Coincidences ... God Works in Miraculous Ways

I've already confessed that I am 'well connected' on a variety of adoption-related boards. Over the course of the last couple of weeks, I have been blown away by how small the world is and how we truly believe that God must be leading us to the right little girl.

Last week, I start conversing via email with a lady that had received her referral appointment for Moscow City. She is with the 'sister' agency of ours. She mentioned that she had been first in line after the accreditation but that, due to a missing document, her family fell into place after ours in line for a referral. We have since emailed about how Mia looks like she belongs in our family and how the referral photo she has looks just like her. Strange.

Today, I got an email from someone on the FRUA (Families for Russian and Ukranian Adoption) boards that had been interested in my story of meeting a 14 month old raven-haired beauty and signing our letter of intent. She mentioned her family had received a referral of a little girl named Munison Malakan and that she was born on 2/23/07. OMG! That's MIA! Apparently, they turned down the referral because they were looking for a little boy and thus Mia's referral came to us.

I also got an email (yes, I get a LOT of email these days :) from the wife of the family that we met at the MOE office. Can you imagine that they were able to find me (okay ... so my email tamaranathan and my various log on names are the same so it may not be that difficult)? They accepted the referral of their son and were hoping that they would be able to return soon to pick him up. How exciting!

All of this reinforces my belief that the world is such a small place. And, obviously God is looking out for all us that we're getting the right children for our families. For those of you waiting to meet your children, I know this will happen for you.

One More Hurdle

After a smooth first trip, we obviously needed a bit of drama in our life to spice up our journey to Mia. We felt confident that we had paid our dues with Sasha but obviously one more payment was needed.

When we originally started our journey to find our daughter, we had thought that Guatemala would be a nice option. The children are BEAUTIFUL, young, in foster care and Guatemala would be a new country for us (okay .. this wasn't the deciding factor just one of several factors we considered) and the timeframe to adopt was really quick. In April 2007, we submitted our I-600A for Guatemala. As the year progressed, Guatemala adoptions came under a lot of scrutiny and the near term future of adoptions in that country didn't look promising. We decided to switch countries. We thought about the Ukraine (yes, another country we hadn't been to ... what can we say ... we like to see the world) but eventually decided to go back to Russia after finding an agency that seemed like they could help us with minimal challenges.

In November, we submitted our application to our new agency and sent our social worker, Nikki, a note to let her know that we had selected Russia as our country. She had been holding off completing our homestudy awaiting our country selection. She prepared our homestudy and got our DCFS letter and everything was sent to USCIS in Chicago in December. We received our 171-H (Notice of Favorable Determination Concerning Application for Advance Processing of Orphan Petition) in early February. I followed the instructions outlined on the USCIS website and the I-600A form to make sure that our country was changed from Guatemala to Russia in early March. We've been waiting for confirmation of this change for two months now.

Fast forward to last weekend returning home from Russia. We still didn't have any letter saying that USCIS had successfully changed our country. I emailed the US Embassy in Moscow and they haven't received our cabled 171-H. Huh ... what does it take to get this done? I have a copy ... can I just cable it to them myself? What's their number?? But alas ... no. I posted our challenge on the Illinois Adoption board (yes, there are board for EVERYTHING and I must admit that I am on most of them ... a sickness? Perhaps but it does provide me a ton of great information and many good friends). A very nice woman emailed me personally and provided a phone number and email address to the USCIS office in Chicago that handles this. I emailed all the information that I have to this address. The US Embassy provided me a different email address to yet another government agency. I copied my original note and emailed everything to them. They emailed promptly back and said they haven't ever received a Visa for us. What??? I can see them not getting the Russian visa but no visa ... not even one for Guatemala. ARGH!

I finally get a response from USCIS. They don't have a home study nor a DCFS letter to support our file. WHAT??? I thought that they had to have everything prior to us being sent a 171-H. I then sent everything to our social worker, Nikki. Now a bit on Nikki ... she's a spunky woman who has years in the adoption profession. She knows EVERYTHING there is to know about this process. As I was typing, I was thanking God that we have Nikki for a social worker and not someone else. Nikki evertually answers (I had warned her that we might have an emergency on Tuesday if I couldn't resolve this on my own) my plea for HELP! and calls. She discovers as I had that USCIS thinks they don't have two needed documents. She talks about all the documents that USCIS have lost recently. This doesn't make me feel any better. I send her a message asking how we could have received our 171-H without these documents. She says that USCIS must be totally confused. That makes two of us. I scan in our 171-H and send it to Nikki and USCIS. What I was hoping was that USCIS would say, "Oh, we must have filed your documents incorrectly. Let me take a look through this box over here in the corner. Perhaps it was just mis-filed. OH .. here it is! I'm pressing the buttons on the fax as I type this note to you. The Moscow Embassy should have it in 2 seconds." But alas ...

This morning, after two more messages to USCIS, they finally provide me a list of 'stuff' that they need to complete the change of country request. I think they typically mail you a list of needed items instead of telling you over email but I was .. umm .. insistent. They need an original homestudy and DCFS letter (which will be the same that they have already received but I digress) and a change of country letter (which they also have had for since March 6). I forwarded all this on to Nikki this morning including a scanned copy of the change of country letter so that she can pop everything into DHL today. Officer Dominguez from USCIS informed me that I should wait a week for them to get it in their department and then can follow up with a request to expedite the process. Can't they just write a note in our file that says that we need urgent assistance? We may have court in as early as four weeks so we don't need them to drag this out or mis-file any more documents or have any more drama at this point.

Mia is waiting ... and she needs sunlight .... so she can get some teeth (she's a pretty girl but she needs teeth). Okay all my friends with your good prayers ... please add us to your list that all our paperwork gets done quickly and in time for our court date. Mia needs your help!

