Photos from second visit

 Matt, being introduced by our translator. He's smiling at Anya who is in the audience.

 Hiding from Matt, who is taking the picture.

Getting "sized" for some winter boots I'll buy her while here.

Our last visit with Anya on the second trip

After crashing into bed at 6:50pm, I woke up at 1:30am and pretty much was awake until 9:30pm that night. I was very sick after the ride back from Elatma and a long, hard day and went straight to bed after dinner again. Ended up getting 12 hours of sleep a (few here and there) and feel much better today.

When the van arrived for us to go to Elatma the first day, our pastor host pulled the agency worker out of the van and insisted that we use his better van for the second day, as the one we initially rode in wasn’t good enough for us and we were paying for the transportation. At his insistence, we rode in his van with seats that had headrests, a few even reclined, and that had a decent suspension system. Once again, with the inside of the van overheated, I started to get nauseous within the first few minutes of the ride. The heat was turned down and Dave pulled out a blister pack of pills from the side pocket on the wall of the van and told me, “Here take one of these.” Did he even know what it was? No. He passed the pack to Vika who looked at it for Russian and said, “Look Monica, it has a picture of an airplane and a car on it. Take one.” Okay, I must be stupid, but based on my husband’s assessment of pills he found in a van in Russia and my interpreter’s assessment of the pictures on the back of the blister pack, I took one. Turned out to be fine and I didn’t get sick from the ride or from the use of unknown substances.

On the way Vika told us many details on the paperwork and told us all about our court hearing. By the time she was done, I was ready to call it off. She gave us every worst case scenario there could be, told us about all the numbers of our assets, monthly payments, etc that we had to memorize and “Oh, when asked this, say this, but do not say that. And for this you must say that. And always do this when speaking and never do that”. We were supposed to memorize something to say at the end that is our request for the judge to rule in favor of us adopting, but I can’t remember it to save my life. Luckily she is coming over today to go over all this information AGAIN. Basically, she told us to expect to be grilled and for no one in the room to understand what we know about dwarfism, attachment issues, etc. Assume they know nothing and tell them everything.

We got to the orphanage, were sent into the room we used the day before and Matt got out his violin for the “concert”. All the little children bustled in and took their seats. He played a few songs for them and they enjoyed the time. Later the interpreter told us that when they talked to the children before hand, most of them didn’t know what a violin was and were trying to guess what one looked like. They headed back to their classes and Anya stayed with us. Matt let her try the violin and she was very concentrated on playing it and enjoyed that time. We played with more toys that we brought and ate snacks again. I had Dave take more than half of the gummy snacks out of the bag and hide them when she wasn’t looking as she was downing them a little too quickly! One of the toys I brought was magnetic “paper dolls” and when Anya put one of the summer dresses on the doll, I commented in Russian “summer dress”. She jerked her head, looked at me strangely and said “dah”. She looked shocked that I was speaking properly. Most likely all the other things I’ve been saying have been off in some way!

(photos won't load, will try later as a separate blog)

It was decided that this would be our last visit before court as Anya needed a day of rest before that. So, we headed back to our station in the better van. We ate, slept and got up for a day of resting a bit, filling out more paperwork for the Embassy and Immigration and going over the details of court again. It is early in the morning on the day of court and will go over there, be questioned, followed by Anya being questioned and will get her photos and things ready for her passport. At that point, even though she is legally ours, she goes back to the orphanage for a two week waiting period (I’ve heard it is in case we change our minds) and then Matt and I will get her and process her to leave the country.

First day in Moscow-off to the 8 doctor medical!

We were to meet our ride in the lobby at 12:15pm. After waking up early, we went to an awesome breakfast buffet at 6:30am in the restaurant lobby, later to realize that it was $100 for the three of us to eat! We went back upstairs to get ready, finish packing and wait out the time.

Matt, Dave and I bought a very nice SLR camera to use that does both still and movie shots early on in the process of adoption. I had been to Russia before and to Latvia with both a camera and a video camera and it was a pain in the butt switching back and forth.I didn’t want to do that with Anya. Anyway, since then, Matt purchased a special lens that is fixed and he also takes photos without flash, using the F-stop. So, guess who wanted really great photos of himself and Anya with his special lens? Not the one I bought that is much simpler to use? You got it, Matt. And guess who decided that he should teach his jet lagged and emotionally exhausted mother how to use this special lens that morning? Right again, Matt. So, I learned the best I could and then Dave took hold of it. He decided to shoot 5 shots in a row of me on the bed and you can see my response to him in the second photo!

