Jodi Speaks Her Mind

Back on U.S. Soil - some of us anyway 11/10/2007

I’m writing this blog post from the Sea-Tac airport in Seattle.  It is Saturday November 10, and has been for quite some time now.  We left Vlad on Saturday afternoon at 3:00 pm and it is now 12:15 pm Saturday in Seattle.  After many hours of flying, in the end we arrive in Phoenix just a couple hours after we departed Vlad.  But I guess it’s only fair, since we completely lost a day on our way there, so we’ve now regained it on the return trip.

The sad news is that Steve and Sophie are not with us.  We finally had a glitch in our adoption and it was a doozie.  Our courier who was returning to Vlad with Sophie’s Passport, Visa, and all other of her important original documents, got delayed when her plane had a mechanical problem.  In the end, the courier flight, which was due in at 11:00 am from Moscow, was 4 hours delayed and didn’t come in until 3:00 pm.  Our flight out of Vlad was scheduled to depart right at 3:00 pm and they would not budge as far as waiting for the other flight for our sakes.  We had decided earlier in the day that Steve would stay with Sophie and bring her home in the event that this happened.  We were sad that it ended up actually happening, but we are trusting that God has some purpose in it or that He will somehow use it for His glory.  Still, it was so hard to be sitting on the plane and see the Moscow plane pull in while we’re on the tarmac and know that the documents we so desperately needed were on that plane just meters away.

As a result of the delay, Steve and Sophie will come home either Monday - if space can be found on some flight going to LA from Seoul - or Tuesday (pretty much guaranteed).  It’s kind of ironic because it would mean rescheduling her ENT appointment which was one of the main reasons we got the ten-day waiting period waived.  At this point, we’re not stressing the details and are just looking forward to all being together as a family in Arizona!

On top of the frustration of the delays, I have come down with a nasty cough and have completely lost my voice.  Thankfully, we can sign with one another, but it is still an inconvenience and painful, too.  I think the reason for the loss of voice can be traced back to our outing into Vlad on Friday.  We finally ventured out of the cozy hotel suite and dared to take the commuter train into the city.  We ended up doing a LOT of walking and it was much colder than we had expected.  Hopefully, Sophie hasn’t also caught something nasty.

Okay, so now that I’ve told you where we all are now, I can back up and share more about our week together and about this new little person who is joining our family.  Sophie is really just a sweetheart of a girl.  She is very easy going and doesn’t fuss over much at all.  She is beginning to learn a few signs, mostly signs that get her more of something she wants, so she is learning cookie, more, please, and candy.  I think those are the motivating ones for the moment.  Once we get home, we trust her vocabulary will begin to expand.  She is quite a busy little girl and runs about putting things away, or just moving things about.  If she doesn’t know where something goes, she will often just give it to a person or she will pick a new location and she has been observed relocating entire collections just for the sake of moving them about.  She learned whose shoes were whose and was often seen delivering shoes at odd moments, but she always makes her deliveries with a smile, so you just can’t help but give her a big smile and a “thank you!”

Sophie is a good eater!  She loves to eat and she seems to eat pretty well.  She likes oatmeal or rice for breakfast, and can eat an adult sized portion.  She likes soup a lot, and we ate soup just about every day for lunch.  She likes crackers and cookies, too, but doesn’t seem very fond of vegetables, though we really only offered her cucumbers and tomatoes, which they have in abundance there, so perhaps she is just tired of them.  We don’t know.  She also drinks a lot, even water, which is good.  Oh, and she seems to like spaghetti.  Hopefully, she won’t have too many adjustment difficulties with regard to foods, but only time will tell, and also an opportunity for her to discover her own likes and dislikes.

