6 Days and Counting...

Well, quoting my wonderful husband, things are "coming together like a good sandwich"! We had a few stressful days of trying to get things in order. We were really expecting another 3 month wait at the least, so we really did not have everything ready to go, but we are in a good spot this afternoon:

• Flights are booked. We leave Tuesday at 4:00pm from Boston. We arrive home (if all goes smoothly) Saturday at 8:00pm.
• Visas are on the way (hopefully!). Our credit card has been charged, so we have taken this as a good sign, and we are watching the mailbox carefully.
• We have ordered our flat, unwrinkled, not-written-on, new money as well.
• Packing is going slowly, but we have little shopping to complete. Our suitcase is almost full, and we only have gifts for other people in there!

I still need to make a "master" list of everything we need, and things I need to do before Tuesday, but I feel good that the big items above are completed!

It still is a bit surreal that we will be meeting our child in a week. I wonder if it will ever sink in that finally, Ken and I will be parents!

Shopping!

We spent a good part of the morning shopping for our trip. In Russia, its good custom to bring gifts to the people who you visit and who help you. So, we bought gifts for the orphanage director & staff, our facilitators from the adoption agency, and for our driver. This gift shopping is not complete but, we definitely got a good start on it today!



We also bought some toys for our little one! This was very exciting and a bit emotional. We are told not to expect to get these back, and it was hard not to buy everything in Toys-R-Us, but we bought a few things for our 1.5 hour visit. We still need to get some snacks and I'd also like to get him/her a small fuzzy stuffed animal.



We bought some great items of clothes to donate to the orphanage. Ken thought of a great idea to go to goodwill and buy a cheap suitcase ($10), fill it with donations, then just leave the goods and the suitcase in Russia. So, we did this. My dad is getting us diaper rash cream and baby powder from his work, so hopefully, we can fill out suitcase!







We decided that since we will not in Russia all that long, we do not need to bring our large sized toiletries, so we bought travel-sized containers today as well. We got some camera batteries, and an outlet converter.

Ken got our visa package sent to New York today, so keep your fingers crossed that all goes well in that department and we get our visas with time to spare! Its strange not to have our passports with us, but in the mail waiting to be delivered to the Russian Consulate! Safe travels passports!

Travel Dates

Well, my "no sleep" prediction came true for both Ken and I last night, talk about heads spinning and mouths smiling! Needless to say, its been a busy day, and with not a lot of sleep, we are both ready to crash and burn (and, we aren't even in Russia yet!!)

We got from our social worker today an itinerary for our first visit to Bryansk, Russia.

Tuesday May 6: Leave from Logan Airport (yes, this date is a week from Tuesday!)

Wednesday, May 7: Arrive in Moscow in the late morning, meet our representative, spend the day in Moscow, then take the 9:00pm train to Bryansk.

Thursday, May 8: Arrive in Bryansk in the morning, check into our hotel and take a shower! Then, we meet with the "committee" to get our referral paperwork. After this is done, we can go meet our little one! We spend an afternoon with our child in his/her orphanage, we can ask the doctor and director many questions as well as play with our child.

Friday, May 9: We will spend this day in Bryansk as well, completing paperwork to move our adoption along. At 9:00pm, we will take the train to Moscow.

Saturday, May 10: Arrive in Moscow in the am, fly out in the pm.

Sunday, May 11: Arrive home

This will surely be a very fast trip, but Ken and I are so excited to be starting this chapter in our lives! We can't wait to meet our little one!

Other than this, we spent the day working on getting our visa applications ready. These packets should be sent out tomorrow morning. Also, we have gotten some quotes from different travel agencies regarding airfare.
We plan to spend the weekend doing some "gift" shopping for our representatives in Russia as well as the orphanage staff.

10 days and counting...

An Unbelievable Twist

Well, I know that I should be getting ready to get to bed, but I feel like I have a restless night ahead of me, so I thought I'd take a minute and update everyone!

2:00pm: Ken gets a call from our adoption agency. They basically say that they are not calling with a sibling group referral, but do have a 16 month old child who is available. They said that since we were next on the list, they wanted to call and check with us. They did not want to turn down a referral for us until they talked to us first...fair enough!

2:10pm: Ken calls me, and shares the news, and both of us go into a kind of shell-shocked mode.

2:15pm: I call back our social worker and basically say "no", we would rather wait it out for a sibling group.

