The Hamersma Adoption

The final post is here

2008-07-30T11:10:00.010-04:00

Well everyone, the time has come.

This is the actual 100th post, and a symbol that one journey is finished and another is beginning!
I can't leave this blog, though, without telling you all what a very rich plan God has revealed in all of this. One of my friends has a great quote on her website:

"We're not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be." -- C.S. Lewis (Thanks, Em)

Isn't that just about right? There is a lot of suffering and a lot of joy in life. And it's all so unpredictable. Without the Bible putting together the pieces for me - showing me how this all fits together, as confusing as it is - I would be lost. But instead I am found, knowing that God is trustworthy because he came down in my lostness and showed me a glimpse of what he was doing. It involves Jesus. Maybe this sounds a little cryptic, but if you are interested, just ask and you know I will be eager to talk. I would be a strange friend indeed who didn't long for her friends to get this same glimpse.

We have started a new blog to chronicle the continuing journey of our lives with Meredith. You can find it at:

www.magnificentmeredith.blogspot.com

(The explanation for the blog title is on that blog, in the sidebar on the right.)

There are more pics there, but here's another for your enjoyment! She is enjoying her three gifts from Grandma and Grandpa -- a special bracelet (given to Grandma when she was a baby), a music box with duckies that sings "Singin' in the Rain", and a "tag blanket" (because she loves the tags on everything!).

God bless you, my dear friends. It has been a wild ride and we thank you for sharing it with us.

Sarah and Rob

Videos of our Multi-Talented Daughter

2008-07-14T21:54:00.003-04:00

And now what you've been waiting for - demonstrations of Meredith's incredible talent. Here are a couple of activities she has mastered. The ball activity is after much practice - it did not work like this the first week we were doing it with her :) The other one...well, that's a new discovery Rob and I each made independently this week. Who knows how long she's had that up her sleeve!

(Note to those not familiar with it: on the bottom of the YouTube windows below, the second button from the right will make the video full-screen if you want)

Meredith and the Ball

Meredith's Special Talent

life at home after the first shots

2008-07-12T08:57:00.010-04:00

Meredith had her first pediatrician appointment on Tuesday morning. The good news is, the doctor thinks she is doing very well for a baby born about 3 months early. She clocks in at the 10-15th percentile for height and weight for her preemie-adjusted age of 9 months. This is not bad at all, especially since living in a baby home in Russia usually slows growth relative to living in a home with parents. So she is doing well. The only specialist we will probably see is an opthalmalogist, since her eyes will likely need some help due to her extreme prematurity (apparently they're one of the later things to develop in the womb, and early exposure to oxygen isn't good for them). As far as we can tell, her sight is very functional and she makes eye contact a lot, so we are hopeful that there won't be any extreme issues. However, it is possible she would start wearing glasses at a young age due to likely farsightedness. Good thing little tyke glasses are so cute!

The end of the doctor appointment was not so fun, as Meredith had to get 3 shots and a finger poke. She did what any kid would do and screamed her head off :( She calmed down OK afterward. But then she had the (apparently common) experience of a fever and irritability (soreness maybe?) for the next two days. A little longer than we expected, and it wasn't fun for anyone including Meredith. What happens when a little girl who used to take 3 two-hour naps instead takes - with considerable effort on her parents' part - 3 half-hour naps? Cranky, cranky, cranky! She was pretty exhausting all day Tuesday and Wednesday and part of Thursday.

Yesterday (Friday) I went back to work - without Meredith - for about 5 hours. I actually enjoyed it a lot - it was a good reminder that I have multiple callings in my life. I was also happy to leave her with Rob, both because I think their bonding is equally important and, honestly, because she had been so difficult the previous few days when I was with her almost all day. Also, Rob and I made a deal that whoever is going to work has the privilege of trying to sleep if Meredith wakes up at 3 in the morning and needs help getting back to sleep (which she does pretty much every night) since the person staying home can presumably get in a nap during one of Meredith's naps (again, HA!). So what do you suppose I heard when I got home at 1:30 yesterday afternoon?

Me: So Rob, how was it?

Rob: It was great! She was up from 3:00 to 3:30, but then she slept until 8:00 and was so happy! She didn't cry with a diaper change, didn't whine when I put the bib on her (note: unprecedented), ate lots of her breakfast, and then she was all cheerful and talkative and we played for a while and then she started getting tired so I brought her in for a nap at 10:30 and she woke up at 1:00 and just had her lunch. And now she's here just playing happily.

Me: (moment of silence...) You stink!

Of course, I was happy that she was doing better and so I don't begrudge Rob his great day with her. Hopefully today will be great too - we are heading to an adoption group picnic at Blue Springs Park. I will be sure to get a photo of Meredith in her amazingly adorable bathing suit. You really won't believe how cute she is! We are so excited to finally end our spell as the eternally "expecting" adoptive parents in the group - we've been attending for 2 years and very often were the only people at the meetings without kids. Luckily, we've made such good friends there and learned so much that we managed to keep attending all that time. It's a great group, with several types of adoption situations - international, domestic, interracial, foster-to-adopt, you name it. We are glad that Meredith will have other friends who are adopted so that she does not feel like she is unusual in her situation growing up adopted.

I have some videos I want to post but I will need Rob to help with that, so for now you get a few more photos. Our friend Nate took some amazing shots the other night.

enjoying life at home

2008-07-06T22:31:00.006-04:00

I don't have time to write anything tonight, but wanted to post a few pics for you to enjoy!

Trying out the new high chair - it's a hit! Well, as long as she has a spoon to play with.

Trying out the snail rocker - not so sure about it yet....we'll try again later!

Dressed for our first day all together at church.

Asleep. Notice the effectiveness of the crib bumper.

Home Safe and Sound!

2008-07-04T12:50:00.002-04:00

We are home and life is good! And actually this doesn't have to be my last post because my friend Matthew discovered that the blog "post counter" that I saw was not quite right - it apparently included a couple of old drafts that were never posted, so I have a few more to go before I reach 100.

Before anything else, I forgot to mention something about the links on the last post. Rob and I noticed when we looked at them that they seemed to emphasize "the mother". If you look at it, please substitute "the parents" there. We are both working hard on bonding well with her.

Our flight from Moscow to Atlanta was not too bad - it was about 11 hours. In the first hour and half on the plane, Meredith got her diaper changed and ate some lunch, and then slept for 2 hours. Wow! We figured this would be a breeze if she kept this up. Well, she didn't. But it was okay...there was just no sleeping again until about an hour and a half before the flight landed. (Sleeping for her that is... for us?... ha!). During the latter part of the flight, she started getting pretty cranky because she was tired and she couldn't quite fall asleep. We were next to the bathroom, which was great for the 7 or 8 diaper changes we needed to do (they actually had a very decent fold-out changing table), and nice because it was near the galley where we could walk a bit. But of course it was also not so nice, because obviously there was a lot of foot traffic, and because the sound of the flushing toilet was unnerving for our sweet girl. It didn't quite make her cry but it seemed to startle her pretty regularly.

Our pattern of trying to get Meredith to sleep went something like this....she's clearly tired, so we rock her or carry her around a big, she starts sort of falling asleep, but then keeps whining and can't seem to calm down all the way. We take a sniff and smell a wet diaper, so we change her diaper. Now she'll surely fall asleep. But then after a while, when she still isn't sleeping, we think, hey, she'd probably like something to eat. So we give her a bottle of formula, which she loves. Surely she'll fall asleep. A little while later, still no sleep, but what do you think? We smell pee again. Basically, we created a cycle by which the twin comforts of feeding and diaper changing were showing their relationship very clearly! But aside from some whining it wasn't too bad - and she made a couple of friends on the plane. One old Russian lady would talk to her when she walked by and one older man would give her a finger to grab. We were also blessed that the guy in the seat next to us (no, we didn't get all three in the middle row) was a young guy - probably our age - who is Russian but spoke English really well and told us he has a 3 year old and that Meredith's age is a good age for flying. He started making faces at her and she was delighted! The flight attendants were also crazy about her, and one of them would always whisper to me if she was delivering drinks and saw that Meredith was sleeping on me. (It wouldn't really have mattered - when she's actually asleep, voices of reasonable volume don't usually wake her).

We've discovered that there are many ways in which Meredith's adoption comes up early in conversation. People say "how old is she?" and we say "she just turned one" and they look a little confused because she's so small. So we say "she was a preemie" and that usually handles it somewhat. But after I told the flight attendant that she had just turned one, she said to Meredith "Did you have a nice birthday? Did you celebrate? I bet you had a cake!" and I just couldn't take it so I said, "Well, we don't really know, we actually didn't have her yet - we just adopted her 8 days ago." Then she was all the more excited - I heard her telling the other flight attendants and everything! So even if adoption comes up pretty often, I don't mind because people are usually really supportive. I think the weird thing that comes up pretty regularly, though, is people then telling Meredith how lucky she is - good gracious, do they not realize how lucky WE are? People sometimes think we are selfless orphan rescuers rather than people who longed to be parents. So I say, "We are all really blessed to be a family."

Our landing in Atlanta was uneventful, but the time it took to get through immigration - which involved a special separate stop for turning in adoption documents - brought us extremely close to missing our plane. Good thing that Meredith likes the stroller and doesn't mind a fast ride because Rob took off with her at full speed to try to catch the plane for us. And he did! They were just about to close the door. Phew! God's grace to some weary travelers.

We were met at the airport by a few very close friends, and then met at home by two more who had a hot meal ready for us. So wonderful!!! And they had bought us milk and juice for the morning too! We ate our dinner after feeding Meredith and laying her on a blanket on the dining room floor (didn't want to put her in a strange crib without us there yet). When I picked her up to bring her to bed (we have a co-sleeper bed that sits right next to our bed) I had never felt her little body so completely limp. She was exhausted! Not a peep - she just kept sleeping. We all were in bed by a little after 10:00. Around 3:30 Meredith woke up and we brought her in bed with us and played (to the extent we could, half asleep!) and gave her a bottle. A little after 4:00 she was drowsy again, thank goodness, so we laid her back down. Then we all woke up at 10:00 this morning. Wow! What a great night that was. Meredith tried out her new high chair for her morning kasha (oatmeal) and then we played for a couple of hours before putting her down for a nap around 12:30. She is being an absolute angel!

Photos will be forthcoming - just wanted you all to know we are home and doing wonderfully well.

the penultimate post!

2008-07-02T15:25:00.003-04:00

Rob recently pointed out that this blog keeps track of how many posts I have made. There have been 98 so far. We've decided that it would be perfect for us to end the blog at 100 posts and replace it with a regular baby blog about daily life with Meredith, since the "Hamersma Adoption" will be complete!

That means I've got this post, and then one more after we get home to let you know that we got there safely.

I want to use this post for something important, and that is to provide a couple of links to our family and friends regarding the transition that Meredith is making into our family. In the psychology literature this is called "attachment" and for most babies it is a natural process in which they learn very early on that their parents will always meet their needs. This allows for healthy brain development - especially emotional development. They learn that there are a couple of particular people who are "theirs" and it allows them to feel safe as they make discoveries in their world. When a child hasn't had this experience early on with her parents (or any parents) she usually has some catching up to do, which can mean that adoptive parents need to provide a more intense nurturing experience than might be typical of a child her age and need to be somewhat "jealous" of her attention. It can appear to others like spoiling or coddling, but it's an essential step in building those bonds that every parent and child need to have.

Rob and I found a nice website with some helpful ideas and info for friends and family related to attachment. We hope that Meredith will have a smooth path of bonding with us and won't run into the problems that this website in some ways anticipates - but that is really the key: anticipation. We want to make wise decisions early to prevent later regrets. This will mean things like carrying her around, feeding her, diapering her, and comforting her when she's crying need to be exclusive Mommy and Daddy territory (sorry for all of those longing to change a diaper). The most helpful seem to be these two pages:

Sample Letter to Friends and Family

Dos and Don'ts for Friends and Family

There are other interesting links in the left panel on the website if you find yourself fascinated. We haven't checked them all out but the site seems pretty good and corresponds to the more detailed reading we have done on this topic.

We can't wait to leave tomorrow for home! Please pray for a safe and peaceful (?) journey for us on the long flight from Moscow to Atlanta and the shorter one from there to Gainesville. We'll post again when we are home and awake (in other words, not right away!).

out and about - a little bit

2008-06-30T11:23:00.007-04:00

Our time in Moscow has not involved a lot of activity outside our apartment since we are trying to keep Meredith fairly on schedule with her usual eating and sleeping habits.

On Saturday, we tried something a little different. I wrote a journal entry about it (a journal I am intending to put into a baby/memory book for her, so it is written in that style) and I'll post that here for your enjoyment. Sorry, we didn't take pictures (but there are others below taken on other days):

***

"Today we didn't have any jobs to do, so we could have stayed at the apartment all day if we had wanted to. But Mommy and Daddy thought it would be nice to go out for lunch and do a little shopping. So after your first nap was done at 10 am, we started getting ready to go out. It took longer than we expected for us to both get ready, plus change your diaper and feed you and get you dressed. We didn't leave until about 11:30! We knew you would usually take a nap at 12:00 but we thought we would put you in the stroller and see if you fell asleep there. We went to lunch and ate blinis (pancakes stuffed with filling like ham and cheese, or apples and caramel) and you didn't seem to mind at all. Since you were not fussy, we decided to do some shopping on Arbat street. We got a present for a friend and a free matrushka rattle for you, from a nice lady at one of the shops. She really liked you a lot!

As we walked home, you were falling asleep in your stroller and so we though you were ready for a nap. But when you got home, you were just cranky! We changed your diaper and fed you, but you were still unhappy that we had kept you out until almost 2:00. We finally got you down for a nap, but you didn't sleep well and you woke back up in 1/2 hour crying and crying! Daddy and I took turns trying to play with you and feed you but nothing would cheer you up. So Daddy decided to bring you outside to the park to see if you liked that better. You did stop crying, and you went on the swing with Daddy, but you still weren't very cheerful. We felt bad that we had kept you out too long after lunch because now you were overtired! We kept trying to get you to sleep again because you were rubbing your eyes, but again you only slept for a very short while and you woke up crying again. We found that you wanted some yogurt and formula, so then you felt a little better.

It was getting close to nighttime and we started trying to sing to you to help you fall asleep for the night. First, I sang some scales, and then we sang some children's songs. Finally we tried "Sing, Sing a Song" and put you in your crib. We though you were about to fall asleep, but then NO!

You started crying again. We put on some lullabye music and also put some medicine in your mouth to help with your new teeth hurting as they grow in. After a long time of carrying you and rocking you, you finally decided it was time for bed! All of us were very tired.

Mommy and Daddy decided that they would not mess with your schedule again for a long time."

***

So if the pictures only show a sweet, smiley, compliant girl, it's only because we don't have the inclination to grab the camera during the wailing :) That was one rough day. Unfortunately, we will be messing with the schedule big-time by flying her to the US for 8 hours of jetlag! We ended up being unable to arrange to come home early, not because of anything with paperwork but because the plane was simply full. So we'll be heading out (and arriving home) on Thursday July 3. Only a couple more days here! We're ready to stop living out of suitcases after over 3 weeks away from home.

We did much better on the naps/outings yesterday. We wanted to get out once, but we planned ahead so that the moment she awoke from her nap, we were already completely ready and then got her ready like clockwork. Too bad it was sprinkling out - but we could not be stopped. We wanted to go to the restaurant a friend had recommended called "MY MY" (prounounced MOO MOO) - it has a cow theme and is cafeteria style so you just point to what you want (Russian style food). We put the rain shield on Meredith's stroller and off we went. Here are a couple of pics - with a new camera that we got (Samsung S760, which was not much more expensive here than in the US - we like it so far, as a very basic, small digital camera for me to carry around with me -- Rob will probably try to get the other one fixed too when we get home).

Notice that we stopped at Starbucks - a guilty pleasure at $7 for a Mocha. It's the only Starbucks drink I've had this trip though.

This is a picture of us at Moo Moo. It is funnier if you click on it to get the larger size and can see Meredith's expression. Please comment with your thoughts on the perfect caption for it! My candidate is: "I refuse to be a part of this picture". For the foodies out there, I'm eating some kind of fried mushroom and potato ravioli served with sour cream, and drinking "dried fruit compote" which has dried fruit on the bottom of the glass that looks pretty yucky.

Here are another couple of cute picks of a feeding session (we do formula for 2 meals a day and food for the other 3). The first one is the actual feeding and the second is the burping - she's generally pretty happy to be burped. In fact, Rob figured out that she also seems to like being patted rather than rubbed when she's trying to fall asleep or calm down.

And I can't resist putting this picture in. It is in my favorite sleeper outfit that we got for her. She likes to spread herself out when she's asleep, filling up as much space as possible with her little bitty body. What a cutie.

brace yourself for the cutest video ever!

2008-06-28T03:13:00.002-04:00

As I noted before, the upside of our digital camera being on the fritz is that we have had to be more creative and use our webcam to capture footage of Meredith. We have moved from still shots to video now. Rob put the camera on the side of the crib and had a little conversation with our girl, in which she was amazingly cooperative with him! (I think it's worth mentioning that it actually took a half hour to get her down for her nap after her apparent compliance here.)

Enjoy!

finally, the backache I've been waiting for!

2008-06-26T15:36:00.008-04:00

I had a "to-do" list for our adoption - things to do before this second trip. One of them was "work out upper body." I bet you can guess whether I did that - hah! Well, the Sarah who made that list knew what she was talking about. The Sarah who ignored that item has been lugging around 14 pounds of pure sugar for the last three days and she can feel it! But you don't need to ask if it's worth it :)

Tonight is our third night with Meredith, and our third location. The first night we were still in Yaroslavl at our hotel. Then we took a van to Moscow that we had all to ourselves - there were two bench seats in the van and zero working seat belts :) Gotta love it. So we just put Meredith in her car seat, rear facing, and we both sat with her in the back row. We made it just fine.

Right as we were leaving in the van from Yaroslavl, our facilitator, while saying goodbye, let us know that the first night in Moscow we would be at a hotel and then would move to our apartment the next day. Oh well. Kind of a pain since we hadn't packed in such a way as to make a one-night stop that easy. But we did fine, and the apartment was literally across the street so - with the help our our driver/facilitator here in Moscow (an English speaker!) we just rolled our luggage over as if we were in an airport. Meredith got to try out our stroller for the first time and she enjoyed it. She is so easygoing! But yet she has a lot of personality, enough that we feel like things are going well and we are beginning the bonding process on the right foot. She lets us know when she's unhappy with crying and an arched back, and we are learning how to soothe her as well as to read her signals (rubbing eyes for sleepy, smacking lips for hungry - clearly she is a very bright young lady!). We are also developing a system for helping her tolerate our frequent use of the nasal aspirator....the poor girl is so congested (she was every time we visited her, we noticed then too) so that little bulb has been a lifesaver. If we lift her up a few times (the flying position) we get some smiles, and then we can sneak in one good suck...and then we have to do it again. Maybe our pediatrician in the U.S. will be able to tell us more about how to help her, but for now this is working OK.

This morning in our Moscow hotel, we did our U.S. Embassy doctor visit. This is an English-speaking Russian doctor, accredited by the U.S. Embassy, who comes to your hotel room and takes a look at the baby to verify that there aren't any medical concerns that the Embassy should be worried about. He had her basic medical info already and his brief exam (10 minutes?) revealed nothing beyond what we already knew - she is congested (which might be related to teething, or, he suggested, just living in an orphanage) and she is small but on the growth chart and a little behind developmentally but should catch up. She also may have eyesight issues due to her prematurity (which we also knew) but he pointed out that clearly she can see reasonably well - she makes good eye contact. He said they must have been taking quite good care of her at the orphanage, and that the Yaroslavl orphanages are know for doing a good job. How encouraging to us! So he gave us a report, we paid the fee, and he was done. The only downside is that all of this happened at 6:30-6:45 this morning - ugh!

At noon today we moved over to our apartment, which is fantastic! I guess it is technically a studio, but a very large one, with an L-shaped room that has the bed filling the smaller piece of the L and a nice large living room, and large kitchen. The playpen was already set up. We wondered what Meredith must be thinking - third crib in three days. But she seems to like it fine. Right after she woke up from one of her naps today (she does indeed take all three) she and Rob were playing a bit while she was still in the playpen - which isn't usually for long. He set up our webcam on the edge of the playpen to take pictures - our camera has officially quit working (ugh!) but the webcam photos are quite good quality, at least for taking photos when we're here at the apartment. Here are a few highlights from today's playpen playtime:

She loves her feet! We don't know if she saw them too much, being bundled up in the orphanage.

Shaking her friend the bear. We are naming it Masha, after the bear that is the symbol of Yaroslavl.

She discovered my toothbrush (with a cover on it, don't worry) and found it fun to flick around.

This picture cracks me up because, inadvertently, she is posed just like her bear!

I need to call it a night - the days are very full even without going out too much! Tomorrow we have just one planned excursion - the U.S. Embassy for an interview. I'm looking forward to it because I think we'll see other adoptive parents there - everyone who adopts from any region of Russia has to go through this, and so it is a kind of bottleneck I think (hopefully in a good way).

I'll leave you with a sweet smile from our sweet girl (playing on the bed in our apartment). No she doesn't crawl, but she gets in position pretty well - just a matter of time :)

* GOTCHA DAY !!! *

2008-06-24T09:19:00.005-04:00

Today was the big day! After a morning trip out to sign documents, and a delicious lunch at the hotel restaurant, we got to go to the orphanage at 2:30 for the final trip. Finally, not just another “visit” to the orphanage! Meredith was brought to us in the same special outfit we had left for her. We had brought another one just in case, but this orphanage seems very conscientious and they wanted her to be able to have this outfit. They also - to our surprise - brought out the blanket and bear that we left with her in May! I don’t know if they put them away somewhere while we were gone, or if she actually had them during our absence, but either way it was so thoughtful of the staff to hang onto them for us.