Leavin' on a Jet Plane ... Don't Know When I'll Be Back Again :)

Ah yes, just like the song, we're getting ready to go to the airport to head to Frankfurt and then home. YEA! We're pretty excited about being home and seeing Baba and our two sons - the blond son and the furry son. There's just nothing that being at home no matter how great a trip you've had or how comfortable your accomodations are.

Our biggest challenge is, of course, fitting everything into our luggage. We purposely limited ourselves to two suitcases and now we're struggling to fit it all in but we will overcome let me tell you. The greatest obstacle is that the toy chest that we purchased doesn't fit in our suitcase so we'll see how they accomodate this at the airport. I would love it if they had one of those huge bubble wrap machines that we could re-pack it into something more durable for the long haul but something tells me this may not be in the cards. So ... we'll just have to see how it survives the trip.

We ate dinner at a little restaurant just next door called Shesh Besh (looks like Wew Bew in Russian). It is an Azeri restaurant and was pretty good. Their spicy lamb soup was excellent even with the mound of fresh dill floating atop (it's first one on the menu). The other soup we tried was a lamb meatball with a boiled potato that tasted of mint. Not as good. The funny thing is that the English menu had Russian then underneath it the English "translation"which was just the Azeri name spelled out like we would have any clue as to what it was. So ... after asking the waitress if she spoke Angleski and her bringing the manager over and asking him if he spoke Angleski they proceeded to bring out a worker from the kitchen who spoke beautiful Angleski and helped us understand the soup choices. We also ordered the Azeri bread which was very good but decided to pass on the 'special' Azeri yogurt drink (which probably had dill floating it knowing how such drinks have gone in the past here).

For our main courses, we opted for items that we understood like Shish Kabobs. We had a lamb and a veal shish kabob. The lamb turned out to be our favorite. We also got two potato and mushroom kabobs which came with a Russian version of green goddess sauce. Very tasty. We decided to try the Azeri pastries to finish off our meal. They all tasted very similar ... brown, dry and sweet; round, light, sweet and dry; diamond-shaped, light with apricots and dr'; square with sultanas and dry; square, and sweet with poppy seeds and dry .. well .. you get the picture. We decided that Azeri pastries weren't a fav of ours but perhaps they would've been awesome if we had opted for the special Azeri yogurt drink. Hmmm ... perhaps another time. For those of you who may dine here after us, they do accept all major credit cards and our dinner was about $80 including a couple glasses of white house wine. And, they have a no smoking section which was pleasant and air conditioning.

The night before we dined at One Red Square instead of Expedition as we had originally thought. When seeing that a starter was $100 a person and the main course would be $200 a person, we quickly thought that eating in an extreme dining experience on reindeer just wasn't worth it for this trip. Perhaps another time....

We started our evening by heading to a little cafe that's attached to Gum (looks like a hangman symbol or gamma in the greek alphabet ym). We had dined here a few times during the extremely hot 2006 summer. It has air conditioning and an English menu and the decor is modern and fun. We entered and found a table and waited quite a while for a server to assist us. We decided that a celebratory drink was in order and decided on Kir Royals. I must admit that I never expected a Kir Royal in Moscow to outdo their French counterparts but let me tell you they did. They were beautiful and tasty albeit at Moscow prices - $20 per drink. Good thing we brought all our breakfast and lunch food with us to save a bit of money. We also opted for the beef carpaccio which was so beautiful and quite tasty. Our other recommendations for future diners is to try their various risottos. They are fabulous and quite large for a portion. They also have various specials that are quite good. The bathrooms are large and clean and they do accept Visa.

So One Red Square is located obviously on Red Square. We decided to have a nice meal to celebrate signing our letter of intent to adopt Mia. We had another goal for the evening and that was to claim our 900th geocache. We had to solve a little puzzle prior to getting the coordinates for this cache. I had solved the puzzle at home and we clicked on the Garmin before we got to the gates to enter Red Square. Our trusty Garmin was quite confused and wasn't syncing up to the satellites so we went in hot pursuit of the hint - an air vent. Now the challenge with Russia is that there are police everywhere and we've been told that they are keen on stopping folks and asking them for a bribe. You can imagine my stress at seeing a police car parked in close vacinity of where we thought the cache to be hidden. How would they take to some foreigners feeling around inside various air vents?? How would we explain in Russian what we haven't been able to successfully explain to our law officials in the U.S. at times? Fortunately, the cache was hidden just next door to our restaurant and away from the police who we think were just hanging out on a smoke break. This is of me with the cache log that we've just signed. It says the date and our caching name, Tamaranathan (quite creative for a name don't you think) and in celebration of signing our letter of intent to adopt Mia. The funny thing about geocachers is that after posting our electronic log and uploading these photos, we started getting congratulations from various local cachers (local to Illinois that is). We never think we're all that but for some reason folks keep tabs on us and had seen us at 899 and halt (well halt for a few days) and knew we must be saving 900 for something good. When we hit 900, they went and looked at our logs that talk about our adoption and doing this in celebration of our future daughter. Pretty cool that people are so nice. We've also been asked what will we possibly do to top this for our 1000th ... go to the moon perhaps? Hmmm ... it does make me wonder what we could possibly do to top this. I'll have to give it a lot of thought ... perhaps it will be 1000 on the day that we adopt Mia. Similar in idea to our 900th but it would mean that we have a lot of caching to do prior to our next trip which could be SOON.

We popped over to the gift shop that is right next to the church across from One Red Square with the bell tower. (If you plan on visiting most churches in Russia, remember that women need to cover their head with a scarf). This gift shop was a bit pricey but had the traditional Russia dress that I had wanted to buy for Mia.

We found a couple more items for future gotcha day gifts which will make our quests for the next trip so much easier.

