goes tomorrow!

The Hard Truth

It's been a couple of days and I feel like I'm ready to share with you some of what has happened here. We both needed time to process it all and deal with the emotions we have experienced. First I will say that although we don't have "official" word of our interpol being in, Oleg did schedule court for us on Wednesday. Nadiya said we won't know 100% until Tuesday but she feels pretty confident.

I'll start by saying this. Some people really do have fairy tale adoptions. I know they are out there. Some people don't but they aren't willing to tell you and they suffer in silence. Some people don't and they are honest. Now, I'm not a person who normally enjoys putting my feelings up for the world to see so this might not be brutal honesty but it's the best I'm willing to do right now.

The reality is that no matter what you are told about how "good" an orphanage is, or how much you convince yourself that because your child hasn't been sent to an institution yet she should be OK....it's not OK. An orphanage IS an institution and these children show the affects of that, some more than others. Facing that has been hard for us. 2 days ago we went to visit Oksana. When we arrived all of the children were outside so we went in to let them know we had arrived. They told us that she was inside. I walked up and peeked in her room (which I normally don't do, she's kind of kept behind closed doors) and what I saw was disturbing. She was in a dark room sitting in the corner on a bed, rocking herself. If you haven't seen an institutionalized child rock themselves you may not understand what I am referring to but just trust me that it is disturbing. When they brought her out to us she seemed "off". Our visit went fine for a short time and then she just lost it. We still don't know of any trigger but she started sobbing, hitting us, and biting herself. We brought her to the caregivers hoping they could help us figure out what was wrong but they just told her to stop crying. One of them tried to take her from us but she refused. It took quite awhile and she finally calmed down and played (this was the day she climbed through the tunnels on the play set) but we were badly shaken by the whole experience. Really typing it out doesn't adequately describe how disturbing this was. It makes it sound like a typical temper tantrum....it wasn't. This child has experienced things we may never know or understand and I have to confess that this is the first time I thought "I can't do this".

We are thankful for our Reece's Rainbow community who have walked this journey, listened to our fears, confirmed that we are not alone in those fears, and have rallied around us. Some of these people are right here in Keiv with us (Thank you Lord), and others we've never even met in person but we knew we could open up to them and they have wrapped their arms around us and encouraged us greatly.

Just so you know our next visit with her was very pleasant. She was like a different child. I've told you before that these orphanage visits are very hard and after our good visit she had an absolute fit when she had to go back. I feared that she would be punished. When we came home we made a final decision regarding our 10 day wait. We are coming home...when I say "home" this time I mean St. Louis where our boys and our family are. Sometimes what is best for a child is that their parents are emotionally and physically healthy. We feel that if we stay here we will come home with her beaten down and emotionally fragile. That would be a horrible start for all of us. We need to come back and be re-charged and re-connect with our children to prepare them, and us, for what life will look like when she comes home. So...if court is Wednesday we will fly home on Friday. Thursday's flights are all horrible so we pushed it back a day and we will visit her one more time before we leave. I absolutely can't wait to see my kids! We will get to be home for 4th of July and Evan's birthday. Again...assuming court is Wednesday we will fly back to Ukraine on July 10th and finish things up on this end which hopefully will only take a week to 10 days.

Today we are meeting with some other Reece's Rainbow families here in Kiev to pray and have our own version of church. We are so blessed to have them here. Tomorrow is a holiday in Kiev similar to our 4th of July so we look forward to more sight seeing and finding out how they celebrate here. I hope this helps you understand better how to pray for us. I'm not even sure how to tell you to pray sometimes. What I do know is we want to go to court Wednesday so you can definitely be praying for that. If you've read this far, thanks for listening. We will be OK.

Update

Well, it's now 4:30 here in Ukraine which means the chances that we will hear anything about our interpol today are slim to none. We've learned that Monday is a holiday here so there will be no movement again until Tuesday. Maybe we will have court Wednesday. We are now pretty seriously considering coming home for the 10 day wait. We desperately want to be back in familiar territory but there are cons that come with that decision too. There are no easy answers. I could fill this entire blog with discouragements and frustrations but I refuse to do that nor do you want to read that so here is the good stuff.

