Day 14 - Are we there yet?!?!

Still no court date…..

Today is Victory Day so no school for the kids (YAY!) but no offices are open to do paperwork (BOOO!) It really is fun to go to the orphanage on Sundays and holidays because the kids are out of school and they are usually outside playing. It gives us a chance to meet  Sergei’s friends, meet some of the caretakers and hand out little treats to all the other kids. We are still trying to slyly make our way to the back of the orphanage so we can see the younger kids and see some of Max’s friends and get photos for all the anxious parents back home. Sorry….no go today.

When we arrived at the orphanage there was a circle of kids playing a volleyball type game. Instead of taking Sergei inside, we just watched and then Kevin was pulled into the game. Little Max came out to play and everyone made sure he got the ball and nobody complained that there was a little 6 year old playing with the big kids. I sat and watch theses sweet kids playing ball on a summer day and then it started to hit me…these kids are going to be on the streets, soon. One boy (Dennis), I am guessing 15, is as big as a full grown man. What are his chances of being adopted? He was bigger than the security guard but he is not a man, just a boy. He is one of Sergei’s friends and played outside with us long after everyone was called in. He was nice and polite and just a cute teenager boy. He played with Max and tried all his English on us. Good kid, praying that he can make it in this world. Another sweet girl, who stood in that circle of kids, kept trying to keep her hair in place after running after each throw. She had large bald spots from pulling her hair, a self sooth defense.  All these kids are cute, innocent, nice kids. They didn’t ask for any of this, it is getting hard over here.

The girls with a teacher

After the other kids went in, Sergei, Dennis and Keivn played a little soccer and Max played with me. It took some convincing but we played an AWESOME game of back and forth soccer. This kind of stuff is a big deal. He made tons of eye contact with me (although he still checked over his shoulder to make sure Sergei was right there) and we just had fun. Max is the strongest 6 year old I have ever met. He can kick that soccer ball hard and he has good aim! He went inside with both knees and elbows scraped but I think he would say it was a great day.



After Max left for naptime we asked Sergei who he wanted to say goodbye to when he left for the US. It got hard again…he wants to say goodbye to his uncle, his cousin and his Babushka (grandma)  who had a stroke so she can’t come to the orphanage. We will also get flowers for his Aunts grave and hopefully get to see it as well. After that, Sergei was done emotionally so we let him play a little Fruit Ninja to de-stress. This is going to be a hard goodbye for the boys. This is the only life they have known, good or bad. We are trying to do it right, pray that we do.

After a hard day at the orphanage and still no internet we decided to walk to the Sea of Azov. It was a little farther than we thought so we stopped in a beautiful park and people watched for a minute. What do you see at a park….LITTLE KIDS! I lost it. I just had a little cry-fest on my park bench.  I am missing the girls so much, I want to have the boys with me, all the children at the park have parents, the kids at the orphanage don’t have families, we are still just WAITING! Cute Kevin walked me back to a little pizza place where we split our $7 pizza and he got internet up enough for me to facebook my Mom. Love this guy…couldn’t do this without him.

Day 13 - Bubbles!

Sorry for the post delay,our internet has been terrible for the last few days. We are still alive over here!

We are still in Ukraine and still waiting for a court date. Blah. In the past, you received your court date and had your court hearing a few days after you submitted your final papers to Kiev. There is a new Adoption Ministry in town and the waiting period is much longer than it ever has been. It is killing us softly over here people. 10 day waiting period for our court date….10 day waiting period after the court date. 20 days of just waiting on the other side of the planet is just too much wait time to get my boys and be with my girls. I am praying for a miracle (you can too since your prayers have gotten us this far!) that our 10 day waiting period after court “cooling off period” is waived. Our facilitator Sasha said this NEVER happens but with you people praying for it….Never say never!

We went to the orphanage today and brought bubbles because Kevin and I are feeling the pain of playing soccer every day in 89 degree humidity.  So much for buying that hairdryer and curling iron…my makeup is melting off and my hair is just…crazy! Back to buns, braids and ponytails! We did a little English lesson and then went outside to play.  The bubbles were a hit and we had fun, Sergei even kept it up after some of his friends were teasing him. Little Max is one cute kid. Today he ran right to Kevin when he met us in the “family room” and he melts my heart when he pulls on my hands to get me to go somewhere. He is his brother’s shadow, where ever Sergei goes, he goes. So grateful they have each other.

Everyone back home, we love you so much and miss you terribly! Funny we see people over her in Ukraine that look like people we love back home. Aunt Deb has a double working at our little corner market that we go into every day to buy water and cookies for the kids!

