The New Normal

Dave sez,

Stop me if you've heard this one: y'know why there are so many songs about UN-requited love? Because, when you DO find that connection, there are better things to do than write a song about it! Am I right? Am I right? Know what I mean? Know what I mean? Say no more, say no more.

Ethan and I came home, and Cathy and I have spent the last few weeks sick. The OTHER souvenir we brought back from our trip. :)

On top of being sick, and trying to navigate our way through the holiday season, we've all been adjusting to our "new normal": having not ONE, but TWO high energy boys.

Justin is pretty intense. He's serious, except when he's not and he's playing or teasing. Over the last year, we've had our good times and bad as the three of us have adjusted to one another.

Now, Ethan is here. Cathy, Justin and I are adjusting to his quirks and eccentricities. I may have mentioned this before, but on the flight home, he spent the trip from Frankfurt back asking if we were in America. I could tell he was excited, anxious and enthusiastic. But it was pretty much EIGHT HOURS of "Are we there yet?" We were crossing over London. America? No, Ethan, not yet. Canada; America? No, Ethan, not yet. Detroit; America? No, Ethan, not yet. We were standing in the security line to get to our gate at O'Hare in Chicago and he asked where Mom and Justin were. I told him we had one more flight to get home to them. I was telling him this in English, even though he speaks and understands Russian/Ukrainian. I was slightly confused by the perplexed look he gave me and my explanation. ;)

Since he's been home, he really only has a few questions. When do we eat? Is it burgers or soup? and Tomorrow school? He's come home pretty much like Justin did, with only the clothes on his back. Justin has pretty much earned a lot of cool stuff. What we're hearing a LOT of is, is Justin saying, "He's taking my stuff without asking!"

We're learning what sibling rivalry is all about. They haven't painted a white line down the middle of their room. Yet.

We got the boys a table top Foosball table. What we've seen is an extreme level of competition. The boys NEED to win an equal number of games. The three of us tend to become VERY excited when we score a goal. Pointing and cheering and chanting, "In your face!" I've been letting the excitement of the game get the better of me. Which is probably why Cathy WON'T play with us. The boys are worse. There's the standard post-game wrestling match to determine who the REAL winner and loser is.

There's a lot of wrestling going on! I can't wait for Ethan to join Justin in Karate and for both boys to start wrestling in school to burn off some of that pent up energy.

...As a junk food junky myself, I am learning a very important lesson from Ethan about eating healthy foods. If Justin has been watching both Cathy and me over the last year and following the example we set, now we have FOUR sets of eyes watching us closely.

It will be good to see Ethan develop as he learns English, but I think we may be at a point where we all take up Russian through Rosetta Stone...

We've had our ups and downs since we've come home as we adjust to one another.

One of the scariest downs we've seen this past week is that Ukraine's eastern neighbor, Mother Russia has started a ban on adoptions with the United States. You've probably seen the story. Here is what is at the heart of the story, according to the CNN story:

"...The move is widely seen as retaliation for a law that U.S. President Barack Obama signed on December 14. That bill, called the Magnitsky Act, imposes U.S. travel and financial restrictions on human rights abusers in Russia.

The Magnitsky Act is named for Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who uncovered the largest tax fraud in the country's history in the form of rebates claimed by government officials who stole money from the state. Magnitsky died in 2009 after a year in a Moscow detention center, apparently beaten to death.

The Russian bill's implementation nullifies a recent agreement between the United States and Russia in which the countries agreed to additional safeguards to protect children and parties involved in inter-country adoptions.

Backers of the Russian bill said American adoptive parents have been abusive, citing 19 deaths of adopted Russian children since the 1990s.

The Russian public has supported the bill, with 56% of respondents in a poll conducted by the Public Opinion Foundation (FOM) saying they backed the ban, RIA Novosti reported.

In 2010, an American woman sparked outrage after she sent her adopted son back to Russia alone on a one-way flight, saying the boy, then 7, had violent episodes that made her family fear for its safety.

Konstantin Dolgov, the Russian Foreign Ministry's special representative for human rights, said Wednesday on Twitter that Russians were "well aware of, and have pointed out more than once, the inadequate protection of adopted Russian children in the U.S." He also said the United States is one of three nations that have not signed the 1989 U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child.