Our final time at the orphanage was spent getting some questions answered about Meredith’s eating and sleeping schedule (three 2-hour naps per day, and 5 feedings) and giving several of the orphanage staff a chance to say goodbye to her. We were able to get her photo with one of the care staff, her opthamalogist, her pediatrician (who we’d met on the first trip), our facilitator and translators (both today’s translator – a new one – and the court translator from a couple weeks ago, who happened to be there with another family). We were getting ready to leave and then we were told to wait for one more person: the orphanage director. I was really glad she wanted to come and say goodbye. I have the impression that she is an intense, sort of severe kind of person after having interacted with her on our first trip. But saying goodbye to Nadia brought out her sweet side. She was so happy to have her picture taken with her, and she held her and whispered little things to her. I got a little choked up. Then she started talking to us – she makes eye contact even when though she’s talking in Russian and knows we can’t understand, and then our translator translates. She told us that she knows Meredith will do wonderfully well now that she has a family, that they will look forward to getting photos and letters from us, and that we are invited to return to adopt again in the future. It felt so good to have her blessing.

We don’t think it’s a good idea to show photos of the various people we took pictures with today, since this is a public blog and we did not get their permission to post their faces on the internet. We will be putting these photos in Meredith’s album, so you will have a chance to see them when you are with us. For now, enjoy a few photos of our special day…
Rob and Meredith reunited:

Sarah seeing whether Meredith was okay with being in a carseat – she was!

Rob bringing our little sleeping princess (fell asleep in the car) to the hotel room:

Home sweet hotel room – they brought in a crib for us today! And the cleaning lady – who knew a baby was coming since she helped with the crib – saw us with Meredith and just smiled from ear to ear and spoke in an approving tone. I think what she said was probably something like “Isn’t that the sweetest little girl I’ve ever seen!” At least, that’s what I would say if I were her.

The plan for the rest of our trip is to get Meredith’s passport here tomorrow and then leave for Moscow in a car in the late afternoon (seemed like it would be easier than navigating the train with her). Then Thursday and Friday we will work on paperwork in Moscow and stay in an APARTMENT again!! We loved our apartment there last time, and supposedly the one this time is just as good and more centrally located. Over the weekend, I hope we’ll be able to get out and about a little bit. Given the three-nap schedule, we’ll have to organize each day in little chunks, but maybe this is good for all of us! We think our paperwork will be finished there on Tuesday (or so) and our plane flies out on Thursday. I finally feel like we’re in the home stretch! Only a little over a week left.

We don’t yet know our internet situation in Moscow – we think it will be good – but just be aware that we might not have as much freedom with our time to go find an internet café now that we are MOMMY and DADDY! We’ll try to post when we can, but please assume that no news is good news :)

Soundtrack of Russia

2008-06-22T12:30:00.002-04:00

Hi everyone!

We've had an uneventful day here. I got some work done (working on establishing SCHIP thresholds, for those of you who know what I'm talking about) and Rob did some reading. We also went out for blinis (pancakes with filling) so that was fun.

Since there's no news on Meredith - still planning for a Tuesday pickup - I thought I'd post my other reflection on our Russian experiences: the music we hear.

Since I am a “music” person, I have paid special attention to the music around me in Russia. Of course, most of the Russian pop just sounds like pop to me, and I have no idea what the lyrics mean. This means that the things that have caught my ear have been the various strains of American music, showing up in odd places. Let me tell you about a few.

· We ate at a nice restaurant in Yaroslavl (with Russian and Uzbek food) where there was a large TV screen. On the screen was a George Michael video. I enjoyed the novelty of it. Then after that video came another George Michael video. Then another. We realized that this was some kind of George Michael video marathon – maybe on a DVD or something? It had everything from “Careless Whisper” to some jazzy stuff (he can sound a bit like Michael Buble) and his newer duet with Elton John (singing “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me”). His hairdo has gotten smaller over time, but his voice is the same. And you know what? It is good. As cheesy as he can be, after listening to his music marathon I have concluded that I really like his voice.

· When riding around in Moscow with our driver, we listen to whatever he finds as he’s flipping through stations. Most of the time it is Russian pop, but there have been a sprinkling of other things as well. For instance, while we were in Moscow at the end of our first trip, after such a roller coaster ride, we heard a sort of Caribbean sounding song in English about the “river of Babylon” and "remembering Zion". The chorus was: “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable.” This is a line from an old church confession. It was such an encouragement at a time when we could delight in a reminder of God’s presence. We still don’t know why we were on the “Christian” radio station – it only lasted for a couple of songs – but it was a blessing. Most of the time, we find we are listening to “Retro FM” which usually isn’t recognizable to us except for its English name.

· Last week in Yaroslavl, while riding with our facilitator, we heard some jazz (I think it was a CD or tape in her car and not the radio). The songs were old standards – “Love Me or Leave Me” and others like it – and I realized that it was a non-native speaker singing. He had this very slight but noticeable accent. Perhaps Russia has its own Harry Connick Jr. wannabe. He was OK, but I’m not running out to buy the CD.

· A few days ago in St. Petersburg we went to see the St. Petersburg Men’s Chorus. They are an acapella group of about 20 men with voices ranging from very high (basically alto) to very low (bass profundi). The first half of the program was Sacred music, some by Tchaikovsky. Apparently in Russian Orthodox churches, there was (is?) no instrumentation allowed, and historically women were not allowed to sing in a church’s chorus, and so the churches would develop skilled choruses of men and boys. The choir we saw is trying to recreate some of those arrangements. They were wonderful! Then in the second half they did some secular music and several Russian folk songs. There is one that Rob and I both remembered from our first piano book* – it was called (in our book) “Song of the Volga Boatman”. Of course, it has a real name, and luckily I still have the program so I can check it later. (* yes, Rob and I had the same initial piano books growing up – just one more random thing in common, along with our distaste for peppers and onions.)

· Yesterday in a shop I heard “Eternal Flame” by the Bangles and a song by Chicago (can’t remember which one, since they all sound the same, but I love them all!). Apparently they have access to the lite station :)

· Along with hearing bits of music here and there, we’ve also gotten to see posters for recent and upcoming musical events. A few highlights include: Bob Dylan, Megadeth, Bobby McFerrin, Nazareth (40 year reunion – yikes!), Blondie, Back Street Boys, and…wait for it…the inimitable Julio Iglesias. I asked our driver in Moscow if Julio wasn’t just a little too old by now for touring, but he didn’t think so. Hmmm.

This reminds me that I'd like to ask for your prayers for my family. We have just lost my grandma. (She loved Julio like nobody's business). She was in many ways ready to go - she had said so before - but it was still a shock, and of course we cannot be there to mourn with our family. Something really special, though, is that the last time my parents were visiting her - I guess about a month ago - she gave them her Meredith doll so that they could pass it along to our Meredith! I would have treasured it anyway, but now it is particularly meaningful to me. I am glad Grandma at least got to see pictures of her, and talk to me on the phone when we were between trips. She was really excited to meet her - but I bet she is even more excited to be in heaven.

Thanks as always for your prayers. We will be in touch again soon.

Two-in-one post!

2008-06-21T04:33:00.012-04:00

Hi all!

Since we've not had constant internet access, I've been composing blog entries offline. So today you will get a two-for-one deal. First, you'll get a report on our visits with Meredith on Thursday and today. Then you'll get my bonus entry on fashion in Russia!

We got to see Meredith on Thursday but she was not a happy camper most of the hour or so we had her with us. We got to play outside with her, which was nice, but we didn't really know if she's allowed to get dirty or anything, so we mostly just held her and walked around. We got one good smile out of her:

but the rest of the time she was less excited:

or even antisocial:

We don't think she liked her hat - it was a little too tight and we think it was on backwards so it kept coming down over her eyes. (As you might guess, the hat was not our idea! It was warm out!).

Today she was cheerier, but we were busy bringing her to the photo shop to get a passport photo taken, and then she fell asleep right afterward! We tried to take a photo of her but our camera is on the fritz. We'll be trying to sort that out soon so as not to deprive anyone! It may involve real film (ack!).

And now for my second post....some reflections on Russian fashion.

If I wanted to look fashionable in Russia....

If I wanted to look like a fashionable young woman in Russia (I know, I’m barely qualified as “young” anymore), there are a few things that would need to be true.

• I would need to wear a mini skirt. This would be accompanied by nylons with patterns – either fishnet or some other kind of design.

• I would have my choice of two types of shoes. Choice # 1 includes a variety of stiletto heels. They can look like pumps, or fancy sandals, but the key is that the heel must be tiny and the height must be 3-4 inches at least. Choice # 2 includes a variety I will call “ballet shoes”. These are extremely flat shoes that I’ve also seen frequently in the U.S. They are usually decorated with a small buckle or a bow or something. Regardless of my choice of shoes, they should contain studs or sequins.

• I would need to carry a very large, shiny purse. I don’t know what is in those things, except perhaps some toilet paper since it isn’t always provided in the public restrooms. This requires a digression. I’ll have you know that even I – one of the thriftiest people I know – was willing to spring for the more expensive 15 ruble port-a-potty rather than the 14 ruble basic model a few days ago when given the choice. My 15-ruble potty included toilet paper and a quality sink with hand soap. In case this is confusing, it can be hard to find restrooms sometimes when you are out and about, so there are pay-as-you-go (no pun intended) port-a-potties set up here and there in parks and along busy streets. By the way, since I know you are wondering, my choice of the 15-ruble over the 14-ruble model cost me about 4 cents. Soon I’ll be on an out-of-control spending spree I’m sure. It’s a slippery slope. Luckily, back in Yaroslavl, potties are usually only 7-10 rubles. Phew! Back to my fashion list though…

• I would need to have bangs. WAIT A MINUTE! I DO HAVE BANGS!! This is the one thing I have in common with the fashionable young women here. It’s not all of them, but definitely a lot more than there are in the U.S. I understand bangs are “coming back” in the U.S., so I’m happy about that too – since I insist on having them anyway, it’s good to be in style when the cycle comes around. (I tried going without bangs for several years but I never liked it).

I feel very awkward about taking pictures of people directly, but if I can fake that I am taking a picture of something else, and just sneak someone in, I am willing to try it. I also got Rob to help me. So here are a few peeks at the types of outfits I've described:

You can see some heels and a giant purse here:

And this gives you a taste of the mini-skirt with heels and giant purse:

Notice that high standards of fashion do not seem to apply to the boys, who can apparently dress however they want and look much more comfortable!

That's all for today! Our internet cafe time is almost up! The current plan is now to go baby-supply shopping on Monday (diapers and food - we brought everything else) and to get custody of Meredith on Tuesday. Can't wait!!!

hello from St Petersburg, a little late...

2008-06-19T11:21:00.005-04:00

*** This posting was composed while we were in St. Petersburg, but when we went to an internet hot-spot the last night we were there, there were some technical difficulties. So here it is, a little late! Another post will be following shortly with more details on adoption news as we learn more. We visited Meredith today (Thursday) and she was a little cranky but it was good to see her anyway, of course! We will hopefully see her tomorrow and then get custody early next week. Until then, enjoy this older blog entry that I have finally been able to post...

Hello from St. Petersburg!

It’s hard to believe we are already leaving here tomorrow, but our tired legs are telling us it is probably a good idea! In the last four days, I bet we’ve spent over 40 hours on our feet. It has been fantastic. We’ve been inside four magnificent churches, gone on a 5-hour walking tour, seen several museums, done a little shopping, and just generally enjoyed the sights and skylines of this beautiful city.

Right now it is near the time of year dubbed the “White Nights” here in the far north. The sun doesn’t go down until very late, and even then it brings things only to dusk for a while and then it is sunrise again. Last night (actually this morning) we took advantage of the opportunity to go on a boat ride to see the bridges opening up over the main river here – the Neva. Since this happens around 1:45 a.m., now is the time of year to do it because you can still see the sights on the early part of the tour (which begins a little after midnight). Our camera has been acting up lately, but here is a picture taken around 1:00 a.m. of the Peter and Paul Fortress – it is a little fuzzy but you can tell that the sun is just setting.

By about 1:45 it is fairly dark, and we could then see the bridges open up for the night traffic of barges. Notice that the one in the background opens from both sides and the one in the foreground just goes up on the one side. Unfortunately, we couldn’t stay to watch the barges come through since little tourist boats are way too little to be hanging out with those big guys on the river!

Yesterday was also a special day because it was Meredith’s birthday! We can’t wait to get back to Yaroslavl to celebrate it with her (I think it’s OK now for me to list the city name). Today we got a book of fairy tales by Pushkin (Russia’s most famous poet) and we are still watching for other things to get for her that will remind her of her Russian heritage.

Since we had a rather late night last night (!) we took it a little easier today and didn’t get out of the apartment until about noon. We went to Dostoevsky’s flat (where he lived in the final years before his death) and then to St. Isaac’s cathedral, which is the second-largest in Russia. The largest is one we already saw in Moscow on our last trip! We also bought a lovely watercolor painting from a street market that is focused on paintings and prints, so you can all see that when we get home and get it framed.

Tomorrow we leave on an evening train, but not before spending a day at the Hermitage. We found a tour in English that isn’t horribly expensive, so we decided to go for it tomorrow even though our day will be shortened a bit by our need to head to the train station. We will at least get a taste of the museum with a 2.5 hour tour followed by a couple of hours on our own. According to someone’s calculation in a tour book, if we looked at each object there for one minute, we would be there for 5 years. So we will definitely need to skip some things :)

We found an internet café so that we could post this to the blog and check email. We think our hotel in Yaroslavl will probably not have internet, so we will try to get to a café every 2-3 days to update you on what we’re up to. (Moms and Dads, we had asked our facilitator in Yaroslavl to pick up a phone card for us but she didn’t get it to us before we left for St. Pete…once we have it we will try to give you a call.)

Thanks for following us on our journey!

hoping for a visit tomorrow, then off to St. Petersburg (the real one)

2008-06-12T14:55:00.008-04:00

Sorry all my Floridian friends (especially those from near St. Pete), I couldn't resist :)

Today was lots of fun - we moved hotels (okay, that part wasn't so fun) and then our facilitator dropped us off at a small park where there was a festival going on. Her daughter was dancing in it! She is a teenager and involved in traditional Russian dance. It turns out today and tomorrow are Russian holidays - go figure! The celebrations are in honor of independence from the USSR. We watched our facilitator's daughter's dance group, and then our facilitator headed out and we hung out there for a while before heading back to the hotel. I was keenly observing the number of babies and small children with hats and coats - it was at least 80 degrees in the sun out there. Here are some pics!

After that we took a break at the hotel, had a snacky lunch, and walked down to the big amusement park area on a little island in town. The amusement park is always there (at least some of it) but there was a lot going on there today because of the holiday.

Afterward we came back to the hotel and ate at McDonalds.

As an aside: I know you think we always go to McDonalds - so rest assured that last night we went to a fantastic restaurant on the banks of the Volga, where a jazz combo was playing as we sat out on their patio, and I got a fancy coffee drink with a wonderful fish entree and Rob got a White Russian with special Russian style meat-filled pancakes. So we do have some more interesting food experiences here than just Western style stuff. Here are some pics of our evening for proof!

This will probably be our last post for a bit...we leave tomorrow evening for St. Petersburg. We are hoping we will get to visit Meredith tomorrow before we leave, but because of the holiday it's unlikely. Which stinks. When we get back to town (next Thursday early morning) we will hopefully get to visit right away! We will have missed her birthday by just a few days but we will certainly sing "Happy Birthday" and luckily she won't know the difference :) Then the following week, early in the week hopefully, we will be allowed to pick her up instead of just visit! That will surely be a day to celebrate - the day we people in the adoption world call "Gotcha Day"!

WE ARE NEW PARENTS!!!

2008-06-11T05:24:00.005-04:00

Court was successful today! I think we were very fortunate - we had a long wait (over an hour I'd guess) before the judge appeared because he was running late, so he did not spend a lot of time on our case when he arrived. It was short and sweet!

Basically, the judge read our petition aloud (one page) and asked us to confirm it, then asked us each to say a few words about why we want to adopt Meredith. After that, the inspector gave her testimony that she had observed us with Meredith and that she knows we will care for her well. After that, the prosecutor (whose task is to "make sure the law is observed") made a statement that all the proper procedures had been followed and that no family in Russia had petitioned to adopt Meredith so that it was in her best interest to be adopted by us.

This all took maybe 15-20 minutes. Then we left the room and waited 5 minutes for the judge to make his decision. He invited us back in and made the statement that we are approved for adoption of the baby, who would now be named Meredith Nadia Hamersma and her documents will reflect that we are her parents! We are done!

Of course, there is still the 10-day waiting period, but this is almost certainly a formality because Meredith was relinquished quite some time ago and we don't expect anyone to suddenly come forward to appeal the adoption. But rules are rules, so we will wait our 10 days without too much complaining.

After court, we got to go visit Meredith - in our court clothes!. Little did we know she would also have special clothes on - the very outfit we left her in last time! They even put on her little hat :) She was not crazy about us right at first - a little weepy, maybe tired or scared, hard to tell. But then she started cheering up. We figured out that lifting her up and down like she is flying is a sure-fire way to get a smile! And her smile now includes a little bottom tooth that is sticking out. Last time it was still a little below her gums. Our little girl is growing up! Can't wait to get her home.

Here are a couple of pics to capture the day. Look for the tooth in the first two!

Here's me trying to get comfy in my court clothes while Meredith checks out a new toy!

tomorrow is the big day

2008-06-10T08:23:00.003-04:00

Well, we got a call this morning from our facilitator saying she would call around 3:00 in the afternoon to let us know if we could visit Meredith at 3:30. She was clear that it was a "maybe". We went out for a while to shop around and find lunch (found a pizza place that wasn't too bad, except the lack of sauce!). Then we came back and hung out at the hotel waiting for the call. Unfortunately, when the call came at 3:45 we were pretty sure our "maybe" was a "no", and we were right. Luckily, I think we'd both figured it was unlikely anyway, so we were able to take the phone call, say "oh well", and move on. Seems like God is granting us the serenity to accept that which we cannot change :)

One thing we did while we were out today was find the "flax market" mentioned in one of our travel guides. The travel guide talked about all kinds of wonderful Russian linens at amazing prices. There were some linens there, but actually it was more like a flea market. That's not a bad thing! It is mostly clothing and shoes and purses, with some other stuff mixed in here and there. We were keeping our eyes open for a baby coat for Meredith. After all of our careful packing, and making sure I have layers for her to wear, and hats, I didn't actually bring a *coat*. Granted, the expected temperature is around 65-70 degrees for the day we pick her up, but it is important to show that we will take good care of her by dressing her very warmly. The little cotton jacket we gave her on Trip # 1 is probably mixed in with the orphanage clothes now, so I don't think we can retrieve it. Fortunately, we have time to figure this out because obviously we don't get to take her with us for a couple of weeks still.

Tomorrow is our big day - going to court. Our facilitator is picking us up at 9:30 and we will be dressed for the occasion. Rob has his suit along and I am wearing a nice businesslike dress (Mom, you know the one, you got it for me a while ago -- navy
blue with one button at the waist). We'll try to remember to take pictures (we sometimes forget to take pictures if Meredith's not around!). In court we will be asked some questions, then the "inspector" (social worker I think) will testify on our behalf, and then we will wait for approval. Assuming it is given, our 10-day wait begins. After court tomorrow, we expect we will get to visit Meredith. Hopefully they'll let us change clothes in between :)

We have found that we can get the internet in our room if we sit right by the door or go in the hallway, so hopefully I can stay in good touch the next couple of days while we are here. We head to St. Petersburg on Friday and so there may be a dry spell of 4-5 days on the blog depending on what kind of internet we can find there. We know we don't have it available at our apartment, though we do have something more important: a washing machine!

safe and sound

2008-06-09T14:53:00.000-04:00

It was another smooth trip to Russia. We feel so blessed to have had on-time flights and no lost luggage! Given how much luggage we had, that is pretty amazing.

We took the train to our region this time (instead of getting a car ride) to save a little money. It was fantastic - we got the slightly more expensive train tickets that allowed the two of us to have a whole compartment to ourselves, complete with a wide padded bench on each side that doubled as a bed. We both took long naps! It was so good to stretch out after the plane flight.

We had a bit of an adventure with our hotel room, however. The one that had been reserved for us was pretty fancy. It is a different hotel this time, but it was only slightly less expensive than the last one, which was a disappointment. However, Rob decided to see if there was any way to switch to a cheaper room, and it turned out that they had one available for $40 less per night. Nice! So we moved to this room, which is cozy but just fine.

There is internet in the hotel, but only in the lobby, so I am typing this from the room and then will post when Rob is back. He went to try to find some drinks for us at a grocery or convenience store and maybe some food (we brought some as well, trying to avoid eating out constantly). Meanwhile, while he's been gone, it started storming outside and I'm imagining he's going to reappear like a drowned rat! And we have his raincoat here too...he just didn't have it with him (it didn't look threatening before).

Our facilitator said she will call us in the morning (that's Tuesday morning) and we MAY get to visit Meredith! This would be a bonus, since we thought we would probably need to wait until Wednesday, our court date, to visit her again. I'll be honest - I'm a little nervous. It is complicated how much we seem to think we "know" Meredith after such a short time, and I'm sure she won't remember us. So let's just hope she still likes us!

We'll plan to post again after our court appointment. All the advice we have gotten about this region is that the court usually goes smoothly and quickly, so we are trying not to worry about that. We'll tell you more about it after we've done it!

ready, set, go!

2008-06-08T00:16:00.002-04:00

I had hoped to write a decent length blog entry today (err, yesterday) to tell you about our preparations for the journey. However, we've done what is typical for us, which is let the packing/preparation process fill all of the time we have available. So while there was no frantic packing today, there also hasn't been much of anything else except packing and finishing last minute stuff. Rob finished caulking Meredith's window and reinstalled the blinds; I tried to get organized in terms of what to pack where.