Then it was off to dinner. One Red Square is located in the basement of the Moscow historic museum. The prices are typical for Moscow but the food is good and the menu offers the history of the various Russian specialities.

We started with mushroom and gorganzola in a pillow which was absolutely outstanding. I was a little worried that the gorganzola would totally overpower the rest of the food but instead was used sparingly and extremely good (made me sad that Nathan and I had decided to split two appetizers so I had to share :) He had ordered a Kamchatka crab coquille which was okay and my first time having this type of crab.

We went in two different directions for our main course. I had a taste for duck so ordered a duck with orange sauce with a port berry sauce. How could you go wrong with duck? Nathan ordered the speciality fish dish, the Strelet, which made me laugh. First, Nathan rarely if ever would choose to eat fish but he chose this to try something that was a house speciality and very particular to Russia. Once our dishes were served and even after sampling both, I knew I had chosen correctly. And, my dish didn't stare back at me which I found comforting.

We also ordered a side of mashed potatoes and a side of buckwheat with mushrooms both which were very architectural and yes, they had dill sprinkled over the top and on the plate.

It is nearing the time for us to hit the road so I say Das Vidanya to all. Here's hoping that we can actually feel our legs by the time we land at O'Hare!

Mia's Referral Information

Okay ... for all those of you have wanted to know what's on the referral page ... (the one I had seen her photo on :) Although I tried to 'scam' the official referral (well, they handed it to me and asked if we'd accept it so I naturally thought it should go into my mighty waterproof green folder for her Lifebook .. any adoptive parent would have assumed the same thing), I didn't get a copy of the document.

Here is Mia's referral photo and translation from the 'Russian Children's Data Bank:

Case № 4hva
Region: Moscow
Name: Munisan M.
Siblings: Brothers and sisters do not
Possible forms of devices: adoption, guardianship (guardianship), Fostering
Date of Birth: February 2007
Sex: Female
Eyes: gray (really?? they are SO dark now .. )
Hair: Black

Day #3 Mia

We arrived to discover that no rooms were available inside the baby home to meet with Mia. So .. they had us go outside. Outside? They told us Tuesday that she had never been outside and thus the reason for her lack of teeth. This was her first time outside?!?! Wow. Perhaps teeth will be forthcoming soon :)

Miss Mia arrived dressed as Nanook of the North. Bless her heart, she looked like the scene from a Christmas Story where the little brother can't put his arms down while in his snow suit. And, no, there wasn't a freak blizzard in Moscow today. It was quite nice and we didn't even need coats (when I say we I mean Nathan nor I as all the Russians had coats on despite being sunny and warm). So .. at least she was dressed in more girlie colors :)

Nathan headed outside with Mia while I finished talking to a caregiver regarding Mia's likes / dislikes. . The chief doctor was still not in today so I'wasn't able to ask any of the detailed medical questions like allergies, medications, etc. We were able to go over things at a higher level on Tuesday which they probably felt covered it all but I would've liked to have asked these additional questions as when I asked them about Sasha I found out that he was on phenabut and had a seizure. Sometimes it pays to be thorough.

Mia seemed completely overwhelmed by her visit outside. She had a challenge focusing on anything. We introduced Katya the Bear that was a gift from Sasha..

We also gave her a story that Vlad, the director of transportation, had translated so I had the chance to use my fabulous (totally sarcastic) scrapbooking skills to cut and tape the translated version into the book that I had prepared for Mia. It's actually a sweet story of how Sasha wanted a sister more than anything and how we found her in Moscow, Russia. We also left a disposable camera for photos in the interim in addition to Katya, the bear.

Katya has our voices on it that say, "We'll be back to bring you back soon. Love, Mommy, Daddy and Sasha". It has both Nathan and my voice on it and we've slept with it to add our scent in case that helps her feel more comfortable when we return. Vlad had mentioned earlier that parents were over the top because they sent various toys that they had slept with. He rolled his eyes describing how silly this was. I chose not to mention that we had done the same thing with this bear as well as the bear that we left Sasha. And truly it may be hooey. All I know is that after the first day that we came back for him he ran into my arms with the biggest smile you've ever seen. So ... I guess I don't care if this seasoned man of the world thinks it rubbish .. if it has any chance of making our daughter feel more comfortable with us, then I intend to do it. We also left a camera (he insisted that two were too many) and some note cards in the hope that the caregivers might write our daughter a note. Again, he was completely unimpressed by this and said he had only one other family ever that had requested this ( I think we may be going on a 'list' somewhere and it might not be the good list). I'm not sure what the issue is really. Writing a couple of lines to a little girl that's found their forever family seems easy. Just write that you hope she has a great life and that she's loved fully. That's it. Since Vlad translated this, I'm not sure if they'll do it. This is the photo of the caregiver after Vlad translated our wishes including that we had this book about our family that would be nice if they could familarize our daughter with this. Doesn't seem promising does it?

It's kind of strange the resistance that we got for these basic things that, trust me, I didn't dream up all on my own. The folks in Kaluga had no issue with any of this. Perhaps people in the country are just better tempered and are more likely to facilitate your requests. Guess it's the same way in the US. Perhaps the caregivers will write a few cards and surprise us. I mean the Russians in general don't have the most positive facial expressions I've ever seen (see my posts on the Metro and 'the Scowl').

We eventually came back inside realizing that perhaps Mia wasn't as intimidated by the out of doors as she was by the HUGE, thick snowsuit that she had to wear. We stripped her of the outer layer (she had at least four layers beyond her snow suit) and hat so she could be a bit freer. She seemed immediately better tempered.

We said a bientot to our little princess. I know many families struggle with the wait in between trips but they are probably way of ahead of Nathan and I. We will need a mattress for the crib that my friend gave us and ... clothes. No more blue or orange jumpsuits for this little princess, she needs purple, pink and various totally girlie items. I think we also need barettes until we can get hair grown out. And, Baba, you thought my hair was hard to comb??? Wait 'til you see how thick this little girl's hair is ... wow. And with it being curly, it will a totally different (actually polar opposite) hair experience than my hair. Should be an interesting journey.

