We got an email from the kids this morning. We told them in our last email that we want them to say more, even if they write in Russian. This email was written with a mixture of Russian and phonetic Russian with English letters (which they use on their online programs - they type in English letters that correspond to Russian letters, and Russian readers would know what letters they mean) - so it took a few minutes to figure out what it said, but it was really nice to get something more than 4 words!
They answered our questions about how they are (horoso = хорошо = good), if they got the package we sent with their new shoes (да), and finally "mq tozi taskuem bez vas mq vas love!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" which says "we also grieve without you, we you love!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
When we write "we miss you", it translates "we grieve without you". So that's where that came from.
Other than that, there's no news. We will soon be sending them more pictures, a digital watch for each of them (they liked to wear our watches when we were there), and letters. I'll keep you all posted!
Love,
Molly
Monday, June 30, 2008
Sunday, June 22, 2008
No news is no news.
Hi everyone! There isn't any news to report. We're waiting for our court documents to arrive via email through the agency. Those documents are the ones where we put down their new middle names and submit them to the court, at which point we wait for a court date to be assigned. We will hear about court date 2-4 weeks before it occurs. We keep hearing that it's "possible" to get a court date over the summer, even though they are "closed". So we keep hoping and praying that we will get the soonest possible court date. We are so anxious to get them home. It's just terrible!!!
No more new contact from the kids. We hope we'll get a letter from them soon. We sent a letter to a family in Texas that is adopting their friends from the same group at the end of the month. They will carry the letters over to the kids for us.
That's all for now. Everyone keep hoping on our behalf that things will go fast! I will report any news as we receive it.
Love,
Molly
No more new contact from the kids. We hope we'll get a letter from them soon. We sent a letter to a family in Texas that is adopting their friends from the same group at the end of the month. They will carry the letters over to the kids for us.
That's all for now. Everyone keep hoping on our behalf that things will go fast! I will report any news as we receive it.
Love,
Molly
Friday, June 13, 2008
"Hai"
We got an email back from Katya and Roman today. It said, simply "we love you. hai!" "Hai" is how Katya writes "hi". We wrote back to ask if they got the package we sent and haven't gotten a response yet. I think they get to check email briefly about once a week when they aren't at camp. So we hope to hear from them again before they go to their next camp in a couple weeks.
A couple of girls in their group are being adopted at the end of the month. Their court date is June 26th. We're mailing letters for the adoptive parents to carry over to our kids while they are in Tallinn. They should see them when they go to the orphanage. Will save a little money that way and then we'll get confirmation that they receive it!
Just thought you'd like to know we heard from them. It makes the waiting a little easier to know they remember us (lol) and they are ok. :)
Love,
Molly
A couple of girls in their group are being adopted at the end of the month. Their court date is June 26th. We're mailing letters for the adoptive parents to carry over to our kids while they are in Tallinn. They should see them when they go to the orphanage. Will save a little money that way and then we'll get confirmation that they receive it!
Just thought you'd like to know we heard from them. It makes the waiting a little easier to know they remember us (lol) and they are ok. :)
Love,
Molly
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Contact
Everyone is asking us if we've had any contact with the kids. We sent them a photo album with the pictures from the trip, a pair of shoes each, and some Orbit gum (which they often asked for while we were there... "Or-beeeet, pleeeeease?"). We also called them a couple days after we got back, but that seemed pretty much useless because they wouldn't use their English, and though they understood us, all they said was "mm hmm" to everything. LOL We think there were people listening to them and they might have been bashful. Someone picked up another phone while I was talking to Katya, and I asked who that was (in Russian) and she said (in English), "group." Meaning someone in another group in the orphanage picked up the phone to use it and heard that it was being used already.
Jason said to Katya, "Learn more English so you will say more than 'mm hmm'!" And she responded with an emphatic "uh uhh!!" Funny how we can joke around with each other with so little language skills being employed!
We've also sent her emails but they are at one of their summer camps right now so she hasn't checked them yet. I hope we get letters or emails from them. The wait is not getting any easier. We feel like we're losing valuable time. We don't know how we're going to handle things they have to learn before they go to school. There is so much we want to explain to them, and they're not going to have much time before they get shoved into the culture and lifestyle here. We'll get by somehow, I guess!
All for now. Nothing else new going on. Just waiting!!
Anyone who wants to write anything to the kids, either for their albums for when they get home, or for an email, feel free to email it to me (or write it on paper if you want it to be for their books). I can translate it and keep it for them or send it to them. :)
Love,
Molly
Jason said to Katya, "Learn more English so you will say more than 'mm hmm'!" And she responded with an emphatic "uh uhh!!" Funny how we can joke around with each other with so little language skills being employed!