What we've ended up with is a lot of luggage, but I think we have been reasonable -- we have three checked bags (one for each of us (!)) and one carry-on for the overhead bin and smaller bags for under the seats. What kind of puts us over the edge is that if we want Meredith in a car seat when we are being driven around in Russia, we need to bring it....so that will be our 4th checked item. And we are also bringing a stroller.

So, basically, we will be a sight to see at the airport :) Just wait until we are also carrying Meredith! This is yet another reason we brought the baby slings with us -- it may be important to have our hands free in the airport. We've already determined that our stroller doubles nicely as a carry-on carrier if Meredith is willing to be in a sling! We shall see.

We don't know how often we will have internet access while we are away, but please stay tuned. The itinerary is something like this:

arrive June 9
court June 11 (also get to visit Meredith!)
- the 10-day wait begins -
leave for St. Petersburg for mini-vacation on June 14
return from St. Petersburg on June 18
hopefully get court decree early the following week (June 23?)
*** get custody of Meredith soon after! ***
head to Moscow mid-week
go to the U.S. Embassy and various other places to fill out forms
return home when all that is done -- July 3!

It is possible (though not super likely) that we will have such a smooth process that we have everything done a few days early. If that happens, we may change our flight home (we made sure to get plane tickets where that is possible for a fee).

For those of you who have roles to play on the day of our return - you know who you are - keep an eye on the blog for any changes in plans. Thanks so much!

We will be sure to check in after court, if not before. Da svedanya!

getting ready!

2008-06-04T11:31:00.005-04:00

We had a great day of cleaning, yardwork, and home improvement on Sunday. Thanks so much to all of you who came out to help!

We're getting to the final stages. We made an initial packing list last week, went shopping, and then yesterday added more stuff and went shopping again. All kinds of little things - snacks and food for us, random infant medicines (just in case), little plastic bags for throwing away diapers, other various stuff, and even a playpen for my office (yes, that's the kind of cool place I work).

I don't have much time today to write but wanted to post Meredith's (probably) passport photo. She'll be traveling to the U.S. on her Russian passport and then when she arrives on U.S. soil she'll be a citizen and we will get her U.S. passport. Among other things, it will allow her into Canada without a visa (which is required for Russians). We tried several times to get a good shot (actually our facilitator mostly did) and this was our best one -- a little funny but adorable!

swimming joins with cleaning tomorrow

2008-05-31T20:02:00.002-04:00

Just a reminder that we are having our "help day" tomorrow starting at 2:00. We'll grill out some burgers and hot dogs in the evening and relax with some board games. You can show up anytime, even just for games if that's what works. We are looking forward to a fun day together. Though no one RSVP'ed on the blog, we do have some people who've told us they're coming and we're excited! But there is still room for others who didn't "sign up" so please stop by if you'd like.

ALSO, I forgot to mention in the earlier post that you are welcome to SWIM if you so desire! So bring your suit and hop in!

can't keep these all to myself...

2008-05-30T15:56:00.005-04:00

I said that we were reserving some photos to keep the blog going during our wait. Well, the wait has turned out to be short! So I'd better get posting.

Today's posts focus on Meredith Nadia's strong interest in the new bear that we brought for her.

In this one, it almost looks like she is looking at me. But no, it is the bear!

Today I went with my friend Holli to meet a mom in town who knows lots about baby slings. We will need to work extra hard at bonding well with Meredith (since we're about a year late in her little life!) and so we are planning to keep her very close as much as possible. Hopefully when she's (literally) attached to my body in a baby sling, we can work on eye contact, and then she will eventually become more "attached" in the bonding sense. It may take a while so please don't feel bad if you don't get to hold her right away -- we will want to make sure she understands who her parents are (and that we are specific people who are particularly important for her!) before passing her around.

Leaving in 9 days!!!!! I'd better get back to that work I need to do before we go.

help wanted

2008-05-28T08:51:00.003-04:00

So many people have been offering us help lately. We really appreciate your desire to do something concrete for us...and for those nearby, we are creating such an opportunity! On the one hand, we could manage this stuff on our own if we paced ourselves, but on the other hand, if some of you want to help us we'd sure appreciate it:

When:
Sunday afternoon, June 1, starting around 2 pm

Where:
Hamersma house, 2631 NW 33rd Place (call for directions: 352-214-8655)

What:
a "help day" at the Hamersmas, including such fun tasks as:

- finishing some painting in Meredith's room
- putting sealant on her bedroom window and reinstalling her blinds
- vacuuming carpeted rooms and mopping tile
- installing some new outlets where some are loose or old
- making outlets baby-safe
- finishing our upgrade of kitchen cupboard knobs (not related to Meredith, but if we don't do it now we will always have mismatched knobs!)
- helping with some outdoor stuff (possibly some pressure washing)
- raking leaves (let us know if you can bring an extra rake)
- cooking some freezable meals
- dusting (oh my, have I put this off)
- making up the guest beds for visitors coming to see Meredith
- brainstorming about baby announcements
- washing and putting away clothes that have been given to us for Meredith
- other things as they come to mind!

There really is something for everyone! But I promise we will keep the bathroom cleaning for ourselves for later :) It is the Sabbath after all.

Our plan is to work on these things with whoever would like to come during the afternoon, then get some dinner for everyone (pizza? grilled burgers?) and relax for the evening with some board games. To encourage you to let us know if you're coming, let me give you an incentive -- if you make your presence known by commenting on the blog, and include in your comment your board game preference, it will be prioritized on Sunday night!

I know many of you reading the blog are far away - we appreciate your encouragement and prayers, so please don't feel bad that you can't make it to our house. There will certainly be opportunity for you to help out in other ways as time goes by!

Prayers Answered! Court is June 11!

2008-05-23T17:31:00.002-04:00

After a very stressful couple of days, our caseworker said that the facilitator in our region is sure that the letter from an attorney will be sufficient. She asked for some changes in wording (the judge wasn't available to talk to her today) but it is just to make extra sure that there is no question about it. Our wonderful attorney friend is willing to sign the new one first thing Tuesday morning and we will fax it over, and then bring it to Tallahassee for (you guessed it) apostilles. We need to send the actual document to Russia ahead of us so that it can be translated and given to the judge before we get there.

In the meantime, our caseworker here in the U.S. said that our court date is certain, and we can go ahead and purchase plane tickets. JUNE 11 !!! For those keeping track, this is less than a month after we met Meredith -- truly miraculous turnaround. It is what our facilitator in Russia thought would happen, but we weren't believing her because it seemed too good to be true.

Our plan is to leave on June 8 to arrive in Russia June 9. That way if there are any flight problems, we should still get there on June 10 at the latest. We will go to court June 11 and get to visit Meredith, and then we have a 10-business-day wait without custody. We plan to go to St. Petersburg part of that time. We will get custody of Meredith around June 24 and then head to Moscow on the 25th or 26th for her passport, visa, and immigration documents. We'll fly out July 3 unless there are unforeseen delays or unforeseen smoothness (apparently sometimes people are ready to go a few days before their flight).

I'll give more info as it comes in -- just wanted to share the GREAT news!!

waiting for judge

2008-05-22T21:38:00.003-04:00

Our caseworker just got in touch with us. She has taken the forms we faxed her and faxed them along to our facilitator in Russia, who will show them to the judge - hopefully right away tomorrow (and it is almost tomorrow in Russia). He will tell her if our forms are acceptable or whether we need something else.

Also, the judge wants verification that under Canadian law, adopted children have the same rights and status as biological children. Apparently the judge knows that this is true for the U.S. but, seeing Rob's Canadian passport, he has started wondering about Canada. We may need to request a letter from the Canadian Embassy in Moscow as there does not appear to be a specific "law" that says this, per se. We shall see. There will hopefully be more info on that tomorrow too.

Thanks for your prayers. I think I aged about a year today, but without God's upholding me I know it would have been much worse.

I'd also like to send out a special thank you to our attorney friend Brian who signed our form today, and my friend Kevin in D.C. who has offered to do any needed legwork there if it's needed. People like you - and so many of you I've mentioned before or thanked personally - are going to be stars in Meredith's life story.

keep the prayers coming

2008-05-22T13:26:00.003-04:00

It has been a rough morning. We have tried 4 places to get the needed document signed and have ended up with one document that *might* work (not quite what we wanted, but what they could give us). We are now getting a copy of the requested document signed by an attorney rather than a law enforcement agency (which they said was "preferred") because neither the local police nor the sheriff's department nor the county clerk could do what we asked. We are praying that this will be sufficient even though it isn't precisely what we were asked for. We hope to hear from our caseworker soon, as we've left voice mails and emails to try to figure out what will resolve this.

Pray

* that the caseworker will call back very soon to let us know whether what we've done is acceptable

* that what we have done is in fact acceptable

* that I will not lose my mind or temper today, any more than I already have (probably it's not good to be snotty to people at the sheriff's department). I am living on my last nerve right now. Ready to break down at any moment. We don't know the consequences if we can't get this form, but they certainly include losing our preliminary court date (which has actually been set for June if we can get this problem fixed). We haven't been able to enjoy even a moment of excitement for the setting of our court date because it was immediately followed by this fiasco putting it in jeopardy. The fact that our caseworker has been inexplicably out of contact since we tried to get a hold of her over 3 hours ago is not helping.

PRAY PRAY PRAY!!!

call for prayer!

2008-05-21T16:13:00.002-04:00

As expected, there is more unforeseen paperwork to be done.

It turns out that the judge in Russia is unhappy that Rob is "Robert Hamersma" on his Canadian passport, "Robert A. Hamersma" on his U.S. greencard, and "Robert Allan Hamersma" on our marriage certificate. It is frustrating that Rob's passport is missing his middle name, as we still have a copy of the passport application where he clearly wrote it - they just forgot to put it on. Of course, we didn't realize this would be a big deal.

We are supposed to get a letter from the police verifying that all of these names refer to the same person. I am awaiting further instruction from our caseworker, but I plan to go to the Gainesville Police Department tomorrow and beg for help until someone will sign this letter for us. It probably needs to be notarized and put on letterhead, so this could be a pain for them. We need them to be full of grace and kindness tomorrow.

PRAY PRAY PRAY! We cannot get a court date finalized until this is resolved.

name that sign

2008-05-21T09:05:00.011-04:00

We told you that Cyrillic was pretty hard to read, but there were some things that helped us sort out the pronunciation of the letters. Perhaps you'll enjoy seeing them, and also get the hang of it. I'll start you off with an easy one. We took this picture while in our region (outside Moscow):

From that one you can figure out that the funny-shaped "A" is a "D" and the "C" is an "S" sound, right? If you're adventurous, you can decode the big banner as well, which sounds out exactly like the English version.

How about this one, in Moscow?

You can also figure out what the store next door is selling.

And then there was a place we almost went to eat just to have an English menu:

....and the place I couldn't resist, and thus spent about $7 on the item in the zoomed-in picture below:

And we know you've been waiting patiently for the stories I promised. So this picture tells you what you need to know about hot-dog stands in Russia:

The hot dogs are actually fine, and certainly one of the cheaper things to eat if you are out and about. We had them a couple of times. But we still affectionately refer to them as "crapdogs" :)

I'll leave you with a picture that tells you what movie I am going to see tonight (right behind the statue of Pushkin)!

Here's a close-up:

Hope you've enjoyed your lesson and I'll post again when there is news or when I have thought of another fun post!

home, safe and sound

2008-05-19T15:59:00.006-04:00

Our plane flights were wonderfully uneventful and we are now back in Gainesville. Thanks to everyone for offering so many prayers on our behalf. We have made a list of things to do before the second trip - such as getting a mattress for the crib we got secondhand, getting a carseat, and learning something about how to take care of babies (I am only partly kidding).

I thought I'd share a couple more pictures today from our visit with Meredith. (We have checked with our caseworker and she has verified that we are allowed to post these, since we have signed for Meredith even though we haven't been to court yet). You have seen her with her tears, and with her smiling and laughing, but did you know she could do this?

She was not unhappy, just felt like snarling I guess! She is a very expressive little girl - somewhat unusual for a child in an orphanage and a sign that she is developmentally doing well. Can't wait to bring her home! We will post here as soon as we have any news.

all out of steam and ready to come home!

2008-05-16T13:11:00.003-04:00

Hi all!

We had our medical appointment today - there was a bit of a scare because we had no documentation of one of the tests they wanted (it was not specifically listed on the forms we were asked to have our doctor sign) - but things seem to have resolved and they signed the needed paperwork.

We spent the afternoon checking out Moscow. I wish I had time to tell you all about it and post a bunch of pictures, but we are exhausted and we need to pack tonight still because we're getting picked up first thing in the morning. So here's the one photo you knew you'd be seeing from Moscow:

Also, it has been suggested to me that there may be a problem with posting the pictures of Meredith prior to court (i.e. the second trip) when we obtain parental rights. I am checking with my caseworker, as I know most families from our agency have set up similar websites including pictures prior to court - but if my caseworker tells me to take them down, I will be doing so. Just fair warning! Hopefully it is not an issue.

Please pray for a safe and timely 12-hour plane ride from Moscow to Atlanta tomorrow, as well as a short flight from there to Orlando. Big thanks to Nick and Betsy who are going to pick us up, give us to a place to sleep, and then drive us home on Sunday!

Next week I'll plan to post a couple times to give you some of the more travel-related parts of our experience like the food and sights. For now, it's packing and sleep!

the amazing race

2008-05-14T13:46:00.011-04:00

What a day!

The morning was spent signing some papers and then shopping for souvenirs and then for an outfit for our little Meredith Nadia, in hopes that we would be able to visit her this afternoon and try it on. We succeeded in finding a baby clothing boutique (read: very expensive shop) and shelled out more cash than we ever plan to spend again on two outfits! We would have bought just one, but kids in the orphanage are always bundled up so we needed multiple layers.

(Fun fact: Russian babies and small children always wear hats outside, even when it is very warm like it was here a few days ago. The children also wear layers and layers of clothing.)

At 2:30 we got the disappointing call that the orphanage was not able to let us visit today. We were so sad and disheartened. After all, we didn't know for sure that she was our baby when we saw her yesterday, and we wanted a chance to be Mommy and Daddy for just a little while before saying goodbye. A bit after that, we got the great idea that hey - our train tickets for the next morning could maybe be changed to the afternoon if there was some way we could visit Meredith in the morning instead. We put in a call to our translator and she said she would check. Meanwhile, we took inventory of our souvenir collection and figured out some additional things we needed to get, so Rob headed out while I waited to hear if we might get to visit tomorrow instead.

Rob was gone about 15 minutes when the phone rang. It was our facilitator calling directly "I pick you up 10 minutes, we go orphanage". I said "20 minutes?" - trying to mean "can we have 20 minutes?" - and we got confused so she had the translator call me. "She is picking you up in 10 minutes and you will just have half an hour to visit, and if you don't go today, you do not get to go at all." I said "I need to find Rob, he's shopping, but we will try!". And off I went!

You'd probably have a hard time picturing me booking down the streets of a small city in Russia with a bag of baby stuff, but that's what I had to do. The race against the clock! I prayed that I would remember where the outdoor market was that we went to earlier (that Rob was going back to) and I prayed that Rob would be there. After all, he could have stopped in anywhere, or been wandering around somewhere else, because we had been told we would not be going to the orphanage today. I alternately ran and jogged (note: running down the sidewalks here is not normal!). I remembered the way to the market and there was Rob - just paying for the stuff! "Rob! We have to go! She's picking us up right now to go to the orphanage!!". It had taken me about 8 minutes to run to the market and I was totally beat - I gave him the bag and said "You run ahead and see if you can catch her in time back at the hotel! I'll come as fast as I can behind."

Bless Rob, he asked no questions, he just took off like a shot and I lost sight of him almost immediately. I alternated jogging and walking, feeling that horrible lung-burning sensation. Oh, did I mention it cooled down to about 40 degrees here today and I didn't have my jacket because I'd left in such a rush? So my ears were also killing me by this point. I knew it would be hard for Rob to explain where I was to our facilitator but I hoped he would find a way to make this work somehow. When I was about a block from the hotel, I saw a car driving down the street toward me that looked like it might be them - and it was! I got in the car huffing and puffing, and we all had a good laugh (with Rob and I also doing a lot of coughing for quite a while.) Don't worry, I think we've fully recovered.

The important thing is that we made it! They gave us at least 1/2 hour - probably closer to 45 minutes, it's hard to tell because we're too busy to watch the time :) They had to wake Meredith from her nap so she was a little subdued for part of the time, and a little cranky occasionally, but we still had a good visit. We also got to dress her in her special new outfit (and its matching hat). If things go the usual way, we won't see that outfit again - it becomes common property - so we had to get the pictures while we could :) Our first "family picture" is pretty funny but I'm sure you'll enjoy it.

Another family photo does a better job of capturing us I think:

We brought Meredith a new bear from home (and we have another there waiting for her so that we don't have to depend on this one making it back). She loved it!

It was rough having to be awake during naptime, so we had a couple of sad moments - probably involving being too hot (since we were trying the Russia-style of layers). Real tears! Oh my.

Meredith loves being lifted up in the air!

That all the photos we'll be posting for today. We have more but we need to pace ourselves and keep the blog going during the time between visits. We were told today that our court date could be as early as mid-June, but we are trying not to get our hopes up. On the other hand, boy, we can't wait to bring our little Meredith home to stay!

We probably won't be posting more adoption-related stuff during our couple of days in Moscow (not sure about internet access) but if we can, we'll post some more of our travel adventures. Some stories to look forward to:

1) another encounter with the movie crew
2) the story of the "crapdogs"
3) the story of room service (not really a story, just a crazy thing we've never done before)
4) the McDonalds coupons
5) photos of interesting food

Until later, da svedanya

- Posted by Meredith's mommy

A late night of naming

2008-05-14T05:38:00.002-04:00

Rob and I stayed up until almost 2:30 in the morning - I think running partly on adrenaline - trying to decide on a name for our little girl. The few we had thought of a long time ago did not seem to fit. So off we went, through long lists of baby names online, staring at her picture and seeing what name she "looked" like. It should not be a common name, but also not too obscure or hard to pronounce. It should go well with our last name too. We also wanted to incorporate her Russian name if possible.

In a way, it may be a blessing that we had such a short time to decide, because we didn't ask for anyone's opinions and we chose something we think fits perfectly! And now even those of you who don't like it will have to pretend to like it because we have signed the papers - it is official and cannot be changed :)

So without further ado...welcome little Meredith Nadia Hamersma to our family. Nadia is her Russian name (actually Nadezhda, pronounced Nadi-ezh-da) and we decided to keep it in its short form. Meredith is a name we really like, and we think it suits her...plus my Grandma had a special porcelain baby doll named Meredith that I always loved.

We are still waiting to find out if we get to visit her again today, so there will be more pictures to come if we do.

* IT'S A GIRL!!! *

2008-05-13T12:16:00.005-04:00

The story is below, but here's the important stuff!

Today was a strange and wonderful day!

We were told last night, when we talked to our facilitator here, that she would get in touch with us sometime today, but not before 10am. She was not sure if we would be able to meet another child right away or not. Keeping in mind that she could call right at 10am, I made sure to get up a little before that (hey, I'm jet-lagged, give me a break!) and it’s a good thing I did. The phone rang at 9:55 and it was the front desk calling, saying “We need to give you a message that a woman will be picking you up in 20 minutes.” Wow! OK. So Rob sprung out of bed and got ready, and within 20 minutes we were in the lobby, hoping that the person who would pick us up would be someone familiar J Fortunately, it was indeed our facilitator. She does not speak much English and I guess she thought it would be easier to leave a message at the desk than to call us (or to have her interpreter call us – the interpreter comes with us for all official business).

We got in the car, wondering what might be happening today (you sure do have to go with the flow here). Of course, she couldn’t tell us too much given the language barrier…but what she did say told us what we needed to know: “Today…look…girl.” A girl?! We had been told when we switched to this region the first time that there was absolutely no chance of getting a girl. (This was fine with us, though we hoped someday to have a girl.) For some reason, girls are more likely to be adopted by Russians. A very young girl is particularly unlikely to be referred to an American couple. How old was she? How is it that she is available?

Well, we’d have to wait to find anything out. We first picked up the social worker at the court house (she is called “the inspector”). This woman will be vouching for us in court when we come on the second trip. She met us yesterday and said she was very happy with our interaction, but I guess she needed to come today too. So then there were 4 of us in the car, but Rob and I were still the only English speakers! We headed out toward the interpreter’s apartment to pick her up (yay!) and when she got in the car, our facilitator gave her a document to tell us about the child. It told us only her birth date and her given name. She was born in June 2007. Under a year old! [As for her name – we haven’t decided yet on a name and we need to do that tonight before signing documents tomorrow. We haven’t thought through girl names yet because we were sure it would be a boy! I decided to post this other stuff to the blog even though we won’t post her name until tomorrow because I didn’t want to make you wait for us.]

We arrived at the orphanage and, like yesterday, immediately donned the disposable plastic “socks” (they go over your shoes, to keep the floors clean). We then met with the orphanage director and doctor before meeting the baby. The first information we got really scared us – this little girl was born very, very prematurely (about 2 pounds at birth). However, the remainder of the report suggested that she seemed to be recovering well from her rough start. We were still nervous. They brought her in and we started holding her and playing with her. She was adorable! We got to play with her for about 45 minutes and had a great time. But we were still cautious because we knew we’d need to wait to hear from our U.S. adoption specialist about her health situation.

We got back to our hotel and immediately sent the new information to our doctor via online submission (he is at the University of Minnesota International Adoption Clinic – they are one of the best). Bless him, he wrote back to us within just a couple of hours. His report was positive! He essentially said that given her difficult start, she was doing very well and was on target for a premature baby girl of her age.