Gdaddy has already warned that we're all in trouble. I think he's right. ;)

Baby Home #14

So today .. another BEAUTIFUL day in Moscow btw, we spent another 1 1/2 hours with Mia. We started outside as the entire baby home is under construction. Mia seemed a bit overwhelmed by the outdoors as she has never been outside her entire life. Wow ... she'll have a lot to learn about at our house!

Thought I would post some photos of the inside of the baby home. I'm sure after construction it will be incredible (umm... thanks Jules for the gentle .. reminder :) We've also included some photos of the children's play yard.

So I admit that again the Blogger servers are confused and irriated by my constant request to upload photos. I will try to open a new post to see if it will be more coorperative.

Day 2 with Mia

We arrived at the baby home at Noon and waited for Mia to finish her lunch. She arrived and was as chipper as the first day so that's nice to see.

Thought I would just put up a ton of photos. She wore the same little blue jumper. Hopefully she'll get her fill of blue as I intend to have her in 'girlie' colors in no time! Don't you think she'll look unbelievably cute in a little hat with a sweet sundress and cute shoes? Oh, I can totally see it!

We got the chance to tour her play area and see where she sleeps. The three caregivers on duty were excited to meet us and laughed when I mentioned (through the universal language of gestures that Sasha looks like me and Mia looks like Nathan). They seemed very nice and very happy that Mia had found her forever family. We told them about her new name in hopes that they will begin to call her that now. They commented on how calm she is and how well she eats and sleeps. I had to laugh remembering back to a similar conversation I had with one of Sasha's caregivers where she wrinkled her face and told me what a horrible child he was. She went on to describe how stubborn he was and how difficult he was to handle. I kept thinking, Isn't she supposed to be telling me how great he is? Since then, I can see how Sasha can be a challenge. He definitely has his own mind and his tendency to be a sensory seeker can lead to challenges if he doesn't get a steady sensory diet through out the day. But, he is a sweet, smart little boy who loves to laugh, dance and sing. He LOVES nature ... I don't think I've ever met anyone who likes birds and animals and plants more than him. He is an amazing little boy who at times can be challenging but I know that he will make the best big brother ever. He loves with all his heart and I know that he will love Mia with everything that he has.

The chief doctor was not in again today so hopefully we'll have a chance to meet her tomorrow. I also have a list of caregiver questions that I will seek answers for when we return. We have the teddy bear, the family book and little note cards for the caretakers to write notes to Mia hopefully wishing her well. We will also leave a couple disposable cameras for the caregivers to take photos of her during our time away.

After our visit, we made our way to the notary where we signed the document that stated our intent to adopt Moonysong, laid out our basic information and let them know that we'd be changing her name to Amelia T.J. (for our mothers Toni and Janet) Christensen. Everything went well and we're going to have a little raven-haired beauty in our family soon!

Baby Home #14 and the Ministry Office

Masha and I outside the Department of Education office after just receiving our referral.

I also wanted to post a few photos of the baby home which appears to be undergoing some major construction at the moment (thanks Jules for the gentle reminder :) The first photo was taken outside the baby home fence as we were walking up to the building. Once inside the fence, you see the sign for Baby Home #14.

Baby Home # 14

As we were leaving from our first day at the baby home. And, the final photo is of the street in front of baby home #14.

To Do List for Moscow

My other posts have focused on the little girl for obvious reasons! We have a bit of time this morning before we return to the baby home so I thought I would post some general stuff.

Our journey over was made more exciting by the fact that we got to hand carry over our friend, Jules', dossier. Here is 'Dmitry'ready to board the plane to Moscow.

On our way to our apartment from the airport, we dropped Dmitry off to be translated. Here he is awaiting his turn to get out of the car to meet the translation team. We have missed Dmitry since dropping him off but know that he is being well taken care of by the Moscow team. He promised to work very hard for Jules' family so that they can bring their little girl home soon.

Last night, we celebrated with our expensive bottle of champagne that we bought in the Munich airport (yes, that pile of papers in the back is my 20+ pages of questions to ask the orphanage doctor plus growth charts, how to take a dot photo to diagnose FAS, etc.). For those of you that will be coming to Russia after us and want this to be a part of your celebration when you find your child, my suggestion is to bring it with you. There aren't as many selections of bubbly as there used to be here. The Sovietsky Champagnsky comes in sweet or ucky. If you like sweet champagne, the Soviet sweeter style may be for you. If you like really yummy stuff, you might want to bring a bottle with you as carry on. The better French stuff is very expensive here. (Yes, Nathan had already decided by the time we were dropped off at our apartment that she was the one. Me ... well it took a bit longer ... we had to chart - twice, look up FAS signs, look up teeth delay, research Tajiks, review popular names on babynames.com, call Jan, call Dr. Pomeranets ... okay, I'm sure there's a word for me or rather a diagnosis but I prefer to think of it as being thorough :)

After finishing our fabulous 2002 Vintage Veuve Cliquot, we head off to old Arbat street which is short walk from our apartment. We walked to the end to visit the Hard Rock Cafe. They have some great gifts so we picked up guitar key chains for future gotcha day gifts along with a Rock Angel t-shirt for a future gift for our daughter. We sat and had a drink and noticed two families with babies with them. Now who goes to Moscow with a baby unless you're adopting? It's always nice to see newly created families walking about Moscow.