We've also sent her emails but they are at one of their summer camps right now so she hasn't checked them yet. I hope we get letters or emails from them. The wait is not getting any easier. We feel like we're losing valuable time. We don't know how we're going to handle things they have to learn before they go to school. There is so much we want to explain to them, and they're not going to have much time before they get shoved into the culture and lifestyle here. We'll get by somehow, I guess!
All for now. Nothing else new going on. Just waiting!!
Anyone who wants to write anything to the kids, either for their albums for when they get home, or for an email, feel free to email it to me (or write it on paper if you want it to be for their books). I can translate it and keep it for them or send it to them. :)
Love,
Molly
Friday, June 6, 2008
I don't speak no English.
I've been getting calls and emails with requests for updates, so here you go! Thanks for keeping us in high demand! :)
Nothing new with the process, really. Just waiting. But we did find a few out interesting things in the last couple days. The Estonian adoption Yahoo group has been on fire lately with people posting questions and answers on all types of subjects. Before our trip, the board was sooooo dead. I would post a question and get only one answer or no answers. Now I'm one of the answerers, so that makes it more fun.
Through the message board we've made contact with a few other families. One (Charlotte) who is currently going through the process and hopes to preview a girl in August. Another (Patti) is a single lady whose daughter was in the same group as our kids, and she was adopted in December. A third (Jenn) lives about an hour from us, and they also finished their adoption in December, a 12 year old boy (now 13) and a 5 year old girl.
As it turns out, Jenn and Patti were both in Estonia for their court dates at the time the previous family was there meeting our kids. We found out from them that that family was very very strict, even having the kids sign a contract about what they would and wouldn't do once they get to their home in America. Patti and her daughter (who knows Katya & Roman) said that the kids look so happy with us in the pictures, happier than they did with the other family. In the conversations that followed with both Patti and Jenn, it seems like the other family was not the type to run and play, go down water slides, give piggy-back rides, and goof off with the kids. They even said that the kids were very misbehaving out in public- and one thing we had already mentioned about the kids is that they were so good in public! They never gave us trouble acting obnoxious in restaurants or anything like that. Sounds like they wanted calm, quiet kids, and maybe that's why they were considering kids their age. But Katya and Roman are fun, active, resilient kids. Not zombies. They are not well suited for parents who want to sit around. So they apparently said that "A lot of things will change when we get them home!"
Patti asked me if Roman tried to run away on us. I said (with shock) NO! And asked why. She said on about the third day with the other family, he said he was going to run away and the parents said basically OK Fine, go. So he took his coat and sat on the stairs in the hotel for awhile. There was nothing even close to behavior like that from him while we were there. Not even during the pouting. They were so overall happy and seemed to want to please most of the time.
All of this leads us to think that they probably did notice quite a difference between us and the other parents that came to see them. We wondered if they appreciated the activities we like to do with them, or if they were disappointed at first that the previous family was not adopting them after all. That gave us a little indication of what they were probably thinking.
The next interesting thing I can tell you all is that Jason was watching the video from the trip more carefully. A lot of it is video of the ground and stuff like that because the kids would forget to turn the camera off when they were done. So he was watching it, started laughing and called Katya a little stinker. I asked what was going on, and he had me watch it. Roman was holding the camera while she talked to it. She said something in Russian, then looked at the camera and said in PERFECT ENGLISH, "Is that recording?"
So....... we have even more reason to think that they know much more English than they let on. Little stinker, indeed. I know she wasn't just repeating something we had just said. At most she might have heard us say that one time, and not right beforehand. That's not the only time they used English phrases that were more uncommon. They knew "massage" and "stand up", for instance.
That's about it for now, I think. Of course I'll keep you all posted if anything substantial happens.
Love,
Molly
Nothing new with the process, really. Just waiting. But we did find a few out interesting things in the last couple days. The Estonian adoption Yahoo group has been on fire lately with people posting questions and answers on all types of subjects. Before our trip, the board was sooooo dead. I would post a question and get only one answer or no answers. Now I'm one of the answerers, so that makes it more fun.
Through the message board we've made contact with a few other families. One (Charlotte) who is currently going through the process and hopes to preview a girl in August. Another (Patti) is a single lady whose daughter was in the same group as our kids, and she was adopted in December. A third (Jenn) lives about an hour from us, and they also finished their adoption in December, a 12 year old boy (now 13) and a 5 year old girl.
As it turns out, Jenn and Patti were both in Estonia for their court dates at the time the previous family was there meeting our kids. We found out from them that that family was very very strict, even having the kids sign a contract about what they would and wouldn't do once they get to their home in America. Patti and her daughter (who knows Katya & Roman) said that the kids look so happy with us in the pictures, happier than they did with the other family. In the conversations that followed with both Patti and Jenn, it seems like the other family was not the type to run and play, go down water slides, give piggy-back rides, and goof off with the kids. They even said that the kids were very misbehaving out in public- and one thing we had already mentioned about the kids is that they were so good in public! They never gave us trouble acting obnoxious in restaurants or anything like that. Sounds like they wanted calm, quiet kids, and maybe that's why they were considering kids their age. But Katya and Roman are fun, active, resilient kids. Not zombies. They are not well suited for parents who want to sit around. So they apparently said that "A lot of things will change when we get them home!"
