2007-Day 2 Vorzel-We meet Kara

We got into Yelena's SUV and I was surprised at how moist my palms were. Were parked in front of this building and the three of us walked in. We saw a few children and a woman approached us and talked to Yelena, all I knew was we were not supposed to come there before meeting with the orphanage director.

We drove down the road to his office and sat outside the room while Yelena spoke to him. After a few minutes she came back out and said we needed to walk across the street to the baby orphanage where Karina was. We followed Yelena along a snow covered pathway, across the street and we saw the orphanage.
So here we were, #5 orphanage, wow, it hard to walk up the walkway with shaking knees, did they have to make that path so long? I thought we would never get there. What would we find beyond that closed door?
The baby house, we were finally there, after over a year of planning and waiting, the time had come to meet our new daughter.

I am certain I looked as scared as I was, the doctor put a reassuring hand on my shoulder. We sat down on the longest sofa and she pulled up a chair.

She read from a 2 inch thick file folder and told us how much Kara weighed at birth, her Apgar scores, that she has a bronchial infection two times, and so many other things that became incomprehensible to me because I was watching the door. I knew Tom and Meghan were there with me, but my whole body was filled with the excitement and some fear of who we would see soon.

We asked questions and then they said Karina was ready to meet us and a caregiver brought her out to us and handed her to me. The video shows us meeting.

A thrill went through me when I saw her, if felt the same way I did when my by birth children emerged from the womb and my arms were aching to hold them, to look at them at last and count fingers and toes. What a beautiful little girl, I was amazed, in awe, and I wondered if they made a mistake, she did not look like she had Down syndrome at all. I remember looking at her pinkies and seeing the two bones and the crook of them, and smiled, there was a marker afterall.

Kara was stinky, she actually smelled like, well, poop, and her hands smelled like she had them in her diaper, so when she stuck her hands in my mouth, I was not thrilled. LOL I picked her up and bounced her to get her hands away from my face, I felt like retching, not a good thing to do on first meeting...still I took one look at her and I thought "My Lord, she is just a baby!" and then I thought "I hope she will be ours" it was that quick for me.

I just had to hug Kara, but you could tell she was not used to it, and was stiff in my arms.
Meghan was just having none of her mom paying attention to this little baby, she interjected herself between Kara and I quite often, I was glad she was going to be there 3 weeks to get to know Kara and get used to the idea that she would come home with me later.

However, Meghan was so excited to see Anna (what she called her then) and was in her face, not something that made Kara happy, she pulled Meghan's hair and it truly hurt Meghan's feelings.
Meghan retreated to a safe distance while mommy and daddy played with this stranger, how much did she understand about Kara? We were not certain, but we tried to include her and help her feel better, she got a lot of hugs too.

Meghan trying to figure out who Kara was, she kept asking me if it was Anna, (Oksana) and I kept saying no, this is Karina honey.

I played with Kara while Tom looked on, a huge smile on his face. I handed her over to him and grabbed the camera, I wanted to get some pictures of this very important day.

We were trying to get her to smile, she was having none of it, the look she gave us we got used to, she often looked this way those first few weeks with us. She only smiled if we played with her.

we brought a bunny and a book for her, and all she wanted was the Ziploc bag. we still have to keep those away from her, she puts them over her head, hum, not so safe.

Tom getting to know Kara, and Meghan again trying to be a part of it, she kept saying "I got her" she wanted to hold Kara, but Kara was grabbing noses and glasses, and pinching and pulling hair, so we thought it best to wait a few days before they "bonded".

Another attempt to get our beautiful new daughter to smile, no way, until she finally showed us her beaitiful little smile.

After a bit of the doctor and Yelena looking on, Yelena said "Kristina, the doctor wants to know, do you accept the referral" and "She says you can take a few days to decide if you want" I looked at Tom and said "Well, what do you think" I know my face and eyes said YES to him, he nodded and smiled and said "Oh yes" and we both looked at her and said "Yes, we accept her referral" and Yelena left us, saying could we walk back to the room, she needed to get back to Kyiv and the next day she would tell the SDA we accpeted the referral and get the adoption process started. We said yes, we did not mind walking, it was already getting dark outside, but we were so elated, we did not even notice it ot that it had begin to snow. Soon after Yelena left, a caregiver came in with a buggy full of food for the children and they told us it was time for Kara to eat.

