Category Archives: First Adoption

Lots of Videos

November 30, 2010 Molly 2 Comments

Today, I took more videos than photos. I love photos, but I think videos give you a better idea of Ilya and Lena.

I made my first attempt to get you all photos of some of the kids you’ve been asking about. We saw a lot of kids today, but no one new who I recognized. You will not be impressed with my photo skills. Because we’re not allowed to take photos of other kids, I was taking photos of Lena with the other kids in the background. Since I didn’t get yelled at for taking these, I’ll be a bit more direct next time and hope to get you some better photos. This is Celia, an unknown little boy and Olivia.

And this is Dana, with one of the nurses (and that’s Ilya– he was totally in on my sneaky photography).

We were sitting on the couch, minding our own business, then we hear this little boy voice say “Ilyusha! Ilyusha!” in a silly teasing way. And these three come up the hall. James?, Polina and David. They were going back and forth shouting at each other like little boys do. It was quite funny to watch, especially because we have no idea what they were saying.

Lena made up this little game with Aaron today. It was very cute to watch.

You can see what a determined little builder Ilya is…

We have been telling them “cracker” every time they get a cracker and “juice” every time they get some juice. Lena is such a little sponge.

This video is for our doggies at home. This is how Ilya treats his dogs…

Here’s Aaron teaching Ilya how to say cracker…

Lena will just go over to Aaron out of the blue and ask to sit on his lap. How sweet is that? Also notice the huge smile on her face! Ilya has our ipod, if you are wondering. They like to look at the photos, so we brought that for them to play with instead of the camera.

Ilya is about a size 9 in American shoes and Lena is about a size 6. I think they could both be down about a half size from that, depending on what kind of socks they have on. Lena’s feet with tights on measured 5 inches and Ilya’s measured about 6. Lena’s shoes were just over five inches and Ilya’s shoes were 6.5 inches… we don’t think his shoes are too big, so I am not sure how that works. The sweatshirt Lena had on today was a 12m. The sleeves were short, but it fit her nicely, maybe even a bit big in the body… she was wearing it over a dress and another shirt, too.

First Adoption

Visit #4

November 29, 2010 Molly 7 Comments

They brought Lena to us first this morning. She could not care less that we were there. She just wanted to stack the blocks. Very determined. She seemed upset with us or something… I imagine because she had not seen us all weekend.

We can’t blame her… mamas and papas should not just disappear for days at a time…

We had no idea where Ilya was. We could hear music down the hall. Then, Celia, Dana, Olivia, David, Carolyn, Kristopher, and Ilya all walked up the hall! There were some other kids too, too many to name. I think I identified all of the bigger kids… it was the littler ones that I could not see. Celia just marched in and waved to us… she is adorable. Dana and Olivia ran over to us and I gave Dana a hug before we had to say “paka” (bye). We also saw little Andrew from RR today. He seems to get upset easily. He and the little girl he was with were screaming! Then, they stopped, she tripped and started crying and he started crying again, even though he was fine.

We got Ilya from them, then they came down 5 minutes later and told us it was time for his lunch. This was 10am. They brought him back like 15 minutes later and then they came and took both Ilya and Lena. We were pretty sure that they were saying they’d bring them right back. And they did a few minutes later. This time, they both were very excited to see us. Much much better than before.

We got out the pen and paper today to write down what we thought was Lena’s shoe size. It was a 26И. I don’t think she wears a 9.5 in children’s sizes, which is what the equivalent would be. I asked a friend before we left who told me that most kids around 3 years old wear about a 7. And I think Lena is a lot smaller than average!

Anyways Lena stole the pen. Apparently she is a young artist!

When Ilya came out, he just started building… he built this by himself… we helped him stack a few blocks, but he told us where he wanted them to go!

This is easily the best photo I’ve gotten of Ilya yet. Both Ilya and Lena really love it when their papa picks them up and tosses them around or plays airplane with them.

This is proof that Miss Lena loves it too… Lena’s hands are much smaller than they look.

I also love this other one of Aaron and Lena. I told you how if Aaron pretends to be chasing her trying to get her, she runs right to me to hide. Well, if I play it with her, she runs right to Aaron!

Aaron also picked up both of them at once and ran around with them! They loved that!

Lena LOVES being upside down. It reminds me of a certain cousin of hers. She stayed like this for several minutes. She was also doing little sit ups like this.

