Where's the Pomp & Circumstance???

We left on Sunday 6/23, just one week after returning home from our 2^nd trip... needless to say, after so much traveling, we are exhausted!  We had a few minor flight delays but we made all our connections and got to Kiev on Monday morning with time to shower, nap, eat, and call the credit card company who put a hold on my card.  Uneventful compared to the possibilities that can happen during international travel - praise God for traveling mercies!  After our 6 hour “layover” in Kiev, we caught a train that night and traveled all night to Melitopol, and then our driver took us the additional 2 hours to Berdyans’k.  It took us 40+ hours from the time we left Raleigh to get to the kids!

We spent Tuesday afternoon and evening running a few errands and hanging out with the kids.  Each time we visit the staff is more comfortable with us and we get to explore and see new areas of the orphanage while we spend time with the kids.  The kids all are truly blessed to have such a dedicated and loving staff. 

Wednesday – the day the court waiting period was over, the day the kids are officially ours, the day we have been waiting for since September! – was actually a little anti-climactic.   The excitement got lost in translation and in the rush.  The day started out at the local court house where we got the official court decree granting us guardianship of sweet Anya and Sasha.  There was a minor delay, but nothing our feisty adoption coordinator couldn’t get fixed in about 90 minutes.  She is truly blessed with the gift of being detail-oriented and not being afraid to ruffle some feathers to get this work done.  As soon as the court decision was given to her she put it in her bag and we ran for the car.  No time for pomp and circumstance!

Three hours later we arrive in Zaporozhe at the birth certificate office.  We did the paper work to get their new birth certificates issued.  Their names are now officially Anna Lynn Stinson and Sasha Thomas Stinson, and we are listed on their official birth certificate as their parents.  But once again, the papers went directly into the folder and into the bag.  No time for pomp and circumstances! 

From the birth certificate office, we went to the tax ID office where they assign the kids ID number to their new name.  This will be needed for the passport process.  Our coordinator completed this with her usual swiftness.  Then we found a notary and got a passport petition made for Anya and Sasha.  The papers with the new ID numbers and the passport petition went directly into the bag.  No time for pomp and circumstance! 

By then it was 4:00 and we hadn’t even had time to eat anything all day, much less see the kids.  We made the long drive back to Berdyans’k to see them for a few minutes before bed.  It had been a busy day for them too.  Sasha went to the doctor to get a follow-up check and X-ray done while we were gone.  The children had been taken for passport photos.  But by the time we got back to the orphanage, it was too late to take the birth certificates and ID numbers to the appropriate offices so that we could officially get them out of the orphanage.  It was not how we imagined our first official day as their legal Mama & Papa would go.  We only had a few minutes with them , and we were hot and sticky and drained from our day of running around in the heat.  No time OR energy for pomp and circumstance. 

On Thursday morning, our coordinator spent the morning running around delivering official copies of the court decree and birth certificates to everyone who needed them.  She also went to pick up the passport photos, and then promptly picked up the children to take them to have new photos taken.  The kids were washed and scrubbed by their caregivers.  They gathered up their few belongings, all of which were things that we have given them, and they were very casually delivered to us.  Still no pomp and circumstance!  We had them change into clothes and shoes that we brought for them so that they could leave the orphanage’s clothes and shoes.  We had them leave a couple big toys we had brought for their friends, trying to explain that they would be too big to carry on the train or plane.  They did this with no arguments at all.  We got to the car to leave and – FINALLY – a little pomp and circumstance:  Hugs for the director, and some pictures. 

We (the 4 of us, plus our coordinator and the driver) squeezed into the small car and drove the 3 hours back to Zaporozhe.  We applied for their new passports, but one of the ID numbers wasn’t set-up in the system correctly, so Alla had to run back to the ID office and get this fixed before we could finish the passport application.

And now we wait for the passports to be printed before we can do anything with the US embassy.  But we got some disappointing news about that… there are some delays with printing passports right now and we can’t predict exactly when they will be ready.  We are waiting until next Tuesday (the next business day because there is a 4-day holiday weekend right now) to hopefully get an update about this.  We are praying that everything will be resolved by then and there will be no delays! 

We had our first dinner together, at a cafeteria where they could choose what they wanted to eat.  They both picked tomato & cucumber salad (It’s summer… Cucumbers are the new cabbage!), potatoes and kielbasa, and strawberry pierogies.  And unfortunately we forgot to take pictures.   After dinner, we went to the train station to wait for our overnight train to Kiev, where we would unfortunately spend our first night together split up in two different train compartments.  As we waited though, we finally remembered to take a few pictures of the kids as we gave them each a gift for our "Gotcha Day"!

 

The past several days have been so lacking in that “pomp and circumstance” that we’re not really expecting it now!  We just transitioned very casually into a family.  I don’t know what we were expecting.  Something grand and ceremonial ?  When you have a new baby, there are so many little milestones and statistics that you pause to savor and document… time of birth, weight, footprints, pictures of every family member holding the baby, that moment when you leave the hospital as a family, the homecoming, first bath, baptism… I could go on and on, because I was one of those sentimental moms that photographed and mentally catalogued EVERYTHING!  We’ve missed all of this with Anya and Sasha.  As I watched Sasha sleep (for the first time) on the train, I cried at everything that we have missed.  Over nine years’ worth of memories and milestones that I will never have and never be able to share with them.  Not one picture or story.  It will overwhelm me with sorrow if I let it, and I have to repeatedly remind myself not to let that happen.  We have RIGHT NOW, and we’re ready to live it and love it.