We handed her back to the caregiver and put on our coats, hats, and gloves and walked outside.


You can see how happy Tom was walking back, I was throwing snowballs at Meghan and we were all giggling and playing, three Arizonans who were not used to so much snow, and just thrilled to be where we were at the moment. I was thanking God for finding us such a sweet little girl. We walked back to the dining hall to eat dinner.

Vorzel- and our new apartment, uhm, dorm room--2007

Meghan all dressed to leave Kyiv and move to our new temporary home in Vorzel. Yes, she was way under dressed, it was so much warmed in Kyiv than Vorzel. We did not make that mistake again. She wore her parka from that point forward.

The busy streets of Kyiv, honestly it seemed like any other large city, except for the signs on the buildings, and some smaller cars. We had fun looking for American cars there, saw a few, even Fords, which we were both surprised to see. We saw girls walking fast on uneven sidewalks in stilettos, I figured out that they actually were an advantage in snow and ice, I slipped in my flat boots all the time.

Remnants of the snow that covered everything that weekend in Kyiv. Cars

routinely parked on sidewalks, but what choice did folks have, millions of people and no parking garages=parking on sidewalks (and driving on them too)

Leaving Kyiv, we thought the snow would be gone, but 20 miles away and in the middle of a forest, the snow was deep and it was much colder, and it continued to come down day after day.
So we entered the Irpen province and more snow, I loved the stop signs, they did have some in English, traditional western octagonal stop signs, but I liked to see these better. Tom always called them C-T-O-staples signs. Russian or English, it says STOP. You can click on the picture to enlarge the image.

The road towards the "resort" We called it the monastery those first couple of weeks, so isolated, no one but our Yelena to talk to, but after 6 weeks it became home to me, and I was happy to return to it after a long day in Kiev paper chasing.

Hmmmm, something left over from the USSR?

Peremoga, from my bad Russian I read that this is the Vorzel Sanatorium Anyone know what Peremoga means?

The map, we were in the first building after the entrance, Corpuce (my translation)#3, diagonal walkway to the right.

The entryway, a nice slippery walk to our Corpuce, they did put sand and salt down to help with slipping, but it became a thick ice path each night as we slept.

The playground at the Peremoga, no one let their kids play there the first two weeks.

Our building, this was the tallest one on the complex, mostly families and older folks stayed there. You could hear children running overhead at all hours. We chose the first floor because the steps were steep and Meghan kept tripping on them, we did not want her or us for that matter, to have a terrible accident. The 4Th floor room had a TV, but it was all in Ukrainian and Russian, so what was the need for one?

The hallway to our room, the first week we were there some unruly kids pulled off one of those handrails, it sat on the floor for a week.

Yes, I took a picture of our room number, I can still hear Tom saying the number in Russian to the staff when her paid for another week. Adin adin pyat'

Our room, Meghan will give you a tour, ignore the fluffy woman in the background...

This was our room, we also had a non-working refrigerator, a small desk, and a bathroom and small closet. It was frustrating that we had a computer with us, but no way to connect to the Internet. I did find out that for $200 I could have had a satellite connection for the entire time I was there, frankly by the end of 6 weeks, $200 sounded more than worth the money.

The path on the way to the dining hall, we had to get all of our clothes back on, hats, gloves, parka's and trudge through snow and slush to the dining hall, some days it was just too hard to go to lunch, we were all tired, and they fed us an awful lot of food, we were usually stuffed for lunch.