We needed a little time to take this all in! In less than a day things had totally turned around. It was a little overwhelming. We talked for a little bit, and then just sat quietly for a little bit, before preparing to call our interpreter (who would then call our facilitator) and say that we wanted to adopt this baby girl. Just as we were about to call, the phone rang – it was our adoption agency caseworker back in the U.S., checking how our day went today (she had called last night as well to check on us). It was great to share the good news with her first! She then went ahead and offered to call our facilitator here directly since she speaks Russian. She asked if we could email her a picture of the baby so she could enjoy the moment too J I had to send her 4 because I couldn’t narrow it down!

So, we hope to visit her again tomorrow – the orphanage has some kind of inspection or official business going on tomorrow so they may or may not be able to have us visit in the afternoon. Please pray we can get over there and see her again! If we do, we will post more pictures tomorrow.

As for the rest of our trip…on Thursday early morning we leave on the train for Moscow (4 hour trip) and will have doctors’ appointments on Friday before leaving Saturday. Time flies! We look forward to getting home and starting the next part of the wait.

One more for those who can't get enough....

a long day

2008-05-12T12:58:00.003-04:00

We had a long day today, but I will describe it briefly because that's all I can really do right now.

We met our referral this morning and he was adorable. But he was very, very small for his age. After taking photos and video and forwarding them to an international adoption specialist in the U.S., we learned that the situation was extremely severe and likely permanent. After communicating with the specialist, we needed to decline this referral. We are so sad to be doing this, it is hard to describe.

Our facilitator here will be inquiring about the possibility of us meeting another child as soon as possible. It may be tomorrow, it may be later in the week - there is some chance we would need to extend our visit a bit depending what happens.

What can I say? It's what I always say...please pray.

(Also, please know that we have email access but not phone access for the time being.)

The Accidental "Extras"

2008-05-11T12:35:00.004-04:00

Day 3 of the trip:

Fair warning – nothing adoption-related happened today (that will be tomorrow) so only read this if you want to read our account of hanging around a small city in Russia. (If you want to know the actual city, I can't post it here because it is public, but you can email me for more info as long as I actually know you).

Rob and I had a fun day today just wandering around town. We planned to hit some museums and churches and to try some Russian food, and we only partially succeeded, but it was a day to remember. It was the day we realized it is really hard to get around here without being able to read Russian. The Cyrillic alphabet is tricky, though knowing the Greek letters helps us a bit to sound things out (which, of course, is only useful when the Russian word sounds like the English word, but that does happen occasionally).

We figured out that “RESTAURANT” looks like “PECTOPAH” and that opened some doors to us. The key is to realize that a Russian “P” sounds like “R”, a “C” sounds like “S”, and an “H” sounds like “N”. We got brave and sat down at an outdoor café to try to get some lunch (with Russian dictionary in hand). They kindly gave us a menu and we looked though it for a while before figuring out that this was only a drink menu. We looked around and realized – no one out here is eating. It is just an outdoor bar. Luckily, we had seen another place called “Mario Café-Pizza” – it had a picture of Super Mario on the sign!

We saw people actually EATING outside there, so we gave it a shot. When we got our menu, Rob told the waiter “5 minutes please” in Russian to let him know we’d need time to look at the menu (as I held up my little dictionary to show him why). The server immediately reappeared with an English menu. How nice! Though the food was mediocre at best, it is a backup option now if we’re having trouble finding someplace to go. After that, we saw lots of street carts and stuff, so we have that option for the future too (we are here for 3.5 more days so we can’t be eating fancy every meal). And thankfully, Michelle (who was here last year) told us where to find the little grocery store. We got some juice boxes and chocolate for snacks later :)

Our museum plan was to go to the History Museum and then the “Music and Time” museum today. On our way to the History Museum, we saw a crowd gathered and a fire hose spraying into the air. My thought – I hope the museum’s not on fire! But no, it was not on fire. In fact, nothing was. The street corner was being used to film a scene in a movie that involved two children in raincoats walking away from a bus in the rain! The sky was clear, so the fire hose was generating the rain. We stopped and stared for a bit with the crowd, took some photos, and then were on our way...but then we couldn’t find the museum, and we realized that we must have missed it. We headed back and found that the movie scene was still going on – we stopped and tried to get our bearings and figure out where the museum entrance was because it seemed it should be nearby. Then we hear the director saying loudly:

" (unfamiliar Russian words) puhjalste (unfamiliar Russian words) "

The word we recognized means “please” and we realized he was looking at us and gesturing his arm. We were in the background of the shot he was trying to get! Sure, we weren’t really extras in the movie, since the director shooed us away, but it was still pretty cool. Amazingly, we were back that way later in the day and almost got in the way again (they were doing a shot in a different direction, so the previously safe area was now off limits).

We ended up giving up on that museum, since the movie filming was happening right in front of it and we couldn’t figure out where the entrance was. We will probably try again in the next few days depending on our schedule (over which we have no control). Instead, we went to the “Music and Time” museum, which is a private collection of clocks, gramophones, music boxes, etc. The collector is apparently an actor from around here and he conducts the tours himself. The guidebooks all say that his tours are fantastic, and we think it probably was, though we didn’t understand more than a word here and there :) One of the words he said fairly often was “slozhichy” which means “listen”. They say that on our Russian language learning CDs at the beginning of each lesson :) The man was very animated and the others in the tour (about a dozen people) were cracking up a lot of the time. He did some audience participation and we managed to hide for almost the whole tour (we were the only non-Russian speakers). At the end he was getting a couple to come demonstrate something and he tried to talk to us, so we - apparently adequately - said “ya nee puneemyo pa-russkya” (I don’t understand Russian). He didn’t speak much English, but he asked where we were from and we said “we’re American, from Florida” and several people nodded and said “Florida” so they knew where it was I guess (or at least they’d heard of it). Our apologies to our Canadian family – the language learning CDs only taught us how to say “American” (Amerikanyits) and we don’t know how to say “Canadian” for Rob yet.

The other thing we did today was to see a couple of amazing Orthodox churches - one we went inside, and the others we just saw from outside for now. They are the cool onion-domed style, and the one we went inside (Church of St. Nicholas the Miracle Worker) was covered in bright frescoes inside with lots of Bible stories along with other stories we didn’t recognize (it looked like some were probably St. Nicholas working miracles). We didn’t get to take photos inside – the lady may have been telling us “no flash” or “no photos” but since we couldn’t figure it out, our photos are from outside. She did sell us a postcard that has an inside picture so at least we have that.

We’re back in our room for the evening now. Our agency’s translator is going to call us tonight to finalize the meeting time for tomorrow morning. Hopefully we will be able to post in the next day or two again, once we have more news about the adoption. We’ve been trying not to think too much about it today, to keep the nerves down. Please keep praying that all goes well!

So far so good!

2008-05-10T10:52:00.000-04:00

Day 1 of the trip (Friday, May 9):

I’m writing this as we sit in the New York airport waiting for our flight to Moscow. Amazingly, there is no wireless internet, so I’m typing this and planning to post it when we get to Russia (so if you’re reading this now, it means we made it!) So far in this airport we’ve found two pigeons and a mouse who make their homes here. It is really something. The flight here was on time and we were glad we had come down to Orlando the night before (thanks Nate!) so that we had no worries of getting to the airport on time in the morning (had to be there by 5:30).

While we have been here in the NY airport, I have read the section of the “Lonely Planet” guide to Russia that covers the area where we are going (a 4-5 hour drive from Moscow) and it looks like a really interesting place to visit. Lots of old churches and stuff. Our hotel – which was organized by our agency – is listed as the premier business hotel in that area! So we know they have wireless, and thus that we will be able to post this eventually.

We are trying not to get too nervous about meeting our referral on Monday. We know that God is in control and that things will go the way they are supposed to go. It may be wonderful, it may be awkward, it may be both, but we are doing our best to stay calm. We have been praying for the baby boy we will meet and asking God to let things go smoothly for all of us. After meeting him on Monday we will send some additional medical info to a U.S. international adoption doctor who has already examined the photo and medical info we have been given – he can then let us know if there are any serious medical issues that we wouldn’t be prepared to handle. If all is well, we will likely be asked to confirm – on Tuesday – our desire to adopt him.
Of course, we will keep you updated!

We will post pictures only when we’re certain that everything is going well, so please be patient. I know the future grandparents are dying here – hang in there!

Day 2 (Saturday, May 10):

We made it to Russia! Our plane arrived in Moscow a little late (less than an hour late though) and the flight was dull but not too bad. Basically, we got on the plane at 4:30pm Friday, ate dinner on the plane probably around 6:30, and then they fed us breakfast around 9:30 a.m. Moscow time…but the time between dinner and breakfast was only about 7 hours (we’re 8 hours ahead here). Basically, the middle of our night was taken from us in the time change! We slept some on the flight (I more than Rob, since it’s harder for him to get comfortable in those tight spots). We were extremely blessed to have a 3-seat section (middle of the plane) where no one showed up for the third seat, so we could spread out a bit.

After we got off the plane in Moscow and went through immigration and customs (blessedly uneventful) we saw the driver holding up our name! I don’t think I’ve even been cool enough to have a driver holding up my name before! Anyway, he is very nice and he helped us exchange some money and we stopped for bottled water/pop on the way out of town. (By the way, it will probably be Monday before we get the special SIM card that will work in the cell phone we brought, so the blog will have to be sufficient for now.) The drive took about 4 hours and here we are at our fancy hotel! We are going to receive a call from our translator tonight to arrange the plans for Monday morning when we will go to the Baby Home (that’s what they call the orphanage – I think it’s a nicer name too). We basically have all day tomorrow to explore and adjust from our jetlag. So far we have only gone a few blocks from our hotel – just far enough to see a sign that looked like an Italian restaurant, and did in fact turn out to be a pizza place! Try to picture a nice restaurant – with slightly dimmed lights, nice tablecloths – combined with a line for ordering food that resembled Sbarro. It was great – we just pointed and used our few words, like “one” “two” “please” and “thank you”  That was our dinner tonight. We also got some kind of stuffed pastry thing that was delicious! We plan to go to a real Russian restaurant tomorrow when we have more time and are less tired and gross. For now, it’s time for showers and some sleep!

I’ll try to post again on Monday night if possible. Until then, we are doing great and appreciate your continuing prayers on our behalf!

(And by the way, a late Happy Birthday to Becky and also Happy Anniversary to Laura and Mike!)

God's orchestrating hand

2008-05-06T17:10:00.002-04:00

The last several days have been a whirlwind of activity - finishing the semester, saying goodbye to friends who have graduated and are leaving, and of course getting ready for our trip. Somehow God is making it possible for us to get all of this done and still sleep at night. Tonight we will start packing so that we can see what we still need and get it tomorrow!

We got confirmation today from Russia that they received the packet of documents that we had sent to them and everything was approved -- they had already approved it based on an emailed copy of the document, but this was still a relief.

I have some special people to thank God for today. Our caseworker Geralyn pulled together all of the supplemental homestudy documents within less than a week - quite a feat (there are 5 different things, all requiring specific types of notarizations, etc.). And then there is my tireless office manager Laura who is never surprised to see me with yet another document in my hand for her to notarize. Today it was something she had already done on two sheets, that we needed to do on front and back of one sheet instead. And our department secretary Martha provides prayer and encouragement, along with handling some of the administrative stuff for my job that I would usually do myself but have had less time for lately. And my department chair has loaned us his European cell phone so that we can be in touch from abroad. And then there are the nice people at the bank who have let us trade in beat-up currency for nicer looking bills that are more likely to be exchangeable in Russia (as you might suspect, each bill is supposed to be in ideal condition to get the full exchange rate there).

Finally, a big shout-out to Donna Lutz, our real estate agent at Coldwell Banker. Why, you might ask, was our real-estate agent relevant at this point, when we bought our house 4 years ago? Well, we have a form called the "residence verification" form. It is usually filled out by the property appraiser's office (and we have one from them, in fact). However, for our new region of Russia, the form must be signed by someone who is "licensed". The property appraiser's office does not have a licensing procedure, so my caseworker said I could ask our real estate agent to verify our residence and give us a copy of her license to be notarized/apostilled. Our dear real estate agent was so happy to help us, even at a moment's notice! What a sweetie. Her only requirement was that we stop by and visit when the baby is home - which we're more than happy to do!

I am about to look through all the documents once more, but I am quite confident that we have everything that we need to be able to turn in our "court packet" in Russia. This is important because it will get us immediately into the line to wait for a court date. If we didn't bring it with us, we would have to send it from here after we get back -- which would lose precious time that our paperwork could be "standing in line" in Russia. However, our caseworker has warned me that there WILL be something wrong with the paperwork, or something else needed - there ALWAYS is something. I have tried so hard to make it perfect, but she has warned me that the rules constantly change and we just need to be flexible. Lord help me be flexible!!

We hope to get online a few times while we are traveling, so we will be posting updates if we can. I may post one more pre-travel note, but then again we may be rushing until the last minute...in any case, please pray for everything to go smoothly! We depart at 7:25 am Friday from Orlando and we will meet the baby who has been referred to us on Monday!

bought the tickets!

2008-05-01T10:11:00.003-04:00

We were given the go-ahead to get our plane tickets! They are now officially in our hands (as much as e-tickets can be, I guess).

We leave next Friday, May 9, early in the morning from Orlando. Our local friends can fight over who wants to drive us there :) From there, we fly to JFK in New York and wait for part of the day until our direct flight to Moscow, which arrives there Saturday morning. Then we'll be in the car (don't worry, someone else will be driving) for 4-5 hours to get to the region where we will be staying. We'll have Sunday to recover/explore and on Monday, May 12, we will meet the baby boy who is waiting for us! If all goes well, we will sign off and submit paperwork so that the wait between trips will be as short as possible - it will be so hard to leave without him.

We'll be arriving back in town on Saturday night, May 17, around 10 pm in Orlando. Our local friends can fight over who gets to pick us up :)

Please pray for our planning details - lots to do and a week to do it!

update

2008-04-30T17:31:00.003-04:00

Well, we fixed one paperwork glitch, then the Russian Department of Education (which runs the orphanage system) found another. We have hopefully fixed it today and the document is in the mail. It involved Rob taking the day off to drive to Tallahassee, so we sure hope this will be the last of the re-doing paperwork for our initial application in the region.

Unfortunately, this may mean we need to wait one more week before we travel -- so we'd leave around May 16 instead of May 9. This is disappointing, but buying tickets this late would also be really expensive so maybe there is some advantage to waiting a week. (I'm just trying to convince myself - you know we would leave TOMORROW if we could!).

Meanwhile, we are finalizing the last few documents for bringing on our trip. The travel process will roughly go like this:

day 1: travel all day, including a 4-5 hour car ride from Moscow after we fly in
day 2: sleep/recover all day
day 3: meet our baby boy!!
day 4: visit him again!
day 5: hopefully visit him again and "sign on the dotted line" to request his name to be removed from the list of available children for adoption
day 6: travel back to Moscow (without our boy) and get our medical exam there
day 7: head home

There may be another day of buffer in there, but that is basically what the trip will look like.

I have heard the time after we get home is the worst - we will know our son and yet we will not be able to get him until we have a court date in Russia. Heart-wrenching! The wait is usually 1-2 months, so we hope to return in mid-late summer. However, you may remember that Russians take long summer vacations, so it will depend on what the judge's vacation schedule looks like. Friends of ours traveled on their first trip in late May last year and didn't get to go back until early August. We hope ours will go faster, but there are no guarantees.

I'll update the blog when our travel dates are finalized or when there is any news!

GOD IS GOOD!

2008-04-28T20:59:00.003-04:00

We finally have some good news to share - it is REALLY good news. Brace yourself!!

The last-ditch effort in Russia has been successful! On Friday we were told that we will be invited to travel in May to meet a baby boy. He is 10 months old right now!! In fact, we were told to plan to leave on May 9! We will provide you more details as we finalize the trip, but for now just REJOICE with us!!!

However, this is Russian adoption, so there has already been one glitch - one form that needs updating - so we may be delayed by a week or so if we're not able to get it in time (yes, it's from the old home study agency - argh!). Please pray for that to work out easily this week. I have sent them a pleading email and will call tomorrow :) Please also pray for all the documents to work out that we need to bring with us.

We will post all kinds of details soon. Thanks for your prayers! God is faithful and he is opening a door for us!

"I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you." John 14:18

moving along

2008-04-22T10:08:00.002-04:00

We are feeling optimistic these days that something is going to work out for us. There may be more waiting involved, but we are gradually getting used to the idea.

There is a small chance that one last-ditch effort in Russia could work out. It is in a different region (one that allows adoption of children with minor/no health issues) and our paperwork has been moved there. We should know in about a week whether our case might move forward there.

The more likely scenario is that we will switch gears and seek a domestic adoption. We have been investigating many different options, and have found one very positive thing: we can get on waiting lists at several different attorney's offices and agencies at the same time. We have selected a few attorney's offices in Florida (all specializing in adoptions) and have also narrowed down to a couple of agencies (which have higher up-front fees, so we will probably just pick one). Getting on these waiting lists is very simple compared to the Russian paperwork, so we will be able to be set up within a matter of a couple of weeks.

How long of a wait will we be talking about? Well, in domestic adoption there is not really a "line" that we stand in. Instead, when a prospective birthmother meets with an adoption attorney/agency, she tells them what she prioritizes in an adoptive family and the attorney/agency gives her information about several families that might interest her. Then she can choose who she would like. Our hope is that we will be an appealing family so that we don't have to wait much more than a year or so. It can happen faster, but typical estimates are 12-18 months. We would probably be matched to the birthmother during her pregnancy and then bring home the baby from the hospital once she has signed her relinquishment (if she decides for sure to do it). Florida law is strong on making sure no adoptive family takes home a baby until it is certain that they will be allowed to keep him/her, so we have some comfort in that.

We'd appreciate your prayers on a few fronts:

* We need sound sleep. Both of us have had some trouble in the last couple of weeks as we've had to think about so many things as well as the regular daily commitments of life.

* We need a final answer on Russia within a week, and we need the strength to fully cut ties if this last effort does not succeed.

* We need wisdom in choosing a domestic adoption agency. We have met with one that we really like, but we're concerned because they are very new. There is a more established one that we could use, but we don't have a really great feeling about them.

* I need energy for these last 2 weeks of teaching/writing exams/grading exams/grading projects. Making decisions about the adoption takes a lot of energy and time, and I want to be sure to serve my students well. Similarly with research - I need to be keeping up better with coauthors on some projects that aren't moving forward at the pace I'd like.

Thanks so much for your encouragement and prayers! We will let you know when we take our next steps.

in case you're waiting for an update...

2008-04-07T16:40:00.002-04:00

...we don't have too much to say. We have been exploring some possible open doors, but I don't want to give details here since nothing is set in stone. Suffice it to say, it looks like we are changing directions, and in some ways this is a big relief!

I'll post here when we have made any official decisions...for now, we are researching options while letting our current process sit where it is. Our alternatives look better than we expected, I think, and it is encouraging for us to know that there is still a light at the end of the tunnel.

Thanks for keeping up with us on our slooooowwwwwww journey.

short update

2008-03-28T23:41:00.003-04:00

Well, no referral yet.

However, the plot has thickened and the news is not good. At least one family that has now traveled to our region, with our agency, has found that the government there will not refer any healthy children to foreigners - so they had the heartbreaking experience of declining two separate referrals who were very severely sick. They were not told about the illness of the first child until they arrived. They are home now - please keep them in your prayers as they mourn this experience and decide what to do next.

As for us - we need to talk to our agency, but obviously it's not looking good. Please pray as we likely make a decision about our next step. We would like to see where God might be opening a door for us.

It's a good thing our optimism is always cautious - it seems we continue to be tested right now.

Continuing to move forward

2008-03-23T19:16:00.006-04:00

About a week ago, our caseworker sent us an email saying that now that our first set of paperwork is there, registered with the Russian government, we should start preparing the paperwork that will be needed to arrange the 2nd trip. The idea is that we will bring that paperwork with us on the first trip, so that we can submit it in person to the court system as soon as we accept a child, hopefully shortening the gap between trips. The reason we didn't prepare it earlier is that some of this paperwork expires within 3 months of the signature - which means she thinks we are likely to be completely done within 3 months. That would be glorious!

So let me tell you a bit about the last week to give you the picture of what we've been up to, and to explain why we haven't had time to blog:

1) contacted county property appraiser's office to get a form listing characteristics of our home - needed to be signed and notarized. Received it on Thursday but the notary stamp was not strong enough (couldn't quite read the name). Asked for a new one and got it on Saturday!

2) contacted our doctors to get appointments (earliest available were this coming Monday for Rob and Wednesday for me) - they'll need to do bloodwork (HIV test, etc) and then we will have them sign our forms ASAP

3) got proof of employment forms from our employers - signed and notarized

4) got fingerprints done at the University Police Department to send to the FBI for a new background check - sent on Wednesday

5) sent an order form to MN for new certified copies of our marriage license on Monday, received them back on Friday (amazing!), sent them back to MN Secretary of State for Apostilles (approval notices that the copies are truly certified)

6) sent a request to our home study agency (the old one) for 4 forms on Monday - received them on Saturday and ALL OF THEM WERE PERFECT!! Praise God.

7) got a few other forms notarized by my office manager (thanks Laura!)

8) sent request to FL Department of Health for a letter verifying that licensed doctors in the state of Florida are qualified to do adoption-related physicals (!)

9) made an appointment with a psychiatrist to get a letter attesting to our mental health (our two exams by psychologists are not good enough, since they don't have MD degrees and our region of Siberia requires this) - that will be Monday the 31st.

We have experienced so much help and cooperation from so many people this week! Please pray for the last few particulars to be taken care of in a timely manner: letter from Secretary of State, letter from Dep't of Health, Apostilled marriage certificates from MN, and doctor/psychiatrist letters. It's a lot to ask, but God is powerful. We hope to bring all of these with us on our first trip to Russia.