According to the U.N. Children's Fund, the United States is one of two nations -- the other being Somalia -- that has not ratified the convention. But the United States has signed the convention, thereby signaling its intent to ratify.

Anthony Lake, executive director of UNICEF, touted the importance of "inter-country adoption."
See the full story here, http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/28/world/europe/russia-us-adoptions/index.html

Cathy and I hope that this sentiment doesn't spread to Ukraine, where the boys are from. Our hearts ache for families that are caught in the middle of this tragic development. We've been in a number of different adoption programs, we've even faced the possibility of Ukraine stopping international adoption. I can only imagine how hard it is to develop a bond with a little boy or girl and then have that taken away.

I'm taking every opportunity to tell my boys how much I love them and hug them close and tight. I am so grateful to God that he has blessed me with them.

This week marks two years since Justin found us. Life has never been the same since.

2013 is going to be AWESOME!!!

Happy New Year!

The One About The Embassy And The Journey Home...

Dave sez,

I have to confess that I wasn't good company to be around on Wednesday night. I was mentally and physically exhausted. I was trying to shake off a cough. I was incredibly frustrated, too. We had made some incredibe progress! Ethan and I were less than forty-eight hours away from coming home; but the biggest hurdle was STILL ahead of us.

I could tell that Igor and Vicktor were doing EVERY thing they could to get things done as swiftly and efficiently as possible. I am very grateful to both of them that bringing Ethan home only took six weeks. It may have taken the same amount of time to bring Justin home, I don't remember off the top of my head, but they really work very hard to make sure it all goes along at a fast track.

If you remember, Monday was the first visit to the Embassy. I dropped off all the paperwork. I was invited back on Tuesday after two in the afternoon for the visa. But, on Tuesday, there was no passport, so i couldn't make the appointment. We finally got it on Wednesday, and had a really long delay at the doctor's office. It was decided that on Thursday, we would take advantage of a small, narrow window of opportunity to visit the doctor for the medical exam documents, and go from there.

So, I went to bed early feeling incredibly dejected, and concerned that we would get everything done in time to make our flight early Friday morning. My prayers were like the Psalms - Oh! Woe is me! Why hast thou forsaken me? Why have you turned your back on me? Why am I cast away? I was seeing only ONE set of footprints in the sand.

It snowed overnight, and all day Thursday. Big flakes. I'd once heard a theory that certain sizes of flakes tell the KIND of snow fall, but I couldn't remember if it was big flakes, big snow..or little flakes, big snow. We got a LOT of snow. The snow already on the ground had iced overnight, and by afternoon, it was all slushy and sloppy.

Ukraine is a country rich in history. 2,500 years old and full of history. They have wash machines, but they hang their clothes on clothes lines and clothing racks or heated pipes to dry. I can't imagine how Ukraine will ever modernize to the point where there will be room right next to a wash machine for a home or apartment dryer.

At McDonald's there was an employee with a traditional mop. At the orphanage, however, a mop is a "T", with a towel or a rag thrown over the end to clean the floors.

I didn't see anyone using a snow thrower. I saw men and women out with coal shovels and wheel barrels, moving snow manually. I saw crews using a flat piece of metal on a wood stick shoveling. I have a great respect for the people and how they do things.

With Sergei's help, we got Ethan's medical documents. When we got back in the car, I asked, "Embassy?" He nodded, grunted as if it were a given, and said, "Da."

With limited internet access, I had been trying to schedule an Embassy appointment to pick up the visa, but really didn't have any way of checking for confirmation. So we went, on faith, that I was able to get it rescheduled. On the ride over I kept kicking around in my mind, "What's the worst that could happen?" They would look at us standing in the snow, and turn us away? They could easily do that. Embassy visits are by appointment only. There is a man with a clipboard. If you get past him, you're golden and you're in. But, I would need to be on his clipboard. I prayed that we would be on his clipboard, or that there was some way he would have sympathy and pity on us and let us in.