We ate breakfast at 9:00, Lunch at 1:30 and dinner at 6:00. It was already getting dark at 4;00, so the walk to dinner was always pretty dark, for some reason they forgot to turn on the lights along the way, but we noticed the Ukrainian folks had pretty good night vision, we used a flashlight sometimes, it screamed AMERICAN. LOL

The dining hall, they did a good job making it look pretty. It was so embarrassing to have Meghan spill food on the pretty tablecloths, but Kara was much worse! For most of the 6 weeks, we ate here alone, we sat at a table in the corner, while the rest of the kids ate opposite us, and across the middle dining hall. Our section was the prettiest, and we always had a flower on our table, it was their way of telling us where to sit. Some days it was in the main dining hall with all the old folks, I loved seeing and hearing them, and so wished I could talk to them.

Meghan eating her first meal, noodles that she would not eat, but a huge hot dog that she downed in no time.

A painting in our portion of the dining hall, I am sure it is of the forest surrounding Vorzel.

Still fighting off a cold

Poor Kara, she just can't seem to kick a goopy nose and general malaise. If you could add her to your prayers, we would appreciate it.

We are perplexed, she has no chest congestion, is not spiking fevers, no cough either, so what is with the nose? Maybe she is allergic to the 4 kittens running around the house.

2007-Day 4 in Kyiv

Entryway, interesting to me that there were a lot of similarities between both of our Ukraine and Estonian apartments, the outside and elevator were older with crooked steps, but both apartments were remodeled and pretty. Though the wallpaper in both was having issues remaining on the walls.

The bedroom, I reasoned that folks in such a cold climate must adore houseplants, surely plants did not grow long outdoors, we of course saw none but Evergreens, and were sorry we missed the fall, which we hear is gorgeous there.

Our kitchen, we never did cook anything, we knew we were leaving soon, =in fact, we did not cook the entire time we were in Ukraine, 6 weeks and no cooking, wow!

The snow kept coming down the entire weekend, we got our luggage and were finally able to change clothes, what a relief.

This is the LINK to the post a year ago.

This was the last day in our Kyiv apartment. The landlady was nervous because we had not paid her yet, we tried to talk to her, but she spoke no English at all. She was a a sweet lady, and treated us with kindness. Our aprtment in Kyivwas $80 a night, and we knew it would be too much for our budget, thinking we were staying in Kramatorsk and apartments were somewhat less. Everything was more in the Kyiv area.

I went from room to room taking pictures to remember the little apartment, the bathroom was a tub and sink, the toilet was in a tiny room by itself. We had a washing machine, but for the life of me, I could not figure out how to operate it, maybe it was jet lag still, it took a couple of weeks for me to get used to the time change.

We had clothes draped over radiators to dry, the radiators would be a Godsend for me in Vorzel.

Adoption journey revisted-day 3

We watched the snow come down for most of the night, being from the dry and warmer desert, this was something we were pleased to see. The world transformed around us. All was quiet, we were somewhat melancholy, almost scared about Monday and moving to Vorzel, we had expected to go to Kramatorsk, were prepared to ride the train all the way there. We had no idea really, where Vorzel was.

Though it was snowing, it really was not all that cold, at least not to us. Of course we got tsk tsk'd because Meghan as not wearing a snowsuit or boots. I think we drove a lot of the older ladies crazy with Meghan's ill-advised Mary Jane's. Those shoes sloshed through snow and slush with no leaks and not wet or cold feet, but they were not what they were used to, so...

We wanted pictures to remember all the snow by, notice my tennis shoes, they just screamed AMERICAN. Yes, Meghan has on two pairs of tights, pants, a tshirt, hoodie and her parka on, but NOT the snow pants or boots.

This picture made all of us laugh because it looks photo-shopped, it was the lights behind Tom that did it.

From our apartment window. Lots of white stuff!

The phone did not ring, I napped during the day, Tom finally drug us out that evening, it was around 5 pm, and we walked to the place where we could use the Internet, it looked like a library, post office and bank, the computers were upstairs. There were a lot of kids on the computers.

Frankly I did not know what to say on the blog, we were still reeling from the about face and not certain how to feel about it. I prayed a lot and felt somewhat at peace about our decision to move forward with Karina's adoption. Tom was introspective, we did not talk much to each other, we were both looking forward to meeting Karina, but Daria's picture was up with the rest of the family photos we took with us. She brought us to Ukraine, we were there because of that sweet little girl, but we were heartbroken because we knew she was only being held at her orphanage until we got there, and now that we weren't going to Kramatorsk, how soon would she be sent to Torez?