Sleeping is a whole different matter.  She does not like to go to sleep.  She doesn’t scream or cry or fuss really, but she just doesn’t allow herself to fall asleep.  We finally got to where we weren’t worrying about it so much and just let her stay up late and play and then try to put her down when it was more likely she would actually go to sleep.  That did seem to help, and it didn’t hurt that she was able to sleep in.  Also, she likes to play with her hands during this time, so we started fingerspelling the alphabet for her.  You can’t start too young, right?  Hopefully, once we get home and she is more settled, we can find a sleep routine that works for her.  Supposedly they had naps in the baby house, but she fought the naps so hard, we pretty much stopped trying.  If a kid who didn’t have a nap is still awake at 11:00 at night, how late would she stay up if she did have a nap?!  Anyhow, the other good thing about her sleep is that most nights, once she got to sleep, she stayed that way.  She only had a couple of times she woke up and cried and had to be helped back to sleep.  Being able to sleep through the nights will be a huge help for us if it continues once home.  It might not, though, and we are prepared for that.  When Adelina came home it was like having a newborn in the house because she did not go to sleep easily or sleep soundly.  Many adoptive parents would say that adopting is no different than birthing a child regarding of the age of the child being adopted.  Sleep deprivation is just part of being new parents.

As for play, she is so playful.  She likes toys, she looks at books, though not “properly” yet, but we are glad she has an interest in them.  She absolutely loves to hang upside down and flop about on the bed.  She does forward rolls even.  She does a lot of up and down, and when she walks she is rather uncoordinated, so she falls all the time.  We’ve heard her knock her head on the floor and the tables, but she always just smiles and keeps going.  I think she must be so used to it.

Well, our final flight to Phoenix is going to be boarding soon, so I’d better sign off.  I’m sorry I didn’t blog more in Vlad, there were 3 of us sharing one computer, and with two kids to care for, it was hard to find time.  See you on the other side!

Court is scheduled for… 10/16/2007

November 2!  We will be flying towards the end of October.  Wow, we have less than 2 weeks to get completely ready, but boy are we excited!

Our home may not be ready, but our hearts sure are!

Sophie, here we come!

Day 3: We say YES - Sept. 6 9/8/2007

We got up right at 6 and checked e-mail. There it was… with a time stamp of 5:54 am. Way to go, Dr. S! The e-mail explained the possible change in prognosis, but the Dr. clarified that it is not a serious problem, and if it does become an issue, it is treatable with medication. (We love you Dr. S., but you could have put that in the last e-mail!). But God was in control, and now we breathed huge sighs of relief, as we now felt we could move forward with the solid backing of our Dr. and peace in our hearts that we did our due diligence in preparing ourselves for her medical issues. Actually, in this second e-mail the Dr. offered us some clarifications on her prognosis that on some issues was better than before. We were practically floating by now and we were very excited to feel like now we had a truly solid “YES, we will adopt her.”

Then, as if the good news wasn’t good enough, we had a scheduled phone call with Adelina! We got to hear her voice and tell her how much we loved her and missed her. She has had a great week, but it was just so wonderful to make contact. We were missing her so much!

Our visit this day was a really good one, and we noticed we were both feeling warmer towards Anna and more relaxed. I think we had both feared getting too attached before everything was really decided, and now we were free to think of her as the girl who will become our daughter and not just the girl who might become our daughter. Believe it or not, it’s a huge difference! Pics from this day are here.

After our visit today, we met our facilitator downtown to go to the notary’s office to sign our paperwork stating our decision and signing the medical conclusion - basically our acknowledgment of having received the medical conclusion. After this point, we are not permitted to change our mind based on medical grounds. I had no idea we were expected to sign this, but it makes all the more glad that we explored her medical issues as thoroughly as we did.

Our next stop was a photo place where we got prints made of a selection of our pictures with Anna. We had purchased her a little pink photo album that looks just like a little purse - so cute! It snaps shut just like a purse and is perfect for her. We brought a selection of pictures of us and Adelina and our home and cats and added at the front of the album all the pictures we’d chosen of her and us. Hopefully with repeated viewing we will become familiar faces to her and the transition out of the orphanage won’t be as traumatic.

The remainder of this day was very pleasant. It was our last night in Vlad and though we had planned to maybe go out to dinner with another family, they were unavailable, and in the end we decided we liked the idea of staying in and getting all our stuff in proper order for our departure tomorrow. I called and ordered pizza and salad for delivery… in Russian! Wow, go me. It is one thing to get by face to face, but I wasn’t sure if I could manage over the phone. I actually went up to the reception desk hoping they would help us and she just wrote down the numbers (which I already had) and said, “call one of these. I think they should speak English.” Yeah, right. Oh well, nothing ventured, nothing gained. We got our salad and pizza right at our hotel room door, and it was much cheaper than eating out at a restaurant. The pizza was quite good, too, which was lucky because that is not always the case over there. We worked on communications, and the photo album for Anna as well as a matching one for ourselves (and Adelina). We uploaded some more video and charged all our devices for the last day and trip home. We packed our stuff, and though we had hoped to get to bed early, we did get to bed by 10, so not too bad.