Day 12 – AUTOMAS!!!!

We started our day off at the orphanage only to turn around when we got there to go sign some papers at a nearby office building. And when I say nearby, I mean nearby an office building not IN an office building. This is the kind of stuff I like about Ukraine…back alley meetings mean “get it done”! Unsure of what we signed but we don’t care…if we are signing papers, things are moving.

We headed over to the orphanage for our 2 ½ hours a day visit with the boys. It is all we get but we will take it. It is so hard being away from the girls and only able to spend a few hours with the boys. Weird place to be…we have five kids but so much of the time here we feel so alone. We are ready to be exhausted with parenthood in Utah. We know it will happen and that we will be begging for mercy but some days it is really hard to imagine our time apart as being a memory.

We have been playing a lot of football (soccer)! Sergei is great and Max loves it. It is a great place for us to work on trust and bonding. We get to hold (illegal but there are no refs) chase and rough house with each other. If I have the ball and Max wants it he has to run up, make eye-contact, say “1,2,3” and give me a kiss on the cheek before I will hand it over. Ok, ok the kiss is forced but it is always super sloppy and I will take them anyway I can! I LOVE THESE BOYS!

We met Joe Crispin and some of his teammates at dinner the other night. Joe is a point guard from New Jersey who plays on the local basketball team here in Ukraine called Automas. Joe really is the nicest guy ever. Not only is he the teams star player he bent over backwards to make sure we got tickets to the game for tonight….front row to boot. The orphanage does not like allowing the kids out before the adoption is final but we asked anyways to bring Sergei but were told no. Booooo! Sergei kept calling himself “Crispin” when we played basketball today.

We got to the game and there was Alice, team coordinator, who led us right to our seats. The game was a blast and we hooted and hollered and the only thing missing was our boys. We actually saw kids from the orphanage there!!! I looked everywhere for Sergei but the other kids said he wasn’t there…double Booooo. It was tough being there without him…especially seeing all the other kiddos around. We won the game and split a pizza (they are littler than they sound) before headed back to the apartment. We actually had internet for a minute and Skyped with Pearl and Charlotte for a few minutes! It was great! We finally saw them and they could see us (our connection has been so crummy it hasn’t worked that well since we arrived)! Pearl showed us how high she could jump and Charlotte copied her and tried to jump twice as high! It was just what we needed, a little dose of home.  I LOVE THESE GIRLS!

I finally broke down and spent the $28 USD for a hairdryer and curling iron with euro-plugs. I thought I was so smart saving money by not buying one yet but after 2 straight weeks of buns, braids and ponytails, my head needed a break! I will leave them here for the next family!

 Our papers are in and we are just waiting for our court date…….waiting….waiting….

воскресенье - Day eleven

Okay - blogity blog time... Because we are waiting for an afternoon visit this Monday - duu kids have school on work days!  So yesterday we started our visit with our boys playing some drawing games.  We had a pile of colored pencils and some notebooks from the local supermarket.  We then did some basic shape drawing with various colors - writing down and saying the English and Russian words for the colors and the shapes.  Max wasn't so into it but Sergei played along.  The few words that I am learning have little funny images attached to them but there isn't a way yet for us to communicate that potential tool.  One example on the image thing - fish in Russian (рыба) sounds to me like reba so I just remember Reba McIntyre singing in an aquarium and the word pops right up.

We spent the second half of our visit playing basketball on the orphanage half court.  Yes that is the basketball court.  Back in the room for some circus audition flips and wrestling which Max really seemed to have fun with – the poor kid is ticklish.

Before going back to the apartment we had Sasha Driver take us across town and past one of the main steel mills to the one Catholic Church in town (Mother of God – Our Lady of Czestochowa).  Crazy roads – in the US no one really buys a SUV thinking they need to lock the hubs and go digging but in Ukraine an SUV is a real advantage as the roads are something that would make even UDOT blush – when they are even paved.  Anyway no one knew where this little church was until we found two babushkas under a shade tree – pointed us there no problem.  The door was closed and locked but thankfully brave Becky was there to do something I would never dare and that was to ring the doorbell.  We met Father Leonard (Pauline Brother from Belarus) and he was nice enough to let me receive the sacraments and fix us lunch.  So much for telling Sash we’d be just five minutes.

 The wind switched on us today which meant we got our first full taste (and I do mean taste) of the pollution in Mariupol.  Mariupol adoption – where one way or another your eyes will water.  I made Becky keep the windows closed until later in the night when we went out for ice cream and a little rain helped to clear things up.