We headed back down Arbat in search of our favorite souvenir shop. It's located at 37 Arbat and is a three story building. Upstairs, we quickly located a toy chest that will be a future gift for the little girl. We bought one for Sasha on our first adoption trip. These hand painted chests are beautiful and the little ladies that work in this shop can disassemble in record time creating a flat package that can easily be carried and can fit in the bottom of a suitcase. Our plan is to pick up another one on our next trip so that we can ultimately have one of our own to keep. Downstairs has music boxes, jewelry, Father Frost figures, Russian toys, etc. We chose a couple wooden toys, a carved pencil, a St. Basil's music box, a hand painted jewelry box, a Father Frost for moi (I collect Santas and this one has the Snow Maiden painted on the front of his robe ... very appropriate), a pull puppet toy and handpainted eggs. That makes eight Gotcha Day gifts and this year's Christmas ornament (I have an ornament box for each child and each year give them one ornament that's special for that year so that when they have a place of their own, they will have special ornaments for their tree. I got this idea from one of our good friends and thought that we should do this too).

After shopping, we headed to one of our favorite restaurants in Moscow, Eastern Quarter. This is an Uzbek restaurant and I highly recommend the Uzbek plov (has lamb in rice with stuff .. very good), the lamb shashlyk (which is a kabob) & the lamb, onion & tomato samso (which has minced lamb, tomato and onion baked in a bread). They are located right around the corner from Mu (which looks more like My My in Russian and has a big cow in front of the restaurant). The address is: 42 Ulista Arbat (Arbat Street but it really seems like it's on Plotnikov Street). So .. it's in between Mu and the Plotnikov Pub. Very good but make sure you bring cash as they don't accept credit cards. For a feast for two including drinks, it's about $70. (We brought breakfast items and lunch items with us so that we could do nice dinners every night).

After dinner, we popped by an expensive grocery market and then went back to our apartment where David, our apartment guy, was waiting for us. He took copies of our visas and our 'white' slips that you get when you come into Russia to get us registered. If you stay in a hotel, they will handle this for you. If you stay in an apartment, make sure that your 'landlord' handles this. This must be done within three days of you entering the country. It will cost additional Rubles so just be prepared.

Today, we are planning on asking Vlad to drop us off at Red Square after the orphanage and the notary. We'll sign a document stating on intent to adopt Moon-ee-song and have it notarized. We're then going to pop by Red Square. Now you may be thinking that we're going to see the sights but alas .. you would be wrong. We're actually going to be getting our 900th geocache today. We worked like mad to get to 899 last week so that we could get our 900th milestone cache in Russia on the day that we accepted the referral of our daughter. For those of you not into geocaching, I think you would love it if you were to give it a try. Check it out: www. geocaching.com. Our geocaching name is: tamaranathan. Good fun. We will also go to dinner at a special restaurant known for northern cuisine as in Siberia. It's called Expedition and sounds like a lot of fun. If you're planning on making a day of Red Square, we would also recommend a restaurant known as One Red Square which has good food, ice cubes and air conditioning. We have photos of us dining with Meg, Tim and Finn in our July 2006 entries. Good times, good times. Ooh Meg .. when you were in Red Square you partook in standing in the compass that was in front of the gates to Red Square and tossing coins over your shoulder. I had the chance to ask our driver about this tradition. Basically, standing in the middle of that compass you are in the very center of Moscow. Tossing a coin over your shoulder is meant to bring you good luck (perhaps that's how you got Maeve and Finn) much as tossing a coin into a fountain is meant to bring you a wish. If anyone else goes there and sees this, you'll see the little begger women who scoop up the coins as they are tossed. Guess the blessing is two fold - we get good luck and the little women get enough change to have a meal.

Hmmm ... so other gotcha day gift ideas for the little girl - scarf, amber jewelry, a locket from the town where Sasha was born, a book on Moscow, nesting dolls, Russian traditional dress .. so I need four more ideas. I may buy them each a painting of St. Basils like the ones we have on our wall. I bought Sasha a copy of the March which we have hanging in our foyer. I thought the painting was beautiful when we saw at the gallery here and March was the month that we met Sasha.

Well .. the sun is firmly up and the cautions about the week of rain that we were supposed to have seem to be unfounded. Yesterday was glorious and today seems to be headed that way as well. Amelia (Mia) T.J. Christensen. It has a certain ring to it.

She's the One!

So, after talking, and talking and talking some more, we've decided that this little girl is 'the one'. Yes, Baba has a new grandchild! You may be thinking well, duh, that was obvious last night but alas ... I told you that I wasn't a leap to some conclusion kind of person and the decision required a 'phone a friend' and a 50 / 50.

So ... first, I called my good friend, Jan. She is a very wise, very analytical person who was sure to give me good advice (btw, we were able to set up Skype on the computer that we're using at our apartment and at 2 cents a minute, you just can't beat it and the clarity of the call is amazing. No, I don't own stock in Skype but thought I would share this excellent tip with other PAPs). The facts as we know them ... this little girl was born two weeks premature. The fact that we know the gestation period is a bonus as for Sasha we just knew his birth weight and nothing else. At birth, they tested her for everything in the whole world and she tested negative. We have height, weight, head circumference and chest measurements from birth, twice a month through April. When you chart her height and weight, she is between 15-25% on a normal growth chart (as opposed to a premie growth chart or a growth chart that might be geared more to her ethnicity). When we chart her head circumference, she comes out in the 50th percentile. So ... growth charts look good. Dr. Davies charges $1000 to review a blind referral. Was it worth $1000 to have him tell us that this is the healthiest referral he's ever seen?

The second thing to look at is FAS which is diagnosed by looking at three things and you have to have all three in order to be diagnosed with FAS - a thin upper lip, lack of a philtrum (the ridge underneath your nose above the center of your mouth) and small eyes. This little girl absolutely has a pronouced philtrum. Her upper lip looks proportional to her mouth. She has very large eyes but this is probably one of the harder things to judge without help.