There is another family with our agency who became registered in the region just before us (within a week) while we were waiting for the one additional document we had to send. They received a call 2 days after their application was submitted with a referral and travel date; they were asked to show up in Russia 9 days later (they arrived there yesterday!). Our application is only a few days behind theirs, so it looks like big news might be right around the corner. It's tricky to balance the excitement and nerves, and yet have the appropriate caution and reasonable expectations.

We are hanging in there and will update you with whatever we hear!

Document submitted in Russia today!

2008-03-14T10:04:00.002-04:00

We got word from our caseworker that our new form arrived in Russia yesterday and is being submitted today!

I asked for a timeline for a referral of a child, expecting to be told it would be totally unpredictable, and she seems to think it will be a matter of weeks (not months). I have become cautious about getting excited about things too early, but I am optimistic that it won't be too much longer now!

Document is on its way

2008-03-12T14:14:00.003-04:00

Just a quick update - our agency director received the form that Rob sent, and as of Monday he had already sent it on to Russia. We hope it will arrive there by the end of the week, and then next week we will inquire with our agency to see if they have an update on the status of our dossier (since it will then be fully ready for a referral). Our only sense of the time frame here is that it shouldn't be too long. In my mind, I'm thinking we might hear something in April and travel for our first trip in May. But it could be quicker or slower....this is just my current guesstimate.

As soon as we know more, you will too!

Looks like we are moving in the right directions

2008-03-07T10:56:00.002-05:00

Amazingly, in less than 10 business days (9 to be exact) we heard back from our caseworker on Wednesday. We learned that there was only one document that the Department of Education in Russia wanted us to redo! It is a really silly one too - they wanted something reworded that was a complete technicality. They didn't seem to mind the other forms that do not have the right region's name on them.

The timing on this was a little hectic, because I was heading out of town on Thursday and we suddenly had this document to redo, plus a bunch of other little stuff I needed to finish before leaving town. Luckily we were able to get the new form done (we just needed to sign and get notarized) and then Rob drove to Tallassee yesterday to get it apostilled and sent to our agency. It will arrive there this morning, and they will be sending it along to Russia! Talk about quick turnaround on our end - we had the form to them in about 40 hours from when we heard we needed it. Hope we never have to try to break that record!

Our caseworker also said that it would be a good idea if we signed region-appropriate versions of a couple of forms that the Department of Education had not rejected, but that our facilitator in Russia thought we should have on hand. We did these as well, but unfortunately one of them needs to come from our home study agency (the old one, since their home study is in our packet that has been - almost - accepted now). Rob is going to deal with them and hopefully we can get that form next week sometime and send it along. But it is not as urgent, thank goodness.

So while we do not yet have a referral of a child, the caseworker basically said "They are still searching for a referral for you, they just want this one form done differently." So we are on the radar!

I expect our fixed-up document will get to Russia by the end of next week, so perhaps we'll have more news by early the following week. I'll keep you all in the loop!

Sarah

Looks like good news

2008-02-22T17:06:00.004-05:00

The other day my office manager asked me how much of my time is spent being preoccupied with our adoption - she can tell how it weighs on me. It was a good question, to which I didn't have a specific answer. I just know it's a lot.

Yesterday was particularly remarkable in the amount of time I spent preoccupied with our adoption. Along with my usual few emails each day related to something other than work (church, etc.) I received 1 email from our new home study social worker, 2 emails from a prospective agency that I had asked for more info, and 3 emails from our current adoption agency. I responded to all of them. I don't want to think about how much time that probably took. But I'm not really able to let that stuff wait.

Our home study worker learned that she needs to do a background check for us in Wisconsin as well as Florida because we lived there less than 5 years ago and that is a new rule. So I looked into getting that process moving. Our meeting with her went very well on Tuesday and we are busily assembling the paperwork she needs to finish our home study update (which is needed no matter which adoption agency we end up with).

The prospective agency was working on sending along a fee schedule to us, as they just finalized it for 2008 (in other words, we're just slightly late!). We have narrowed the search down to this one or one other one that I talked with back in November.

But the most important emails yesterday were from our current adoption agency. They have confirmed that our paperwork made it to Russia and was brought to the office of the Ministry of Education, and was turned in, and was NOT rejected outright (even though some of the documents were prepared for another region of Russia). We are surprised and cautiously happy about this. Our caseworker said that the MOE could still ask us to redo some things once they look more carefully through it, but at least for now it looks like we are actually "in line". We like the idea that the Russian government actually HAS our paperwork for the first time. Our agency was told by the MOE to check back in 10 days to check the status of the situation. This could mean that they would be ready to give us travel dates, or to tell us about a specific child, or to ask us for updated paperwork (could be one document, could be all 12 or so). I emailed back and forth with our caseworker to try to understand more, but this is really all the info they have. This could be very good news, but we just can't tell for sure yet. (Notice my lack of exclamation points - I am holding off on getting excited right now).

There was an interesting turn of phrase in our caseworker's email in which she was explaining the possibility of getting a referral. She said that after 10 days "they might have someone ready." For some reason, this stuck with me: "someone". I think everyone always says "a child" or "a baby", not "someone." It seems much more specific to me, for some reason. Even though it's unlikely that the 10 day mark will bring this best-possible news, it has helped move me toward a more hopeful mood about all this.

If we are instead told we have to redo all the documents, we are still planning to switch agencies. Both of the our candidate agencies are moving at light-speed right now, with first-trip travel happening within a month after submitting paperwork. So no matter what, we should be in a good situation within the next few months, God-willing.

Please pray that God is willing!

The plot thickens...but not too much

2008-02-14T15:56:00.003-05:00

We have learned that the packet with our dossier was in fact sent on Monday to Russia. The person who told me it hadn't been sent yet had thought the director was still waiting on something, but when I talked to the director today he gave me the tracking number of the package he sent out on Monday to Russia. It should arrive tomorrow or Monday.

I had a talk with him about this situation and he understands where we are at. He has asked if he can just TRY to get it submitted and see what feedback they get before we move ahead and sign up with another agency. He made clear that he was not asking us to pay anything, basically he just wants a week to see if the submission goes through. I told him we were absolutely, for sure switching home study agencies, even if we didn't switch adoption agencies, and I said that we expect it would be messy to potentially have two different homestudies floating around. He assured me that this will not create a problem. He also clarified that the new bureaucrat in our region is not at all involved with the court system, which is the dicey part of the process.

Nothing has changed from the plan I laid out here earlier today - we are starting the new homestudy on Tuesday (already made our appointment), and we are looking into whether to pursue Russia with a new agency or pursue domestic adoption. The one change is that during the next week, while we are investigating these options, our current agency (with no additional payment or commitment from us) is going to try to submit our paperwork. If by some miracle it is accepted, despite the expiration dates, then we would be traveling quickly. More likely, there will be problems and it will not make it, in which case we will pick up with another agency as planned. So it doesn't cost us anything to let them try.

Not sure what you should pray for, but please pray for God's will to be done.

The Time Has Come for a Fresh Start!

2008-02-13T21:57:00.004-05:00

Well, we did not wait until Friday. We did wait until we found out whether our paperwork was going to be submitted before it begins expiring. It is not. The paperwork I sent overnight mail last Tuesday to our agency's office in the U.S. has still not been sent along to Russia. Our agency explained their alternative plan to me (too much to bother explaining here) and we have decided we don't want to do it. So we have officially terminated our case with them.

As much as this is a loss, this is really a huge relief! We don't have to deal with the uncertainty of working with our agency anymore. We also don't have to worry about the particular region we were planning to adopt from, which just recently got a new government official who may make adoptions more difficult. These worries are no longer OUR worries.

So what's the plan? First, we are going to move forward with a home study update from our local social worker. This means we won't have to work with the home study agency anymore either, which has certainly been a source of stress. So this is the first good thing we get to do. Second, during that process (maybe a month? not sure) we will finalize whether we want to start a new Russian adoption or consider a domestic adoption. Both have their upsides and downsides. If we go with a Russian adoption, we will probably use an agency recently recommended by friends of ours. I have been in touch with the agency, and they are literally searching for families to adopt the children that they are ready to place. They recently had a family submit their documents, and the day after the documents were submitted in Russia they were given info about a child, followed by a trip to meet her two weeks later. Talk about running smoothly! So even if it takes us a month or two to put together new paperwork, we are still possibly in the game for a first trip by summer. We don't know as much about domestic options, but we will talk to our social worker about that to get more details. The timing is more uncertain in those cases since we would have to be selected by a birth mother from among other waiting families, and you can't predict when that will happen.

We are feeling optimistic that we are being led in a new direction. Having these frustrations behind us is a load off our minds and hearts. But your prayers for our next move are appreciated!

Counting down to next Friday

2008-02-06T20:08:00.000-05:00

We had an excellent meeting on Saturday with the local social worker. We talked about a lot of options with her, and we will most likely switch to her for our home study update and then talk with her about our next steps. It is really exciting to have personal contact with someone who is local and available to help us!

So why are we counting down until next Friday? That is when our paperwork in Russia begins expiring. If it happens that - between now and then - our agency manages to submit our file to the Ministry of Education in Siberia, then we will be able to continue there. Otherwise, we are prepared to rethink the whole situation.

We'll keep you informed!

Sarah

meeting on Saturday

2008-01-31T10:06:00.001-05:00

Just a quick post to let you know we will be meeting with a local homestudy/adoption agency this Saturday. We would appreciate your prayers that it would become clear if we should change course in any way.

Thanks!

a good thing

2008-01-28T22:43:00.000-05:00

We have been thinking about how to make this process easier as we re-do several things. The list of documents can be broken into roughly two pieces: those provided or filled out by us (passport copies, Russian adoption registration forms, etc.) and those provided by our home study agency (the home study itself - which is a 7 page document all about us - as well as copies of their licenses and some other forms they need to sign and notarize). There are only a couple other miscellaneous forms that don't fit into these categories - so this about covers it.

Upon reflection, we've realized that the difficult and stressful part of this has consistently been with our home study agency. Though certainly no one is intending to be malicious, we just haven't had a smooth experience with them. I think the distance (they are not within an easy drive) has made the process of sending things back and forth too cumbersome. One possibility this time around is to have our updated homestudy done by a local agency (meaning a local social worker with a non-profit organization) rather than continuing to work with the agency that we have been using. This would mean we could physically bring over forms, stop by to pick them up, and be able to get things quickly fixed if there are any quirks. Rob has talked with one organization already and they have indicated their willingness to do this. We also have another one referred by some good friends who did a Russia adoption in 2006 and lived in FL at the time. Though we need to finalize it, we think this will be a really good move for us to ease the stress of the paper chase.

Meanwhile, we are also re-examining our options as far as adoption agencies go. Each time we've done this before, there has been a hopeful development with our current one. It's hard to imagine what that would be this time, though. We have a few leads, so we'll be checking into them in the next couple of weeks.

That's all from the adoption front for now - we'll let you know if there are any new adventures :)

My oh my

2008-01-25T16:15:00.000-05:00

Well, the news from Russia is not very good. We've basically learned three things since our caseworker returned from her maternity leave. (Praise God that she is back - I now have a clear communication channel again with the agency and she is very responsive.)

Here's the scoop:

1) The document we sent (twice) has not arrive either time. According to the FedEx tracking number of the second package, it was attemped to be delivered at 5pm last Friday and the business was closed, and since then every day it says "in transit". Don't know if that means it is on its way back to the U.S. or what. But they never received it at our agency's office in Siberia.

but that doesn't really matter because....

2) We also learned that even though we had talked with our director about moving our file from the new region (where we applied last August) back to Siberia, he never actually did it. This means the other documents that we updated last fall are also not in Siberia. We thought they were there already, since we were told to only re-do the one document.

3) Also, our agency cooperates under the auspices of another one for the Russian side of the adoption (staff in Russia, etc) and apparently that other agency did not have the appropriate updated documents for our case. I don't even know what this is about, but apparently it will be fixed within a week.

What this all means is....

Our file is not ready to be submitted to the Dept of Education in our region, despite our best efforts and our following of every instruction we were given. It is missing several pieces. By the time those pieces arrive (about a week for the stuff coming from the other region and for the stuff from the Russia-side agency, and who knows how long for our document sent by FedEx) it will be February. By late February all of our Siberia documents begin to expire because the signatures are over a year old. (We submitted all of them last time around in April 07, but the ones we obtained first were signed as early as February, and the rest in March.)

Folks, we are just about back to square one. We basically need to do all the paperwork once again. It is hard to believe. We are still promised that we will be first in line (at least within our agency's set of parents) when our documents are submitted, but they will not be submitted for a while because we need to get everything updated. It wouldn't be bad if it were just filling out forms, but we have to get forms from other people/gov't agencies. This includes stuff from our home study agency, and that is always a difficult situation because they are not usually comfortable with our many, detailed requests and it tends to take a couple of rounds to get anything done.

Please be in prayer for us. We've said it before, and we'll say it again: we need to rethink whether to stay with this plan or try something else. We will not give up on becoming parents, but we may need to change course.

Wondering when this will speed up....

2008-01-14T15:22:00.000-05:00

Well, today is the big day that the government in Russia comes back from vacation and back to work. I wish I had some confidence that today was the day that our documents would be submitted, but unfortunately we have never been told yet whether the document we sent (on Dec. 22) arrived and was obtained by our facilitator there. It had been sent to the wrong address, but we were told that the facilitator would probably be able to get it from there. Unfortunately, we've gotten no information from our agency since hearing from them before Christmas (when they let us know the correct address) and our attempts to communicate have been unsuccessful.

We decided to wait until today to re-send the document, as it is costing big bucks to FedEx it all the way to Siberia. It is now sent! This means we have a tracking number and it should arrive in 1-3 days (I'm guessing 3!). So even if they never got the first one we sent, this one should be successful in arriving at the correct destination. Then it is just a matter of our facilitator there putting it together with our other documents and submitting it to the Russian government.

Please pray for us. I'm really unhappy about the communication issues that are going on and I just want things to get moving! This coming weekend Rob and I are going out of town for a couple of days just to relax - hopefully our last vacation before the child arrives. If I remember, I'll try to post some pictures to the blog when we return!

Happy New Year!

2008-01-02T13:16:00.000-05:00

Well, we have just returned from our holiday travels. It was a real mix of joy and sadness this year, as Rob lost both his grandmother and a cousin on the same day (Grandma from illness and Ted from a car accident). Our time in Canada was mostly spent preparing for the arrival of relatives and putting together funeral plans, a picture collage, etc. It was good family time, for which we are thankful. We are also comforted that both Grandma and Ted had committed their lives to Christ and are now with him. After our time in Canada, we headed to Minnesota to see my family, which was wonderfully relaxing and (thankfully) uneventful.

But even though our holidays are over, the holidays in Russia will not be over until January 14. This is when we hope that our packet can be submitted to the Department of Education in our region in Siberia. (By the way, for those who know the exact region we are going to, please do not post it in your comments, as we are supposed to avoid posting such detailed info on the web.) We only had to re-do one document, but the copy of it that we sent before leaving town on December 22 was actually sent to an outdated address in Russia (long story, not our fault), so we are sending another one. It is on its way to Tallahassee to be apostilled and we will get that back next week and send it along to the RIGHT address in Russia. I hope to be writing an update here soon when we confirm that the document has arrived and is ready to be submitted with our packet in Russia! Then it is just a matter of waiting for the Department of Education to give us an invitation to travel (when they have a child in mind for us), which could be weeks or maybe a couple of months from our submission.

Wishing you all a happy and blessed New Year! I suppose you can guess what our hope and prayer is for this year (same one as last year and the year before, since we started all this in January 2006!). We believe this WILL be the year, and we'll be sure to post if there's any news!

Reasons for Rejoicing! Reflections and an Update

2007-11-29T15:01:00.000-05:00

Reflections:
I promised a while ago to post a list of some of the blessings God has provided that may not have been possible if he had not made this path to children difficult for us. I call the list "Blessings on the Path that Veered from my Plan." Here are a few selections...

* If we had been given our first child when we initially planned, I would not have been able to invest as much in my education - an education that has served me well and brought me to a job that is a great fit and great blessing for me!
* If we had been given our first child when we initially planned, I would have spent less time having really important conversations with friends in Madison and helping some people through hard times. My flexibility allowed me to bless others.
* If we had been given our first child when we initially planned, we would not be in a position in which we call on others for so much support -- and experience so much grace through them.
* If we had been given our first child when we initially planned, we would not have been able to be as highly involved in multiple ministries in our church and small group.
* If we had been given our first child when we initially planned, we probably would not have connected as well with younger people when we arrived in Gainesville - which would mean missing out on some of our greatest times playing board-games and entertaining ourselves with the Wii!
* If we had been given our first child when we initially planned, I would not have gotten to know my students and colleagues as well as I have (I'm always hanging around the office). I have really valued the relationships that have been built during this time of schedule flexibility.
* If we had been given our first child when we initially planned, Rob and I wouldn't have had as much time to enjoy each other's company and support without a lot of other responsibilities pulling us in different directions. I have come to take our time together for granted, but really it is a huge blessing.

And finally....
* If we had been given our first child when we initially planned, we wouldn't be experiencing God's provision of the child who was meant to be ours!!

Speaking of that child....there is good news!

Update:

Just as we were getting really frustrated and looking (again) at changing agencies, we got the news that our agency has been REACCREDITTED IN RUSSIA!!!!

For those keeping score at home, our agency's previous accreditation expired in June 2006, and there have only been two batches of agencies accreditted since then (in June and July 07). Our agency always "hoped" to be in the next batch. Then we were told earlier this week that our agency actually WAS in the next batch. I decided I'd believe it when I saw it. Fortunately, when the accreditations are issued, they are posted on the web, and I was able to confirm that our agency was reaccreditted. (You may recall that I'm not allowed to discuss my agency on the web due to our contract with them, so I can't name it here).

So I talked with our agency's director today, and he said that the best thing to do will be to pick up again on our process in our original region (remember we had done a new set of documents for a new region this summer). He is going to let us know next week exactly what needs updating in our documents there, where we submitted some updated documents in April 2007. We know for sure that a few of the documents need to be redone, but we don't think it will be too much work. Please pray that anything that needs to be done can be done swiftly and without stress :)

We expect to submit our updated paperwork next month, but it probably won't get officially registered with the Russian government before the holidays. (They take a break from late December until mid-January.) However, it will be registered immediately after that. I asked about the time projected between registration and travel. Our director said he thinks that, since we first attempted to register our paperwork with the Ministry of Education (government office that handles this stuff)way back in May 2006 in this region, they should put us at the front of the line even if there are others currently waiting there who submitted more recently. (The others in the process there are with other agencies that were reaccreditted earlier.) He said it is realistic to expect to travel by February.

********* WOOOOHOOOO!!!!!!!! *********

God is good and we are so happy to be moving forward.

An update, and yet not really

2007-10-30T22:54:00.000-04:00

I received an update from our agency, after a couple of emails. It appears that they, too, are not clear on the current delay. They did not tell me whether the family ahead of us had gotten a referral (I am guessing not, since they would certainly have wanted to give me good news if they had any). They did say that they talked with their representatives in Russia, who have indicated that several other American adoption agencies started working in this region in July/August and that the region's Ministry of Education seems to be serving them right now rather than us. Our dossier arrived there in late August.

Guys, we just can't seem to catch a break. Plain and simple. I don't know what I'd do if I didn't think God had a plan in all this.

I specifically asked our director if it is reasonable to expect that we could travel in November (remember, I wrote to him a couple of weeks ago, when October wasn't practically over), and he said he could not yet be sure and that he'll get back to us in a week or two with more info. That sounds very much like a "no" to me. And if we do not travel in November, that brings us to December, when all of the bureaucrats' vacations begin again as the holidays approach (and continue through part of January). Sigh. I am trying to let go of the idea of traveling before late January, but I can't do that quite yet. Our update from our director in a couple of weeks might finally provide some realistic expectations.

My prayer partner - who is also in frustrating circumstances - reminded me of how praising God in the midst of difficulty can be really good for us. We've decided to each make a list of some particular blessings and joys that have only been possible because our circumstances have deviated from the plans we had. You can look forward to seeing some items from that list in my next blog entry.

oh the long,long wait

2007-10-21T18:42:00.000-04:00

There's no news yet. We'll let you know when we hear anything at all.

You might be thinking, "Man, they have been waiting a long time." I agree with you. In fact, I've been noticing lately a very tangible measure of the length of our wait.

You may remember when I posted this photo in June 2006, after getting my hair cut:

Below is a picture of me today. Luckily, I am so lazy that I haven't gotten a haircut since June 2006, so we have a perfect measure of the "length" of the wait!

Before you say "Wow, Sarah, your hair grows fast!" let me tell you that it's grown about 9 inches in 16 months, which isn't much above average. It has just been a loooooong wait! Thanks for hanging in there with us.

one vacation and one family to go

2007-09-25T10:39:00.000-04:00

I got an update from our agency. The first family that was ahead of us in line has gotten a referral of a child and has just returned from the first trip! This means just one more family ahead of us. However.....

(see if you can predict this)

.....the government official who arranges these referrals is, yes, going on vacation for 2 weeks. So it will be at least 2 weeks before that family receives a referral, and then we will be next. It's not clear how long the wait in-between will be, because there are other agencies also working in this region of Russia, so there are other families waiting as well. Where are we in the "overall" queue? Who knows.

Please pray for good news for us in the next month.

becoming professional waiters

2007-09-23T16:00:00.000-04:00

There is a person on an online Russian adoption chat board called "Russian waiter". It is funny how being a "waiter" becomes very defining of who you are - and I don't mean waiting tables!

When I go to those chat boards, I find people who've waited longer than us, people who are caught between trips, people who started after us but are already home with their children, and people just starting out who still have the illusion that they may have some control over the timing of their adoption. Probably the most helpful people are the ones who have gotten home and can give practical advice. There are some particular discussions we will definitely re-read once it gets closer to our turn.

Unfortunately, I have no news. I have sent an email to our agency director but haven't heard back yet, so I don't know if the two families ahead of us have made progress or not.

If you are a pray-er, here's what we need from God's hand right now:

1) Patience!!