Back down to the other restaurant in the lobby for lunch. Another $100 later for a waldorf salad that was mostly a head of celery sliced into ¾” chunks for my part of lunch and the other two meals, we sat on the lobby sofas and waited. I was feeling really queasy before we came down for lunch, through lunch and couldn’t take it any more. I just lay down on the sofa for the entire Russian world to see. So much for decorum.

I was told our appointment was at 1pm and as that time passed and 45 more minutes as well, laying there I didn’t hardly care that we just missed our one last needed item for court. I did call, there was a huge accident in Moscow and our appointment was moved to 2pm.

Again with the medical. Only three doctors saw us this time and the psychiatrist was talking about Matt to her colleague, raising her eyebrows up in delight and nodding her head while indicating she meant that boy, over there. Six couples and all their translators with in the two rooms this time. They did decide to give us a bit of discount this time, which was nice since we just did the same tests 3 month ago.

We stopped at a restaurant in Moscow for lunch, Moo Moo, and yes the sign out front was a painted up like a cow and cow paraphernalia was everywhere. It was a cafeteria and I had the best borscht soup there!!

Off to Ryazan. Four hours later traveling in a van/bus, with two leopard throw pillows that had silver cord trim to boot, we arrived in Ryazan, our station, if you will. Vika told us that Anatoli didn’t know we were coming that day, which I chalk up to busyness and being a man, and as he hugged me hello, I said, “Surprise!” We got all the luggage inside, were fed a marvelous dinner of sliced tomatoes and cucumbers, two kinds of bread, mashed potatoes and little meatloafish patties that were awesome. And we got an apple pie type dessert too. Unpacked everything: toys, toiletries, mine, food, Anya’s, gifts, meds/first aid, blah, blah, blah. Organized what we needed for the following day and hit sack.

Our first visit of the second trip (sorry about that title)

I was really apprehensive about seeing Anya. How was this really going to play out? Doing all the task involved was rewarding once they were finished, but now, now I would be dealing with another little soul with a will of her own! Paperwork is somewhat easy to wield, a child, well…

For the week or so prior to leaving, I would see my boys together laughing, or one of them at work or walking down a hall, and I would look at pictures of Mandy and just take a mental photograph. I wanted to memorize life as it was, as it has been. What if this all goes awry, I wanted those stable photographs of my family as it was. For years earlier, I had the thought that we may adopt and desperately wanted a family portrait of “us” before someone else invaded us. It was an expensive proposition and other things needed to be taken care of, so it never happened. Then, two years ago, we got the perfect photo of us at Thanksgiving, laughing away as a group. Love it and it hangs on the wall.

Now here has been my internal dilemma, part of me doesn’t want to “give up” the stage of life I have reached and to be thinking about someone else all the time (even though I find this boring…) and the other part knows that once someone in need is in my care, I will rise up to the occasion, wanting to eliminate the part of me that thought otherwise. But it is still a scary place to be. That is where the “my family as it is now” stuff comes from. I know it will seem like a stupid thought in a few weeks and “how could I even consider Anya not a part of the family?” But I am not fully there yet. In fact, the orphanage workers left us alone with her for over an hour and I (being very exhausted from emotional torment and jet lag) kept looking down the hall wondering if someone would be coming to get her soon, because I was tired. Yikes! How can you be adopting and sit there wishing someone would take her away so you could rest?!? Well, I don’t know the answer to that question, but I’ll tell you one thing, you can. Plus, she is still “theirs” and not “mine” yet.

In fact, when we all left to walk her back to her building, all the adults were halfway down the hall before I looked back and asked where Anya was. She was all bundled in her pretty purple winter jacket and striped beanie cap, sitting at the table. No one bothered to tell her to come with us! And a few minutes later as we went out in front of the building, the two workers stopped to change plans and I noticed Anya headed to cross an old village street, with a car coming on it. I ran up in front of her to block her and they all started call her name and telling her to stop. Maybe it will help me to feel that care for her as I am realizing that she really doesn’t have that individual attention every child is meant to have.

Back to the timeline. We got into a dilapidated old van to head to Elatma, a two and a half hour drive in a Russian BMW. We weren’t able to go in that care due to all the duffle bags of gifts we had for the orphans. Well, guess how long it takes to travel in a bumpy, jumpy, swervy van? About four hours. We spent around eight hours traveling in that contraption. On the way back, I was car sick from it too. Ah, what you do for a child.

Matt began taking pictures from the van window and of course they are awesome and we chatted and sat thinking all the way there. Okay, why do people always ask me where things are? On the way there, Vika said I would have to tell them where to turn to get to the orphanage, once in town. But before that, I told the drivers that they needed to make a left at the Dixie market to get to her town. How and why does this happen? I say I will not help people any more and that I am just not going to know the answers anyway, but I usually do. I have a very weird brain.

