Papers Please

In Russia, official papers are very important. The kids have no biological father because no father is listed in the official papers. I'm pretty sure they were not another case of immaculate conception, but officially, they have no biological father. That's the way it is... end of discussion. When you are doing business in Russia, particularly when it involves offical papers, you DO NOT mix in idle chit-chat or make pleasantries. Business is business and social graces are not. You do not mix the two. If you try, they just look at like you should be focusing on the paper you silly American :-)

Like yesterday, today was split between the kids and business. We spent 90 minutes with the kids in the morning, and then had to leave to go to the notary to sign the documents for “officially” accepting the referral. These were a set of three documents. One where we formalized our intention for assuming parental care for Gena, one for Yana, and one that goes to the ministry of education. We had a new translator for this part and he indicated that the fee the notary charges is 1000 pyb. (rubles) [about $40]. Once we had the papers completed, we were informed that the fee had changed and it was now 500 pyb. per document. Typical Russia… things change almost weekly. In fact, when we asked the translator what to expect for out next trip for the court date, he replied that he would not give us that information now because it will be different next week, let alone next month or the month after. We’ll get the most up to date info right before we come.

Part of the documents involved listing the names we intend to adopt the children under. We have discussed this at length for months and we were pretty set on a boy’s name. We’ve really been struggling with a girl’s name however. We poured over more name lists yesterday and settled on two finalists. I really liked one more than the other and I think it fits Yana’s personality. When we asked the children if they would like to have new American names for when they come to America, they both said “da”. We gave them each two choices. We had a lot of fun taking American names and trying to write them out phonetically using the Cyrillic alphabet. Apparently we didn’t do too badly because Yana could read them and said them correctly. She chose the name I liked more. She also attempted to choose the name she liked best for Gena. He, as usual, deferred to his older sister’s judgement. We’ll post the names after we tell them with Beth and Luke when we get back home (they can already guess Gena’s new name). It was a little different for the kids to no longer have patronymic names where they middle name is an adaptation of their father’s first name. They have new first names and we are keeping Yana and Gennadiy as their middle names. When they are older, they will be able to decide which name they prefer to use.

In the afternoon, we went back to see the kids and Gena had a note for his “Mama”. It seems that he cried after we left (one of the other boys was calling him a crybaby). The note was clearly written with the help of one of the caregivers to help console him, but it ended with “I love you Mather and father” in English in a child’s handwriting. Gena is really starting to bond. Both kids are VERY excited about joining our family and they want to go with us now. We had to be careful when discussing today’s official papers with them so as not to give the impression that the process is finished. They wanted to know when were coming back to get them and we told them that the choice is not up to us. We told them October (there are no court hearings this September we have learned), but there is a chance that we might be able to get an August date if we can get the rest of the court dossier paperwork together by the end of the month… we’re now on a mission. We gave the kids a new soccer ball today and spent a lot more time playing soccer, checkers and chess. They play what we now call Yana-Gena checkers which is where you make up new ways to move your piece to suit your particular need at the moment. Need to jump 4 spaces diagonally over a couple rows… no problem.

Tomorrow morning will be our last meeting with the kids. We have to fly out tomorrow for Moscow because all of our in country coordinators say there is no chance we will make our Moscow – US flight at 12:55 if we take our originally intended Stavropol – Moscow flight that arrives at 10:00. The drive between airports is too questionable with bad traffic to risk it. This disappointed greatly because we had specifically been instructed by our travel agent to confirm with our adoption agency that this would work. We had two different flights we could have taken from Moscow. Our agency said that we would be OK taking the earlier flight. Turns out that they were mistaken. Make sure you have at least 4 – 6 hours between flights or you are in trouble. Take heed! We’ll travel to Moscow on Thursday, spend the night there, and fly home on Friday. Our regional coordinator has been very gracious and found a way for us to spend some time with the kids on Thursday by flying out of a different airport (2 hours away). He didn’t have to do that, but we are very thankful that he did. I can’t say enough good things about the job he has done for us in Stavropol.

We do not expect to be able to get an internet connection where we will be staying in Moscow tomorrow night, so we probably won't be able to post anymore to the blog until we return to the states. We love you and thank you for all your prayers. See everyone soon.