Adoption day!! 11-22-2007

'I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.' --Maya Angelou

Feeling for the day, we were so excited to finally be there after a year of struggle and pain, our dream was coming true. It was such a momentous day, and soon Kara would be our daughter. We hoped those helping us adopt Kara felt the same way, but we knew they could not understand why we wanted a "sick" child, still we hoped they would make the day as wonderful as it should be.

We both woke up really early, around 4:45, neither one of us could sleep because today was adoption day, or we thought it was. We thought it was at 10:00, but were not certain, follow-up was not something done in Ukraine, or at least for us. We decided to get dressed around 8:00 and Meghan woke up with a belly ache and had bouts of diarrhea.

We were picked up around 9:35 for our 10:00 court appointment. Meghan made a mess in her pants right when we were ready to go into the car, so she was a mess while we were waiting for court. I was feeling kind of embarrassed about it, but these things happen, and after a bit I was amused at the irony of her pooping for the court date knowing how she was feeling about Anna (Karina) The green-eyed monster had reared it's ugly head, and with Meghan feeling sick, it was even worse.

We waited in a lobby full of people, the inspector from the school and the orphanage director were there. Elena our official court translator was there (she is Alex’s sister) and Yelena. Yelena, Elena, and the inspector had their heads together discussing something. We were not sure what, but they kept glancing at Meghan. We thought they did not want her to go into the room with us. She did join us though, where else would she go? and she made it smell GOOD. I felt bad for the others in the room.

I pulled Yelena out to tell her about Meghan but we were called back for court before I could take her outside to change her. We went up two flights of stairs and entered a hallway that led to a small courtroom. The courtroom included a small cell for prisoners, very interesting place. Soon after the judge, a pretty blonde woman, entered with a young man and two other women all looked to be in their 20’s.

We sat down and the judge began to read our petition, as she read Elena translated, and I have to say her knowledge of English was a welcome relief.

The judge asked Tom his name and birth date and checked his passport; she did the same for me. Then she talked some more about the application and whether we agreed with it and whether we still wanted to adopt Karina. We both said we did. She read through some more, and then Tom was asked to stand and tell why he wanted to adopt Karina, he also asked to have the ten day wait waived, but we really did not have a compelling reason. They then asked me, and I got little flustered, I knew what I wanted to say for months, but when it came time to say it there, I froze. They then asked the inspector if she agreed that we should adopt the child, and she repeated back a litany of things we could not understand. Elena said she roughly said that she read our information and felt we would be good parents to Karina. Then the orphanage director was asked his name and he answered that the child was abandoned at the maternity hospital, both parents signed away their parental rights to Karina, and she entered the orphanage at age 2 weeks (November 16th) where she was available for Ukrainians to adopt for 1 year. No one asked to adopt her. She was then released for foreign adoption and we were the first family to ask about her. She seemed to want to be adopted, and was bonding with us. He said she had the diagnosis of Down syndrome, had developmental delay; and “wild” eyes, and a nerve thing??? (We are not sure what that means, we need to find out) He said he thought we would be good parents to the child.

After that the prosecuting attorney asked us if we had had other kids and could we afford another one. What kind of future can we provide for Karina, and such? After that the judge spoke again and Elena said they were going out to deliberate. Elena said it was a formality.

They entered again and we all stood up. The judge read some papers back to us that basically said that they were changing Karina’s name to Kara Irina Levario (I did not realize I had not been breathing until she said this, and I felt warm all over with happiness), and she would be issued a new birth certificate after the 10 day wait, which is when we knew we would not have that waived. Tom was really disappointed by this and felt it meant I was going to be here a really long time without him.

The judge also said that as a disabled child and ward of the state so to speak, Karina was given a yearly pension, which the orphanage never used. It was $600. I knew when Elena told me this that I would leave it with the orphanage, and it could be considered more of the donation. We had tremendous pressure put on us to pay $1,000 to the orphanage, we hoped that this with our $500 donation would help the orphanage replace the windows.

The judge left the courtroom, I got a hug from Yelena and we walked back to the Mercedes where she asked me if we were going to change Meghan there or later, I told her I would like to change her NOW, but she basically ignored that, got in the car and started to drive us back to the “resort”. Yelena asked me about the donation to the orphanage and I said we were giving $500, which we really could not afford. We were going to go as soon as Tom and Meghan got out of her Mercedes.

On the way back I had told Elena that our room was not being cleaned. When we got back to the “resort” Yelena asked for the maid and conversed with her (Natasha). The maid basically said I told her not to come in…..yet she speaks no English, so I am not certain how I conveyed that, but maybe it was the time she had tried to come in when Tom was taking a shower and I told her to wait, I suppose that was when she decided it meant she did not have to clean our room. I was cleaning it myself by grabbing the broom after Natasha went to bed for the night. I was wishing for a vacuum, the dust in there was terrible.

Yelena and I drove back to the orphanage director’s office leaving Tom and Meghan at the 'resort". I paid the director our donation and he made sure I got a receipt for it. Yelena took me back to the room and drove away. I believe that Yelena told him we would give the orphanage Kara's SS money as well, and that seemed to make him happy.

Tom and I expected to go somewhere, a restaurant? to celebrate, but we were left at the room alone. Would we ever understand Ukrainian culture? Did we do something wrong? Or was it Meghan's accident that caused the issues. Yelena did ask me why I did not just put Meghan on the toilet. (sigh) I wish it were that easy. I am still struggling with Meghan, adopting Kara and then Amanda does not make her want to use the potty all the time, she likes the attention they get, and wants it for herself.

We did not get pictures of Kara that day, I forgot the camera.