The only other thing we were a little concerned with is that she doesn't have any teeth yet. Nope, no teeth not even one ... just gums. In doing some additional research (don't you just love Wikipedia??), we found out that children get teeth at various times from birth to 16 months. We also spoke with the director of our adoption agency and her son didn't have teeth when he first came home. Katy, Jan's daughter, only had a few teeth at 17 months old. So this is where I used my 50/50. I called Dr. Pomeranets, our pediatrician, to get his advice (Dr. Pomeranets equals free medical advice as opposed to $1000). I quickly went over her growth charts which he thought sounded very good. Then I asked about the teeth. Now, for those of you unfamilar with Dr. Pomeranets, he is from Belarus. He has a variety of different medical degrees from the former Soviet Union as well as his medical license from the U.S. He's really a nice man and seems to find me entertaining. I have sent photo cards at Christmas, Valentine's Day, etc. and brought them Russian chocolates after our first adoption so the staff knows us very well. The fact that within minutes of me calling his office, telling them that I was calling from Russia and him answering the phone is a testament to what a nice man he is. He thought that my question regarding the lack of teeth at 14 months was a good one. He said that it could be due to malnutrition and that, even if she had no teeth, it wasn't something that was a show stopper (would this little girl have to wear dentures?? have to worry about polydent at age 2? ).

So with this final concern minimized and having used up two of my three life lines, we have decided to proceed. As the final test, I just spoke with my Dad (aka Gdaddy) to get his thoughts. No, I'll tell you that my father is probably one of the most analytical, practical people I've ever known. He's a mechanical engineer by education and he's a good sounding board when I want to verify that I've thought of everything. After listening to the medical information, using Wikipedia a couple of times, he too came up with the assessment that between our conversation with Dr. Pomeranets and the various tools that we have (growth charts, FAS diagnosis information, etc.) that we probably didn't need to enlist Dr. Davies for this referral.

Hope you enjoyed the couple additional photos of the little girl. No, we haven't completely decided on her name yet and know that the clock is ticking! We think that her middle name will be T.J. to honor our mothers - Toni (aka Baba) and Janet, who left us entirely too soon. We feel completely blessed to have had two awesome mothers and feel it would be our daughter's honor to have their names be a part of hers (we did something similar with our son's name who has John Thomas for his middle name ... isn't it interesting that both their names will have the same letters - T & J). Obviously, her last name is easy. We're wrestling with the first name. No, I'm not hip or should I say hippy enough to call her Moon. We're thinking about Amelia which means To Strive, To Excel or To Rival and is Latin. We would call her Mia. She just looks like a Mia doesn't she? Jan's suggestion was Emily which is another form of Amelia. Isn't that interesting that she looked at this little girl and thought of the same name that we did?

We're still undecided but will know later on today. We will also have some new photos to add to the blog a bit later. We head over to the orphanage at 11:30 a.m. and will spend 1 1/2 hours with the little girl. Vlad was translating the story that I created for her to have during the time we're gone. It's called A Sister for Sasha and tells the story of how Sasha had a beautiful home, parents and family that loved him, friends to play with but most of all, he wanted a little sister to love. It tells the story of how he found his little sister. It's really quite sweet and hopefully will be a lifelong story that they can share (and evidence that I can use when Sasha forgets how much he wanted a little sister later).

Well, enough for now and, you see, we didn't just 'know' that she was meant to be our daughter. As I predicted, Nathan was sold long before I was. For those of you who know us, that probably seems strange but it always takes me longer to arrive at this kind of decision. Once I'm there, I'm OTT but until then it just takes a while.

Sasha's Sister

We arrived at the Ministry office at 9:45 a.m. The director in charge of adoption wasn't in yet she had five families in front of us waiting to receive their referral. One couple was French and another couple was American. They looked a bit shell shocked. I wished them good luck as they gathered their coats to leave. The mother-to-be asked if we had done this before (was our experience showing through??) and I admitted that we had a beautiful 3 year old son who was adopted in 2006. She seemed relieved to hear this. We then chatted a bit and I explained that we planned to send all our medical information to Dr. Davies. They too were using Drs. Bledsoe and Davies. I congratulated them on picking what I think are the best in the IA field. They again seemed relieved. As they left, I commented to Nathan that I thought I should talk to them because they looked a bit intimidated. Our coordinator mentioned that she thought we looked so calm. We really were. What could the director ask us that we hadn't already heard? What could happen that would be worse than having our fingerprints expire and almost being stuck in Russia because our visas expired too? Yes, I guess we were old pros at this.

We were ushered into an office with the director and two other women. They wrote down our names which by the way look lots cooler in cyrillic and settled down for the interview. The director asked us in one breath - where do you live, what is your home like, who will be the primary caretaker and where do you work. Our biggest challenge was remembering all the questions which we were asked. She then asked if we had any problems with our current child from Russia. Hmmm ... I admitted that the first month was challenging - we were getting used to be parents and he was mourning the only home he had known. I followed up by telling her that he's thriving now and doing great.

She then showed us the official referral. First, I have to tell you that I had seen her before in my perusals of the Russian child databank. I will also tell you that now our house will have a proper balance of blue eyes to brown and blonde hair to brown. Now ... the freaky part. I had told Nathan that I thought that we would be referred a dark, curly haired little girl with brown eyes that would be Tajik. Guess what ??? That describes her perfectly! Ooh ... and she has the cutest dimples you'll ever see and I think she could be related to Katy the Beautiful. They have that same exotic beauty. So .. her name is Moonysong Malakai. Hmm .. perhaps we won't be able to use any of her Russian name. Even the director didn't know how to pronounce it. What do they call her for short?? Moon?? No, they call her Moussa which is typically a male name. Strike three on that ... we can't call our daughter a man's name. And, surely Moussa would send her in to early teen age therapist visits.