You will think Lena is screaming for the first few seconds of this video. She’s not. Those are squeals of delight. If you don’t believe me, wait ’til you see what she does when he puts her down…

Ilya gets really wound up, like a typical boy… he just runs around and jumps and laughs. When he acts like that, Lena follows suit. I took this one to show you how silly they get, but I love the end of it. What they’re saying sounds like “dadda” but it’s not… anyone know what they’re saying?

First Adoption

Tappn Nottep and the Big Statue

November 28, 2010 Molly 3 Comments

This morning, we went to go see Harry Potter. The lady behind the window was very accommodating and helped us get the seats we wanted, even though we don’t speak Russian. Our facilitator told us that sometimes American movies are played in English with subtitles, but this was not the case. We had no idea until the movie started.

It was a good two and a half hours of entertainment. We’ve both read all of the other books and see the movies, so we could follow the plot, even though we could not understand most of dialogue. The tickets were only about $4 each, so they were very cheap. And the theater was beautiful. We also got a soda and popcorn for another $4. Everything is super cheap, compared to going to the movies in the US.

After the movies, we went down to a pizza restaurant a couple of blocks down. We wanted to go there the other day, but it was a sit down restaurant and we were lacking our dictionary. This time, we had it, so we walked in, I told her “two” in Russian and she said to me in English “smoking or non-smoking”. Ha, I did not have her fooled. Turns out, this restaurant’s menu has the English and Russian words written right next to each other. I got a cheese pizza and Aaron got “duck in cherry sauce.” We also got drinks and a milk shake. The total was around $13. $7 of that was Aaron’s meal! My pizza was $3. Ridiculous. We really enjoyed the food and with the prices and the fact that they have English on their menu, we will go back. We are somewhat limited in what we can make in our apartment because we only have a stove and a few pots and a microwave. Plus the fact that we never know what we’re buying at the store! Pierogies, pasta, sandwiches… those might be our options.

There is also a little stand down at the corner where we have been getting food. They have french fries for about 60 cents and huge hot sandwiches for about 70 cents… Aaron said that their sandwiches are better than McDonalds (and obviously cheaper too).

I am glad that tomorrow is Monday and we get to see Ilya and Lena again. I love our visits with them and it is hard to fill our days with walking around town and grocery shopping!

Sasha was giving us directions to a “super market” the other day, and she referenced the Lenin statue. We had seen this giant statue, impossible to miss, so I guessed that must be the statue she meant! Well, today we paid closer attention and noticed the real Lenin statue. Anyone want to guess who this is a statue of? I will be shocked if someone gets it.

First Adoption

Questions and Answers

November 27, 2010 Molly 4 Comments

Are you planing on keeping Lena and Ilya as their middle names or not?
Yes, we will keep Lena and Ilya as their middle names and we will call them Lena and Ilya, unless they chose otherwise. Lena’s full name is Olena, but they all call her Lena (so we are dropping the O for her legal name). They actually call Ilya Ilyusha, but it took me awhile to realize that and we were already calling him Ilya.

so do they speak any english?
Not yet, but by the time you meet them, they probably will be! We have been using our tiny knowledge of Russian with them and speaking English around them. They should pick up English more once they are no longer hearing Russian most of the time. Ilya is very smart and speaks a lot of Russian… I think he will pick up English very quickly. Lena is a little copycat, so I think she will quickly pick up our words and Ilya’s.

Are you able to get any photos of the other RR kids?
Legally, we are not allowed to. That being said, if I have the camera and one of them is walking through the room that we’re in, I will take pictures of Ilya and Lena and if I happen to have the camera zoomed in on the wrong face… WHOOPS! 😉 And we’ve gotten lots of requests to be on the lookout for different kids, trust me, we are. I stare. And then I get home and go on RR and we said… I think it was James, what do you think? We know how much you all want info on these kids and how it will help them find families. I’ve talked to our facilitator about it, but she told me that this is a Ukrainian law, the orphanage follows and blatantly breaking it could jeopardize our adoption.

Do you get to see them every day while you’re there?
We don’t get to see them on the weekends. Just Monday-Friday, 9-12. Or pretty much whenever they want to give them to us and take them from us. Yesterday, they picked them up around 11:30. We need to stay on the good side of the orphanage, be super nice to them and pretty much do as they tell us. Because, when we go to court, the deputy director will stand up and say how great we are, how clear it is that we love them and how this is best for Ilya and Lena.

