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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Getting Real

As I've read over my blogs the last few days I feel it is necessary to write this post. Larry and I have been blessed with people who have been real with us. They prepared us well for what this process can look like...the good and the bad. Thanks to them none of what I am about to tell you comes as a surprise to us, and thanks to them I fear that my blog looks too much like a fairy tale adoption. It is not. Before I go farther I will tell you that much of what we have experienced is the same or better than we had hoped and that is the majority of what you are seeing as we share this journey with you. But I think it is important, for many reasons, that you know a bit more of the other side.

Really, everything was going great those first few days. There was a lot of excitement with the SDA appointment, sightseeing, the referral, even our first meeting went far better that we could have hoped or imagined. Then came our first "official" visit. When looking at our blog, pictures, and video you may think that there was an instant and amazing connection between all of us. Yes, we do get along well. She has never rejected us in any way and that in itself is an answer to prayer. At the same time the reality is that she doesn't feel like our child. It feels like we spend 2 hours a day babysitting someone else's kid. We are severely restricted in what we can do with her because of her surgery, because we don't know her at all, and mostly because we are under the watchful eye of the staff and have very little freedom to do much with her. Let me tell you....that makes for a LOOONNNGGG 2 hours. Oksana calls us "Mama" and "Papa" but that doesn't mean anything to her. We are just nice people who come play with her. If we never came again she'd probably be fine, and when our time is up she's perfectly content to leave us. This is perfectly normal for this phase of our meeting, but again, I fear that we are putting an image out there that there is some instant family bonding happening that isn't.

The other reality is facing her disability. Not much about her has been a surprise but, reading it on paper and seeing it in person are two different things. I've worked with children with special needs my whole life. Still, being a teacher/caregiver that sends them home every day, and knowing they are yours forever, are also two very different things. When we met Oksana we had to face, in reality, all of who she is. There is much she can do but the delays we are looking at are significant. It would not be unrealistic to say that she is developmentally at the level of a 2 year old. She's 5 years old...she doesn't know how to hold a crayon to color or a spoon to eat, I'm not positive she'd been on a swing before yesterday, we've tried twice to see if she has any knowledge of colors or color matching and have seen no evidence of that, she doesn't know how to blow out of her lips to make bubbles, etc. I KNOW she will grow and learn by leaps and bounds but that doesn't change that we have to face who Oksana is now. The Oksana I see now will need life long care. Even if that never changed we'd still adopt her but we have to go through the process of dealing with all of this emotionally, and that can also make the visits difficult.

On the way home from our last visit I told Larry that this whole thing goes against our human nature. When I had my boys there was an instant connection. Biologically we aren't designed to love other children like our own. Yet, adoption is God's heart. And doesn't that often seem to be the case....that things that seem so unnatural to our human nature are perfectly natural to God? So no matter what we FEEL we push forward in FAITH that God told us to do this, TRUSTING Him to create the love and push out the fear in us that will allow us to be the family He created us to be.

Saturday Visit

Today we brought the stroller along and asked if we could take Oksana outside. They said that was fine as long as she was back by 12 for lunch....at least their talking and pointing indicated that! She did a great job in it and we spent a full hour rolling along pretty much the same path over and over and over again. She didn't care at all! She sang songs, tried to touch all of the plants she went by, and would occasionally make an observation about something we didn't understand! It gave me a great chance to get some pictures of the orphanage grounds. Her outfit was yet again the latest trend in orphan wear :). It was better than yesterday but that doesn't take much! We stopped to eat some yogurt and she loved it! One of the things I've noticed about her is that when she experiences something new or different she gets such incredible joy from it. She cracks this huge grin and sometimes will belly laugh (the pictures and video show this). After our snack we went over to the playground and asked her if she wanted to get on the swing. She covered her eyes and then looked very unsure as we unstrapped her from the stroller. When we put her in and started swinging the laughter that rose up from her was hilarious! We thought we would never get her out of that swing but then out came the orphanage worker to let us know it was time for her to eat...and 10 minutes early I might add! I carried her in and off she went.