2) Motivation for work - especially me (Sarah) because I have a lot of research on my plate and need to really push to get much of it done before the adoption.

3) Our preparations....there are little things to do (finishing some small home improvements, getting an official lead paint inspection) and some bigger things (Russian language study, preparation for unique parenting issues that may arise during the transition from the orphanage)

Some praiseworthy things are:

1) Our God who has a plan for us and our family!

2) Conveniently for us, there is a "Parenting" Sunday School class going on at church this semester, so it is really helpful to be thinking through issues of parenting with a group of people who are trying to take a Biblical approach

3) Our church Bible study home group has been growing, and discussions have been really good so far this semester. We always lose some people in the Spring at the end of the academic year, but the rebuilding has gone very well this fall.

4) My undergrads this semester (about 75 students) are great! We are having a lot of fun with Labor Economics (although, how could it not be fun? honestly?).

Thanks for your prayers, and for walking with us in this process. It is sort of surreal sometimes - I am sure that is how it will feel when we finally are given a travel date. The whole thing is sort of hazy right now, and it will suddenly be real and probably shocking! We'll be sure to let you know whenever there is news.

Across one ocean and behind two families!

2007-08-24T09:56:00.000-04:00

Our adoption agency director in the U.S. has carefully gone through all of our apostilled documents and they are GOOD TO GO! He will send them to Russia on Monday. When they arrive, they will be translated as we wait for two other families who are ahead of us in line. He expects that the first family in line should be invited to travel very soon, so then just one more to wait for, and then us!

I've been really impressed so far by the communication from the director of the agency, who is now handling our case directly because our caseworker went on maternity leave. He has been very attentive to my questions this last week and even offers other information that he expects to be helpful. Very nice!

While we wait for something to happen, we are continuing to work on our Russian. We're on lesson 10 (of 30) and we also just got a booklet/CD with vocabulary especially designed for adoptive families. It's a combination of travel help and phrases to say to children to help comfort them during transition. Although our child will likely be 1 year old and not talking, he/she (probably he) will likely have some understanding of Russian. We want to make it as easy as possible for him to latch on to us, so "sounding" familiar might help.

We'll update you (probably not for a few weeks) when we have any more news!

Success!

2007-08-20T15:58:00.000-04:00

Our corrected documents arrived on Saturday. We went to Tallahassee this morning and got all of our apostilles, and this afternoon I sent everything out to our agency. We should be in the queue for the new region now.

Phew!

Hopefully this is our last "dossier # 1" (we did one for our old region, then an updated one for our old region, and now this one). Third time's a charm right?

I will update the blog when I hear anything about a timeline. Right now, I am just ready for the break from paperwork! We think there are still some families ahead of us, but we hope that this fall will bring at least trip # 1 and perhaps both trips. Meanwhile, it's time to get back to teaching and work on sending out some more research papers before our travels.

Thanks for your prayers, and we'll post when we have news.

Ever feel tested?

2007-08-17T13:55:00.001-04:00

Yep, we needed our last two documents, which arrived in the mail yesterday -- both with errors. New ones are being sent today, for arrival tomorrow, so that we can go to Tallahassee on Monday instead of today.

I have never, before entering this process, been in a situation where I actually felt like physically exploding with sheer frustration. I wonder if this is how people with short tempers feel all the time. It's miserable! I actually wanted to walk outside and scream at the top of my lungs - I would have, except people would have been worried about the crazy woman outside :) There have been many times that I've been glad that they do the interviews/home study/psych exams at the beginning of the process, since the process itself can actually drive you into insanity.

Fortunately, Rob had just the ticket to calm me down last night after we got the mail - he made me chicken soup and peanut-butter toast (yes, I like them together, it was an elementary-school-cafeteria thing). And then we watched some comedy shows and a couple episodes of "The Wonder Years". Nothing like a little Kevin-and-Winnie puppy love to cheer you up. Mix that with a glass of chocolate milk and life looked a little better.

I hope, hope, hope to be writing with good news on Monday -- once we send that stuff out, then it's back to the waiting game. While we're still hoping the wait won't be more than a couple of months, one thing we have learned is that nothing is predictable. Praise God that he has a plan:

"God sets the lonely in families" (Psalm 68:6a).

And so he will, in His timing.

The switch is almost complete

2007-08-14T18:33:00.000-04:00

We have finally reached the end of the series of documents that needed to be modified/changed/updated/created in order for us to switch regions! The last two are in the mail from our home study agency. We should get them this week, and then it's off to Tallahassee for (you guessed it) the chance to drop another $200 or so on apostilles.

(I decided not to blog about the last few weeks, which were among the most frustrating paper-chasing I have ever experienced....just glad it's over.)

After that's done, we'll send the packet to our agency and officially be in line for the new region. There are only a few people ahead of us, so we still hope to travel on our first trip in September or October if things go smoothly. We'll probably just get a week's notice.

PRAISE GOD THAT:

* We seem to have all of the correct documents, finally!

* Two families working with our agency successfully went to court last week (in our new region) and now have custody of their children!

* We had a great, relaxing vacation in Canada last week, which helped take my mind off of the stresses of this stuff

* My department has worked with me to arrange a substitute professor to teach for me when we are traveling to Russia

* Both Rob and I can use sick leave (instead of unpaid parental leave) for our adoption travel

* I have just been given the opportunity to revise another of my articles for possible publication - this is good to get done now rather than later!

PLEASE PRAY THAT:

* Our documents are indeed acceptable to our agency and to Russia

* The lineup in our new region continues to move and does not stall

* We are able to concentrate on our work and on practical preparations (rather than unproductive worrying)

Thanks to everyone for continuing to support us in this very long and difficult quest to find the child God has planned for our family. We will continue to update the blog, whether or not there is news, every few weeks - so stay tuned!

making some preparations

2007-07-25T10:33:00.000-04:00

Well, we still have a couple of weeks before we can get our final documents from our home study agency, and when they arrive we will be in Canada for a week...so we hope to send our new dossier on August 15. We still don't know for sure which region we will end up in...a total of 19 agencies have been reaccredited, but ours is not one of them. So assuming they are not reaccredited within 3 weeks, we will go with the new region.

Meanwhile, we thought we should be thinking ahead a bit and learning some Russian for the trip. Although we probably would have done a short/simple program for tourists, some friends were kind enough to pass along a longer course that they no longer needed. It is a completely "aural" course (all on CD's, listen and repeat, no book). It took us a bit to get used to it, but we are starting to catch on. We listen in the car almost every day. We have finished 20% of the course (6 out of 30 lessons) and I can already say some important stuff:

(note: I am making up my own spelling, because of course we are just learning how to say them, not write them in Cyrillic)

"Zdrastvuit-ye. Ya nimnoga goveroo parusskie. Ya Amerikanke. Ya khatchelee ba shtonyboot payeest."

"Izvineet-ye. Skazheechee puhzhalste, gjeuh shtonyboot payeest?"

Translations:

"Hello. I speak a little Russian. I am American. I would like something to eat."

"Excuse me. Tell me please, where is something to eat?"

I figure these will help me in any number of situations :)

I know that the language is starting to sink in, because I was trying to wake Rob up yesterday - "Time to get up!" - and he mumbled something at me. I said "What?" He repeated: "mozhitbweets poe-zhuh".

Translation: "Maybe later".

Let the games begin!!!

2007-07-05T09:47:00.000-04:00

What games? Why, the Olympic games for one thing. Russia just won the bid for the 2014 winter Olympics.

But that wouldn't be enough to write a blog entry about. Instead, I have great news -- yesterday, on the 4th of July, seven American adoption agencies were given their reaccreditation by Russia!!! Ours was not among them (there are around 40 still waiting) but this is a huge turn in the tide. No agency had been reaccredited since April 2006. This is a symbol of a giant breakthrough: Russia has demonstrated that it is going to continue with its system of accredited agencies being allowed to facilitate adoptions (which at times people had begun to doubt). Our agency "hopes to be" in the second batch of reaccreditations (who doesn't?), and we aren't sure when they would be. However, last time Russia did reaccreditations the first two "batches" were only about 3 weeks apart. So it may not be long. But who knows?

What does this mean for us? Well, the timing is interesting. It is still another month or so before we are able turn in paperwork to switch regions. If our agency is reaccredited before that, we plan to stay with our original region. If not, we will prepare our documents for the new one and send them in mid-August. In either case, we very much hope that we will be traveling in September or October!

Fun fact: Our original region is in Siberia, and would require a plane trip from Moscow. Our potential new region is just a 3-hour drive from Moscow. While sort of attached to the old one, one nice thing about the new one was that we could at least save money from not needing those flights. Then we learned that in the new region, there is an extra doctor's visit required in Russia. Each of us would need to go to a special clinic where they do these exams (most people say they're quite brief) and it would set us back $700 PER PERSON!! Scandalous!

Finally some progress!

2007-06-06T18:02:00.000-04:00

It is nice to write that in the subject line!

We have decided to switch regions, within our agency, to one where there is currently movement in adoption processes. (You can call me/talk to me if you want to hear the long version of why we didn't have this opportunity earlier.) So what's the scoop on the new plan?

1) While summer vacations occur in Russia, we'll be putting together new paperwork for this region. It's similar to the other one, but there are still some new/different pieces. We'll also be re-applying for our permission to adopt, from USCIS (formerly the INS, i.e. U.S. immigration). Our old permission was good for 18 months, but its associated fingerprints were only good for 15 months (brilliant, I know!) so we are redoing all of it at once. Looks like it will be free to get the update, which is a plus :)

2) In about 6 weeks, we'll send our new paperwork to Russia. There are others also waiting to adopt from this region (sorry, can't name the place for confidentiality reasons) so at that point we'll see how quickly things move. The earliest we could be asked to travel would probably be September. In the grand scheme of things, this is just around the corner, though it is still a bit of a wait. If we did get to travel in September or October, there's a good chance we'd be able to go back for trip # 2 to complete the adoption before Christmas. I am trying my best not to anticipate that, though....what can I say, I am a Christmas addict, so I always build my mental schedule around Christmas! I tend to build up anything and everything surrounding "the most wonderful time of the year."

3) My impression from others who've worked in this region is that there is generally a "waiting period" during the second trip, after you've been to court to get the adoption approved. It looks like most people are not given custody yet during that time (about 2-3 weeks) so sometimes, instead of waiting in Russia, it makes sense for people to return home and then go back to Russia once again for "trip # 3" to take custody and come home. We don't know yet how this will work itself out for us, but just thought we'd let you know what the process is looking like.

ALL THIS IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE. Boy, is it ever! Please pray with us that this avenue remains open to us. My optimism has gotten very cautious these days, but things are looking up.

Looking at our options - there is hope!

2007-05-19T22:24:00.001-04:00

I try to write on this blog once a month, whether there is news or not.

In one sense, there is no news. Russia still has not reaccredited any agencies. Our dossier remains in our assigned region (a city in Siberia) and our agency continues to hope that reaccreditation will come soon. We are less optimistic, given our experience so far.

However, in another sense, there is news. It looks like there are a couple of paths we might take to move forward with a Russian adoption. This is feeling good!

One option is to switch to an agency that is still able to help people adopt in some regions (without accreditation). This is called "independent adoption" and it is legal in Russia. Essentially, we would be hiring an agency as a "facilitator" but the adoption would not be done "through" the agency in the usual way. My understanding is that most people find the experience to be basically the same; the agency does the same amount of the work, provides the same services (translator, driver), and so on. The smoothness - and even existence - of this type of process is built on personal relationships set up between agency facilitators and regional officials. Let me say again, though, it is legal. The only downside is that it is always possible that the Russian government decides to change policy on this...but that is a risk no matter what we do (as we have learned already!). Oh yes, and the other downside is that we lose a lot of money and have to redo some paperwork.

A second option, which is better if we can do it, is to switch regions WITHIN our agency. Although they were not taking applications for a while, our agency is now starting new cases in ONE region of Russia where they have been able to set up "independent adoptions" while they wait for accreditation in their other regions. A couple working with our agency recently returned from there with an 11-month-old baby boy. Our caseworker has said that we may be able to redo just a few documents and be able to transfer the rest of our paperwork to that region instead, where we would then be able to register our paperwork with the government and actually be in the queue for a travel date!

However, the first thing we have to do, before deciding on anything, is wait for a couple more weeks. (I am sure that doesn't surprise you at this point!). The head of our agency is going to be in Russia trying to establish what is going on with the accreditation. If she returns at the end of the month with good news of truly imminent accreditation, it may make more sense for us to leave our finished paperwork where it is, because we are the first in line there for a travel date as soon as the accreditation occurs.

We have no idea where God has placed our little one. We think this child of ours is in Russia, but we simply don't know where! Please pray for us to make good decisions in the next month as we try to find the way.

It's probably over the ocean right now...

2007-04-17T18:27:00.000-04:00

We (finally) got our corrected documents from the home study agency, and we drove up to Tallahassee yesterday morning to get them apostilled at the Secretary of State. It was an uneventful trip and they did not have any trouble verifying our notaries. So yesterday afternoon I made lots of photocopies and sent our documents "Global Express" straight to Russia. They should arrive within 5-7 business days. Since it doesn't look like accreditation will happen before then, we are in good shape. the documents are good for about a year, but hopefully we won't need to worry about that!

Interestingly, the national news has picked up on the Russian adoption delays. There have been several stories this last week, I guess because the last couple of agencies' accreditation finally expired. Although this didn't really affect anything, newspapers picked up on the fact that now there are NO accredited agencies in Russia. The only international adoptions occurring there are those that had already started proceedings for a particular child before loss of accreditation, or those whose agencies work in a few regions that don't require accreditation (but are risky in their own way). USA Today decided to write that Russian adoptions had been "stopped", as if the last expiration were instead a new law in Russia banning adoption! That's not the case at all. This is just a long bureaucratic delay, and there's no indication that Russia is going to prevent accreditation. The fact that they have asked for extra documents, while frustrating, suggests that they are paying attention to the agencies' applications in some way.

We'll let you know when there is an update! For now, I'm trying to get through the last couple weeks of the semester....tests to write, papers to grade, tests to grade...plenty to keep me busy!

Spoke too soon....

2007-04-01T22:06:00.000-04:00

In my last post I suggested that we'd be off to Tallahassee soon to get our documents apostilled and sent to Russia. The last background check was supposed to arrive within days, and I thought that once we got that our social worker would send our remaining documents immediately.

I forgot to "figure in" the fact that I was asking the social worker for 8 documents, and inevitably there would be a glitch in the first attempt at the documents. The social worker is not here in Gainesville, but elsewhere in FL, so everything is also delayed because we are sending these things through the mail instead of doing them in person (didn't realize there's be so much paperwork for them; thought it would just be the home visit, so we didn't realize the advantage of going local). So we are doing another round with the social worker, hoping to get everything next week. THEN we will be off to Tallahassee.

This is very frustrating, but (fortunately?) no agencies have been reaccreditted in Russia yet, so we aren't worried about losing our place in line while our paperwork is getting finished. The line simply isn't moving. There's no clear word on when it will start...the Russian government simply hasn't gotten any of the agencies' applications processed yet. The good news is that we know they are working on it -- some people who have gone to pick up their children recently (who are with the few remaining accredited agencies) have gotten more of an inside scoop. Sounds like some people think April will be our lucky month. I am not holding my breath.

I, for one, am trying to plan for fun things that we will be doing in the next few months, without assuming there will be a trip to Russia anytime soon. I've got a conference later this month, then we'll go to a wedding in early May, then I have another conference mid-May, then my brother will be visiting in late May, and then we will be going to Wisconsin (for a conference) and hopefully Minnesota in June. You may notice that conferences qualify as "fun" to me :)

And of course there is plenty to be done at work, so I am not at a loss for things to do! My ability to focus at work is sometimes a little lacking (don't know if I can blame that on the adoption or not!) so your prayers are appreciated as I try to prepare some more research for sending to academic journals. I'm happy to report that I passed my "3rd-year review", so I get to stay here at UF and keeping working toward tenure. I won't be evaluated for tenure for another 4-5 years, but publication cycles are SLOW in economics, so now is the time for me to be as productive as possible!

We'll let you all know when we have actually sent our documents to Russia - no false alarm this time!

Tallahassee, Here We Come (again)

2007-03-13T22:49:00.000-04:00

Well, it looks like we should be heading to Tallahassee to apostille our re-done documents soon. Rob's doctor note turned out to be a breeze, but this time the Florida Department of Law Enforcement had a delay with our background checks. They took a long time to send them, and then they never arrived. I have been learning the real-life lesson that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link! So I requested new ones...should be arriving soon. Once those arrive, our social worker can finish his updated home study, and then we can take it all to Tallahassee to be apostilled. After that we send it to Russia.

Let me offer public thanks to my office manager, Laura, for notarizing 19 pages of documents in the last two days. Thank you!!!

It looks like there will only be a gap of a week or two between the expiration of our current dossier in Russia and the arrival of our updated one. Of course, we would have preferred no gap, but this will probably be fine. I'd be shocked if our agency happened to get reaccredited right when we were in the gap. In fact, if they did, that's fine. We wouldn't be the first to travel, but we'd at least know our agency was operating again.

Your prayers are appreciated this spring and early summer. There are baby showers and new babies galore all around us. We will be helping out again this year at the kid's Easter Egg hunt at church -- last year I was fully anticipating coming the next year with our toddler in tow! We even bought him/her an Easter basket on clearance the following week - it has a plush Big Bird (yes, Easter baskets have gotten fancy these days). Alas, it was not to be...not yet.

This will surely be the most anticipated baby of all time. Or at least in second place, behind that time God became flesh.

Back in the paperwork game...

2007-02-10T19:52:00.000-05:00

Over the last two weeks, we have successfully requested a new copy of our social worker's license, received it in the mail, sent it to Tallahassee and back to be apostilled, and then sent it on to Russia. This document had expired, so this will bring our set of documents back to being updated for the time being.

The next order of business is updating our home study, which expires in about a month. Fortunately, we don't need to go through another home visit - just need to get some updated documents to the social worker. All of them have been straightforward, except that we ran into a snag with Rob's doctor's approval form (stating that he is healthy). It turns out that Rob's doctor doesn't work in Florida anymore! So he is getting a new exam done with a new doctor instead of just having his old doctor sign a new form like mine did. Luckily, he is getting in for this appointment in the coming week. Once we have that, and the results of our background checks, we will be able to send them to our social worker and get the updated homestudy, which we'll send to Russia immediately.

I talked with a Russian grad student the other day and it was both encouraging and nerve-wracking. She accurately described the way that Russian bureaucracy seems so complicated and tends to go in circles - it was encouraging to know that this was her experience too. Then she gave me her prediction that our adoption would take another year. Nooooo!!!!! She was sweet - told me that she hopes it's shorter - but she just knows how slowly the government can operate. I've decided not to believe her, for my own sanity :) Plus, there is some evidence from the Russian adoption online message boards that the wheels may be turning for reaccreditation. At least one region is even allowing an agency to start operating again based on anticipated, imminent reaccreditation. Let's hope that our day of celebration is right around the corner!

Marking a frustrating anniversary

2007-01-28T22:08:00.000-05:00

Well, we've officially been in the adoption process for over a year now. Not an anniversary I anticipated celebrating, given the original 6-7 month estimate our agency gave us last January.

But here we are. What's past is past, and we now hope to hear something about reaccreditation within the next 2 months. Meanwhile, we've discovered that we need to get new copies of several of our forms because they are soon expiring (one already did). This will mean more notaries, some more travels to Tallahassee for apostilles to certify the notaries, and new background checks in case either of us has become a criminal in the last year. On the bright side, it gives us something to actually DO to pursue the adoption, instead of waiting helplessly.

We'll definitely let you know if there is any news!

Sarah

Quick update

2007-01-11T22:20:00.000-05:00

I confirmed today that our agency has submitted its accreditation paperwork to the Russian government! They turned it in before the holiday break, although our agency director was not sure if it was officially "processed" before the break or if it was just recently processed when workers returned from the break this week. In any case, we should hear back about their reaccreditation within 90 days, according to the new laws passed in Russia. This means that - as long as there are no errors in the paperwork - our agency should be reaccredited by sometime in March or April.

We are so happy to see things moving forward. Please pray that this deadline is honored!

Christmas for our little one

2007-01-10T19:49:00.000-05:00

While we still don't have any news on our timeline, our child was not forgotten this Christmas!

The Kampfers (my family) got us an Advent Calendar that is a whole set of tiny books, each in a special slot, as well as a sweet little teddy bear! We also went shopping after Christmas, and Mom picked out a new stocking and stocking holder for our new addition for next year.

The Hamersmas got our little one a pair of Calvin College sweatpants and some sweet little slippers that look like Dutch wooden shoes! I am glad that the Russian descent of our child isn't stopping them from raiding the Dutch store :) Hopefully our kid will like Dubbel Zout candy (double-salty black licorice) more than I do!

Our agency still anticipates being reaccreditted "soon". At least one person I have talked to, who is with our agency but submitted a dossier just recently, was told that they expected she might travel in May. Of course, we take all of these predictions with a grain of salt, but I suppose it's better than if she were predicted to travel even later...

We'll keep you updated as usual!

Actual progress!

2006-12-20T21:15:00.000-05:00

You may remember from my last post that we were not clear on whether agencies were able to submit their documents to Russia yet, or if Russia wasn't accepting applications. I talked to our agency and learned that when they told me our agency's documents had been "submitted" they were relying on a faulty translation from their Russian office -- what actually occurred was that they had brought their documents to the Russian Ministry of Education, where they are eventually going to be submitted, and got information/corrections for putting together their packets.

But this doesn't sound like good news - it just confirmed that Russia was not yet accepting documents. I went for a couple of days trying to come to terms with the expectation that Russia would probably not accept applications until after their holiday break. After all, they are obligated to decide on the applications within 3 months of submission, and since they'll be on vacation for almost a month they might not want to start accepting submissions until they return to work in late January.

