Foreign Affairs & Phobias.

Hey everyone!

Well first of all I made Jason promise to upload the camera onto the computer this week so I can appease you all. I don't have any recent pictures on the computer because 1) our computer broke and we just got a new one and 2) the camera memory card holds like 150,000,000,000,000 pictures so sometimes Jason doesn't bother uploading them. And honestly, I don't mess with his fancy camera much so I don't know the way he wants it done. Never come between a man and his Nikon. Sheesh.

Update on everything:
I keep forgetting what I wrote before and what you already know because things change so often. I can't even write all the details. But basically the lawyer (Liina, who is Rutt's partner - Rutt was on vacation last week) found out that a guy she needs to speak to at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who needs to weigh-in on the legal questions, has been out of town. So he's back this week and the lawyer plans to talk to him asap. As I mentioned in my last post, Kersti is supposedly under the impression that the Russian Embassy will not give the kids travel documents after their adoption. She told the lawyers the reason is they will know they are traveling for adoption because their last name will be changed (to ours). Sooooo naturally we came up with a brilliant idea that NO ONE could have EVER thought of in a MILLION years... Why not just NOT CHANGE THEIR NAMES?! Duh. So Kersti said that since no adoptive families ever decide to leave the kids bio names in place, she didn't know if it's possible. Liina explained that the law does not require us to change their names. (Clearly indicated in the "Names" act, of all places.) Liina told me that while Kersti is open minded about some things, she's not so much open minded about what the laws allow. Just because it doesn't say "The family may choose to leave the child's name the same," she's not sure if we're allowed. It just says that we "may" change their first and last names. We don't have to. So to be sure, Kersti is checking with the birth certificate office and the court to make sure that is acceptable.

So today we got an email from Kersti, through Diana, saying that there are other issues with the Embassy. The email wasn't really understandable, but it seems like Kersti has heard from another person somewhere that the Russian Embassy isn't allowing ANY adoptions of Russian children in Estonia without consent from Russia, even if a new husband wants to adopt his wife's child in Estonia. I don't know how that's possible, since that means that the Russian Embassy would be going against all the laws of Estonia to take that kind of authority. Kersti said she doesn't have anything official from the Embassy about all this, though, so it's likely not true or at least that's not all there is to it.

Liina told me today that she also received an email from Kersti that she didn't really understand, so she's going to speak to her tomorrow.

In the meantime, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Justice will soon (as they say) be investigating the laws and replying to the attorney about how the Russian-Estonia bilateral agreement should or should not be applied. I try not to worry about that because the agreement is pretty clear. I don't know how they could misinterpret it also, if they just read it. Hopefully once that is cleared up, then it won't matter whether the Russian Embassy is imposing ridiculous restrictions on the travel and/or adoption of Russian children.

Lots of craziness and frustration and finger pointing going on, and a lot more detail (all of which has already been researched and is very understood by us and the lawyers, so don't worry about telling us all the reasons why Kersti's concerns are totally without any sense at all), but that's basically the deal.

This week we will hopefully hear something from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and hopefully also clear up what in the world is really going on at the Russian Embassy.

Now for Anna news! Anna's doing really well in school, although she occasionally gets in trouble for being silly (talking during class, etc.). Her English is more and more coherent and her sentences are becoming more complete and correct.

She has bad days here and there where she is disrespectful or argumentative, but not often. She bounces out of it with a little help (consequence!) and talking to her about it. She also occasionally white-lies. Like that her teacher told her that we can just TELL her the answers to her math homework. Or she can use a calculator and that's ok too.

She tests us in a new and exciting way sometimes. The other night she completely lost her mind because she had left her bedside lamp on and that meant that she couldn't have her lamp that night. She sometimes sleeps with no light (by choice) and has once before lost her lamp for forgetting to turn it off in the morning. We imposed this rule, by the way, after reminding her a million times and her already burning out a bulb from not turning it off. But this night she went nuts wailing about being afraid of the dark. So we told her (not wanting her to be legitimately terrified) that while we could not give back her night lamp just because she was crying (which would only teach her to wail when she doesn't get her way, whether she's really scared next time or not), that she could leave her ceiling light on that night if she was really scared. She didn't want to do that, because it wasn't the same as the lamp. Which told me that she was only checking to see if she freaks out, if we'll give in. Otherwise she would have jumped at the chance to have ANY light on. After a few minutes, she gave up and agreed to sleep with the ceiling light on, which was off before morning. Naturally she's not forgotten to turn off her lamp since then, and doesn't try crying hysterically to get her way. But you want to know why she tried it? Because there was one time where I let her have one more chance with the lamp instead of making her sleep without it when she was supposed to. She even said "But mom said if I forget two times, then no lamp for one night!" Noooo I did not. But guess what - kids DO, in fact, keep score! LOL

Rest assured, she was not traumatized in the slightest from the experience!

She is slightly traumatized, however, about her beloved Chloe the Hamster, who spontaneously died on Saturday. :( Sad news. For you hamster-experienced people: no, she did not have wet-tail. We don't know what happened to her. Although Jason was tempted to tell her that it was because of having too much light at night. (*Trying not to chuckle*)

That's all the news for now. More soon I hope!

Love,
Molly