Part four: Last Days in Kremenchuk

(Edited! Just so you know - some of the information runs together with part 3! It was a posting and tracking nightmare! Thanks for reading!)

Ukrainian Independence Day Party

We were invited by Svetlana and her husband, Vitaliy to join them in celebrating the 10th anniversary of independence from Russia! The gala event was held at Svetlana's home in the country. They came and picked us up and we spent the morning helping them prepare for the feast, while enjoying a tour of their home and relaxing outside! Svetlana made tables full of food in her summer kitchen! Much of it - we could not eat - mystery meats, fish with heads and stuff! We did try small bites as to not offend her! They also had more vodka on this table then we could ever imagine... and all bottles were empty by the end of the day! They had other friends come ot the party, and we enjoyed hearing about most of them! One, Sasha, spoke excellent English! He did most the translating for the day!

After folks had ate their fill and needed to walk off some of the booze.... we were taken down to a small pond that was connected somehow to the Dniper River....
One of Svetlana's guests thought it would be really nice to strip down in his briefs, jump into the Dnipro river and retrieve me some flowers... very touching! Well.. and he was very drunk!
Enjoying one of the last outside visits with the boys-- eating crackers and bananas!






The view of the Hotel Kremin from the Red Square of Kremenchuk
Here are the boys on their last day in the baby house... we were waiting for the final PAPER to be sealed so that we could leave!
The hubby waits outside the office for birth certificates... for some reason it took hours! It was a long long day for us!
Here are Svetlana and myself enjoying a drink in the Central Park near our hotel. Svetlana walked EVERYWHERE! She walked in high heals and had no problem with it!

Amy

Part three - our 2001 adoption

(Edited to let you know that some of the information runs together with the previous and next post!)

Daily Life in Kremenchuk

Each morning while in Kremenchuk, and the every wonderful Hotel Kremin, we started off our day with a shower and occasionally washing our clothes in the sink! We'd set them out to dry on whatever free chair back, hanger, knob or otherwise that would hold the item! Svetlana would usually meet us at 9am in front of the hotel. We would end up walking for about 30 minutes through town, and then she would get us a cab to the orphanage. We did LOTS of walking each day! We would stop on the way to the orphanage and get a snack or small toy for the boys. Some days we stopped at different parks while Svetlana would give us a brief broken English version of history of the town! After our morning visits with the boys, we would get a cab from the orphanage, that would usually drop us off somewhere in town - usually a mile or two from our hotel... Svetlana LOVED walking! We enjoyed taking Svetlana to lunch - and treating her! She always put up an argument - but ended up caving each time... for us, it was no big deal to pay $15 for a really nice lunch for 3 people! We usually ate borscht and an awesome cucumber and tomatoe salad.. super yummy! Some days, we tried different things that Svetlana suggested.. some good - some not so good! Every couple of days, Svetlana would take us to the postoffice.. it was an odd building that had about 15 phone booths inside, as well as two computers with internet access. We would spend about $5, which would get us about 2-3 minutes to try and call home with a very brief update. We would usually try to send an email at the cost of about .20 for 10 minutes. We also would go and get our pictures developed and look for kids clothes. Each afternoon, we usually bought a big jug of water to put in our small fridge in the hotel.

Getting to know the boys

For the next week, we saw the boys in the mornings, and occasionally in the afternoon. For some reason, Svetlana had to get the boys for us each time. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that the Director was not happy with us. After about 3 visits, we paid to have a Western trained doctor come and look at the boys. Her name was Dr. Anna Groban. She worked at the American Medical Center in Kiev. She was a godsend! She spoke British English fluently! She checked out the boys head to toe, tested development and helped answer a ton of questions! It was funny when we look back, as she said that Alex was the very healthy one, and Jason was the one with the "Olympic Front (forehead) that he was going to be the one to keep an eye on! She said that she would do the boys exit medical exam for their Visas when we got back to Kiev. That was nice!