Praise God, I was wrong!! The Russian government issued a letter yesterday that finalized the documentation requirements for agencies applying for reaccreditation (include # of photocopies, etc.) and declaring that they would officially start receiving applications on December 20. THAT'S TODAY! I talked with our agency director and he expects our representatives in Russia to submit right away, since they had already made revisions and corrections based on their discussions with the Russian government. Though I don't know if they submitted today, it should be soon. At that point, the 3 month countdown begins!

Yes, 3 months is a long time...but if we're able to travel soon after reaccreditation (say, within a month or so) we may still get our first trip in the late spring. And it's possible they will issue the reaccreditations within less than 3 months. But I suppose I shouldn't start having wild dreams here :)

This is something to be thankful for - a reminder that while things are slow, they are not completely stalled.

We'll be up north for Christmas and New Year's, so I probably won't be blogging (unless there is news). Until then, Merry Christmas!

Christmas time is here

2006-12-10T23:41:00.000-05:00

I just realized it has been a full month since I posted. As usual, you all know what that means....pretty much, nothing is happening with the adoption. Our agency has told us that their accreditation paperwork has been submitted. Meanwhile, some other prospective adopters on the adoption message boards have been told by their agencies that the Russian government isn't actually accepting the applications yet. Everyone seems confused these days.

At least we will not have to wonder what's happening during late December through mid-January, since the entire Russian government will be on vacation for the holidays. Ugh.

It is still possible that we will be traveling when we had hoped -- in March for the first trip -- but that possibility becomes more distant if our agency remains unaccredited through the holidays. I suppose we just need to be patient.

How am I doing? I'm in a strange array of moods in any given week. If I think too much about this child of ours in a crib in Russia, it is unbelievably depressing to think that we can do nothing to help care for him or her. We have the time, money, and willingness to do something, and yet we can't. Can you imagine how different his or her Christmas would be if he or she were home with us?

But this is too much to take. So usually, for better or worse, I try not to dwell on this and try to separate myself from the situation. There is nothing we can do. When people ask about how things are going, I sometimes explain the whole situation, but more often I have heard myself be a bit short with people: "We just don't know. We hope for Spring, but we really have no idea." I cannot get my heart set on a certain plan, because we just don't have control. So I think, to some people, I appear less excited about the adoption than I should be. I'm not bubbling over with the joy of this plan right now. I am just getting through this hard part.

This weird range of emotions has me in a strange place with little kids and babies too. Sometimes I love to be around them and to think about our future little one - today was one of those days. The little kids sang in church and I thought about how ours would be joining them in the next year or two. How cute! And I saw a dad with his little guy hanging on his back - maybe 3 years old - at the airport this weekend, and it gave me a warm glow when I thought of Rob and our kid. (No, economists, I'm not using the technical "warm glow" terminology here). But other times I'd rather not be reminded of what's missing right now!

Now, I said earlier that there is nothing we can do. That's not quite right, I guess. We can continue offering this situation to God, calling on him to take action on behalf of our child and us. I am running out of steam on this, so I would appreciate help from those of you who are willing to be part of this effort. It has been so encouraging to get comments from some of you who have been lurking (especially the old Madison crowd! Wow! ). I'll try to email you guys individually sometime soon - I greatly appreciate your patience until then :)

I'll post again whenever there is news...but assuming nothing big will happen before Christmas, let me wish you all the joy and peace of Christ this season. We will be with family, first in MN and then in Canada, and we look forward to celebrating with them.

Merry Christmas!
Sarah

Russian government creeps toward reaccreditation

2006-11-10T22:28:00.000-05:00

Some excellent news came out of Russia this week for pre-adoptive parents like us!

The Russian government has issued its new set of reaccreditation requirements. They needed a new set because the old requirements were (apparently) inconsistent with some aspects of the NGO registration laws that slowed things down from about April to September. These requirements have been expected to come out "any time now" for at least 3-4 months. Finally some progress!

Practically speaking, this means that our agency and others now know WHAT forms they need to submit to get reaccredited. The new rules also have one great feature: accreditations will last for at least 5 years instead of being subject to annual renewals. This will make life much easier for those adopting from Russia in future years (who knows, maybe us again?).

No one knows how long it will take for Russia to actually process the reaccreditations, though the law does say that they must give adoption agencies a "yes" or "no" within three months of their application. I cannot begin to express how glad I am that we are not still in that "any day now" mode...the prospect of up to 3 months more of that feeling would be overwhelming.

We have confirmed our plans again with our caseworker - that whenever it is that our agency is reaccredited, she will not submit our paperwork yet but will first contact us to discuss the timing. We hope to travel in March, which would probably mean submitting paperwork in February and not before. However, even with the new "progress" on accreditation laws this week, it sounds like there is still some waiting to do...so it may be that our first opportunity to submit isn't until February anyway. I cannot even fathom the irony if that were to happen! It would sure be a lesson in learning to trust God's plans.

The Fall is Flying By!

2006-10-28T21:46:00.000-04:00

It's been a few weeks since I posted something, so I thought it was about time for a new one.

There is no news from Russia, but happily this is only something I check on a couple of times a week, instead of every day. Still no agencies have been reaccredited. If we were still planning to travel ASAP, I can't imagine how stressed I would be right now. Rob's idea of delaying our first trip until the spring was definitely the right thing to do. I have been more productive at work, more enthusiastic about the conferences I'll be attending (rather than worried that I might have to cancel at the last minute to leave for Russia), and a much less stressed-out person.

This month I am presenting in two conferences: one in Madison (my grad school hometown) and one in Charleston, SC (Rob might come with me for that one). They should both be productive and also great fun - I am planning to connect with friends at both conferences for meals, etc. As if that weren't enough travel for one month, we also decided to go ahead and plan something crazy and exciting for this time before the baby arrives: for Thanksgiving, both Rob's and my parents are joining us in Florida for a 4-day cruise!!! I can hardly wait! Most of you know how thrifty (OK, cheap) we are, so this is a real adventure for us. (Of course, we got the tickets for less than half price...but you already knew that....). Our two sets of parents haven't seen each other since our wedding over 6 years ago, so we are excited to all hang out together.

Last weekend, we made a bit of progress on the baby's room - we installed new closet doors. the old ones were completely mirrored. Not only might that scare our poor kid, but I wasn't a big fan either! So we got some nice plain white doors with a very basic design. It looks great!

I'll close up with a reminder to please pray for our little one in Siberia. Earlier this month we were in Canada with Rob's family and got to see some of his cousins who have a 20-month old (Jake) and newborn (Mitchell). It was really wonderful to see them, and especially to meet little Mitchell! But it was a little bittersweet knowing that we can't take care of our own child right now the way these parents (and grandparents, and aunts, and uncles, and cousins) can take care of him. Our child is most likely between the ages of these two cuties, and there are two more kids on that side of the family who are slightly older, so he/she will have lots of cousins to play with.....just can't wait until he/she can actually come home and DO that! Until then, we're praying that our baby is experiencing attentive care from the orphanage staff, enough food to eat, and at least a few hugs along the way. We'd sure like to send some!

There is Finally a Plan

2006-10-04T15:35:00.000-04:00

It has been a rough couple of weeks trying to figure out whether we should keep waiting with our agency or switch to another where things are moving forward.

Over the weekend, we had decided to switch...but then some feedback from our current agency gave us some hope that things might begin moving before too long. Meanwhile, the new agency that we really liked had some hoops we needed to jump through in terms of some new paperwork, a 2-hour interview, and an educational requirement (involving reading books/watching videos on adoption). We sent them a preliminary application but were still unsure.

The decision we made today - to stay with our agency - actually rests on Rob's very thoughtful but persistent suggestion of an idea I initially did not like. He pointed out that with the new agency, our best case scenario would be bringing home a child in January (maybe February). At that point, I would have needed others to cover my classes for the trip and I would be returning to the work of teaching my two classes immediately upon our return. I’d also have a toddler running around (or at least learning to walk) who is confused and can’t understand most of what I say to him/her – and it is really important to be proactive about “attachment” when adopting a child at this age. Though Rob would also stay home part time, I think he realized that he'd have two people to take care of: a new child and a frazzled wife. He suggested that it might be in the best interest of all of us - especially the child - if we could delay by a few months and bring our child home early in the summer. I will not have any work responsibilities until Fall, so could concentrate on bonding with our little one and visiting family. Ironically, this was exactly the plan when we first started (to bring home our child in the summer). So we asked our current agency whether we could intentionally hold back our paperwork in order to do our first trip in the Spring, even if they become reaccredited before that. They said we could certainly do that.

So then we just had to decide whether we wanted to do this. My initial reaction was "I want a baby YESTERDAY! I'd be nuts to wait longer than I have to". Later on, I started doing the math....the difference will just be a few months compared to starting with the new agency, and the costs of starting over are high. And then a couple of people independently suggested this option, not knowing that we were considering it. You know, it made sense. Rob is a smart guy. One thing I love about this idea is that we have some control over timing, so we don't need to worry whether our agency gets reaccredited this month or next month or even the month after. (There are agencies who have met with the Russian officials about the delays, and it sounds like they are gradually getting things resolved -- so we really don't expect our agency to remain unaccredited into next year.) My daily following of all the Russian adoption news can fall back to a calm, weekly check on what's going on. We will leave our paperwork where it is, in Russia with our facilitator, and it will be up to us to decide when we want it submitted -- travel dates are usually given within weeks of submission. We will still likely travel without having been assigned a specific child in advance.

Phew! Sorry for the long entry. It's been an eventful time for us. But it will now be followed by some peace about this and no frenzied switch or hyperactive websurfing for Russian news. I'm hoping we can even do a little vacation at some point over the next 6 months before life changes drastically :)

Ok...so that excitement has worn off now

2006-09-22T16:34:00.000-04:00

I was reading my last entry and it sure doesn't reflect where things seem to be now.

What has become clear is that even those agencies who have had NGO status since JULY have still not been reaccreditted. Absolutely no agency has been reaccredited since the NGO legislation initially went into effect at the end of April. There has now been a report from one agency, to their clients, that two officials in the Russian Ministry of Education have resigned, and their signatures were needed for accreditations to be granted. If it is true, we must wait for these people to be replaced before anything new can happen.

There are a few agencies that were reaccredited last March and April, before the NGO rules were passed, who are still operating smoothly because their licenses are good until next March/April. A couple have gotten NGO status as well, so there are no delays with them at this point. We need to think and pray hard about this. Forms would need to be redone, money would be lost, and the process would still be unpredictable. However, if we could travel during this semester (while I am not teaching) it would be so much better than if we had to wait until Spring and I ended up having to recruit help to cover my two courses. I know I would get the help - my department is so fantastically supportive of all this! - but it would just make more sense for this to happen NOW!!! (Plus, as you may have noticed, I am ready to be a mom and am tired of waiting!)

Thanks so much for listening and hanging in there with us.

Successful Jump through Hoop # 1 !!!

2006-09-05T14:50:00.000-04:00

We just learned today that our agency has been granted NGO status by the Russian government. Woohoo!!!!!

You might ask how this affects our situation. It essentially means that now our agency can actually apply for its reaccreditation (which was not allowed w/o NGO status). It could still be a while -- the online adoption gossip ranges for estimates of "any week now" to maybe not even this calendar year. Our agency has an optimistic timeline, but we will just have to see what happens. In any case, the situation is MUCH better now that the first hoop has been jumped through. Once hoop # 2 is done, we will be on our way to Russia in no time!

We'll keep you posted!

Some helpful hints

2006-08-22T17:29:00.000-04:00

Talking to lots of family about our adoption reminded me that I had been meaning to provide some general "helpful hints" for people who are asking someone about their adoption. They apply both to our case and to anyone else's, and might help you think about what to ask or say (and what not to ask or say) when you talk to a friend or family member who is adopting. I read some of these elsewhere so they haven't even necessarily come up for me, but I think it's a public service to let people know anyway!

For the record, I haven't been offended by anything anyone has said to me, so if you read this and think you violated some rule, don't worry about it! Just be aware for the people you might encounter in the future. I have had a great time talking with family about our process.

DO: Feel free to ask about the adoption! Some people are hesitant to bring it up, particularly when they know things are stalled and don't want to bring up a source of stress. But it is so good to know that you are thinking about us and praying about the situation!

DON'T: Ask how much it costs financially, unless you are a very close friend or family member (or you want to donate money)! It ends up sounding like we are "buying" a baby. Kind of awkward. There are just a lot of administrative and travel costs to make things happen.

DO: Ask questions about the child (ex. do you know the gender? have you thought about names? do you have a room set up?). These are the things you might ask a person who is pregnant, and since adoptive parents are also "expecting" a child, it makes sense to ask! You also have the chance to ask other questions you wouldn't get to ask a biological parent, such as where the baby is currently living and how old he/she is likely to be when he/she comes home.

DON'T: If you have brought up the issue of money (which I've already said you shouldn't!), do not suggest that adoption is "probably comparable" to the costs of pregnancy and childbirth. Health insurance doesn't cover adoption! However, there is a substantial federal tax credit that helps defray costs, which is helpful.

DO: Encourage adoptive parents to hang in there when things are delayed or moving slowly. They can use the encouragement! Leaving comments on this blog, as some of you are doing, is a great help to me. It's easy to do. If you don't have a special online account, just check the box for "anonymous" when you leave your comment, and be sure to put your name at the end in the text itself, such as "Lots of love, Aunt Jaynie and Uncle Steve"....hint hint :)

DON'T: Compare the open-ended adoption wait to the length of pregnancy (as in, "well, even a pregnancy takes 9 months"). Absent any medical problems, a couple knows, immediately upon learning of their pregnancy, the approximate month their child will arrive. An open-ended wait is a completely different experience with a different kind of stress. Be sensitive to this when talking with someone who is in the waiting stage.

DO: Talk about other things besides the adoption. Life is multifaceted!

DON'T: Suggest that those who have decided to adopt will now become pregnant. It sounds like Murphy's Law, but the fact is it very seldom happens. I found the statistic today -- it's roughly 5-10%. It's surprising to me how many people do in fact know someone for whom this was the case. Maybe it's because those stories are spread more often than the story of a couple who adopts all of their children. But what concerns me more is that it gives the impression that one has "given up" on a first choice and is "settling" for a second choice (but still secretly hoping for that first one). It's almost given as a word of comfort, as if the news of an adoption is bad news and they hope it can be avoided. Of course, people don't mean it that way, but it is hard to hear it any differently. An unexpected bend in the road, created by God himself, should not be characterized this way! We are very excited about what God is doing, even if we cannot always predict how he is going to do it. It is remarkable to think how we will look back and see God's hand in something that has been difficult and confusing and joyful at the same time.

I think the best example of a great reaction to the news of an adoption is the way a friend of mine here in Gainesville reacted. I told her I had some big news. She grabbed my arm and got all excited and said "You're pregnant!". I said "no". She waited. I said "We're adopting a baby!" She picked up right where she had left off, eyes lit up and hugging me and telling me all about how it is going to be a girl because she wants a "niece". She joined in the joy! That's the best thing you can do. A lot of adoptive parents have waited a long time for the excitement of being a parent, and it's worth celebrating that the blessing is on the way. Thanks so much to all of our friends and family who are continuing to wait and celebrate with us!

Just so you don't think I've forgotten about the blog...

2006-08-18T18:15:00.000-04:00

We have no news about the adoption. However, there are now several agencies (maybe 6 or so) that have obtained their NGO status. I don't know where our agency is in the queue, but in any case our agency's estimate of early September for getting NGO may be fairly reasonable. No one knows yet how long it will take to be reaccredited after that. Some thing it will just be a month, others have said sometime in the fall, and still others that the reaccreditations may not be complete even by the end of this year. It is all speculation at this point.

Please keep praying for this situation.

In lighter news, we've been on vacation in Canada all week, and I spent the last 4 days without e-mail (or running water or a real toilet). It was a blessing!

Slogging right along

2006-08-07T15:56:00.000-04:00

I keep waiting for something newsworthy to post, but there isn't a whole lot to say. There is one piece of GOOD news, and that is that one agency has obtained NGO status and the others supposedly learned how to do so at the July 26 meeting. Our agency is guessing early September for the NGO status.

So why am I not more enthusiastic? At this point, it appears that the reaccreditation that was supposed to follow soon after the NGO registration may not be as soon as we had hoped. Let me be clear that we just don't know: it might be, or it might not be. Why? It appears that because of the new NGO law, Russia has realized that they need to make adjustments to their current accreditation law. (For those interested in the politics, the NGO registration is administered by the Ministry of Justice and the agency accreditation is administered by the Ministry of Education). We had initially thought that these two things would be independent. However, it is possible that Russia will delay reaccreditations until they have got the new law passed and a new procedure in place. Or they might NOT delay those who are waiting. We don't know. The silver lining is that the new law is supposed to make the accreditations have a longer term - instead of one year at a time - and to make the process smoother in the future. (Forgive me if I'm not jumping up and down yet).

Our pastor made an analogy in church yesterday that helped me realize that I needed to handle this situation differently. He told us that he has a person from Microsoft coming to look at his computer. He is hoping to get some things fixed by this person, but is insistent that some things must not be touched: namely, his access to iTunes and his Google. These are off limits to the Microsoft guy; he is a consultant only. Jesus, however, is not a consultant. We don't get to hang onto things (my personal favorite being control or the illusion of control). We need to trust him with all of it. Now if you asked me if I trust Jesus with this adoption, I would say "yes". But if you looked at my life of researching these issues, worrying, and obsessing, you would see that it couldn't really be true.

So I am recommitting myself to trust him with this, with his help. Your prayers are appreciated.

Upcoming Meeting

2006-07-21T17:40:00.000-04:00

I have been following the saga of adoption agencies trying to become registered as NGOs. There is some sense that a few have been told what corrections/additions they needed in order to have their applications approved, which is a good sign. More importantly though, there is now a meeting scheduled for July 26 between a U.S. national adoption organization and a high-up Russian official to try to clarify the situation. This is good news!

PLEASE pray with me that there will be clarification and that many agencies (including ours) will learn exactly what they need to know to get us back on the road again!

The Current State of Things and a Funny Story

2006-07-07T17:16:00.000-04:00

I have been in touch with our caseworker to find out more about the current state of things. The situation is as follows: not only does our agency need to be re-accredited, but they (along with ALL other adoption agencies) are also subject to a new law passed in Russia this April. The new law requires adoption agencies and many other kinds of organizations to "register" as non-governmental organizations (NGO's) with the Russian Ministry of Justice by October. This is distinct from becoming "accredited" by the Ministry of Education, which is what they always have to do. Our caseworker said that this is what is holding things up (along with the bureaucrats' vacations). The story is that our agency first needs to get registered as an NGO and then they will be able to reaccredited after that. Our caseworker expects that everything will start moving in August/September. Not sure what this means for us directly, but we are really hoping for a travel date in September.

One thing I have learned from some adoption chat rooms (with some very informed people) is that no agency has yet obtained the NGO registration. The administration is apparently in the midst of being established and there are still bugs in the process, such that the applications that have gone in have been rejected for technical reasons.

There is one good thing about the situation: I had been worried that the accreditation and NGO registration would operate independently, and that somehow we might be allowed to travel upon reaccreditation but then be caught between trips if the NGO registration isn't established by October. Our caseworker assured me that they will only begin trips again when both things are established, so we will not get caught. That was comforting!

Another thing pertaining to the adoption is that we just met two families who recently adopted from Russia. They have told us that, since we did not give a gender preference for our child, we are more likely to get a boy than a girl (sorry Burcin!). Apparently girls are more often specially requested. We are happy with either one, but it's nice to know what to expect (even if only in probability).

Prayer requests:

* for NGO registration to start moving in Russia

* for patience for us as we wait

Now for my funny story.

Rob and I had an all-day date last weekend in Tampa. We were looking for a place to have lunch, and I found that we had two coupons in our Entertainment book, one of which was for a wings/burgers place. We thought it sounded good, so we found it on the map and made our way there. I should have known something was up (I sort of did) when we drove into the parking lot and it was full of pickup trucks. "I wonder if this is more of a 'guy' place?". Hmm.

So we walked in and our hostess asked us whether we'd like to sit inside or outside. We had to look at each other and try to communicate nonverbally about what we should do. Not about where to sit, but about what we should do now that we found ourselves in...you guessed it...an imitation Hooters! I'll just call it "Wing Place". Our lovely Wing Place hostess was in a little low-cut tank top, shorts that were more like a swimsuit bottom, and thick, shiny tights that were among the tackiest things I'd ever seen. Wow. But we decided, hey, we're here, we're hungry, and they have TV's. We can watch World Cup soccer and pretend not to notice the decor or staff :)

The food was actually very good (though as you might guess, we won't be going back!) and our service was also good. Our waitress was exactly like a normal waitress but probably a little chilly in her costume...er...uniform. The most disturbing part of the whole thing was that there were many kids there. There were a pair of dads with each of their sons. There were couples with babies. But most of all, there was a pair of grandparents with their perhaps 8-year-old granddaughter for her BIRTHDAY! The waitresses sang to the girl, and she left holding up the free t-shirt she'd gotten and showing it to her grandma. On the back of the t-shirt, it said "Top 10 Reasons to Eat at Wing Place" and every alternating reason was "The Wing Place Girls". Eeeeeeeeek! They might as well have given her a calendar (which, by the way, they did have).

What does this have to do with adoption? Well, isn't it obvious? We won't be bringing our child to Wing Place!

Locks of Love

2006-06-18T20:50:00.000-04:00

A great way to help out little kids is to donate hair -- check out www.locksoflove.org .

