So by the way, how are the KIDS???

Today it has been 3 weeks since we arrived in Kiev to start living life as a family.  It may seem as if the unfortunate passport situation has overshadowed much of our joy...in our Facebook status updates, emails, and blog entries perhaps.  But not in our "home"!  Yes, we have felt stress and sorrow, but we have tried very hard to do so privately.  When we are with Anya and Sasha, life has been all about them.  And although we have failed to adequately express our joy publicly, believe us, it is there!

So after three weeks, how ARE the children, you ask?

They are incredible.  Really.  They are doing so well with their transition from living in an orphanage to living in a family.  We really couldn't ask for them to be handling it any better!  Sasha is taking it all in stride; you'd never know he'd just experienced such a huge change!  Anya is relishing in the affection and attention, and slowly relinquishing her instinct to "parent" Sasha.  All my worries about how they would handle these role changes were largely unwarranted.

The first week was interesting... There were habits to break (no, kids, you do not need to wear your underwear in the shower) and they had to get used to many things, like the idea that they could have MORE to drink if they wanted it (we went through almost 3 containers of milk the first day).  There were communication barriers to overcome, and I learned WAY more Russian than they learned English.  But we laughed so much!

I can't figure out how we communicate as well as we do.  Yes, we use Google translate a few times a day but I am certainly not walking around with my nose constantly in a Russian/English dictionary.  It just works and I can't explain how!  They speak to me in Russian and somehow I understand what they mean.  I speak to them in English and they eventually figure it out.  The Lord is giving us incredible understanding for one another.  

I am sure that we are going through a honeymoon phase.  I have no doubt that there will be more difficult phases to come, especially as we return home and begin life together as a family of 6.  But I also know that God crafted these delightful, funny, goofy, thoughtful, and affectionate children to be Stinsons, as surely as He did Sophia and Claire.  So we trust Him that He will guide us through whatever challenging times may come, and praise Him for the joyful times that we have had already!  

Seeking out the Blessings

Anya playing with a new friend on our 92nd excursion to a park.

As we passed the 50-day mark this weekend, I was saddened by thoughts of all the things we've been missing at home during these 50 days spent in Ukraine (since April).  I kept having the stereotypical mental picture of a prisoner keeping tally marks on the wall of his prison cell, thinking that my 50-day tally feels just like that.  

Facebook has served a great purpose in helping me to feel connected and delivering encouraging "likes" and comments to me.  There have been many people encouraging us to focus on all the good things that are happening throughout all of this.  I'll admit that it is usually hard (sometimes impossible!) to set aside missing my daughters to see any good that is coming out of our being so delayed here in Ukraine.  But many of you convinced me to try, so here is what we have come up with so far:

1. We've been able to ease Anya and Sasha into the Stinson family gradually, on neutral ground.  We're getting a chance to feel each other out and learn how to communicate BEFORE introducing 2 more All-American girls into the mix.  Hopefully transitioning to a family of 6 will be a little easier because they first had the chance to be a family of 4 in Kiev.
2. Communicating with Anya and Sasha, and establishing our boundaries and expectations as a family, has been a full time job.  If we were home already, Neil would be back to work and I would be doing this alone with all 4 kids already.  We'd be dealing - either directly or indirectly - with inevitable feelings of jealousy from Sophia and Claire.  That will still come, but for now, Neil and I both have been able to devote ourselves fully to Anya and Sasha.  
3. Aside from Sasha's broken arm, which will require a hospital visit in the next week or so if we are still here, our children are healthy and don't require medical attention.  There are families waiting here who have a far greater need to get home than we do.  There are children with medical needs who need to get to the US to be treated.  There is also a father here whose daughter at home is about to have surgery and he can't be there with her.  There is a father here whose older daughter is getting married in two weeks.  There are financial hardships among many families who never anticipated being here this long.  There is a young mother here who brought her 2 toddlers with her... When I think of the needs of some of these families, I know I have no right to complain at all about my situation.
4. We've been able to bond with other adopting families here, including a family from our own church!  The relationship that our kids have already developed with our friends, the McDuffs, will undoubtably help them once we get home and continue to see those familiar faces.  
5. I am blessed that my husband has been able to stay here with me for so long!  
6. We are learning more Russian because we are still immersed in it here, and that's been helpful in communicating with the kids.
7. We are getting to see MUCH, MUCH more of Kiev than we thought we ever would.  We will have lots of pictures and stories to take home for Anya and Sasha.  I have always been saddened by the lack of a history that we will have for them.  This time in Ukraine doesn't make up for the 7 and 9 years that we missed with them, of course, but it gives us a better start than we expected to have.
8. We hear that the animals are lining up 2 by 2 at home, waiting for the ark to show up. The weather was terribly hot during our first week in southern Ukraine, but here in Kiev?  Lovely!  Low humidity, lots of sunshine, and temperatures in the 70's and 80's.  That's been a blessing that has allowed us to get the kids outside every day!
9. We can see how blessed we are with a community of friends and family, near and far,  who are praying for us and checking in with us & Sophia and Claire.
10. Most importantly, when our worry/anxiety/stress/boredom/fear/disappointment/discouragement/sadness overcomes our joy, this has kept us continually turning to the Lord for comfort and strength.  