2:15-2:30pm: After talking with each other again, we realize that this could be a perfect referral for us after all, and I call back our social worker to change our "no" to a "maybe". She calls me back and said we had until 5:00 to make a decision.

2:45 - 4:00pm: The most confusing/happy/terrified time of our lives! But, ultimately, we decide that this referral just felt right, we loved the age, the timing is good, and we can always go back if we want another. We just feel that this is the right time and moment.

4:15pm: We officially accept the referral!

Ken and I are meeting with our social worker tomorrow to go over paperwork, and to get our travel dates for our first trip. We are thinking that we will head to Moscow as early as the end of next week!

Bring on the retail therapy! We got money belts, a compact notebook holder for my computer, and a portable alarm clock all from EMS tonight. The sales associate asked where we were going ,so we got to share the good news with them as well!

I will post tomorrow with more travel details.

HOLY MOLY!!

What a difference a week makes! Basically, we received a referral today!!! Completely unexpected, and we are still shell shocked, but wonderfully surprised. I'll update later.

3 Months Down!

Ken and I have officially been waiting three months for our referral! We have had many highlights over the past month. First of all, tax season is over, and I have my husband back, I think this is the best of all! Its finally spring, and just two days ago, the last of the snow melted off of my front lawn. And, its April vacation for me, and the weather has been unseasonably gorgeous, I am no longer jealous of all of my colleagues who went away on vacation.

There is not much to report on the adoption front. We still have a gut feeling that we will be traveling for our first trip this summer sometime, but other than that, there is no new news. I keep wanting just to go out shopping for our future children, but not knowing ages or genders, it has been hard to justify any retail therapy. A few weeks ago, though, we did make our first children purchases. Target was having a sale on preschool games, so we picked up candyland, memory and chutes & latters, all for a very cheap price! Other than this, I just daydream at the children's sections of most stores.

We were told that its a good idea to leave our children photo albums on our first trip, so that they can learn who we are while waiting to be brought home. So, we have made two photo albums. I had a hard time not being too crafty with these, but we were advised to make them simple, as they may not be returned to us. Here a just a few pictures from the books.

Papa

Mama

sabaka - dog

home

I spent a whole Sunday afternoon working on my Russian alphabet so that I could correctly write labels for each picture. I would get one word done then ask Ken if it looked right, etc... It was quite the process until he told me hours later that I can make labels on my computer - he told me that he thought that I wanted to hand-write them so he didn't tell me sooner! The computer is much more efficient at making labels in Russian than I am.

Very Useful Information

Last night, Ken and I went to a Russia Orientation Class given by our adoption agency. This is a required class for all families who are adopting from Russia. I didn't expect the 3.5 hours would go as quickly as it did! We were lucky to have two "special quests", representatives from our agency who are from Russia (one person from the Moscow region, and one from the St. Petersburg region). They provided great insight into the adoption process from a Russian point-of-view. This gave me great reassurance that we will be well cared for throughout all points of this adoption journey. There were about 8 families including us at this class, from points as far as New Jersey and New York City! From sizing up what everyone said, Ken and I are definitely farther along in the process than the rest of the families there. This is no surprise, however, because we are waiting for siblings and our wait will be longer because of that. It did feel good to be the "veterans" of the group with all of our paper work in, and having 2.5 months of waiting under our belts!

We learned what official referral papers look like, and what kind of information we will receive from the doctor/orphanage director. We also learned that almost all children will have weird and scary sounding diagnoses included on their paperwork. We were told to take this with a grain of salt, however, as some children get labeled merely for not crying loud at birth. We also learned that our children will most likely be in the same baby home, but because they are organized by age within the orphanage, they will most likely not know they are biologically related.

We saw the basic itinerary for a Bryansk visit.

Day 1: Arrive in Moscow, rest at a hotel until 7:00pm, take the overnight train to Bryansk (7 hours), get to hotel and sleep.

Day 2: Go to Ministry of Education and officially receive referral of our children, go to orphanage and meet our children, take the 7:00pm train back to Moscow.

Day 3: Paperwork (maybe some sightseeing) in Moscow.

Day 4: Return home!

Quick, huh?

Other than this, there is no news on the adoption front. We have been waiting 2.5 months at this point. We have been told that families waiting for siblings usually have to wait 5-7 months for their first trip. So, Ken and I are still thinking that we will travel sometime this summer.

Until then...so much to do!!