The minimum donation is 10 inches, but my hair was so hot and frizzy in the humidity that I couldn't wait any longer, even though the result is rather short hair. I'm happy with it! Some have said it's good "mommy hair" :)

No news...but I'm curious about something

2006-06-15T14:30:00.000-04:00

You should see the amount of action on the adoption internet bulletin boards these days. Roughly half of all the usually-accredited adoption agencies have lost their accreditation in the last month because the Russian government did not streamline renewals. Many people are stranded between trips and don't know when they'll get to go bring their children home. The answer from all experienced people, and an adoption attorney I talked to, is that we all just have to wait it out. A person could start over with a new agency that is currently accredited, but this wouldn't likely save time (and definitely wouldn't save money!). There are simply no hard and fast timelines with Russian adoptions.

Something I'm curious about is this: everyone I talk to is equally convinced that we will get "the" child that we are supposed to get. Someone pointed out yesterday that this delay almost certainly means that the child we bring home will not be the same one we would have brought home if we had been traveling now. And yet even he was convinced that the child we will be getting is the "right" one.

Let me be clear: I myself believe this, too. But there is a specific basis for this: I believe there is a God who has a plan that will not be thwarted, and who uses even bad things (like bureaucratic delays!) to accomplish his purpose. The prime example of this is how God used a bad thing like the killing of his Son to reconcile us to God.

Many of the people I talk to do not have this view of God. Many don't profess any belief in God at all. I am curious as to why they are convinced that there is a "right" way for things to turn out, and that "what's meant to be will happen." Maybe this is something God teaches all of us, regardless of our interest or belief in him, by his grace.

I am certainly convinced that God has a plan for our child's life, and that we will get the "right" one :) I can't wait for you all to meet this little "right" one.

An Amusing Story + How I Am Like Angelina Jolie

2006-06-09T16:21:00.000-04:00

Well, there's no news on the adoption front. However, I know some of you check this blog regularly and you might be wondering if I stopped using it. So let me re-iterate that whenever there is any news you will hear about it here!

Since there's no news, I'm forced to come up with something else to write - so I have an amusing story, and then a short reflection on adoption.

Amusing story:

I suppose many people, at some time or another, have tried to run up a "down" escalator. Most of the time this is for the challenge of it, or the scene is in some cliche comedy (in which hilarity ensues repeatedly). This week I was in Athens, Greece at a conference. Can you believe this is related? I was headed to the subway in Athens to get myself and my suitcase to the airport. In order to avoid taking up the whole width of the escalator going down to the trains, I decided to pull my suitcase directly behind me instead of slightly to the side. As I got onto the escalator, my suitcase hit a bump and I lost hold of it. Picture my surreal moment as I looked at my suitcase on the ground at the top as the escalator brought me down. (There was no one else there, as I'm sure they would have grabbed it for me). All I could think was "I'm going to lose sight of it, and hopefully it will still be there when I come back up the other escalator." Then I remembered - this was not an elevator. I was not frozen. So I did it - I booked it up the "down" escalator. It was a weird feeling, but I'm happy to say that I made it and rescued my suitcase! I am definitely in training for our future unpredictable adventure traveling in Russia.

Short Reflection:

On the plane yesterday (10 hour flight from Athens to NY) there was some news-type show in which Angelina Jolie was being interviewed about her relief work. I am not usually very interested in celebrities - they are just people who get way too much attention for their work (am I a jealous academic?). I'm even skeptical about the relief work they get involved in. But it was interesting - Angelina was asked about her two adopted children, from Cambodia and Ethiopia. The interviewer wanted to know how she explained the adoption to the kids, especially because she was (at the time of the interview) pregnant. She explained that she said to her little boy (I'm paraphrasing a bit), "You didn't grow inside mommy's belly, but there was a wonderful woman in Cambodia who did that for you and mommy is so thankful for her. She wasn't able to take care of you, and so you were alone, just for a little while, until mommy could bring you home." So there I sat, choked up and wiping my eyes with the airplane blanket, thinking about that "little while" that our little one is experiencing right now without a mommy or daddy. I am so glad that it will only be a little while! And I keep praying that God would help them know they are loved even now.

Hard to believe that Angelina Jolie and I have something in common. Maybe I shouldn't be so hard on celebrities.

The first bump in the road - it's a doozy

2006-05-22T07:12:00.000-04:00

No more can I say "Yay for bureaucracy."

We've just learned that while our agency had hoped to get us on the road to Russia in the next few weeks, it is not going to happen. This is a disappointment, though it is one of the most common types of delays.

As with most American agencies, ours needs to be re-accredited every year by the Russian government around this time (our agency's expiration date is June 6). While this used to be a formality and create no delays, there were some serious child abuse cases last year regarding Russia adoptive children. These have made the government much more cautious about automatic renewals. This means our agency and all the others will likely take some time to be re-accredited.

Because the Russian government almost shuts down over the summer due to to the bureaucrats' vacations, our agency's best guess is that new travel dates won't be established until at least August. This means the earliest we might likely come home with the baby after a second trip would be around October or November. Please pray with us that we will have a baby home by Christmas!

We will keep you updated, though there won't likely be much news for a while now. Thanks for following our story and keep in touch.

Sarah (& Rob)

The time is near....

2006-05-09T21:30:00.000-04:00

I got an email from our caseworker today. She said she had talked to our agency's associate in Siberia and the associate had told her that our travel date would likely be selected within a week! Typically, when they inform us of the travel date, it is about 2 weeks away. This means there's a chance we will actually be traveling by the end of May!

We'll keep you updated.

Sarah

An Early Baby Shower!

2006-05-01T23:24:00.000-04:00

While we are waiting for our invitation to travel (hopefully coming in the next few weeks!) our dear friend Burcin and roomie Sara Joy decided to throw me a baby shower!

It was a great mix of friends from my department and church. The guests had to be creative, since we don't know the gender or exact age of our child. I thought I'd post some pictures of my friends and of their clever gifts!

Here are SJ and Burcin getting ready!

The food was awesome: chocolate fondue and other goodies :) I may also be the only mommy-to-be to be able to drink sangria at my shower!

This food was less delicious, but a fun game (I got second place for correctly identifying unlabeled baby food).

Me and my girls :)

Present time!

I put one of my old dolls on this great snail rocker from Kristine:

Eve got me a beautiful baby scrapbook, and Krista got stickers to go with it...

...along with an adorable cow puppet (right). Mandy got us the finger puppets (left) and Lynne won the prize for the most creative gift with the Philosopher Puppets (middle)!

And Katie gave the gifts most appreciated by Rob!

I couldn't put everything here, but you get the idea. We SO appreciate people's generosity, creativity, and support in this adventure! Thanks for helping bring this whole thing to life day by day as we get ready to go. We'll update the blog as soon as we get our travel dates!

Sarah

Moving right along....good news from the INS!

2006-04-22T10:41:00.000-04:00

We've been assembling some of the stuff for our second set of paperwork, and got two big envelopes in the mail yesterday that were VERY encouraging.

First, we got a pack of a few more apostilled documents back from Tallahassee (which we sent last week - some additional forms our agency wanted from us). We've learned that they have a fairly quick turnaround time by mail (thanks, Jennifer!), so it was much more convenient to send our few documents than to drive to Tallahassee again. We'll probably only drive there once more, when we are carrying particularly important stuff before our second trip.

Second, we got our adoption approval from the INS!! It was just two weeks from fingerprinting to approval - seems like some kind of record! It is a delight to check one more thing off the list. Especially if you're me. I've been known to add things to lists that I have already accomplished, just so I can check them off right from the start. But seriously, there are so many possible ways in which things can be delayed, it is extremely encouraging every time something goes smoothly.

I should also let you all know, in case you are watching the news really closely, that the recent threats to Russian adoption accreditation do not apply to us. There was recently a statement issued by the Russian Deputy Prosecutor General threatening to revoke the accreditation of 12 adoption agencies in Russia. Ours is NOT on the list. (Even if it were, there are often threats being made and it's not clear whether they will go anywhere).

***Please pray for the adoptive parents working with the threatened agencies, that they will not panic, and for a positive resolution to the whole situation.

***Praise God for some new online friends I have made who are adopting through the same agency, and from the same region, as us. I have been following their journeys as they go ahead of us - for example, some people who made their first trip in early February are now on their way home from their second trip with two new kids in tow! Another couple finished their first trip in early March and has been given a court date in mid-May for their second trip. Finally, another couple is on their way out for their first trip in a week. They turned in their dossier about a month before we did....so it is really encouraging and exciting to see things moving along!

I had anticipated writing some reflections, but you'll have to settle for this one: I do not really enjoy grading papers, but I have 35 papers (5-7 pages) to read, written on topics such as Sports Economics, Immigration and Higher Education. I love teaching....but I don't love grading.

That is my reflection.

We'll keep you updated :)

Sarah

We are in the pipeline!

2006-04-14T10:23:00.000-04:00

Our set of documents (Dossier #1) has begun moving forward! Valerie sent it off yesterday. It first goes to the umbrella agency with which our smaller agency is affiliated, and after approval from them it will make its way over to Omsk! This processing time overall is supposed to be about a month, and then we will hear from them soon after that with an invitation to travel. So don't expect too many new postings in the near future...although we may be able to do a bit more introspection now that the first batch of paperwork is done (don't worry, there will be more!).

I think it's going to be fine...

2006-04-10T18:46:00.000-04:00

I talked with Valerie again - this time on the phone (for the first time! we've also just done email). It seems that I misunderstood one aspect of the checklist, so I need to send some additional stuff, but FORTUNATELY I already have it ready to go. (I would explain the misunderstanding, but you'd all agree that my interpretation was very reasonable!). I just need to go make a bunch more copies and send another Express mail out tomorrow. She'll get the package on Wednesday and should be able to start processing it.

I learned something about apostilles today. Even when you have two identical documents apostilled (such as two copies of Rob's green card), each apostille has its own identification number. This means you should not do what we did: for our records, we just photocopied one of each document, not realizing that we should have copies of both because they have different IDs. This, along with the misunderstanding, is the reason we need to make more copies and send some more stuff. Oh well. We're almost there!

A very short update

2006-04-10T12:21:00.000-04:00

I just got the news from Valerie that she has received all of our forms and our check. She said she'd be checking everything over tonight, so I will hopefully know tomorrow whether anything needs to be redone. Pray that it doesn't!

Hooray for bureaucracy!

2006-04-06T22:13:00.000-04:00

Yesterday was our big day of bureaucracy, and it went remarkable smoothly.

It all began when we left the house around 6:30 a.m. and drove up to Jacksonville (2 hours) to give fingerprints at the INS office (now under "Homeland Security"). I was expecting a big stone building in the downtown area...trying to find parking, dealing with mean immigration officers, etc. Basically, I was expecting the Milwaukee office (we went there a few times for Rob's immigration stuff since he's Canadian). Well, in Jacksonville it is instead a one-story building in a business park, with its own parking lot. It reminded me of Rob's engineering firm in Madison! At the door, we were met by an officer who told us to put basically everything but paperwork back in the car (fine) and then we went in through a metal detector to find a place that looked remarkably like a DMV. They gave us a number and we just waited there, ready to renew our driver's licenses...er...give fingerprints for our adoption application.

While we waited, I noticed two large photos framed on the wall - George W. Bush and Michael Chertoff (the Homeland Security guy). It reminded me of my semester in the Middle East in 1997, where every place in Jordan had a picture of (at the time) King Hussein. I also know that some Catholic places have pictures of the Pope on display. I didn't feel like these guys really measured up, but oh well. Rob was less fascinated by this than I was. He had a Tolkien book with him. Anyway, they called our names and we gave our prints, and that was that! All told, it took maybe 45 minutes. Fantastic! Now we wait for an approval from the INS for our adoption -- we don't need this approval until our second trip to Russia, so there shouldn't be any problem getting it on time.

We then headed over to Tallahassee to the Secretary of State's office where they apostille documents (i.e. verify that the notarizations are legitimate). We were making such good time that we even stopped for a fairly leisurely brunch at the Cracker Barrel. As we got close to Tallahassee, I figured we'd need to head downtown to a big office building, find parking, etc. Can you believe....it was outside the city, in a business park, with its own parking lot! I guess I didn't realize how different bureaucracy is down here -is this a Southern thing? There was no line in the office, and they looked through all our documents - 24 of them - and stapled approvals on them. It took less than half an hour...and a bargain at 10 bucks each (ugh).

We immediately went to a UPS store and made multiple copies of everything (we ended up making about 150 photocopies!) before sending our packet off to Valerie, our adoption agency caseworker. She will receive them all tomorrow. So, do you think we forgot anything? We hope not. But actually, Valerie already figured one thing out....she asked if I remembered to include the first part of the fees to be paid to the Russian government. Ooops! That check will be sent express mail tomorrow!

If everything is on the up and up, our packet will go the umbrella adoption agency with which our agency is affiliated, get approved, and will then go over to the Omsk Department of Education (DOE). This processing should take about a month. Sometime soon after that we should get permission to travel. I just learned today that we probably will NOT get a particular child's picture/info before we go, but that we will arrive and meet someone at the Omsk DOE who will show us information on a particular child they've chosen for us - we can agree to meet the child or ask for a different referral if we have some kind of concern (such as medical issues). Once we meet and confirm our intentions to adopt a particular baby, then the ball starts rolling for the Russian government to organize the adoption - so we will come home babyless to wait, and go back a month or two later when everything is ready.

For all you pray-ers out there:

* pray that our documents are all in order

* pray specifically that the umbrella agency will accept some documents that were signed in black ink, which we've just been told were supposed to be in blue ink (I wish I were kidding - no one had told us about the importance of non-black ink, which helps them know it's not a photocopy). It wouldn't be too bad to do these forms over, since they are among the few that don't require notarization/apostilles, but it would still be a delay.

* pray for my work, as I need to do some catching up from my travel day on Wednesday

* pray that our baby is doing all right in his/her crib right now!

* also, we thank God for some very sweet new friends who (unfortunately) are moving away and (fortunately) have provided us with a crib, rocking chair, and dresser for the baby! How nice to have one less thing to think about (or really, three less things...)

Thanks again for so much support - please feel free to leave comments (you can do so anonymously, without an account, by clicking on any set of comments and then adding your own).

We'll let you know as soon as we have heard more about whether our packet is confirmed to be complete!

Sarah

Timeline & a few pictures

2006-04-02T17:10:00.000-04:00

Lots of people are curious about the adoption process. Ours involves all the steps of a typical adoption, but will likely take less time because of the agency and region we chose. There are an incredible number of details (probably more than some of you are interested in hearing about!). We've been marking off milestones so far and thought you might be interested in them...occasionally we've included a picture too.

Jan. 6 Registered with our agency to adopt from Siberia, Russia. This agency helps us with all the paperwork and connects us with a child (and a translator!) in Russia. Our caseworker is Valerie, who is from Russia but works here in the U.S. for the adoption agency.

Jan. 25 Spent 5 hours being interviewed for our Home Study (conducted by a local psychologist)

Jan. 26-Feb. 22 Got background checks from the City, State, and FBI; got medical approval from our doctors.

Feb. 22 Received Rob’s birth certificate

Feb. 23 Sent Rob’s passport renewal application (w/ birth certificate)

Feb. 23 Sent packet of background checks & copy of Rob’s birth certificate to the Home Study agency, to finalize their report

Mar. 18 Received final Home Study – we are officially approved! I was so happy that I even took a picture of the envelope.

Mar. 20 Sent I-600A (immigration form) and Home Study to U.S.C.I.S. (Citizenship and Immigration Services, formerly “INS”) in Jacksonville

Mar. 24 Received invitation for fingerprinting from Jacksonville U.S.C.I.S.

Mar. 24 Finished redoing the walls in the baby's room, after a couple weeks of scraping/painting with much help from friends!

Here's me, scraping a wall that had layers of paint and wallpaper.

Rob was sanding the walls. The air was full of dust - you can see it in the picture!

This is our housemate, Sara Joy, who is an intern with a campus ministry for the year. We are sad that she'll be moving away this summer - it's been a great time! And as you can see, we put her to work too :)

Here's our good friend Burcin from the Econ department. She came over for two different painting days and we listened to 1980s power ballads - quite memorable!

Mar. 25 Got carpet installed in the baby’s room! Below is our final product. The walls are very light green, with one a shade darker and textured. The carpet is actually a light beige, but the flash on the camera made it look darker. We'll be decorating it with a border of musical notes (pictures to come later).

Mar. 29 Received Rob’s new passport

Mar. 30 Got our results from our psychological exams (the MMPI personality test). The official letters state: “Results appear valid and not consistent with any psychopathology.” Phew!

Mar. 31 Got documents notarized at the bank for Dossier # 1 (first of 2 packets of forms). The ladies who work at the bank are so excited!

*** below are the plans for the future and all dates are subject to change! ***

Week of April 2-9 Planning to give our fingerprints at the U.S.C.I.S. (Jacksonville) and to get our notarized documents apostilled (Tallahassee) so that we can submit them to our agency. An "apostille" is a document/seal from the Secretary of State verifying that a notarized document was notarized by a legitimate notary (no, I'm not kidding!).

The following month or two: wait for a referral of a child from our agency

Soon after referral: travel to Russia for a week to meet our child

The following one-three months: get additional documents for Dossier # 2 and wait for a court date from Russia

Soon after court date is announced: travel to Russia to go to court and pick up our child, and stay for at least 10 days (the government’s mandatory waiting period)

Welcome to our blog! Intro and FAQ

2006-04-02T16:37:00.000-04:00

Many of our friends and family have been curious about our upcoming adoption, and we thought this site would be a great way to keep you updated with all of our news and prayer requests.

This first post will be pretty long, to answer lots of the questions we've gotten about our adoption. We'll also be posting a timeline and pictures of our preparations as things move forward. (No, we don't have a picture of the baby yet!)

THE HAMERSMA ADOPTION F.A.Q. (Frequently Asked Questions)

1. Why are you guys adopting a baby?

We have always planned to have children, and we have been praying that God would send a baby our way. While adoption is not the way we initially expected to build our family, we are really excited to see the way God’s plan is unfolding! There is a child out there who belongs with us, and though he or she is still unknown to us, this baby is part of our family. Since I (Sarah) am from a family where adoption isn’t unusual – in fact, my brother is adopted – we’ve seen firsthand the way that families are built on love and commitment, and not simply genetics. It’s becoming more and more clear what a privilege it is to start our family this way!

2. Why are you adopting a baby from Russia?

There are an overabundance of American couples who want to adopt children – far beyond the number of babies given up for adoption each year in the U.S. (this is partly due to the ~ 1,000,000 pregnancies terminated every year here). However, when one looks overseas, the story is exactly the opposite. I found a statistic stating that only one in ten Russian orphans will ever be adopted. Similarly, there are thousands of children in China (mostly girls), Guatemala (mostly boys), Korea, and other countries who are waiting for families. We prayed about this and decided on Russia – the timeline is fast (more on that later) and we could adopt a fairly young child. This is particularly true for the region of Russia we have chosen, which is part of Siberia. We also think it will be very interesting to travel to Russia and experience the culture our child has experienced for his or her early life.

3. How did you select an adoption agency?

We registered on the websites of several agencies to get more information. We became familiar with the basic process and costs, so just needed to figure out the next step. Then one day we received an email from a specific agency (we are asked not to discuss agencies by name on the web) describing the particular need for people to adopt children from parts of Siberia in Russia. The process seems to be more streamlined than some other regions, and the children tend to be healthier than in some other parts of Russia. We looked through the pictures in the email of children who’d recently been adopted, and (of course!) they were so adorable that we were sold! We also like the organization – while they are not officially a Christian organization, the ideas of “having faith” and “being faithful” are prominent in their mission. The online message board for parents like us is full of encouragement from the Bible as we all wind our way through this process. There are so many great Biblical examples of prayerful waiting…and that is what we are trying to do.

4. How old will the baby be?

Babies in Russia are not considered officially “orphans” until they have been in the orphanage system for at least 6 months. Combining this waiting period with bureaucracy, the youngest are usually 12-18 months when they are adopted. The most recent adoption I know of (by a couple working with the same agency as us, adopting from the same region) involves a baby who was 11 months old when the adoptive parents went to meet him, and will be 13-14 months old when they bring him home.

5. When do you go to Russia?

We will need to make two trips to Siberia. On the first trip, we will get to meet the baby that has been selected for us and (prayerfully!) confirm that we want to proceed with adoption of that baby. If for some reason we feel wrong about the particular match that has been made, we will have an opportunity to meet a different child. We will leave (after about a week) knowing the child we will adopt…but we don’t get to bring them home yet. At this point, the adoption enters deeper into the legal system and we wait for a court date, hopefully within one-two months, at which time we will go back and legally adopt our baby in Russia and stay for about two weeks. We hope to make the first trip in May or June, but it will depend upon the speed of bureaucracy in our region in dealing with our application. If we get to go by June, then we would expect to make our second trip by the end of the summer! (However, there are many places in which the process can be delayed so we are trying to be flexible.)

6. Have you been “accepted” to adopt a child?

Yes! We are not waiting to hear whether we will adopt, but simply which child we will adopt. We have been approved through background checks and a careful study of our home life (a 5-hour interview!).

7. Will your child be a U.S. citizen?

Yes. We will need to fill out some paperwork, but they will certainly be a U.S. citizen. Some Canadian friends have also told us that our baby will automatically be a citizen of Canada as well, since Rob is Canadian – hopefully that is the case, since it would great for our child to have dual citizenship. We still need to look into this.

8. Is there a chance you will come back with more than one child?

Not really – all of our documentation is set up for one child only. I am sure it will be hard to leave the rest of the children behind in the orphanage, but realistically it makes sense for us to start our family with just one child, particularly since it is our first child and neither of us plans to stay home full-time. Instead, we plan to stagger our work schedules and get some part-time help with child care in our home. I will be doing a lot of work from home in the Fall semester, as I do not have teaching responsibilities but instead will be focusing on research projects. I will still spend a few days each week at UF and plan to stay fully connected with my work as a professor there. I will be teaching again next Spring. We both love our jobs, and our colleagues have demonstrated a lot of support and flexibility already. We feel so blessed!

We're happy to answer other questions too! We'll be using this blog to keep you updated, answer questions, and reflect on this fascinating experience.