At what point do they get to leave the orphanage?
We will not get to take them from the orphanage until a few days after our 10 day wait is up, until we are ready to leave Donestk and go back to Kiev, I think. This is because once the wait is up, we do lots of running around for birth certificates, passports and other papers. We may literally drive around all day and not stop for food, so it is better to leave them in the orphanage so we can get this done quicker. So, we will have court on December 6th, wait is up on December 16th, and we’ll probably get them the week of Christmas. I’d love to be home for Chrismas, but it is not looking super likely right now. We’ll see.

I’m happy to answer any other questions… weekends are a good time to ask, because there are no cute kids I’m blogging about.

First Adoption

Day 3

November 26, 2010 Molly 14 Comments

Today’s visit was very good and also a bit heartbreaking. We played with the same toys as yesterday. I also brought our ipod today so that Lena could look at pictures while I took a video. She likes to name all of the people in the photo, “Ilya, Mama, Papa, Lena”. It’s also fun if I point to them in the photo and she names them while she points to the real person.

They both love to it when they build a tower and Aaron picks them up to put the top blocks on… I should mention that these are very soft foam blocks, so it didn’t hurt if they hit anyone when they fall over!

We brought snacks today and wow, they devoured them. Ilya drank two juices boxes… and they shared two small packs of crackers. They ate them eagerly and licked up very last crumb (including the ones on the floor, before we could stop them!) They let us cuddle with them while they ate. We were trying to teach them “please” but I know they have no idea what we’re saying and we are trying to get them both to trust us, so I did not push it too much. I don’t want them to be the person waving a cracker in their face, but not letting them have it.

Ilya absolutely warmed up to us today. He took our camera and was going through all the photos. He found a picture of the castle of foam blocks that he and Aaron made and he ran over to Aaron saying “Papa! Papa! Papa!” That maybe the first time he has called for his “papa”. A nanny came in at one point and I think she asked who we were. Well, both of them said almost at the same time “Mama i Papa”. They both seemed very proud to have their own mama and papa. And, in the middle of our visit, Ilya had to go to the bathroom (so we think he is fully potty trained, as he actually asked both of us and looked at us like we were crazy since we had no idea what he was saying). Well, a nurse took him to the bathroom and we knew he was back when we heard his little feet running as fast as he could down the hall! He is letting both of us pick him up and hug him. We played the running away from mama game, where they act like they don’t want me to get them, but then they laugh when I pick them up and hug them, kiss them and tickle them. Aaron tried to play that with Lena, and she laughed, but she ran right over to me to be picked up!

Aaron played “airplane” with both of them today too. He’d set Lena down and she pull on his legs to be picked right back up again. She really is something. She smiles constantly. I mean, constantly. She smiles when we play with her, she smiles when we feed her, she smiles if we’re just sitting there next to her. Ilya takes a toy out of her hand, and she just kind of shrugs it off and keeps smiling. I kept commenting to Aaron on the constant smile. I was actually wondering if she is this way for her nannies too; if she is just a very happy little girl. Well, they came down to get her for lunch, we did not understand what they told her, but you should have seen the pout on her face. I am not sure that I’ve ever seen a child that genuinely sad before. She didn’t cry or screamed… she just looked miserable.

Lena has a very strong desire to be held. If you hold her like a baby, she gets a huge smile on her face. This orphanage is a very good one, but I still don’t think that they get the chance to be held constantly like a baby with a mother does.

We had a bunch of RR kid sightings today. We saw David, James, Polina, Carolyn and Dana. They were all very curious, but Dana especially broke my heart. She looked at me and said “Mama?” She ran over, but before I could give her a hug the nanny pulled her away. She and Carolyn walked by again later and they both tried to run over to us. It’s hard to see all the RR photos and know that a child is waiting. But when that child comes up to you and asks you “Mama?”… that is just heart wrenching. I am very glad that Dana has a wonderful family coming for her. She is the only one of those who does. All the rest of them are 4 or 5, I think, and still waiting. These children need a mama and papa. Adoption is hard, long and expensive, but it’s beyond worth it. And special needs? Who cares. The second Lena came over to me and smiled, I realized that there was nothing wrong with her. Trust me, she’s perfect. Ilya too. This might sound really cheesy, but I am not sure that you can understand it until you’ve met these children. Until Lena smiles for the whole two hours during your visit or Ilya runs down the hall ’cause he can’t wait to play with you more.