We really enjoyed spending time with the boys and getting to know them! They started to understand English pretty quick. Svetlana (a teacher by training) did an amazing job trying to teach them words in English as well as teaching us words in Ukrainian to help. We would take snacks each day for them. Those boys LOVED bananas! Little Dima could eat one faster than you could get it unpeeled. We were told that both boys were not really good eaters... after seeing some of the stuff they had to eat - who could blame them! Little Dima was left to feed himself at meal time... he had little coordination... it was no wonder that he was soo tiny! Vitaliy had lots of energy and loved to play with the toys we brought each day.. he loved to put them all in his mouth!



We spent time playing with them in the music room, as well as mainly outside on the playgrounds. We brought them bananas, juice and crackers each day.

Vitaliy and his Papa... in the groupa room that he lived in
Mama and Dmitriy in his groupa room in front of his locker - #1
Dima and Vitaliy playing in the outdoor playpen

While we enjoyed visiting with the boys and getting to know them better - we were also very anxious to get home! We had brought clothes that would fit Vitaliy, but we had nothing small enough for little Dima, who was wearing 6-9 month clothes! So, each day, we would look at different stores.

Ukrainian Independence Day!

We were invited to Svetlana and her husband, Vitaliys house to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Ukraines independence from Russia.

Court and stuff

We had our court date on August 25th. Svetlana and her husband dropped us off outside the courthouse -and said their goodbyes... which was a little weird after spending alot of time with them that most likely we would never see them again. Svetlana cried - and almost had me in tears as well.

Court went pretty fast... we were declared the parents and quickly whisked off to a building that had maybe 2 lights in it to obtain birth certificates. After a few hours, we went to lunch, then back to the orphanage to spring the boys out... but not until we had some last "paper" from the capital city of the region....

2001 Adoption - part one

THE BEGINNING

We started the process for our very first adoption in the end of 2000. We figured since the world did not end on Y2K - we'd go for it.. haha! We did some online research and first thought about going to Russia. At that point - we were interested in ONE child... gender not important and going for the youngest child we could! We found an agency - I asked alot of questions to the families that had already used this agency. This agency had been doing Russian adoptions since Russia first opened to international adoption. They mailed me out their packet of information and we got the ball rolling. (just fyi -I will not put down the name of the agency... if you read the whole story - you'll find out why!) We were referred to a agency here in our state and started the homestudy. The more information we read and learned, the more concerned we were with trying to determine OUR child from a short medical report and pictures of a child from Russia. Since this agency had just started adoptions from Ukraine a few years prior - we decided to look into Ukraine. It made alot more sense to us to actually MEET our child before going through the whole process. So... Ukraine it was! We put together our dossier (a 2 pound document that basically summarizes your life, that gets all kinds of stamps, and then is sent to Ukraine to translate.) In April of 2001, our dossier was sent to Ukraine and submitted to the National Adoption Center (further more called the NAC). Then we waited...

GETTING THE REFERRAL CALL!

In mid July, we got a call from our adoption agency in California. They wanted to know if we could fly to Ukraine ASAP (like a week later!) and meet TWINS! Since we were only approved for one child... this was a little odd (side note - pre-selection of children was not "allowed" in Ukraine.. but some translators had an "in" with different orphanages and had ways around the system.. little did we know at the time that this was a no-no!) that they would call us for TWINS! The agency was very excited about this referral... as the twins were healthy and almost 27 months old, and a boy and a girl! I remember that I was at work when I got the call... I remember being so excited that I almost burst! The hubby and I talked it over for a day or so... decided to go for it - but needed an extra few weeks to get our homestudy changed, and INS papers modified. Our travel date... set for August 18, 2001.

Getting Ready to Travel

We started packing like mad... bought new HUGE suitcases, money belts, translator books, kids clothes and shoes! We bought our tickets and I remember thinking how awesome it was that we'd be getting TWINS! The hubby was excited because he (thought - haha) we would be done with two kids! We were traveling on Northwest and KLM to Amsterdam then to Kiev (now called Kyiv)... it would be a long flight! We did not think much about names... we had not purchased any furniture or toys... we were still a little worried that it might not work out.