Day десять - a rose by any other name

If you've been following the Gardiner's adoption blog Dearest Dema you may have read about how dearest Dema became dearest Alex.  Part of adopting children into your family means updating their name.  That may mean just updating the last name to match the new family's name.  It is also the case that the first name may be changed and that the child depending on their age may have some input into the matter.  For us the boys keep their first names.  My understanding is that in Russia and at least this part of Ukraine people do not have middle names.  Instead a patronymic is given (thanks to Sasha for this English lesson) which is the father's name with a 'son of' ending.  This ending is usually a sort of sounding '-ovich' for boys and '-ovna' for girls with the father's name as the prefix.  Anyway as soon to be Americans we have decided to give both boys middle names and the whole intro about the patronymic is that Sergei will have Kevin as his middle name.

We showed him our plan on paper and he seemed very happy with the idea - so we will stick with it.  Our Sergei Kevinevich will be Sergei Kevin Radzinski (Сергей Кевин Радзински) meaning he will be able to have a Russian style patronymic and an American style middle name all in one.

Maksym will get Stoker for a middle name for Grandma Buchmiller and her family name – her parents adopted her and she has been instrumental in getting us over here.

Adoption paperwork timeline:

I thought this would be easier to see what we are doing over here to get the adoption DONE! Every document and step is required and must be completed/filed before we can move on. The SDA (Ukrainian adoption offices) only accepts paperwork Mon. Weds and Fri. Also remember that Kiev is an overnight train-ride away from Mariupol. Everyone is closed for the weekends and holidays usually delay any paperwork processing a week. With all of this, you will realize how AWESOME our adoption agency, The Stork, is and that our local facilitator Sasha is the BOMB!! If a form has to be signed by someone at 9pm, during a holiday…Sasha tracks them down …and gets it done!

April 22 – Leave Salt lake City, Utah (we went stand-by without a hitch!)

April 24 – Arrived in Ukraine (arrival date required by our adoption agency

April 26 – SDA Appointment (Check in with country and get permission to go to orphanage)

April 27 – Overnight train-ride from Kiev to Mariupol (this is the town the boys orphanage is in)

April 28 – 1^st visit to orphanage! (Saturday)

May 1   - MAY DAY HOLIDAY (office closed officially Monday and Tuesday)

May 3 -   Doctor appointment at orphanage (required meeting)

                 Signed and Notarize an “Intent to adopt” to local ministry

May 4 -   Signed and Notarized an “Intent to adopt “ to Kiev. (We signed this Friday. Sasha met                someone after 8pm to complete and he took the train to Kiev the next day to hand 

               deliver.

                

May 5 – Our paperwork will be reviewed on Monday. Once that is complete we will get a court date (we are waiting to see what day.) This will take place in Mariupol and we will have Sasha as our representative, there will be two jurors a judge and a prosecutor. The last court held the prosecutor was tough...really tough.

We can feel all your prayers and are so grateful for every single one…PLEASE KEEP THEM COMING!!

Day 9 - Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes

Kev and I had a break through with Max! We made constant eye-contact with him and reinforced the idea that I am Mama and Kevin is Papa over and over again during our soccer game. I think just hearing us say it over and over, reassures Sergei as well. After the game we went inside and Max repeated the words “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes”…His first English words! He can do this! Hearing his little voice and feeling his little hand in mine makes all my worries disappear. He is so happy to be with his brother and Sergei LOVES him more than anything. Watching them play soccer was great. Max will focus on whatever Sergei does. If Sergei does a drop-kick, Max does a drop-kick. I still couldn’t get Max to kick me the ball (he would only give it to his brother) but he does call me Mama, yell extra loud in Russian at me in hopes of me understanding him better and leads me by my hand when he wants me to do something. I love these boys.

We are going into week 3 this Sunday without the girls and I cannot tell a lie…it is really starting to hurt, bad. We have not been able to Skype the way we had hoped and it really does help when we can see their faces and Charlotte’s big round belly. At Suzy’s school they have a different virtue they work on every month. This month, Suzy was chosen as the student who displayed this month’s virtue: Patience. When we read that, we both lost it. We are so grateful for these sweet girls and their big hearts. They are anxious to get their brothers home so that Pearl can teach them English and how to swim and Suzy can show Max the jumpoline and Stewart (if Charlotte hasn’t crushed him by then…) Kiss our girls and hold them tight. Girls, Mommy and Daddy love you and we are coming home as fast as we can!