On Monday, before all the snow, there was a guy still laying sod near the security bunker that guarded the Embassy. You can imagine that it is like a fort, this complex, and that the security office is the guard station leading to it. It really is a beautiful building. There are a number of steps leading down into a courtyard walk into the Consulate offices for visas. On Thursday, with all the snow, there was a guy with a snow thrower. Most of the people manning the security office were inside or nearer the front doors. I did not see the man with the clipboard. But I did see a security officer, and I showed my passport, and told him I was there to pick up my son's visa. He found the man with the clip-board, who asked when my appointment was for. I told him it should be for eleven. We were not on the clipboard. But, he brought us inside out of the cold and snow and called about our appointment. he told us to go through security and into the consulate. We were in!!! Praise God!

Once again I got a number and went right to window to see the same man from Monday. He had a big smile on his face. He asked me how I was, and without missing a beat, I said, "Years from now, we will laugh about this!" He asked for Ethan's medical documents and Ukrainian passport with a smile and invited us to sit and wait.

We were called to a different window by a woman. She went over each document with me. I had filled out everything, signing things before I should have. She asked me to raise my right hand, "sir, your OTHER right hand", and she swore me in on the validity of the forms I had filled out.

She told me that it would take a while for the visa to print. If it did not print in the next few minutes we would have to come back for it again after two. She invited me to sit and wait again.

I sat down and bowed my head and prayed.

A few minutes later she called me back up to the window, and said that the visa was printing and would be ready shortly.

WE HAD MADE IT!

We spent a little time at the orphanage after the Embassy, and then went back to the apartment. I grabbed my computer and we went to McDonald's to check in on messages. I had gotten a confirmation for an eleven o'clock appointment for Thursday. :)

Last year, Justin's and my last day was filled with "Justin no suh-leepin'! Popi, Justin no suh-leepin'!" This year, Ethan's chant was, "Me no sleep!" but I had him lay down around six thirty. We both napped, got up at midnight, and counted down until Sergei came at 2:40am to take us to the airport.

We had a 5:55am flight to Frankfurt. It takes an hour to get to the airport, and with the weather, it was agreed that we would go at 2:40am.

The question is not What happened on our flight home from Kiev, but rather, what DIDN'T happen! I was not kicked in the shins by a midget. That did NOT happen on our flight home. I made sure I had my document binder out to show off the court decree and any necessary documents whenever and wherever possible. After checking our suitcase, and going through security, there is a window where we had to show our passports. The uniformed guard looked over our passports, chatted with Ethan in Ukrainian, called over another operator, and then invited us into a small security office where he ran everything passed a supervisor, and Ethan was questioned further. We went back to the window, he gave us back our documents and passports and wished us a safe journey.

At a little after five came an announcement over the PA that the flight from Kiev to Frankfurt had been CANCELLED due to the conditions of the runways at the destination. It was like a cartoon, my jaw hit the floor with a loud, metal clang. All of the passengers crowded round the gate as an operator came over and quickly assured us that this information was INcorrect, and the flight was still on.

If you think ADOPTING a child is a challenge, try flying with one. Last year was a debacle with Justin! This year was just as big a challenge with Ethan. I've told the story that Justin was trying to watch movies with mature content and we spent almost the entire flight from Amsterdam to Minneapolis arguing. Ethan was so excited that he kept asking, "America? America? America?" We were over London. "America?" No. Montreal. "America?" No. Detroit. "America?" No. :) We got to Chicago, and he kept asking when we would meet Mama and Justin. He was fine watching kid's movies from Frankfurt to Chicago, he was constantly asking questions. The difficulty was giving him an answer he would UNDERSTAND. I could tell the day was starting to wear on him. Nine hours of sitting is hard on any one, including a child. There were extra passport checks throughout the day, but for the most part we kept moving from one flight to another pretty easily. I was not able to check in on Facebook, or get a Chicago style hot dog or any cool food at O'Hare, because we had to move through customs and the TSA office there, grab our bag, run it through security and then check it for the flight to MSP. We had to find our terminal and then our gate and then make sure that our seats were together for that flight. We had ridden trams to some of our flights throughout the day, stood in a number of different lines, and Ethan was now asking, "Bus? Car?" At one point he asked what color our car was? "Blue?" No, red. The color of our car is red.

We finally got off the plane in MSP, and met our friend, Mike, just coming in from his own flight, and he walked us down to our huge welcome home at baggage claim. After three weeks it was great to see Cathy's face again. After six weeks, it was great to see Justin's face. It was great to see as many other families from our "club" of adoptive families. It was great to see each one of them, and the signs welcoming Ethan home. He and Justin got two very nice Christmas presents; Thor and The Hulk. Justin handed his to me with a smile on his face and said, "Popi, I know you like this kinda stuff, we can share!" Yeah, buddy!