Yesterday we did a lot of sight seeing. We walked until we literally couldn't walk anymore but we did have a good time! Here are a few pictures.

They love statues around here. There are various statues all over the place and I have no idea what most of thema are!

This is the bell tower at St. Sophia Cathedral. We got to climb to the top of it!

Here is a bell in the tower that was made in the early 1700's.

This is a view of St. Sophia Cathedral from the bell tower. It is BEAUTIFUL inside but they didn't allow cameras.

This is St. Michaels. Also beautiful inside and we were also not able to take pictures inside. Bummer!


Today we went to visit Oksana and got to see something interesting. A lot of the kids were outside and we went over to the playground where the kids her age were playing. Remember, these are not the kids she is raised with. Because of her medical conditions they have kept her with children who are all around 2 years old. She started watching them on the big playground, got intrigued, and wanted to try it out for herself. We started by putting her on a slide. Then she wanted to get inside and see. Next thing we knew she was crawling through the tunnels! I am so bummed that I forgot my camera! After all of the sightseeing yesterday I downloaded pictures and then forgot to put it back in my bag. We'll try to do it again tomorrow. She did pretty good and had such determination. I really wasn't sure if we were supposed to be letting her do that or not but we had kind of a rough start to our visit and got to see some of her temper so we didn't really care at that point if they would allow it or not as long as she was happily playing. When we saw one of the workers walking toward us we thought for sure we were busted but she just wanted to tell us it was time for Oksana to eat.

Then it was back to groundhog day. Lunch at the apartment, watching Discovery Science (which is the only station in English with anything decent on), dinner out, and bed. Then we do it all over again. You can probaly see why this gets old very fast.

Another vist and our first delay

Being able to go outside makes such a difference! They brought Oksana to us today looking very cute. She had her hair in a ponytail and was in the same dress from the other day with a sweater that was a bit too small. We walked Oksana around and saw kids from her baby house out walking with the workers. We were beginning to wonder if they ever took them out so it was good to see them. We got to see Marshall and Monroe from Reece's Rainbow. They are both precious. You can probably tell that the pictures and videos are getting to be less and less! We really do the same things over and over so some of these visits are getting to be a lot like groundhog day, except in different outfits! Today we gave Oksana a banana. We knew she loved them and she was very excited to see it come out of our bag. I peeled it half way down and handed it to her. She took one bite of the banana and then took a bite of the peel! Lesson learned...give Oksana the banana WITHOUT the peel!

We were just about to bring her back to the workers when they came out and told us, through a very rough translation, that they needed our driver to take the doctor to get some documents for Oksana. They said we could stay here and walk Oksana around for another half an hour. We'd had a good visit up to that point and she was just starting to get a bit tired of walking in circles so that's not really what we wanted to hear. We took her over to swing for awhile and then it started raining on us so we went in and played until our driver came to get us. It was well past her lunch time at that point and she willingly went with the worker to eat.

Here are some pictures:




We also learned today that we are facing delay #1. It probably won't be the last, but hopefully there won't be many more. There is an international background check called interpol that has to be done here in Ukraine. It holds up many families in this process so we were not at all surprised to hear that our interpol clearance is not ready and that means we may not have court tomorrow. If it comes in today or tomorrow we can still have court but otherwise we have to wait to hear from Nadiya before we can move forward. We were well prepared to hear this but it's still disappointing when you want nothing more than to go home.

We will not visit Oksana tomorrow. We want to be available in case we do get to have court.

Starting to dread that little room...

Today when we arrived we were told that Oksana can't go outside because of her legs. We were confused until they brought her to us like this:


Well, that makes sense. These are like big thick AFO's bound to her legs with bandages. Apparently this is related to the massages that she gets on her legs. When they brought her in and laid her down she immediately started crying and crying. They wanted to lay her flat and she wanted to be propped up so they brought some pillows to lean her up. I still don't think she was thrilled, and it's rather likely that she was in pain. I think she wanted to be able to go outside too. I immedately looked at Larry and said "This is going to be a long 2 hours". Now we are stuck in this tiny room and she is imobile.
As usual, she spent a good amount of time playing with bubbles. She liked it when I would make a really big one and then she would lean forward, pop it with her nose, and crack up laughing:

We gave her a snack and then about an hour into our visit they took off her bandages. We played a bit more but she was getting tired of our games and when we went to pick her up we discovered she was wet. Of course all she wanted to do was be held, wet or not, and I knew that if I told them she was wet that would be the end of our visit. We got a good look at her and figured out that she was wet enough to need to be changed so we took her out to the hall to find a worker and explain the situation. They took her away, explained it was time to eat and sleep and sure enough our visit was over 1/2 an hour early. Honestly, at that point there was some relief because we were out of entertainment options in that room! This time she was most definitely not happy when they took her away. I'm still not sure if it's from some desire to be with us, or because she knew they were going to change her but she started crying as soon as they turned their back on us and went through the door.

We saw a lot more 2 year old behavior today...putting toys and crayons in her mouth, throwing toys when she was sick of playing with them, etc. We felt a bit defeated today but luckily this came on the tail end of a great visit so it was easier to handle. I did get some video of her saying Clayton and Evan's names.

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She really doesn't know who they are. She has very little interest in our photo book. We try to talk about them but she won't get it until she is living with them. We are praying that tomorrow we can take her outside again.

Encouragement!

The whole way to our visit today we prayed that we would at least be able to come away encouraged and not discouraged. Our prayers were definitely answered. We walked in the baby house and asked for Oksana. As we waited for them to bring her out we heard her in her room chanting "Ma-Ma, Ma-Ma"! They brought her out and she actually had on a cute flowered dress and her hair was brushed! She immediately pointed at my bag that I bring her fun stuff in. We got out a new toy that is blocks of different colors and shapes that you string onto a piece of string. I really wondered if she could do it but was pleasantly surprised that she did very well with it! The video shows her working on it. Then we had a snack of wafer cookies. Sandie told us that she noticed the children were often thirsty so we brought water this time and I'm glad we did because she loved it. Ellen, you are right, she is a very messy eater! Every now and then a worker will come in to check on us and just ask if everything is OK. Each time they do that Oksana waves to them and says "Paka" which is Goodbye! It cracks all of us up. Even the workers get a kick out of it. After our snack we got out bubbles and we would make her say "bubbles" before I would blow them which sounds more like "guh-bosh" coming from her but oh well, we know what she means. That is in the video too so I hope you can hear it. Each time we would blow the bubbles she would sing, dance, talk, etc. It was very funny. During our time doing bubbles two workers came in to use the desk in the room (you can hear them in the background of the video).

Shortly after the workers came in, the doctor came in with her daughter who was able to translate for us. She asked if we were enjoying our time with Oksana and if she was being good. She told us that they are keeping her legs covered because she just had a massage. Then Oksana started talking and I asked what she was saying. We were told that she said she wants to go home with us! We were surprised but thrilled. She then asked if we would like to take her for a walk and they got her all ready and gave us a stroller. We had ours in the car but didn't feel it was worth the translation when they were already on a mission to get theirs. When we went outside we were thrilled to see lots of people on the grounds. A mission team is here from Michigan and they were playing with the kids from the baby house next door. We got to talk to a few of them and loved speaking English to someone there! Yesterday on our walk one little girl who was playing in a gated area would come to the edge of the gate, smile at us, watch us, and try to interact with us, only to be sternly told "Nyet!" by the worker which means "No". Today she was out with one of the mission team women and she ran over to me, grabbed me, and started saying "Mama, Mama". After that they put her back in the gated area. I've heard this is a common thing that many families experience when they go to these orphanages but experiencing it is hard, very hard. I still tear up thinking about her. A little boy later ran up and grabbed onto Larry and wouldn't let go.

When it was after 12:00 we knew lunch would be coming so we carried her inside and they took her from me and told her to say "Paka". She waved and off she went. Next thing I knew I heard crying. I don't know her voice well enough to know if it was her but I heard a worker speaking and saying "Mama" so I'll just let myself believe it was her and she was finally sad to see us go, even if it wasn't ;). Overall it was a very encouraging visit. We will visit her Tuesday and Wednesday and then court is Thursday.


This girl is obsessed with cars! She was thrilled to see one right along our walking path. Every time we passed it she would say "Machina!" over and over and over again!

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