From Russia with Glinda.

Well, it happened.  I did not think it would happen, to be truthful, perhaps the same way as you don't think your wedding will ever happen until you are literally walking own the aisle, or the same way you don't think you'll ever have a baby until you are actually carrying one home.  But nevertheless, while looking at the parrots at the Naples Zoo (of course, we are on vacation), my phone rang and came up as "Medina, OH."  I knew. Here we go. Or not.

I wish I could tell you all this information that I have just read, or post the pictures on here I just received, but there are so many things holding me back.  The main thing being that a year ago, when I began filling out forms and signing my life away, I recall signing that I wouldn't share any information about our referral until she was ours.  The second being that I am not sure we are going to take the child.  But I will share what I can.

The child they called us about is very young, much younger than we had anticipated, which we are incredibly thankful for.   I cannot tell you her real Russian name, but it starts with a G, and reminds me of Glinda, the "good witch" from the Wizard of Oz (or Wicked, which is my preferred reference point.)  And, like people give nicknames to their children in utero, this is what I will call her until we can share her Russian and American name with you.  She was born in December and is just a few weeks older than my newest nephew.  She is coming on 8 months.  I looked through her medical file and I am so thankful that I (almost) am a doctor because I understood the medical jargon they were using and know what the potential problems are as well as the things that are really not problems at all.  For sure, I don't care if she has baby eczema. Our first and foremost concern is that we receive a healthy child.  Since we will undoubtedly have a whole host of challenges with raising her, it is best if her emotional and physical health are as good as can be given her circumstances.  So, we are working with the international adoption clinic at the University of Cincinnati.  There is a doctor there who is trained to review these crazy documents and interpret words, findings, etc in light in the country of origin.  There are a few things on there that I am really unsure of their true meaning given what we know of how these medical records work, so we rely in the consultation of this doctor to tell us if she is healthy.  The doctor will also examine the 2 pictures we received for signs of any genetic syndromes, fetal alcohol syndrome, obvious neurologic problems, etc.  I already scrutinized and don't see anything obvious.  The only thing I will say about her picture is that if we do end up adopting this girl, my hopes of adopting a blue eyed, blonde haired Russian girl will be dashed. Alas, I shall have bigger disappointments in my lifetime.

We also know that this child was referred to another American family who turned her down.  We do not know why as they used a doctor that the adoption agency we are working with does not know.  I do not see any glaring things with her medical record that surprise me or overly concern me, but my training and knowledge are very limited.  There are several things in there that I think would be very concerning to someone if they either had no medical training and were just looking things up, or if they did not have knowledge of how Russian medical diagnoses go with children in orphanages, so part of me thinks that perhaps that family was thinking there was a big problem that is not really a big problem.  Or maybe I am just being overly optimistic. We are going to be putting a lot of weight on the report we get from Cincinnati and are not going to really be making a decision or really even able to talk about making a decision until we get the meeting with Cincinnati.  I have a ton of questions for this doctor.

So....we meet with her on Wednesday afternoon by phone as by then she will have time to review the pictures and medical records that we have already received.  After that Tim and I will have to make a very, very, very gigantic and life altering decision.  Our adoption agency tells us we have until Friday.  No pressure, here, while we are on our family vacation, trying to relax.  No pressure at all. So...by the time I touch down in Dayton with the boys on Saturday, we'll have this decided.

I am trying to not get too attached to this little girl because I might have to tell her no.  And what's funny is that when I looked at her picture my first thought was not, "how cute!" or "my baby!" or "yay!"  My first thought was, "DARN IT! No blonde hair. No blue eyes."  My second thought was, "Thank God, she has a filtrum."  (A sign that she might not be too terribly damaged from alcohol exposure in the womb.)  But, in her defense, I often look at Samuel's eyes and find myself feeling very sad that they are no longer blue. I still love him to pieces.

Fear not, oh blog stalkers, we will update again later this week with our decision. I will do my best to update my blog regularly so you can see the whole process.

And...since I can't share this girl's picture, or name, or birthweight (she was VERY tiny) or anything with you, I will show our fun vacation.  I will try to post more from our camera, this is all I have on my phone.

Ratified!

On Tuesday the United States and Russian governments ratified the long awaited bilateral agreement regarding Russian adoptions from Americans.  This agreement was put to the government because of few adoptions gone horribly wrong.  According to an article I read from the Washington Post, the Russian government has stated that 19 Russian adopted children have suffered abuse or death at their hands of their American adoptive parents.  When that crazy woman in 2010 sent her adopted son back to Russia alone, there was outrage within Russia at the adoptions that take place between the two countries.  This agreement, now in place, requires all adoptions to go through a certified Russian agency and requires that agency to monitor the child's upbringing in the US.  This doesn't affect us at all because we were already in compliance with those laws.  It also requires the Russians to provide more medical and social history to prospective adoptive parents.  I am not sure how much this will change as much is unknown about these children's backgrounds.  But what we do think this will mean for us is that things should speed up again.  We have now been waiting 6 months for our referral and we began this process 1 year ago.  We continue to wait...hopefully we will receive news soon of more referrals being handed out as a result of this agreement.