The Trip to Kiev

We left the Yakima airport on our way to Seattle, then Seattle to Amsterdam on August 18. We arrived late the next afternoon in Kiev. We departed the plane on the tarmac and were bused to the terminal. We had to cross a weird little carpet to clean our shoes for some animal based disease that I can't remember now! We stood in line for passport control for over an hour and realized we were in the wrong line and had the wrong forms and forgot to purchase the $8 insurance! We finally got through it - gathered our luggage and looked through the crowds and saw our driver holding a sign with our last name. That was the first time we met Valery (pronounced Va-larry) and our Kiev translator, Irina. We loaded our luggage into Valery's big Ford Van and they took us to a grocery store in the middle of a high-rise neighborhood... looked alot like a ghetto! We bought enough food to last a day or two... then they took us to an apartment.

First Days in Kiev

The first day, we just rested in our apartment. I don't remember venturing out or exploring at all! Day two we went with Irina to the NAC. To make things "official" we had to look at the infamous binder of children there to pick one out to go and visit. This was extremely difficult, as Irina told us to not ask questions or say anything about the fact that we already "knew" who we were going to see. It was like an act... we thumbed through this notebook... Irina said a few things to us like "this child has AIDS, this child has dislocated hips" the pictures that we saw were very hard to take in. At some point, Irina took a page from the binder - said something to the social worker and we were on our way. Basically, we were just getting permission to go to an orphanage. After our apppointment, Irina took us to lunch at an outdoor cafe and we had our first Ukrainian borscht - it was awesome! We did alot of walking and then Irina and Valery did alot of running around. Later that day, we went to meet with our facilitators. Who were Michael, his wife (whose name escapes me!), Nina - who was supposed to be our regional translator, Valery our driver and another man who was driving us to the region. We asked about the Twins - whose names were Alina and Dmitriy. We did NOT ask their age, as we had already been told by our agency. We were told they were very healthy and good children... we were very lucky to find such a good referral. We were told alittle about the region (Poltava) and that the driver and Nina would pick us up for the drive at 4am the next morning.

The Drive to Kremenchuk

Nina and our driver picked us up at 4am. We had to load everything into the little car. We did not eat breakfast (dumb Americans - we thought we'd be stopping at breakfast time!) The first hour, Nina was "running errands" picking up gift bags (bags of bribery! booze and chocolates!)and paperwork. We left Kiev about the time the sun was coming up. Our driver had an extremely heavy foot and the scenery raced by! Outside the city, we enjoyed the countryside for the first hour or two... beautiful farmland and lots of sunflowers! It was a beautiful day! We stopped only once to use an outhouse on the side of the road... it was a little weird! We arrived at the orphanage about 10am. We did not know what to expect. We pulled up to a large white stone building with greenish trim... there was lots of sheets hanging up to dry out front. Nina took us inside the building and up stairs to the Directors office. We went inside and met the Director, whose name was Nataliya. She seemed very efficient and to the point. She asked us a few questions. Not long after - two little children were paraded into her office.

MEETING THE TWINS

My first thought was - OMG - these children are HUGE 2 year olds! The twins came in saying "Privyet Mama, Privyet Papa!" It was an odd sensation and feeling. After about 10 minutes of the nurses telling us about the children (via Nina) we were asked "You will adopt them? They are beautiful children - very healthy" . Lina and Dima were beautiful indeed. Lina had light brown hair and blue eyes, Dima was a blue-eyed blonde. Both children were told to sing for us, tell us things they liked (more like we were told what we had to buy for them!) and then these tornado children started going thru our bags and taking our camera! We asked Nina and the director if we could play with them before making our decision. Nina kept pushing us, telling us how good they were and healthy. Our adoption agency told us these twins were 27 months... in reality - they were 47 months and would be moved to the pre-school in a month. (this was lie #1 from the agency).The hubby and I asked to talk it over in the other room... Nina was ok with it - the director was a little put out by how long we were taking. We went into the music room across the hall. I remember that I sat down and the tears started. They were not tears of joy - more like tears of uncertainty and grief. I knew in my heart that these twins were not our children. Nina came into the room and asked us what the problem was. We told her that our adoption agency had told us that the twins were 27 months, toddlers. Nina told us over and over that SHE had personally talked to the agency and told them the birthdates more than ONCE... she was upset about the fact that we had been misled, but she was persistant about us taking these twins home. She gave us a few minutes to talk, think and breathe. We both felt the same thing. These twins were more than we could handle - we just did not feel it in our hearts. We were worried that we were making a huge mistake. During our hour talking and thinking and trying to figure out how to put it into words that Nina could understand... the twins each came to the door a few times and said... "Mama? Papa? blah blah blah in Russian"... it was heartbreaking.Finally, Nina returned and we told her that we could not adopt these beautiful children and that she could take us back to Kiev.

