A Week Ago, Today…

… we were thinking about our 3rd appt, and praying it would go well the next day. What a difference a week can make! Here we are, in a truly beautiful town, with beautiful fall weather, and we have our beautiful daughter. Amazing.

I have gone and caught myself a cold, though. I don’t even remember the last time I was sick but here I am stuffed up with a sore throat and tonsils the size of golf balls. I haven’t been able to visit Mena in 2 days now, which is the only thing that I look forward to as if it’s my birthday every day. I’m scared she’s going to forget me- or worse- think I’m like the other people who just disappeared. Ois has gone to see her though and today we had the brainstorm to record a little video on the iPhone so I could wave hello and blow her kisses. She loves the iPhone, I fear we’re going to have a gadget girl in the house on top of Oisin; she totally understands that when you tap a button on screen something happens, and when she looks at pictures she doesn’t just randomly smack the screen but she understands if you swoosh one direction you see say, photos of the cats at home and when you swoosh the other direction it’s photos of her and us. And she really freaks out when you switch around the camera so you can take a picture of yourself like a mirror. This is the greatest thing ever!

Yesterday when Ois visited, all the kids were playing outside because it was nice out. They were eating walnuts and a lady came with a big pail of cookies, so they all lined up and were able to each eat a few. Big excitement. There are a few older children (5-9) in the orphanage, although we’ve never seen them until now. Ois saw a few little girls and they know exactly why he is there, and they know that Mena will be going home to live with us. It’s a pretty sad thing for the kids that understand. Natasha was there with Oisin, and she told him about a conversation she overheard one of the little ones having with Mena. A little girl asked her how she was so lucky that she got to pick a Daddy, and Mena replied, “I didn’t choose my Daddy. He chose me.”

To be chosen and wanted by somebody. It would break your heart.

I wish that the idiots who make up these laws that keep these kids in limbo between the national system and the international one would just get out of their offices, and put a train ticket on their expense accounts and come and see for themselves what their political ideology really means for the children in state care. The human cost for their national pride is unnecessary human misery- so many people want to adopt these children, yet they are prevented at every turn by the Ukrainian government and the inbred corruption within the system that is supposed to protect their children.

I also am beginning to wish that we would have done a homestudy for 2 kids, now. It wouldn’t have cost practically anything more aside from photocopied documents and a bit extra for double medical stuff- and if you are going to be home with one kid, a second one wouldn’t be a gigantic life change in as much as going from no children to having one child. The kids at Mena’s orphanage are all so sweet, to think that over 90% of them will end up on the streets after age 16 and then into prostitution, the drug trade, or dead as a suicide before 20 makes me have to shut my brain off, or I’d be a useless mess the entire time I’m here. I’ve never felt so lucky, yet so unhappy all at the same time.

Anyhow, tomorrow Natasha will find out who will be our judge at our court hearing, and she may even be told a date. Mukachevo apparently is the first town in all of Ukraine to try a new computer system where you are given a judge for your case- before you could talk to somebody and request a judge that was available ASAP so you could get the first available opening. So Natasha says she has no idea when our date could be- it could be in 2 weeks, it could be in a month., or even longer. (Please G-d, let it be less than 2 weeks… anytime this week would be great, actually.) The only thing we *do* know is that Oisin can’t get any paternity leave money until we have a court decree for the adoption, and that is a financial crisis for us. We both have to be in court. But right after he will be flying home to go back to work while I stay here until the judgment comes into effect, and then to do all the legal documentation to tie it all up, plus passports, new birth certificate, etc etc. So it will be me and Mena on our own in Kiev once again. I’m excited at the thought of waking up in my own house, being able to make my own coffee in my pyjamas in my own kitchen, have 10 baths a day if I want to with all the hot water I want, and not to be at somebody’s beck and call for my own kid. Today, that is my idea of heaven.