So, the next challenge is that we have to decide her name TODAY! OMG ... our strategy all along had been that we would use some part of her Russian name as a tribute to her birth mom. Unfortunately, while a nice thought, this isn't going to work. So we have to think of something fast.

Okay ... back to the story ... we traveled to baby house #14 to meet the little girl. We almost had to break in as the 'guard' wasn't at his post and no one answered the gate. Finally, a little white coated woman answered the main phone and came out to unlock the gate's padlock. We walked into the building which was totally under construction.

We were shown to an office where we were able to review the medical record of the little girl with our interpreter (the chief doctor wasn't there today so we'll have to wait until tomorrow to ask the more detailed questions). We went through the medical reports. I've never seen any Russian child more healthy. This little girl basically has had a couple of colds. That's it. No hip displaysia .. no seizures .. no nothing. The mother was 34 when she had her. The father and the mother were in good health. They were both (or so the records show) Tajik which means that they most likely don't drink or take drugs. When we track her growth, she is actually on the charts and her head circumference is ahead of her height and weight. So .. we're trying to decide if we should contact Dr. Davies as she looks SO healthy compared to anything we've seen.

So .. because this is completely a closed Blog as in it's not published and you have to be given the link to see anything, I will post her photo. We wouldn't normally be allowed to share a photo otherwise.











Here she is ..













We plan on signing our intent to adopt tomorrow. She seems SO healthy ... we just can't believe it. What to name her ??? That's the big question. Any ideas?

Back in Russia

Greetings to all - we have arrived in Moscow and are typing this from the comforts of our apartment that overlooks Novy Arbat. This apartment is quite nice and has ... get this ... drum roll please ... an airconditioner in each room! Ít's a very nice place that has been completely remodeled. Our greatest fear is that the little old ladies that sit at the opening will quiz us on something and we won't know what to say (they look like they've been sitting in this building's lobby since Lenin was in power).

We've had our breakfast of oatmeal and are now ironing all our clothes (well Nathan is ironing while I update the blog ... good deal, huh?). Our schedule today is that we're picked up at 9:15 a.m. then we're off to meet Masha who will assist us in the 'referral acquisition' process which is at 10 a.m. With referral in hand, we''ll go to the orphanage to meet the little girl. We will also have time to meet with the baby home doctor who I'm sure will be delighted to answer all 20 pages of my medical questionnaire. Okay .. maybe it's more like 15 pages but still ... it is long. I want to make sure that Dr. Davies has all the information that he could possibly need to help us make this decision. I even have some of the questions in Russian to help facilitate the process.

Once the little girl goes down for her nap, we'll be coming back to the apartment so that I can type up all the answers to 20 pages of medical questions to get them off to our IA doctor. If we're lucky, he'll be able to provide his input prior to us going to bed. If not, we should either have an answer tomorrow morning or additional information that we'll need to collect. We purchased a vintage 2002 bottle of Veuve Cliquot champagne in the Munich airport to celebrate our daughter once our decision is made. Hopefully we'll get to drink it tomorrow night.

Much love to everyone and I'll post more later.

Hell Mouth Hath No Fury

During a recent dinner of steak and asparagus, Nathan pulled out a special spice that a friend of ours makes called Hell Mouth. It's very hot (thus the name Hell Mouth) so we sprinkle just a bit on our plate and dip food into it. Sasha starts chiming "I like that, I like that". I let him know that I don't think he likes this. It's very hot. He insists that he likes it and starts to whine.

We sprinkled some on his plate and he tentatively held his piece of steak over the seasoning. We warned again that it was very hot and he only needed a little bit. He rubbed his piece of steak in it and blew on it (it's hot afterall so he needed to cool it down). I explained that it's not temperature hot but spicy hot to which he put the steak in his mouth. He chewed a couple of times and then his eyes got BIG. "My tongue has an ow ... my mouth has an ow", he says. We texplain that this is because it was spicy hot and that he didn't need to eat any more. We were expecting the typical spitting out of the offensive food but he continued chewing. He then took another piece and ran it through the pepper mix and put it in his mouth. Oh my gosh! He likes it! Does his love for spicy hot food go along with his sensory seeking behavior? Hmmm ...

So .. hats off to Jeff the Hell Mouth creator. You have another fan in our three year old who must take after his Gdaddy. Gdaddy, we have a bottle of Hell Mouth for you too. Hopefully you'll like it as much as your grandson does.

Stress ... stress and more STrESs!

After the exciting news that we would be going SOON to Russia to meet our daughter, the onslaught of less exciting tasks hit.

The first task was to get airline tickets and accomodations. We called the woman that helped us during our last adoption from Countryside Travel. She is an adoptive parent herself and doesn't flinch when you make the 100th change on your ticket. No issues (well unless you call forking out $1900 per ticket for a coach seat an issue ... and we're not even going to be able to drink slushy drinks by the pool. Somehow that seems SO wrong!). The tickets arrived today so one item down.