What we didn't know was there was a family in America already trying to figure out how to adopt two girls (instead of one) once they got to Ukraine for their own adoption. I wish I had known, I carried such a weight on my heart for much of my 6 weeks there. At one point I was reprimanded for mentioning sweet Daria again, apparently Yelena believed I did not cherish Kara because I was so sad for Daria. I knew nothing about her fate, I was worried about her. No one thought to tell me anything about her, at least from our agency, who was our only contact to the outside world.

We presented them a problem, when the SDA said NO to us about Daria, we lost the facilitator we were supposed to have there. There was no one available for us, and we ended up having Yelena as our facilitator. She had done most of the adoption process, just not all of it for one family, so it was her first time, maybe her last I know it was a huge hardship for her. I will always be grateful to her for agreeing to help us adopt Kara.

SDA appointment-one year later

You may wonder why I chose to revisit Kara's adoption Journey, it is simple, unlike other adoptive parents, we did not have Internet connection once we were in Vorzel. With the exception of one day in Irpen; Kara's journey was not chronicled on her blog, and I want it to be there for her, so hopefully one day we can make a book for her.

Meghan all ready for the SDA appointment, that poor stroller lasted 20 minutes on the Kyiv streets, the front wheel broke off. We threw it away, our TRU stroller, in a garbage dump in Ukraine somewhere. It was the last day we had dry streets, it began to snow in earnest that night.

Andreevsky Street


Saint Andrews Church

One of three wedding parties we watched descend those stairs in the 5-6 hours we sat in Anatoly's Mercedes. After Meghan spilled water on the back seat, we did not see Anatoly again. We just knew it was because of the water, and he did not seem entirely comfortable with our daughter.

We had worried that bringing a child with Down syndrome to Ukraine may pose issues, especially when you consider that folks there have likely never seen a person with Down syndrome, I am sure there were some underlying issues, we could tell Meghan made a few folks uncomfortable, but no one was outright rude to us. In a way, I think having her at our side helped the SDA officials and the judge at Kara's adoption to see how much we loved and cherished Meghan, and I hope it helped open their minds a little about children with Down syndrome, at least we hope so, and perhaps the dozens of families adopting the many children with Down syndrome before and after us helped them see how much they are loved too. :o)

There were no rolling blackouts, we had a warm and cozy room with radiated heat which actually got too warm, a dining hall with 3 hot meals a day, sure the room was tiny, but we managed. Meghan adored walking through the snow in ill-advised shoes, note to other parents traveling in fall-winter, bring snow boots for your kids, we did not think to (living in the desert Southwest, we do not own such things) and there were none in her size in Vorzel. All in all, having her with us was a blessing, so much for gloom and doom about bringing a child to Ukraine.

Instead of writing our what happened on the 9th of November, our appointment day with the SDA, so I will post the link to that day here:

http://ukieadoptmom.blogspot.com/2007/11/about-eva-and-huge-180.html

Needless to say, it was one of the most difficult things I have written on this blog. Concerns that losing Eva like we did would also lose us friends were valid, we did, because of the doubts we had about her health, they absolutely blamed our family when the SDA said we could not adopt her, and we can say it likely was our lack of faith in a small way, but we feel God's hand in all the transpired.

Eva came to America (as most folks know) and she is doing so well, no one could be happier than us, except of course for her forever family! She looks like she belonged with them all along, and Kara looks like she was meant for us, only God knew the course our adoption journey would inevitably take.

Oh my goodness

Kara last year, still in the orphanage, she was finally getting used to me and opening up, I knew we had a long way to go with our bonding, but I was enthralled by her.

Kara yesterday, such a change in a year. Today my little stinker was walking all over the house. She walked down the hall, got her balance, walked past the desk, got her balance and walked out the back door, she climbed out and walked to the playhouse. This is the longest she has walked so far. I have a feeling crawling may soon be a thing of the past for Kara.