Day 2: Ups and downs - Sept. 5

We awoke early anxious for a response from Dr. S. It wasn’t there but it came through sometime in the morning while we were getting ready. We had another early morning with Vlad picking us up at 8 am. The Dr wrote that he had been unable to view the video due to technical difficulties, but he felt he could make some conclusions based on pictures, the medical, information provided by the baby house head doctor, and our anecdotal observations. He addressed her various issues point by point, but in the end he said he felt she likely had a good prognosis provided she received good nutrition, a loving family, appropriate therapies, and so on. We were elated and started our day out feeling pretty good about life.

We med Vlad, picked up Elena on the way, and had a pleasant drive out to the Ussurisk baby house followed by a pretty good visit with Anna. Pictures from Day 2 are found here. I think Steve and I both had some anxiety still about it all, but we have the benefit of a previous adoption and remember feeling very anxious and scared when we decided to adopt Adelina. It is just such a huge decision and a major responsibility we are taking on. You can’t help but question it all some. Anna gave us some sweet hugs, though, and we were really warming up to the idea of making her our own.

Anyhow, the day went much like the day before. We stopped at the Vlad Motor Inn to turn over our interpreter and driver to the other WACAP family that is in Vlad at the same time and were provided another driver for our return trip to our hotel. Once back at the hotel, we tried to check e-mail, but something was wrong with the wireless connection or with g-mail, and it was loading too slow. We were starving because we had skipped lunch and we decided to go to an early dinner at an Italian place down by the waterfront. The e-mail can wait.

Our dinner was excellent, though the lasagna was not nearly as good as the creamy salmon and pasta dish that I had. Wow, it was so yummy - we must go back for some more of that. After dinner we walked along the boardwalk area and I took off my sandals so I could walk in the water. I mean it isn’t everyday you get a chance to put your feet in the Amursky Bay, essentially an inlet off the Sea of Japan. They had a little beach area there and many people were sunbathing and playing in the water. It was cold, but not unbearable. We saw some other cool things at the waterfront, like a diving platform. You know the ones for the competitions where they have the concrete platforms at 5 and 10 meters (we think those are right). The platforms were right on the bay, which looks so scary! It’s one thing to plunge from the heights into a clean pool of water, but into a choppy sea!? Yikes. Anyhow, the waterfront area was really cool. We then had to walk up the hill (the hotels are on this steep hill rising above the bay) and we got some pictures with the tiger statue, evidently there to commemorate the hill, which is called Tiger Hill. Pics from our walk around Vlad are in the gallery. So we had had a most pleasant time and we returned to our room feeling encouraged and refreshed. Upon our return, we checked our e-mail, and this is when things got interesting…

Dr. S. had written again letting us know that he had finally had a chance to view the video (he had gotten technical help) and had some further comments and a concern. The concern involved something he observed on the video regarding her muscle tone and the CP. He asked us if we had observed the same thing he thinks he is seeing, and he went on to say that if we have (observed what he saw), this will alter her prognosis, I am afraid. “I am afraid” is the phrase he used, and we did NOT like the sound of that. I think Steve about started to hyperventilate, and I was just trying to pray and remember that God is good and He is in control, and He has a plan. This would alter her prognosis how!? We started scouring the internet to see what we could find. We found a little but nothing clear enough to really help us. In the end, we put together a second e-mail for Dr. S. detailing our observations as related to his concern and also providing more medical data we received that day on some of her other issues (which left us a tad concerned). We also uploaded another video in case it helped him to see more of her movements and motor skills.