Patti asked me if Roman tried to run away on us. I said (with shock) NO! And asked why. She said on about the third day with the other family, he said he was going to run away and the parents said basically OK Fine, go. So he took his coat and sat on the stairs in the hotel for awhile. There was nothing even close to behavior like that from him while we were there. Not even during the pouting. They were so overall happy and seemed to want to please most of the time.
All of this leads us to think that they probably did notice quite a difference between us and the other parents that came to see them. We wondered if they appreciated the activities we like to do with them, or if they were disappointed at first that the previous family was not adopting them after all. That gave us a little indication of what they were probably thinking.
The next interesting thing I can tell you all is that Jason was watching the video from the trip more carefully. A lot of it is video of the ground and stuff like that because the kids would forget to turn the camera off when they were done. So he was watching it, started laughing and called Katya a little stinker. I asked what was going on, and he had me watch it. Roman was holding the camera while she talked to it. She said something in Russian, then looked at the camera and said in PERFECT ENGLISH, "Is that recording?"
So....... we have even more reason to think that they know much more English than they let on. Little stinker, indeed. I know she wasn't just repeating something we had just said. At most she might have heard us say that one time, and not right beforehand. That's not the only time they used English phrases that were more uncommon. They knew "massage" and "stand up", for instance.
That's about it for now, I think. Of course I'll keep you all posted if anything substantial happens.
Love,
Molly
Sunday, June 1, 2008
An exotic American Russian German Irish Swedish French Italian Swiss English.
While we were talking to the kids on the final night, we asked them in Russian if they wanted new American names. They both said yes. We want to keep their first names the same for a couple reasons. For one thing, we love their names. We don't want them to get rid of their past entirely, so what is usually recommended is that you either give them middle names, or you put their Estonian/Russian names as their middle names and give them new first times. We've heard that the kids usually want American names because the new names sound exotic to them. That way their whole lives they'll have the choice of being called names exotic to them, or exotic to other Americans. ha ha
We rattled off names off the top of our heads and they liked them all. Probably because they all sounded new, different, and they had no associations to them. Of course, it's harder for us to pick names because we have associations in our minds to some names.
There is one top choice for his middle name. It's a boy's name I have always loved and think goes well with his first name and fine with our last name. There is one favorite girl's name I'd love to give her, and Jason also likes it, but there is one concern with it... To some people it sounds more Germanic than American. So her name would be Russian-German-Italian, in that order. Would that be too weird?
I won't tell what either idea is because I don't want to hear the cheers or jeers just yet. LOL
Katya will have the option of also just being called Katie, which we think suits her really well. So she'll have two non-Russian options in her name. So since Katie is an option, is a Germanic middle name so bad???
Jason's not really for asking everyone's opinion on our top choices and seeing what everyone thinks. But I am for asking if anyone has any suggestions on names they like. I know in the past a certain much loved family member has said that naming is personal and she would never give suggestions on names because it should be something we pick on our own. But in this case, having to sound good with established first and last names already, I think it's a little different.
Feel free to comment with names you like and that you think sound good. No need to suggest your OWN names... We can think of those ourselves. ;) And no we won't call her Kathy, Kathy! ha ha
Love,
Molly
We rattled off names off the top of our heads and they liked them all. Probably because they all sounded new, different, and they had no associations to them. Of course, it's harder for us to pick names because we have associations in our minds to some names.
There is one top choice for his middle name. It's a boy's name I have always loved and think goes well with his first name and fine with our last name. There is one favorite girl's name I'd love to give her, and Jason also likes it, but there is one concern with it... To some people it sounds more Germanic than American. So her name would be Russian-German-Italian, in that order. Would that be too weird?
I won't tell what either idea is because I don't want to hear the cheers or jeers just yet. LOL
Katya will have the option of also just being called Katie, which we think suits her really well. So she'll have two non-Russian options in her name. So since Katie is an option, is a Germanic middle name so bad???
Jason's not really for asking everyone's opinion on our top choices and seeing what everyone thinks. But I am for asking if anyone has any suggestions on names they like. I know in the past a certain much loved family member has said that naming is personal and she would never give suggestions on names because it should be something we pick on our own. But in this case, having to sound good with established first and last names already, I think it's a little different.
Feel free to comment with names you like and that you think sound good. No need to suggest your OWN names... We can think of those ourselves. ;) And no we won't call her Kathy, Kathy! ha ha
Love,
Molly
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)