Are you as excited as I am? And yes, I know running follows walking, but it is OK, Meghan can chase her. :o)

Day two-revisting Kara's adoption

From my adoption journal:
November 8 2007- When we arrived in Ukraine we were not told what to do or how the airport worked, and we sat for 30 minutes wondering how to get out since we had no idea where we were staying in Ukraine. First off, our luggage was lost, and Tom ran off to complete the forms to find it. However, this was after we sat in the lobby trying to get through customs. A kindly soldier told us to put Hotel Dnipro on our customs form and we were out the door. We walked out to a sea of people all holding up sings and I am sure we all three had eyes the size of saucers seeing all of them and trying to find our facilitator. Finally, we saw a sign with our name, "LIVARIO" and we met Anatoly, who literally grabbed our carry-on bags and ran out of the airport, he kept telling us to hurry and we tripped through the parking lot to his late model Mercedes. Though we felt intense relief at finally having someone take charge, he was a man of few words, well maybe because he only knew a few words in English.

He told us we did indeed have our SDA appointment the next day instead of the 13th as we were told before we left. That was a relief, but we were both uneasy about the next day and neither of us knew what to expect, we had mixed messages about the SDA.

After being deposited in our apartment (riding an incredibly rickety elevator), we were relieved to see a pretty little apartment and a huge bed. Meghan fell asleep pretty quickly after lunch and slept all day; it was a bad mistake, she was up all night.

We tried to sleep and rest, but jet lag hit us hard, 9 hours difference and their night was our day. Tom ventured out before Meghan or me, I was not ready to go out on the streets of Kyiv, they intimidated me. Tom went to Mc Donald’s and got us some food, he also scoped out an internet café so we could post to the blog. He brought food and water to the room and I opened the water quickly and took a drink, quickly spat it out, it was GAS water, whoops, he had to go back to the corner store and get non-gas water.

We were staying right off of Independence Square and it was pretty busy on our street. I sat in the window and watched the Ukrainian women walk by hoping just one had on a red coat like mine; I did not want to stand out like a sore thumb. I can’t believe how happy I was to see women in red coats! Everyone had told me all the women wore was black, but it was far from accurate, at least in Kyiv.

A year ago today.

November 7 2007

We were up at 5 packing the van and getting ready to leave for the airport. Our sons were here and we were all pretty nervous, we had never left the United States (Mexico does not count, it is 60 miles away). I had stayed up late getting Amanda’s dossier ready to send to Estonia, literally post-it noting my way through all of the documents. I was doing this the night before we were leaving to adopt Daria so my oldest son Fred could get them notarized and apostilled. Handing him the stack of papers that held our hopes for Amanda’s adoption was a bit scary, but I trusted him to take care them, I was amazed that we were doing that and leaving for Ukraine the next day. I was exhausted, you could see it in my face in the pictures we took; but I was operating on that raw energy we women get when something important needs to be accomplished.

Meghan and I on the flight to Ukraine, we had already flown from Tucson to Salt Lake City Utah and Salt Lake City to NYC. We sat on the tarmac for over an hour and nearly missed our flight to Ukraine; they opened the doors of the plane and let us in. As soon as we entered the plane, we felt like we were already in Ukraine. Not one person sitting in their seats was speaking English. We looked at each other and felt apprehensive, it was going to be a long flight without a soul besides each other to talk to. We listened to everyone speaking, thinking how melodious his or her voices sounded but not understanding one word. So much for Rosetta Stone!

We were served a meal that was very different for us, hard bread, cheese wedges, white cheese, and a brand of juice we did not recognize. Meghan, who had been awake a very long time, dozed off, she was exhausted, too, and wanted to sleep on the floor, for 9 hours either Tom or I would pull her off the dirty floor and back to her seat, and very rapidly, she would ooze back to the floor, seemingly boneless. Neither of us slept longer then a couple of hours. We were all relieved when we landed in Ukraine, we were also giddy with excitement, in a few short days we would finally meet Daria, and finally, after a year of pain and loss (and enormous stress) we had renewed hope, we were going to finally meet our new daughter. Or so we thought.