Once parked at the orphanage we got out and greeted Ekaterina, our once mortal enemy. She chattered away in Russian and every so often you’d hear a “Moe-nee-ka” punctuating the sentences. We brought in the duffle bags, let them know the contents as they have to catalog them and were sent to a room where we could play with Anya. We were just getting settled when I looked down the hall and saw a small child coming. Was that her? She looked so small. But indeed, that little girl bouncing down the hall in her puffy, shiny purple jacket and striped beanie was Anya! She came in and I grabbed the camera from Matt to film her reaction to him. She got her coat off and thrust her hand out in a hand shake to him with a huge smile on her face. Her caregiver was so delighted and I said in Russian, “My name is Monica, what is your name?” I am now drawing a blank as to her name, but she decided that since I spoke Russian, she’d tell me everything. All I picked up was that she recognized us (from the DVD?) and I heard the word fireman. So I just kept saying, “Dah, dah”. 

 At first seeing us...

 She took this of us!

This girl is an athlete. She is so comfortable with a ball in her hands and good at it too. She almost gasped when she hit the ball behind two rows of chairs and my Davey stepped right on them to get over them.

Monica: Uh Dave, I don’t think they step on the chairs here.

Dave: Really?

Monica: Yes Dave. It’s an orphanage and there are about a hundred children who are basically mentally ill. Would you let them step on the chairs?

Dave: I guess not.

Later.

Dave: Maybe I should wipe off my foot prints.

Also, she kicked the ball way over to the other side of the room and decided to hide herself from Dave behind a 3’x3’ pillar as he went to retrieve it. Another time, she looked at me, made the “shh” sign with her finger in front of her lips and took Matt’s lace up card to hide it under the table. We’ve got a true jokester on our hands!!

It was interesting to see her drawings of animals. I’d say she in at about 5 or 6 motor skill wise based on her drawings. Generally, as a basic rule, the first artwork children draw of people is around age two and is a head with sticks coming out of it for the legs and arms. Next they graduate to a head a round body and sticks coming out of that. After that stage, there is a head, a body and the legs and arms are thick, not sticks, they have matter to them. She is at that stage of drawing. Very cool to see.

 Dave doing I don't know what.

All this time we were alone as they workers were apparently preparing a contract for Dave to sign since we donated items. I got concerned because as Dave was signing the papers at the table, Anya looked over to see what he was doing. I asked Vika to explain to her what was going on just in case she thought they were adoption papers and that she might be whisked away right then or something like that.

It was time to leave. I was tired and okay with that. We told her “tomorrow” in Russian and she was taken back to her home, walking with a bounce in her step and with two Ziploc bags of toys and a half deflated beach ball in her hand. Too cute.

On the way home, we were told we would be going later the next day and Matt was scheduled for a concert there for the children at 3pm! When we first got to the room with Anya, Matt took out his violin to play for her and there was a music teacher down the hall with some boys in his class. The teacher insisted that Matt play for them the next day!

The blankets at the airport.

Here is a picture of our luggage for the trip. The two large duffle bags and the largest suitcase are filled with gifts for the orphans and for those who help us over there. Among other things, the kids get fleece blankets and pajama bottoms (90 items altogether) that I enclosed in Space Bags and squeezed all the air out of.

After we got all our luggage and were walking out of the airport, just before the exit, Dave was stopped with the large luggage cart and they ran all the bags through the x-ray machine. The women were very perplexed by the space bags of crumpled blankets and pjs and had us open the luggage. The did point at one of the bags and ask, "What is theese?" Being exhausted, all I could think of in Russian was the word for "child". So, being myself, I said in Russian, "for child" and acted out putting a blanket on myself and putting on a pair of pj bottoms. They nodded their heads and said, "Ohhhh.....okay, okay," and with that we were off!

We made it to Russia!

We're here! We're here! We're actually here! In Moscow at least. A 12 hour non-stop flight is grueling physically and other than slightly swollen feet that went down, we are all well. Our passport line was about 20-30 minutes this time verses the three hour wait we had in July heat with limited air conditioning last time.

Tomorrow we go for our second "8 Doctor Medical" to make sure we don't have infectious diseases, cancer, tuberculosis and that we are sane (questionable at this point), you know stuff like that. Now, we did this same medical at the beginning of July, but it "expired" and we have to do it again, to the tune of another $1500. We took care of our blood test and chest x-rays (which are in Dave's suitcase!) at home to save money for those tests. Of course, the results came in a mere 24 hours before we left on an Friday afternoon, which was the cause of some severe nail biting on my part.