In June we went to the picnic for our adoption agency.  It was encouraging to meet the families who have adopted and see their children.  By and large, the Russian kids were as I expected.  Most were seemingly normal with reported issues from their parents such as attachment problems, sleeping problems, and difficulty controlling emotions.  A few kids I saw had noticeable fetal alcohol syndrome (and by a few I mean 2 out of probably close to 75 to 100.)  But, other than that and one child with an impressive hearing aid, no other health issues were obvious.  I think what was so encouraging about all this was seeing that my expectations for our daughter are reasonable.  Of interesting note, probably 60-70% of the adopted Russian kids were boys, and of those boys, over half were named either Alexander or Andrew.   I think a lot of families adopt older kids so they keep their Russian names. We may keep one of our girl's names as a second middle name but we have a very American name awaiting her.

And now we begin month 7 of waiting...

Cow Appreciation Day

Yesterday was cow appreciation day at Chick Fil A.  So, in an attempt to get a free dinner at Tim and Matthew's favorite restaurant, I did some last minute throwing together of some cow costumes.  I just used the cut outs that they provided online and then found a huge sheet of cow print fabric that a gift was wrapped in for our wedding and cut out some bandanas for all of us.  I must say, for getting the idea to participate in cow appreciation day one hour before we ate dinner, we looked pretty awesome. Next year, though, I will be more creative with our costumes.  This is definitely a new family tradition.

We enjoyed our free meals and are so thankful for Chick Fil A, the only restaurant that can get Matthew to eat protein 100% of the time.

In other news, yesterday was Samuel's 4 month birthday. We will have to celebrate him in another post later.

3 months old!

Happy 3 months to my sweet Samuel.  He is getting so big and is starting to look so much like his big brother.  Samuel's eyes are still blue and I'm hoping they stay that way.  Other than that, he looks very similar to Matthew. Especially when he sleeps. So sweet.

I have had so many people recently tell me what a good baby he is.  I know this to be true.  He is so calm and so easy, it's actually a little scary.  He does not cry.  Really.  Even in the morning, sometimes I will go in to his room to wake him up and feed him and he'll be awake, all swaddled nice and tight, just looking around.  Then I have to wonder, "how long has he been awake?"  He fusses (and I wouldn't even call it crying) when he wants his binky or if he's really hungry (which doesn't happen very often since I feed him on schedule instead of waiting for him to ask for it.)  We can put him down on his mat or in his chair and he'll sit there and look around and kick his legs and coo for an hour. I feel like I neglect him sometimes because it's so easy to put him down and forget about him in favor of the screaming, shrieking, running, busy, mischievous toddler.

He hardly sleeps during the day, especially considering he is only 3 months old.  He sleeps in spurts at day care for probably a total of like 2 hours.  He might take an hour nap in the evening. So maybe he'll sleep for 3 hours total during the day.  Then at night he'll sleep for...well...I don't really know how long because I usually have to wake him up to start the day so i can go to work.  I think he'd probably sleep for between 10 and 11 hours.  I am thinking of trying to feed him bigger feedings during the day so I can cut out one feeding and put him to bed earlier.  He currently eats 5 times a day. I feel like 4 times is a little few for 3 months, but maybe it will work.

Not really sure how much he weighs now since we don't go to the doctor till 4 months, but I think he weights about 12.5 lbs since i tried to weigh him on our scale at home.

He talks a lot, making cute little cooing sounds. ;He gives small little squeals and is experimenting with "aahhh."  Matthew was never so talkative.  Samuel also has very little interest in rolling from his tummy to his back.  He just lays on his mat like a sack of potatoes.  He doesn't even lift his head or push up.  It's very funny, really. When he's on his back he is so active and will sometimes turn to his side.  And he can hold his head up well and put some weight on his legs pretty well, too.  But apparently tummy time is not so appealing.

Samuel often has a very concerned look on his face.  It's just how he always looks if he's just checking out the world.  We think it's very cute. But we are a little biased.

I could not be more in love with this wonderful son God has given us.  Tim and I were talking last night that perhaps the reason Samuel is so easy is because by the time he is a year (hopefully) we will have a (potentially) needy little girl who is not that much older than him.  Perhaps Samuel's temperment is going to be what prevents us from checking ourselves into the psych ward. We love you, Samuel Christopher!

