The Parents We Were Never Going To Be

We are stellar parents! When he asks for the computer, we say “no” and give him a puzzle. When he asks for the computer again we give it to him. And he procedes to play video games for two hours. And we load him up on Coke, chocolate and candy. We are the parents we said we would never be! And someday we won’t. (Remind me!) But for now we have a little guy that we get to spend two hours with a day, we don’t have a common language (except the video games), and we are leaving after tomorrow’s visit only to return in a week or so and expect him to stand in front of a judge in court and tell the judge he wants us to be his parents, to move to American, and to learn to speak English (and leave everything he has ever known – even if what he’s known all of his life is not better than what we have to offer, it is still hard to leave). So….we give him the computer, Coke, chocolate, and candy. And we’ll do it again tomorrow for our last visit before we leave!

For now, our relationship is developing as well as can be expected without any way to talk to our son. He is genuinely happy to see us when we arrive and was spotted watching us through the window as we left the orphanage yesterday. He appears to be quite smart – very logical in his thinking. Otherwise, he seems to be your typical boy. He is PERFECT!

Tomorrow night we will return to Kyiv. We will have a second SDA appointment and request a referral to meet our daughter. It will be hard to leave our son but we are excited out of our minds to see our daughter!! I can’t even come up with the words for how excited we are to see her! The plan is to obtain our referral for her and be to her region before the end of the week. We don’t have much wiggle room; everything needs to pretty much fall into place perfectly for this to happen.

As always seems to be the case, there is bureaucratic disruption here that might threaten our proceedings. I don’t really know much about it except that it appears that the change in division of the Ukrainian government that handles adoptions that was voted to be changed a few months ago is now finally taking place. I don’t know what this means to us….. We pray (it means) nothing. But there’s always that looming possibility…

Otherwise, we are ready to leave this region. No offense to the locals as no one has done anything to make us not feel welcome but we have been somewhat out of sorts since we arrived. I have not been feeling well and the weather has been cold, raining, and windy. I don’t know how to describe the surrounding except to say it is dark and depressing. I don’t know for sure, but this area appears to be severely impoverished. It is very likely that it is not as bad as it looks. Occasionally there are well-kept or new buildings but they are always completely surrounded by what would be classified as the slums in America. I can't make heads or tails or it but it certainly makes me appreciate how privileged my life really is.

The internet situation has not improved. I sometimes (but not reliably) get email. I cannot send or respond to email. Posting a status update on facebook or sharing my blog post takes no less than an hour. It’s excruciating. But I guess it gives me something to do…

In closing, I can’t tell you how much your prayers and encouragement mean to us. We are not necessarily great foreigners (well, who would be in the kind of weather we have had?). I wish I could say we are enjoying the culture but we’re really just not (at least not here in this region). Mostly, we are keeping our eye on the prize. Your sharing our journey with us truly helps! Thank you and God bless…