I think we will continue to see many more blessings to come this week.  The embassy has agreed to our request for a meeting (albeit not until Thursday).  Also, today the embassy requested information from us about our passport applications, so that they could request

for our passports to be some of the first printed.  They have also bent the rules on medical exams to allow us to get them completed prior to having our passports.  I know that their hands are tied on many things, but I'm grateful that they are acknowledging us and our struggles here.  

We just ask for your continued prayers for strength for us, safety and comfort for Sophia & Claire, understanding and patience for Anya & Sasha, wisdom for the US officials helping us, and motivation for the Ukrainian officials who are in a position to help us!

Eating Cheese at the Wall

It's Neil's turn to use the blog as a stress remedy...

We are into our 7^th week in Ukraine since first leaving on April  7^th.  Today is exactly three months from our first appointment with the SDA.  We have accomplished a lot and have just a couple things left to complete so we can bring Anya and Sasha home, but those tasks are still evading us.  We are so blessed by what we have, are able to do, and our freedoms and liberties.  I sit here struggling with feeling irritated that I am not on my way home today as planned.  It gives perspective to the uncertainty that people in Ukraine live with every day.  It seems like some rule, guideline, law, or standard is changing every day.  People here never know what to expect when it comes to dealing with medical or governmental needs.  They just show up, ask questions, muddle through it, and hope they get what they came for.  I guess if this is all you know, maybe it doesn’t seem strange. 

Here is my confession for the day.  I am frustrated.  I have hit my wall, am stressed out and am struggling to give it over to God.  After waiting 12 days now for passports, and after having to change our airplane tickets to a week later than our already conservative departure date, I have hit my wall with delays, issues, and changes.   Thank God for providing the McDuff’s and the other great families we have met here in Kiev, and our prayer warriors back home.  If it wasn’t for them I think my wall would have come, been climbed over and “Berlined” at least a week ago.   I’m in that place where anything can irritate me. 

A short list of items that have stressed us out over the last two weeks:  Passport delays; positive skin reaction to TB tests (both kids); false information, no information, and continually changing information with no good guidance on how to plan; missing Sophie and Claire; and Claire losing a tooth while we are gone.  Yes, somehow not being there when she lost her first top front tooth (not her first tooth even) pushed us over the wall. 

So I’m at my wall this morning, already working on this blog entry, and I get my email with my daily bible verse... and it is this:  I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. — Philippians 4:11.

I could take this two ways.  One as a slap in the face for not being compliant with his plan (although I think I’ve been a good sport so far), or that he is meeting me where I am and giving me guidance.  I think it may be a little bit of both, so I will humble myself, refocus, and continue to bond with my family.  We have had so many great moments over the past week and a half.  I’ll return my focus to nurturing them and praying for guidance on how to show them God’s love and message through acts, words, and a language barrier. 

As the saying goes… “When stuck in a mouse trap, you might as well eat the cheese.”

Dependence Day

Happy July 4th to everyone!  As you all celebrate at home, it is just another day in Ukraine.  But not for the Stinsons.  This is perhaps the most poignant Independence Day we will ever celebrate.  Not only because we appreciate our home country more than ever, but also because we are waiting for our own Independence Day, for the freedom to move forward as a family. 

 

Yesterday we went to the US Embassy in Kiev.  As we drove up and I caught sight of the American flag flying in front of the building, I was overcome with emotion.  After spending so many weeks outside the country, everything that flag represents means so much more to us.  I can hardly wrap my head around the freedoms that we enjoy as Americans.  We like to gripe about politics and media and the price of gas... but most of the time we pay no attention to just how good we have it, in all areas of life! 