We had to call our facilitator and tell her that we were dealing with questions from our Dr. and we were pulling back temporarily from our “yes” just until we can get his concerns addressed. She was very understanding and sympathetic to our situation. We e-mailed our parents for support, then we prayed hard and went to sleep. Despite the stress of it all, we actually slept okay. We had asked Dr. S. to please answer us by noon AZ time, so we’d get his response by 6 am in Vlad. That should give us enough time to contact our facilitator and either continue or alter our course. Thus ended what was largely both the best and the hardest day thus far.

Day 1: Meeting our referral - Sept. 4

Our “referral” is a little girl named Anna. The couple of pictures we had seen of her were really cute (one in particular). But we were a little scared about the CP diagnosis on top of the deafness. Well, late on the night of the third we were provided with the official “medical conclusion” for her. Wow, it was scary. It had long lists of things she was diagnosed with at birth; more things she was diagnosed with later on, and a “current diagnoses” list that was frighteningly long. We spent some time researching as much of it as we could so we were prepared to ask questions about it when we met the orphanage head doctor.

Our schedule called for the driver to show up at the hotel at 8 AM. We thought this would feel early but since we were so jet lagged we ended up waking up at 5 am and not able to go back to sleep. So we got up and did what we needed to do to prepare to meet little Anna. Then we went to have breakfast with our new friends. That was actually quite enjoyable until we realized we’d talked too long and we had to run out without actually having eaten much of anything. Thankfully, we packed granola bars to eat on the road.

There were multiple stops along the way. First to meet Tanya to pick up a printed copy of the translated medical conclusion (thus far we only had an electronic version), then to buy some water. The orphanage was a 2 hour drive from the city, and we were beginning to see some of the obvious differences between here and Ukraine. First of all, it would appear that everyone has cars (the previously mentioned used Japanese cars). They have no emission rules here, and all the vehicles, especially the trucks that are hauling stuff everywhere, and buses and such, are always spewing horrible amounts of exhaust. Anyhow, I’ll skip the pollution treatise here, and just summarize by saying that as much as I love Russia, I’m really grateful for the cleaner air in the U.S. I know it’s not great all over, but ten minutes driving in Vlad and you’d be wishing you were in L.A. instead!

Ok, so back to business… we had a driver and an interpreter going with us to the orphanage. We drove the 2 hours to Ussurisk on crappy roads but we were feeling pretty good. Very much at peace, though aware that we were headed into something huge. When we arrived at the baby house, we were ushered into the head doctor’s office. She was very nice and very open about information regarding Anna. We got a rather thorough history both medically and regarding her family history. As we were still asking questions, Anna was brought in. She was so little and so cute, but at the same time we were pretty emotionally guarded throughout the visit. We were constantly watching her movements to see how the CP manifested itself. All in all, our first visit was good. Steve played with her and the nesting cups while I continued to take notes on the information we were being provided. Anna seemed quite happy with the attention. She definitely smiles a lot!

After awhile we went outside with her and pulled out a ball that she gladly played with, though she didn’t seem to get into chasing it around. Based on what we observed when the children are brought outside it is not to run and play on the playground equipment (of which there was very little), but rather to put them into small wooden pens where they can play with one another and select toys without wandering off. These wooden pens are about 10 feet by 10 feet, barely larger than a small room. So it’s no wonder Anna is so physically underdeveloped. It is definitely not just the CP, it is because she gets so little exercise and activity. It’s not that it’s a bad orphanage or that they don’t care for them, but it is a very small “campus” and it just doesn’t have good outdoor play equipment. Very unfortunate. We went into one of these pens to play with Anna because the asphalt was so rough and dirty (and the only other place to interact really). Here we pulled out the nesting cups again (Steve had played with these with her in the head doctor’s office) and she really liked them a lot. She would move them all around and appeared to be making sure each cup was placed on a flower petal or in the center of a flower. (The flowers were painted on the floorboards of the wooden pen.)

It wasn’t very long before it was time for us to go. I think our visit was about an hour and a half total, so not very long. We were mostly liking what we were seeing. Oh, the other thing we did at some point was pull out the one musical toy we brought to see if she responded at all to the sounds. And we clapped our hands and things like that to see if we could observe any reaction to sounds. Nothing. They had her hearing tested last December and it shows severe-profound in one ear and profound in the other. We actually wonder, though, if it is possibly profound in both now.