Naturally, our suitcase made one of the OTHER flights from Chicago, but we had time to take the boys to Nickelodeon Universe. Justin covered Ethan's eyes until he was standing in front of the bronze Spongebob statue. "Whoa!" was heard to exclaim.

Breakfast this morning is pancakes from IHOP.

It is good to be home.

The One About The US Embassy Visit...

Dave sez,

Hi! We are Cathy and Dave! This is our continuing adventure with our first son, Justin, and the journey to bring our second son, Ethan, home. When we first got married, Cathy wanted to start a family and have kids right away. I always thought that we would have plenty of time for that. So we focused on our careers. And when I say "we", I mean "me". Fourteen years, and a few job changes later, we found ourselves in Rochester, in a fertility program that diagnosed Cathy with cancer. I almost heard Louie Armstrong's "We Have All The Time In The World". I say almost, because the cancer was caught, removed and while we recovered, Cathy said that we needed to look into adoption. That was eight years ago. It's been almost two years, since I went "all in" and posted my determination on Facebook, "I want to be a dad in 2011." With a little help, Justin found us. He introduced us to his brother Ethan...

...And here we are, on our final Monday here in Kiev.

Sergei picked us up this morning at eight-fifteen and drove us to the US Embassy. It moved sometime in the last year. There was the Embassy; and a few blocks away was the Consulate offices in a separate building. Last Tuesday, when our facilitator, Vicktor, and I were at the Regional Office of Vital Records, he was explaining that the Embassy had moved and that I would need to make an appointment as soon as possible and let Igor know, so he could schedule Sergei to drive us, because it was, "absolutely not any where near a Metro station."

So we drove, with light flurries falling on the first Monday of December. Ethan's last Monday in Ukraine.

If I feel any guilt, it is when I come to the US Embassy. Not knowing where to go or what to do here at the new location, I walked up to a security guard, presented my passport, and told him I had an appointment. Like I did at the Consulate office last year with Justin. The guard walked me over to a man in civilian clothes with a clipboard. I presented my passport and he checked my name and appointment time off and told me to go right in. Ahead of every one else waiting in line. The building I went in was the security checkpoint. Pretty much like going through airport security. From experience, I brought only the paperwork I needed for Ethan's visa. Some Altoids. Cough drops. Along with the cell phone, Ethan and I surrendered our earbuds. We'll leave those at the apartment on our next visit.

With a smile we were directed on into the Consulate office and told where to go. I got a number that immediately corresponded to an open window. What are the odds that I would get the same person that helped me as last year - let along that I would remember that it was the same person that helped me last year? And what are the odds that all of this would happen at eight-forty in the morning? We spent a few minutes going over the packet of paperwork, and he directed me to another window, and told me to come right back afterward. By nine o'clock, we were finished and on our way back out.

We killed some time before having lunch at McDonald' at thirteen hundred hours. That's one o'clock to you and I westerners.

As the snowfall started to accumulate, we headed out to the orphanage for a bonus visit. And, what a bonus it was! The social worker gave me Ethan's school records and the classroom teacher found at least a half dozen certificates he had earned and three more certificates she still had for Justin! Bonus! A couple of the children started handing me drawings they had done for me and Cathy. Bonus! Masha handed me three that she had drawn: one of Bambi, one of a giraffe, and one of Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella posing. It looks like the teacher had written her name on the picture of the giraffe and the Disney Princesses. Bambi was drawn on a small square of graph paper. Bonus!

We got our timeline of what the next few days should look like: tomorrow will be a check on the progress of Ethan's Ukrainian passport. It may not be ready until Wednesday. We may need to reschedule our trip back to the Embassy. We'll have our visit with the doctor for his final physical on Thursday.

And that's it. We will be finished. Our journey to bring Ethan home to join Justin, along with Cathy an I (or is it "me") will be complete.

Just like last year, we will start a NEW chapter. Another year of firsts, this time for Ethan, and firsts for the rest of us as we go from THREE, to FOUR.

Who knows what the future holds?