 

The most amazing gift that we have been blessed with as Americans is freedom.  We are free to go where we want, when we want.  We are free to pursue any vocation that we want.  We are free to have relationships with anyone, regardless of their class or status.  And most importantly to me, we have the freedom to worship however and whenever and wherever we want. 

We can appreciate our freedom more than ever, given that we are now experiencing what it feels like to NOT be free to come and go as we please.  We are not free to leave Ukraine, and we have absolutely no control over when we WILL be able to leave.  It's out of our hands and all we can do is wait for things to turn around.  If we have learned nothing else through this process, we've learned that God's timing is perfect even when it makes no sense to us!  So we trust him that he has a reason for us to be delayed, and our eyes are wide open to seeing what that might be. 

 

While America is celebrating its independence today, the Stinsons are instead celebrating our dependence, on a God who is bigger than all of these circumstances. 

 

But His word also says, Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.  For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. - Matthew 7:7-8  So I've been asking away, and I won't be shy about asking you to pray for us too!  I may be unhappy about being delayed, but I can handle almost everything about it.  The one thing that is breaking my heart however is being separated from Sophia and Claire, with no definite end in sight (and this separation has given me a whole new appreciation for military families).  Even though the girls have been handling it better than I could have ever hoped, I know it is very hard for them to have both their parents away for so many weeks.  It's because of them that I pray incessantly for God to clear the path and allow us to bring Sasha and Anya home soon.  It's time for all the Stinsons to be under one roof!

Toddlerhood 2.0

God knew what he was doing when he put it on my heart to adopt.  He knows that I lack patience for some areas of parenting but find more joy in others.  While I know some mothers who LOVED pregnancy, I was not one of them; I think they must have been slipped something in their epidural to alter their memory.  The ONLY part of being pregnant that I enjoyed was the knowledge that our family was being blessed with a baby.  I could say the same thing about the infant stages.  I adore other people’s babies, but if I’m being honest, I’m just as happy to give them back after a while. 

But TODDLERHOOD… now there’s a different story.  Give me an 18-month-old, or a 2-year-old, or a 3-year-old any day!   I loved this stage of parenting.  While I sometimes heard other moms express frustrations about their child’s budding tantrums or stubbornness (and I’m sure I did on occasion too), I don’t remember a day of toddlerhood that I didn’t absolutely love.  I called it the “age of discovery”… where everything is new and exciting, and children can’t wait to try new things.  Yes, it often meant difficulties and temper tantrums.  But I loved every minute of it. 

In toddlerhood, you start to truly parent your child and have a different relationship with them.  You talk to them constantly, labeling everything you see and do so that they can learn the language.  You are constantly redirecting behaviors, doing so with lots of motions and short sentences that they can understand, like “Ouch!  Biting hurts Mommy!”  Toddlers speak to you with language you often can’t understand, but you’d better figure it out any way you can – sink or swim!  As their parent, you can interpret a toddler’s needs better than anyone… and let’s be honest, a toddler shows her appreciation for all your hard work more than an infant does, and that’s just nice.  Toddlers need toilet training.  You have to watch a toddler every moment because you just never know what they are going to do.  But their unpredictability can also make them hilarious; a toddler will make you laugh about things you’ve never laughed about before.  If I could have had my wish, we would have adopted a toddler. 

Guess what having an child who doesn’t speak the same language as me reminds me of???  After 4 days alone with our kids, I've decided that it reminds me of parenting a toddler. 

 

All those parenting skills you use with your toddler to improve their language, their social skills, their habits?  They are the same ones we are currently digging out of the long-forgotten corners of our parenting bag of tricks.   My kids and I can’t understand each other – it is now our 24/7 job to figure out their needs anyway.  Having less than ideal parenting early in life, and having lived in an institution for the past 2 years, I can’t just assume that they know anything that a 7-year-old and 9-year-old might normally know!  They need to be watched every second because they’re so unpredictable to us.  I can’t assume, for example, that my 7-year-old has the common sense to not touch the stove or run out into the street.  We use lots of gestures and repeat very short phrases to teach them not to do these things, just like you would with a toddler.  We find ourselves once again monitoring bathroom habits to make sure that everyone has indeed used toilet paper, flushed, and washed their hands with soap, and takes off their underwear when they shower!  There's a lot of old habits to undo, whenever the time is right.