Anyhow, we then grabbed lunch at the grocery store deli (it is so funny to say that because it is so NOT what any American would imagine by using that phrase) to eat in the car because our interpreter and driver were needed for another family later in the afternoon.

Steve and I processed what we could from the trip on our way back to town. We were exhausted from being so focused. We were trying hard to capture video that we could show our doctor so he can do the appropriate evaluation of her and just generally observing and analyzing more than anything. It is important to us that we know what her issues are before committing. Her medical diagnoses were so many and some of them were rather scary.

Our ride with Vlad (Vladimir, Volodya, Vova - pick your name for him) ended at another hotel, the Vlad Motor Inn, where he and our interpreter, Elena, were needed by another family, who was preparing to meet a sibling pair. It was a family I had hoped and planned to meet while here, so it worked out nicely that we were able to be introduced. The Vlad Motor Inn is where most adoptive families stay when in Vlad. It is run by Canadians and is more western than it is Russian. The staff all speak English, and it also really caters to adoptive families. They have an indoor play area for the children as well as a recreation room for families to “hang out” in (with a pool table). They also have a playground outside, and the hotel is nestled in the woods so the surroundings are very peaceful and somewhat isolated. For our first trip, we really wanted a more Russian experience, so we’ll save the Vlad Motor Inn for trip #2.

So, we returned to our hotel in the city and spent the remainder of the day working on an uploadable video for our doctor to view as well as gathering all the various medical information together in an e-mail for him. We were feeling pretty overwhelmed by Anna’s needs and while we really liked her and thought we will probably say yes to her adoption, we felt her medical required some analysis by someone more qualified than us. We hoped he would offer her a positive prognosis even given her many diagnoses, and if he did, we were prepared to say yes.

We breaked for a bit to have dinner at the “Messroom”, which is the restaurant they have on the 4th floor of the hotel where we were staying. Our new friends Besty and Steve joined us and the four of us had a really nice time enjoying the food, stories about our adoptions, and much more. We laughed a lot, too, which is really important in the adoption process, which can be a lot of mental and emotional effort at times. Once done with dinner, we headed back and worked some more.  We have some stills from the Day 1 Visit, but they are mostly pulled from video, so they will look decent on a computer screen but are not high res. We finally got to sleep pretty late. Oh, I forgot to mention that at some point today they told us we could switch rooms to the bay-side of the hotel. We were very excited to do this, so we were also now enjoying our new room with a fabulous view of the bay. Watching the sunset over the water was breathtaking every time we saw it and we got some nice pictures. We also had a much nicer breeze on that side of the hotel, so that eased us a bit from the heat. We did eventually get our e-mail sent out though it was much later than we’d planned and finally we got some sleep.

It had been a long day, and we were glad it was finished. We hoped to get good news from the Dr. in the morning.

Arrived in Russia 9/3/2007

We made it safely to Vladivostok. Our flights were fairly uneventful, though there was more turbulence on all 3 flights than I think is average. Still, we’re here and doing well, though very tired now and quite ready to crash. It is currently 7:35 pm on Monday in Vlad, but it is 1:35 am on Monday in Arizona - that’s a mega time difference! (+18 hours)

When we arrived, we went straight to the Department of Education, where they provided us with an official referral for a little girl born Dec. 2004. We will meet her tomorrow. We have had a lot of peace throughout this adoption process, but tomorrow is a huge day, and we have not made a decision either way about this girl. We just know that God has led us to where we are now, and He will give us wisdom and discernment to know if this little girl is meant to be a part of our family. We really appreciate your prayers, as this is such a big decision. (Thanks!)

We also finally know where she is located, which is in the town/district of Ussurisk. It is about a 2 hour drive from Vlad. Tomorrow we’ll be sharing our ride with another adoptive family who also just received a referral (for siblings) at the same baby house.

More tomorrow after we meet her!

Tickets in hand 8/15/2007

We are flying to Russia in just over 2 weeks to meet what may likely be our next daughter.  Yes, she’s a girl.  Yes, she’s deaf.  And unfortunately, that is about all I can share publicly at this point.  This first of two trips is a relatively short trip (7 days including travel days) and has one primary purpose:  to meet the child and accept or decline the referral.  If we accept, I can post a picture or two upon our return.  Something for you to look forward to.