Accomodations presented a slightly more challenging opportunity. The various more Western hotels charge between (this is NO exageration) $600 - $1500 a night! Outrageous! We had thought we would stay with a host family for our first trip after verifying this amount. Unfortunately, the gentleman that could possibly host us doesn't get back to our agency in Tamara time (okay, I know that Tamara time is not the timeframe that the rest of the world uses but it's what I know and waiting to 4-6 days before we're leaving to secure housing in a foreign country is simply not my way ... can't be .. won't ever be ... just can't do it). So ... two days into the wait, I started looking for an apartment. I found one that was $190 a night (a veritable steal compared to the Marriot) from Peace Travel, a highly respected travel country in Russia. They wanted me to fill out some paperwork and fax over my credit card information including the 'super secret number' on the back. Now ... I'm not an overly cautious person but sending the front and back of my credit card to some random fax machine ... in Russia no less ... didn't make me feel warm and fuzzy. So ... I scanned everything in and emailed it to the representative that was helping me. He couldn't open the document. I then saved everything into a PDF file to which he replies he wasn't sure if the apartment was still available. What??? The next morning he confirmed that the apartment was already booked and that we would have to book two different apartments and move. I don't think so. It would be different if we were there for a month but to move when your trip is four nights just doesn't seem reasonable. Fortunately, I had the name of a group of apartments owned by a nice Australian man and with no more than an email he reserved the apartment for us. He uses PayPal (what a concept!) so we can pay securely and not have to drag extra 1000s of crisp, new 100 dollar bills with us. He then emailed me back and asked if there was anything that he could do to make our stay more pleasant. Wow .. customer focused too?? I asked if he grocery items including Sovietsky Champagnsky (hey, if we make it this far we should celebrate right?), so we don't have to go out the night we get there. He was very accomodating. I hope this turns out to be the best thing ever and we can stay with him for our return trip. That would be so nice.

We then had to fill out our visa applications. I quickly started going through my passport to pull all the countries and dates of our trips to add to the visas. When I reached the back page, I note the visa for our last adoption. Hey ... wait ... the last page!?!?! Oh NO! We need at least two pages front and back to put the two visas that will be needed for our two trips. UGH! And, of course, I was so on top of getting Nathan to send in for his new passport but totally missed the lack of pages in my passport (gives you an idea of how much we've traveled). So, a quick call to our agency eventually confirmed that the same agency that would work our visas could also get extra pages added to my passport. I spoke with Katerina at the travel agency and she told me the list that she needed. We gathered everything together including the LARGE check for all the overnighting needed and sent by next day Fed Ex. Perhaps things were going to work out okay. But alas, Katerina just called and she had apparently signed a form for me (why she didn't just have me send this while I was sending the rest of the package, I don't know. She told me that my signature was too complicated and that they hadn't accepted her rendition. Hmmm .. so surprising really that our U.S. Government wouldn't knowingly accept a forged signature on a passport form) and the passport folks wouldn't accept it. SO ... now we're in yet another crisis and will be headed to Fed Ex momentarily. We think that if they get the forms Monday morning that we will still get our passports with our visas the end of next week. Good thing we requested next day services for both items. Lord. I'm just worn out.

Added to the stress of the travel details, we're traveling blind to meet this little girl. We have no photos or medical information and we'll have to collect all kinds of information while in country in a very short time frame to make our decision. We participate on many boards and have heard several people recently comment that they didn't get any valuable medical information. WHAT??? How can we possibly make a decision about whether we can parent a child or not without some medical information - at least growth over time? Stories of how the translators would gloss over the report and not spend any time on things emerged. Other stories of how the baby director would 'tell you what you wanted to hear' came out. We were told that we most likely wouldn't get copies of the child's medical report. What? Not even in Russian? How can you evaluate a referral without at least reviewing basic information?? And, my personal favorite, how people just 'knew that this child was meant to be theirs'. Now, don't get me wrong, I think it's wonderful that people are blessed with this gut reaction that this child is theirs. My gut doesn't seem to be wired this way. Perhaps it's all my years as a project manager where analyzing data was critical or perhaps too much use of Excel can be blamed. Perhaps my folks are somehow responsible for this :) I don't know why I am incapable of believing that the moment this little girl enters the room that I'll know that she's meant to be our daughter but I don't. After all, the first time we saw Sasha he was sitting on his little potty pot and trust me ... I didn't immediately think "Oh look, that's our son!" So these folks ... the go with your gut folks .. continue to write about how they had Dr. Davies all lined up to evaluate their referral but knew already that this was the one so never called for his assistance. Really? Wow. That's fantastic but it's not me.

I did ultimately call our agency to discuss my concerns about this overall lack of information. I explained that without medical information, we couldn't make sure that we were capable of parenting any child. She suggested that we tell our translator up front that this is important and this would help set his expectation (meaning that no matter how cute she is, our 'gut' won't do much talking so we need some factual data to base our decision on). I was successfully 'talked off the ledge'.... for now at least ;)

And, just for added seasoning, Nathan got a flat tire on the way home today. Currently I-94 is, there's no other way to put this, a complete mess which doesn't have any place to pull over to change a tire. He managed to get to a forest preserve parking lot and changed to the spare but replacing the tires is yet another expense and another task that we didn't really want to do prior to going to Russia.

Hopefully next week will smoother sailing for us. Let's hope.

We're Going to Russia ... AGAIN!

All - we just got 'the call'. We're going to Russia! Our meeting with the Ministry of Education to receive our referral is set for April 22nd. OMG! We are completely in SHOCK!

More later ...

The Cone Mystery is Solved

So ... after wondering where our son has learned about ice cream cones, an email just arrived that solves this debate. Apparently, Waltraud, our good family friend, had an ice cream cone at the Chinese restaurant and obviously made it look way yummy thus causing Sasha to believe that this was for him. Anything with ice cream has got to be good, right?

We had our fourth swimming lesson yesterday. Apparently Donnie, our instructor, had tried to call to tell us that the water was 4 degrees cooler than normal. Sasha, who was already suited up and dancing at seeing Donnie, and wouldn't hear of not going in. So .. Donnie took him in, teeth chattering - Donnie's teeth that is, and Sasha laughed and splashed as usual. At some point, Donnie pulled him out and said that his nails were starting to turn purple from being too cold so we'd have to stop. Sasha would NEVER have gotten out of the pool. He LOVES to swim and Donnie is at the same levels as princes or rock stars in his book.

So .. we'll take the lesson over on Sunday when the pool should be warm again. We really lucked out to find such a great instructor. The minute we left the building, Sasha was talking about "go swimmin'". The boy loves water.