Time to Worry

Dearest Dema,

Well, even though we haven’t heard about a travel date yet, I still feel positive about moving forward to get you. We had a long Skype call with Alex yesterday evening and he said that he would try to call you. It might be easier for him to get in touch with you than for us. I told him that I want you to know we will be coming in April or May. I am sure that it will be a shock for you - here we have been working so hard and constantly praying for things to move along - so it will not be a surprise for us to finally see you. But I can imagine it might be a nasty shock for us to show up and you to realize that you will be leaving all things familiar.

This point is especially concerning to me, I actually lay awake thinking about it at night! I worry that you might not want to come with us. You will be leaving friends, a familiar place, your country and your language to come live with virtual strangers. I worry about how to convince you that it will be ok, that we will love you and give you all the benefits of a loving family life. You will find friends and make a future with us as your back up whether it is here or back in Ukraine, but this is going to be hard for you to understand. And I am sure that it will be hard even when you get here and you are lonely or frustrated.

I have joined several email groups about adopting older children in an effort to try to understand everything you will be going through or possibly facing while with us. I want to anticipate every possible scenario so that I can help guide you through it, but I sometimes get overwhelmed with this. I don’t know you yet, so how can I predict what you will be feeling or how you will react? 

All I do know is that all of us are desperate to have you a part of our family. We talk about you at least once a day and have planned out trips and things to take you to. I am afraid you will be a little frazzled with everything we want to show you! I know that one day, we both will look back on this and laugh, but for now, I am obsessed with making sure you have a smooth as possible transition to our family. I know that you will enrich our family no end. We are all looking forward to the new family you will help us create.

So, here I am counting the hours as they pass too slowly to hear back from the Ukrainian government and passing the time worrying about you.

Love always,

Bethany, G3, G4, & Amanda

Time to Panic

Dearest Dema,

Well, after a few days of basking in the glow of paperwork sent off - I am starting to feel the itch of concern as we wait. We are still waiting on confirmation of the delivery of the documents, the appointment for submission, and then the date to travel. All of course are out of our hands.

So, to ease the strain, I put together a little party of people that hosted some of your friends from the orphanage this past summer so that everyone could get together an commiserate on their progress on adoptions, or lack thereof. It was a great party - you would have recognized everyone there. It was nice to reconnect with everyone and find out where they were in the process of their adoptions. But it had one unintended consequence, I got freaked out! I realized that we were the furthest along of anyone and that really there was not a lot of time before you came. A few months at most. I wasn’t any closer on learning Russian, your room was only half set up, and I hadn’t started cleaning out closet space for you.

This has served to kick me into high gear as I am motivated now to get everything ready. I promise that things will be ready for you. I want to make things as nice as possible for when you arrive. I know that you will want to put your own touches on the room, but I want to feel that you have everything you need to start off with.

So, off to start getting things ready for you!

Love,

Bethany, G3, G4, & Amanda

The Paperwork is Done

Dearest Dema,

Well, I have great news! We finally got the papers sent off to Ukraine last week. It was a little frustrating at the end with all of the changes to the documents that were needed. We had everything ready to go in November, but the immigration letter was late. Well, since the next appointment date flipped over into a new year, there were a lot of changes that had to occur. Then the adoption department changed in the government  in Ukraine. Not really anything changed except the letterhead on the documents. But it was enough to cause half of the documents to be redone. Then the medical forms were changed and then there was a new form, and then they needed duplicates of the interpol forms, and yada, yada, yada. It seemed never-ending when we were only one form away before.

But we persevered through the documents and they were sent off at last. Now everyone says is the hard part of waiting, but I think the hard part was actually the documents. The waiting I can fill with getting your room ready, buying you clothes, and figuring out how to teach you. I can also fill it with worry about whether you still want to come home with us, whether you will truly integrate into our family, and how long it will take you to learn English. I can go on and on about the worries I have, but as you can see, I am at no loss to fill my time with things while we wait.

We have 10 days until we hear about an appointment. Victoria is going to try to call you again. She tried around your birthday - we desperately wanted to get to you by your birthday - but that didn't work out. But hopefully, she can get in touch with you to let you know about the paperwork being on its way.

Love as always,

Bethany, Amanda, G3, & G4