The Second Referrals

Nina went into the Directors office and apparently told her our decision. There was a lot of screaming on the part of the director (Nataliya) ! She was not happy at all! Nina came back and told us to wait and she would see if there was any other available siblings to look at while we were here. We were pretty numb at this point... we just wanted to get outta there! It was beyond emotionally draining! Nina was gone for maybe 20-30 minutes and came back and told us that there was only ONE set of siblings available interesting, since this place was overflowing with children! Within a few minutes... Nina left the room...

Meeting Vitaliy

Not long after Nina left, a nurse brought in a little boy (who was wearing the same exact clothes that Dima had been wearing a few hours before) who had dark brown hair and brown eyes. He was extremely quiet. He sat in my lap and once I handed him some crayons, he began to color. The nurse stayed and answered lots of questions about him, via Nina. We moved to the carpet and played on the floor for a bit... not long after - we heard screaming coming closer. And in came Vitaliys little brother screaming his head off... and his name is Dmitriy.

See part two....

Our 2001 Adoption - part 2

MEETING DMITRIY A nurse brought us in a tiny little blonde haired blue eyed boy - screaming at the top of his lungs! His name... Dmitriy. Nina told us "you have to take this one too..." We played on the floor with the two little boys. Dmitriy sat on Johns lap for a while... no longer scared - but refused to give us a smile. He was very serious! At 17 months old - he was very small and had just started walking on his own. We played with both boys for awhile. During this time, we were not pushed hard at all to decide on the adoption. It was late afternoon when Nina finally asked us if these two would become our sons. After a brief discussion - we decided that they were the ones.

OUR FRENCH TRANSLATOR, SVETLANA

Not long after making the commitment to start paperwork, we were ushed back into the Directors office (thankfully she was gone for the day) and we started talking to the Asst. Director, Lydia (who is now the director). Nina told us that she had to go back to Kiev... uh oh. In the room was an attractive dark haired woman. She was introduced to us as Svetlana. Svetlana was to be our translator during our stay in Kremenchuk! We talked for a few minutes and thought - no biggie.. until she told us that she is truly a FRENCH translator and does not know English very well! UH OH! Nina told us that she was unable to find anyone else to help us while she was gone. We figured that as long as Svetlana could get us around and could understand the basics, we would be fine. Svetlana left - telling us that she would see us in the morning at our hotel.

THE NOTARY AND NAMES

Nina and our driver wisked us off to the "attorney" aka a notary - to start signing papers. We get to a nice office and wait in line. Nina introduces another large older woman named Ludmilla. She is apparently our "attorney" or something like that! This woman spoke awesome English! She was excited to meet us and talk to us! She was very nice and put us at ease, until Nina came over and said "What will their (the boys) names be? We need it now for the papers..." Ummmm... NOW? Names were not something that we had thought about AT ALL! Nina gave us like 5 minutes to come up with names! Wow! We decided to keep the boys Ukrainian name as their middle name. We came up with Alex and Jason. After signing some unknown papers - Nina took us to our hotel.

HOTEL KREMIN

Nina and our driver took us to this odd looking hotel that sat next to a large town square that had a statue of Stalin. Very communist indeed! We were quoted a price of $45 a night, which included our own bathroom with hot water. Before we commited, we were shown the "nicest room they had"... lets just say that it was nicer than alot of other places that we could have stayed! Down the hall from our room - it reeked badly of sewer gas! I think that we were on the 5th floor, and we had a little balcony... whoo hoo!