A couple of quick observations. I mentioned before that she has a great attention span and is full of joy in most situations. She also talks and sings A LOT and picks up English words fast. We've also noticed that with that attention span comes an inability to separate from an activity that she is enjoying and she lets you know about it too! While she does talk more than we expected we have seen quite a few indications of significant delay. While eating yogurt today I tried to give her the spoon. She didn't know how to hold it but did have the basic idea of sticking it in, scraping, and trying to get it to her mouth but it seemed like she had never self fed. I emailed Nina's mom to ask if this is true. Also, the day we met Oksana she had a small doll so yesterday we went and got something similar. It came in a box with some hair clips, a brush, haridryer, purse, etc. As I was taking everything out of the box yesterday it occurred to me that I should keep it all in the box because she would probably like the box better than the doll. Sure enough there was VERY little interest in the doll or all of her "parts" but it all got taken in and out, and in and out of the box. That is where she is developmentally but hopefully not for long!

I know I type too much but there is so much to tell! Believe me, I'm leaving out a lot. We will see Oksana again Monday. Here are pictures and video from today:
This whole adoption thing really is stressful (more on that in another blog). We've had a hard couple of days but we got the best laugh when I almost walked out the door in slippers! I'm sure that would have made a great impression on the orphanage staff! By the way, those slippers were provided by our apartment....at first I thought it was because they were so kind but then I realized it's because the floors are RARELY cleaned!

Today's outfit....

Yogurt face!

EVERY time we went by these plants she had to reach out and touch them!

This statue is behind her baby house with a garden in front of it. Do any of you Vorzel families know who this guy is?

There are a number of statues throughout the grounds. This is one of the more ummmm...interesting ones. A fox and a headless bird!

The back of Oksana's baby house

They don't use dryers here and I love this picture of stockings and undies hanging to dry. What color do you think Oksana will be in next time?!

This is what most of the playground equipment looks like....

So we were surprised and thrilled to see this!....

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Day 2 with Oksana!

Today was our first “official” visit with Oksana! Our driver picked us up at 8:45 and we battled traffic to Vorzel. When we got there they put us in a small room with some desks, a bench, a cabinet, and a few random items and had us wait for her. When she came in the caregiver was very sweet and was telling her that mama and papa were here. She set her up with a blanket to sit on and a pillow to prop behind her back and off she went. Yesterday Oksana was in a dress and a darling hair do. Today we got "orphan Oksana"! It was an outfit like no other and her hair hadn't even been brushed! I guess they figured after we said yes to her there was no use bothering :). We brought crayons and a coloring book, a ball, a snack, and bubbles to play with. The coloring book was not a big hit but the crayons sure were! She dumped out the crayons and started putting them back in the box. At first we were noticing how she couldn’t get the crayon in and that she was really struggling but after a few minutes of perseverance she was putting them in like a pro….then dumping them out….and putting them back in. She did this for about 45 minutes! The girl has an attention span! We did bubbles, threw the ball, and then took out the crayons again. When we were at the end of the fun we picked her up and walked her around the room. We spun in circles and played a tickle game with dad. Little did we know that after all of that fun she would NOT want to be put down. Unfortunately she is not a small kid and holding her nonstop is not an option! She was not happy about that. At this point we had been trapped in this little room with her for over 2 hours and she was getting tired and hungry. We tried to entertain her a bit more but she wanted nothing to do with what we had and that’s about when the orphanage worker came back in to get her. I think we were all relieved! Almost 3 hours trapped in a room with a child who can’t walk and barely knows you probably isn’t the best case scenario! Tomorrow we are going to bring our stroller and ask if we can take her outside for a bit. Here are pictures and video of our time together. I'll give you some good daddy pictures since it was all mommy pictures yesterday:

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Today is the first day that I am feeling the impact of this, the novelty is wearing off, and I’m missing my boys terribly. I know everyone goes through this at some point and honestly I’m surprised it took me this long! It’s been kind of a hard afternoon but hopefully tomorrow will be better. After our visit with Oksana tomorrow we are meeting up with the Claxtons again and going to a BBQ with them and some other Americans living in Ukraine. We are both looking forward to that!

Court Date!!!!