Gymnastics

We've had Matthew enrolled in gymnastics since about September.  He loves it and it has been so fun to watch his skills and interests change as he has gotten older.  This morning he kept asking me to take pictures of him during different activities.  Thought I'd post some on here Matthew loves to jump on the trampoline, flip on the bar, walk on the beam, jump off the vault, and do somersaults. . 

Pool Adventures

We belong to the best pool.  It's really more like a mini waterpark for kids.  There are a ton of slides, including a tunnel type slide that spirals, and a lot of things that spray, squirt, and dump water for the kids to play with.  (There are also super steep slides for adults...)  And the baby pool is really fun, too, with some mini slides and other fun equipment.  Matthew has so much fun at the pool and really loves all the water slides.  Of course, I can't get any pictures of him going down the bigger slides because I'm certain my camera would get wet.  There is a giant bucket (and I mean, giant) that dumps water over the play area every minute or so. It's impossible to play on the equipment without getting dumped on. I will say, that's a bit annoying.

Yesterday was Samuel's first time at the pool where he was awake.  He enjoyed sitting in the water with his dad.  We are looking forward to spending a lot of time at the pool this summer!  I am so thankful Matthew is fearless in the water, and even more thankful that a lot of the pool here is so shallow that Matthew can stand.  There is only one area that's to deep for him to stand, and that's not the area with the slides, which is helpful.  We're going to have to watch him when we go to Florida. He's going to run and jump in the pool faster than we can catch him.  We have him in swim lessons for the second summer, but of course he's not really capable of swimming by himself yet.

Waiting...

It has been so long since I gave an adoption update. I thought I would use some downtime during my call day to do it.

The reason I haven't said much is there isn't much to say.  Let's see.  Everyone asks when we will get our daughter.  We still don't know. Basically, when we sent in our dossier (which is basically the docs that register us with Russia) they said that for a young, healthy, girl, we should expect to wait 6-9 months for the first trip.  They told us at the time that this was usually a longer time period than what normally happened. In fact, when I was talking with the international coordinator at our agency (Building Blocks) she said that the longest they have had a family wait recently for a young girl was 7 months.  BUT...this was all before things in Russia slowed down due to political hesitancy with international adoptions. The crazy woman who adopted a boy without fully understanding the consequences of him having grown up in an orphanage and sent him back to Russia alone, with a note, has royally screwed up everything for the hundreds, if not thousands, of willing, excited, and realistic families who are trying to bring him a child to love.  Meanwhile there are thousands of kids in horrible orphanages who stays there are being needlessly prolonged. But, unfortunately, my opinion doesn't matter. Since then, things have slowed down.  Andrea, the international coordinator at Building Blocks said that things are moving, by more slowly.  However, she also said she expected our referral to still be in the 6-9 month time frame.  I don't know how she could possibly know that.  Maybe she does or maybe she is just trying to make me feel better.  I am more inclined to believe the latter, but I am hopeful that she is right.

We are coming up on 5 months of waiting. So we will see.  Tim and I are both hopeful we will get a call in August or September, but again, we just have no idea.  My life is definitely crazy enough now and I am enjoying having 2 kids, so I am not necessarily sitting around every moment in agony waiting to add another child to my family.  However, I have begun to anticipate our daughter and I do hope they call in the next few months. I cannot imagine the torture that this waiting period must be for families who have no children and are waiting for an adopted child.

The other news is that Russia recently changed their laws (who said they could do that?) and they now require 3, one week trips to Russia instead of 2 trips, one longer and one shorter.  We are less than thrilled with this change because we are going to have to spend thousands and thousands (and thousands?) of dollars more to buy plane tickets for a third trip not to mention all those painful hours sitting on planes.  We are still trying to figure out what to do with the kids during these trips.  We are not allowed to bring the kids into the orphanage, so if we bring them (or even just Samuel) we require very generous babysitters to join us on our international excursion.  I am definitely planning on bringing the whole family for the last trip, when we pick her up, and I'd like to bring Samuel for the first trip, also, since I will most definitely still be nursing him.  But a billion hours on a plane is a lot for me, let alone my infant or my (very) active 2 1/2 year old or 3 year old.

So that's all for now. We are planning on going to a picnic in the northern part of Ohio that our adoption agency holds in a few weeks.  We are hoping to meet a lot of families who have adopted from Russia (and more importantly meet their children).  We sure could use some stories, advice, and some first hand look at the kids that have been adopted. We are excited for our mini vacation (swimming, playgrounds, and a trip to the zoo!)  We will have more to say after the trip.