Other than accidentally tipping the bell man $2.50 (in Rubles) for 7 LARGE suitcases (they cost us too much in excess baggage fees, which we knew would happen, but we needed to bring the orphans and others we work with gifts) and then correcting that with a quick trip to the lobby, we are settling down as the minutes pass.

Here is a quote from a lady who just adopted a daughter from China this summer, (another Achondroplasia Dwarf) and it sums up what it will be like for us and Anya when we bring her home:

When Junie gets home, we'll probably take it slow in introducing her to family and friends...try to remember that she is 4 years old and has had 4 years of experiences in China; first with a birth family who made the decision, or felt forced to make the decision, that they could not keep her, abandoning her in a safe place at the age of 5 months. Since then, she has lived with other kids - some of whom she has seen leave to be adopted, some of whom have been sick, or maybe even died. It certainly seems like she has been well cared for, but her life there is not the same as living with a family. Her caregivers have almost certainly changed over time. There will be adjustments; she will be grieving the people and experiences she leaves behind; she will be introduced to all new food, new sisters, new extended family, and a new routine. She may never have been to a store, or ridden in a car much - certainly not in a car seat, or had a choice of what to eat, or when to eat. She has never slept in a room alone, or been on an airplane; she'll be learning a new language! People here sound different, smell different, look different...it will take her some time to process all of these changes. So please be patient as she gets accustomed to her new life! We can't wait for her to meet all of you!!

Thanks for coming along with us (in spirit) on this ride!!

~Monica

Anya is out of hospital and says YES to being adopted!!

Here is an email I got from our pastor friend in Russia. He got the full, very, very good story. I am beside myself with joy! Puts a whole new spin on our next trip. Now, it will be like a party to go see Anya instead of having a cloud over us that she may say NO to the judge in court (about coming to live with us).  ~Monica

Here is the email:

Dear Monica,

God's  love  to  you!  On  October  8  I  had a talk by phone with the director  assistant  to learn a hospital where Anya  is.  She said that Anya would have some test only for one day and she would not be put to the hospital for many days. When I was calling and at  the  same  day Anya was taken to the psychical clinic for her test mental  ability  only  for one day.

I  asked some questions. The director answered. Anya wants to be adopted by you. The director also wants Anya to be adopted by you.

Anya  have  received  your  pictures in the orphanage and everyone was looking at them with great interest.

We are praying for your process of adoption. Our God is Allmighty!

With prayers,
Pastor Anatoli.

no visitors for Anya

Okay, the powers that be in Russia have said that Anya may not have visitors, unless they are from the orphanage. Mostly because she is in  a "special" hospital for "special" testing. Doesn't that make you a little bit nervous? It does me. Pray with us for her strong little personality to handle it well and not to be convinced that coming here is a bad idea. Thanks for listening! Next week we should get firm travel and court dates. Until then....

~Monica

Aye, Aye, Aye or in Russian, Oy, Oy, Oy

Man, oh man. Argggghh. Come on!

These are the slightly edited thoughts I have had today. The bottom line first...the orphanage did NOT give Anya her medical by  September 30 and the courts are pulling her out of the orphanage on the 6th or 7th for her medical, which is TEN TO FOURTEEN DAYS in a hospital. Talk about inciting unnecessary fear in a child.

I got the call from the director of our California based adoption agency this morning. This has generally not been a good sign when he calls. He was responding to my questioning to see whether or not Anya actually got the medical instead of us waiting until the end of the week to see if the judge gave us a court date or not. Apparently a director over in Russia is philosophically opposed to international adoptions and would not give Anya the medical. So, we think the courts then stepped in and we understand she must be sent to a hospital for her 1-2 week medical. Please do not ask me what they could possibly do that takes 1-2 weeks. I do not know. I do know however that Russians do not typically run on Western time and deadlines are often suggestions. And they are seldom a hurry to do much of anything-it's a great way of life in many ways. So, this testing must be given from a very relaxed point of view.

I am however, heartbroken that this poor girl is going to be dragged out of her home and hospitalized. We should have much more clarification tomorrow and will correct anything we believe today that is actually wrong at this point. If she is hospitalized in the town we stayed in, there are people we know and more importantly, that she knows, that will go visit her for us. We have even thrown out the idea of sending Matthew over there next week to be with her daily if the powers that be approve. I don' t know how that skinny boy will stay warm, but he tells me he does. Then it looks like, at this point, I would go over around the 24th and we would go to court the first week of November sometime. Now I really have to add another suitcase for the "vinter vear", as Tricia put it. Who knows when we'll go?! Okay, well God does.

Please pray for Anya's calmness and peace, for Matt being able to go if that is what she needs, for her to see this as an adventure and for NOTHING the slightest bit unusual to show up on her medical. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I appreciate that through all this, you are out there, understanding all the drama!

~Monica