Today we started our day with a trip to the notary with Nadiya, whose name I have spelled 3 different ways but I think I finally have it right :). We had kind of a funny experience when right in the middle of working with the notary she suddenly stopped, rambled on about something, looked at us and held up her hand showing the number 5, shut out the lights, sent us out the door, and locked up behind us! Apparently she had somewhere she needed to be....right in the middle of what we were doing! We just started laughing. The notary said she would be back in 5 minutes but Nadiya knew better so we went to a coffee shop to hang out until we heard back from her. It was a great opportunity to get to know Nadiya better. As soon as I can I'll get a picture of her. She is 27, single, and adorable. We have really grown to love her in just a few days. After the notary she went out to Vorzel to deliver our documents to the judge and we already have a court date! We will be in court on June 24th! After that comes the 10 day wait and hopefully July 5th will be gotcha day!!!

Overall it was kind of a quiet day so I thought I'd take the opportunity to post a few pictures and observations that have been side tracked with all of the excitement about Oksana.

We are really starting to enjoy this city. Many people speak at least enough English to get by when they talk to us. If not, pointing works well too! There are a good number of restaurants that have English menus so that has helped. The other day I used a public restroom while I was with Jill Claxton, not because I needed to go, but because I wanted the experience :). We walked in and handed 2 hryvnia to the lady which is about the equivalent of 25 cents. Then we took a piece of toilet paper from a dispenser on the wall and off we went to find an open stall. Yep, you heard that right....toilet paper first, potty next! Larry's big question was "What if you need more than one piece?!" I guess you are out of luck. We haven't encountered a turkish toilet yet and if I have my way we won't anytime soon!

Here are some pictures:
Our apartment from the outside....you'd never guess would you? It looks run down like this all they way up to the point that you walk in the room and then it's like walking into another world!


This is a church that we got to go inside on our walk home from the notary. It is St. Vladimir's Cathedral and it is absolutely beautiful!


Here is an ad for Toy Story 3:


This is a Papa John's Pizza! I don't know if you can tell but "Papa John" is an African American man! When I've told some of the Ukranians that he is not African American they get a kick out of it!


This is our favorite Ukranian buffet. Mmmmmm....we are yet to find something bad there and it is so cheap!


And here is the famous TGI Fridays...I've heard more English speakers coming in and out of this door than any other!


We are being picked up tomorrow by our driver at 8:45 to see Oksana again. More to come tomorrow.....

Meeting Oksana

Pictures and video first and then I'll talk :). I will say briefly that after interacting with Oksana while the orphanage worker held her, they let me hold her and before Larry had a chance they whisked her away for a nap. He did get to have fun interacting with her though!








This video shows her looking at the photo book of our family with the orphanage doctor, then it goes into her singing a song, and last you will see her rocking with her mama :)!

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When we got to the orphanage we met with the doctor and she went over the most recent medical information she had on Oksana. We learned that she was born at 31 weeks gestation weighing 2.2 lbs and she was 15.7 inches long! She grew very fast after birth though and was at the orphanage by 2 months weighting just over 6.6 lbs and she was 18.9 inches long. She does NOT have microcephaly. She had surgery on her eye in 2008 because it was crossed (you can still see this a little bit). She also had the tendon release back in March. She can not currently stand on her legs because of the surgery. She needs to get AFO's and they do have some ordered for her but they won't be in by the time we leave.

When she came in they warned us that she might be in some pain and had not been in the doctors office often so we needed to be prepared that she might be scared. That was not the case at all. She was very intrigued. The doctor has all kinds of fun toys including a big pink ball that she was so intrigued with that they eventually took it out and told her they would bring it to her groupa!

She was very sweet to us. She saw Larry and immediately commented that he was a man! She doesn't see them often and she reached to touch his hand and smiled at him! She has a precious big dimple in her left cheek :). Then she leaned forward and touched her nose to mine and then to Larry's. She interacted with both of us quite a bit and talked and talked and talked! What speech delay are they talking about?! Even our translator was shocked at how much she was chatting away. Of course, we had no idea what she was saying! Then they let me hold her. It felt so good to hold her! She is precious. Next thing we knew they said it was time for her to take a nap. They had been keeping her up from her nap to let us meet her. We asked for a picture of all 3 of us and then off she went.

We will finish up paperwork tomorrow so we will not be able to see her but we will see her on Friday. We can't wait!