I won't pretend that it isn't exhausting and sometimes frustrating... a toddler is at least smaller!  You can wrangle up and confine a toddler if you really need to.  And a toddler has usually been hearing you speak a common language for a while, and they usually understand much more of what we say than we give them credit for!  We don't have that advantage with Anya and Sasha.  I think we must spend 1/2 our day with our noses in a Russian dictionary.  And they are much bigger and stronger than toddlers - it's amazing the things they can get into. 
 

But OH MY GOODNESS, can they make us laugh!  I could write a whole separate blog entry about all the unpredictable and funny things that they have done that have, just like a toddler would do.  My most memorable in these past 4 days was when Anya figured out how to turn on the bidet in the bathroom.  Thank goodness I was in the room – I looked over to find her bending over, hair hanging into it, as if she was going to take a drink.  In my wildest parenting dreams, this is not a sentence I would have anticipated having to use in my parenting: “ANYA, NYET, THAT’S NOT A DRINKING FOUNTAIN, IT’S FOR WASHING YOUR BUTT!!!!!!!” 

 

Thank you God for you sense of humor, and for crafting me into the kind of parent who was made to find joy in this new, more intense version of “toddlerhood” that we are experiencing now!

 

¹³ For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
¹⁴ I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
¹⁵ My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
¹⁶ Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.

Psalm 139:13-16 (NIV)

 

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. 

Where Church and State Collided

Today we arrived home from our 2nd trip to Ukraine.  We were gone for one week, all for a 2 hour court hearing on Wednesday, June 12th.  This is probably old news for you, but our petition to adopt Anya and Sasha was approved by the judge at our hearing! 

Our coordinator - who believes less is more when it comes to sharing details about what happens in Ukraine - cautioned us to keep the details of our court hearing private, just like she has cautioned us to keep many other things private.  There are a lot of valid reasons for her recommendation, most importantly that what happens in one courtroom in Ukraine can be extremely different from what happens in another courtroom in Ukraine.  And as we've been cautioned many times, it's never a good idea to compare adoptions! 

But there are just some things about going to court this week that we just can't be expected to keep to ourselves!  In retrospect, we could not have expected our court hearing to be any more successful.  We experienced so many blessings in that room, and we could feel the prayers of everyone who has been praying for this day.  There were three of us going to court to petition for Anya and Sasha - the two of us and God. 

A court hearing in a foreign country is stressful.  Your life and motivations are put under a microscope, and you have no idea what the prosecutor or witnesses will ask.  They might be cooperative and your court hearing could be as short as 20 minutes.  The witnesses have the right to ask questions, so alternatively your court hearing could last many hours and include some pretty outrageous questions, depending on the position of the witnesses.  Our hearing felt stressful at the time, but the questions were predictable, and the time that it took was very reasonable considering the fact that we were talking about the futures of two young children! 

We were very blessed that they allowed the kids to stay outside the courtroom for the hearing except for when they needed to come in and answer questions.  This meant that they did not need to be present to hear in detail about how they came to be in the orphanage, or how relatives that they may not even remember have never come forward to take care of them or even visit them.  The kids did a great job of answering questions.  When the judge asked if anyone had any additional questions for them, Anya said "No" and then realized that it wasn't a question for her.  Everyone got a chuckle.  After that, the mood lightened as we finished up.  We have great stories about how everyone reacted to us once the official proceedings were over, but the best is... as she congratulated us, the prosecutor remarked how much the kids look like us and said it must be "from God." 

The bonus of being in town for 4 days for a 2-hour court hearing was seeing and playing with Anya and Sasha for several hours each day.  Since the kids are done with school for the summer, we were able to spend 5 or 6 hours with them each day.  There is a bond there that can only be from God.  Each minute with them is precious and we are starting to understand their personalities more and more.  It is going to be a fun, scary, crazy, exciting, and wild adventure once we get them home!  We can't wait to blog about their growth and transition, in just a few weeks! 

We have been so blessed by all the great people we have met at the orphanage.  They are all great examples of people who are spiritually gifted with children.  We can't understand them, but their passion for these kids is clear to see by the way the children respond to them.  I hope their lives are as blessed by the kids as the kids are blessed by them.