Sad

We got an email this morning from the kids. They answered yes that they are back in school, and then said:

"We you very much love. We miss you. I am always crying."

:(

Diana asked how we can enjoy the weekend after that. Indeed!

Don't miss the post below from last night if you haven't read it yet...

Love,
Molly

A word at the right time

I talked to Melonie last night, who is in the process of adopting her 4th Estonian child in 2 years. I have talked to her before by email and on the message board, but I had a few questions for her so we talked on the phone this time. We talked for over an hour and she settled our minds on so many uncertainties that have gone through our minds over the last nearly 4 months. Mostly on what the kids would be like when we see them again, how quickly they will grow up, what the court hearing is like, and when our court date will probably be. She said the magic number is 4 months from dossier submission and asked when we submitted our dossier. I told her 5/13. She said we will be getting the kids home VERY SOON then. She said she talked to Diana yesterday and Diana said that in the beginning of Sept. she's convinced that the courts will start passing out court dates. Melonie said that when they get back from summer holiday, they don't mess around. They get stuff done. So she thinks that we'll hear our court date by the middle of Sept. and it will probably occur toward the end of Sept., which is what I was thinking all along. Diana always says that the time line other people experienced offers no guarantee of what will happen for the next person, but the last several people who got court dates for Tallinn kids got them in about 4 months. Two were right at 134 days. (Trust me, at this point we are so obsessed with getting any clue about when it will be that we've scoured the message board, calendar in hand.)

Jason would know for sure, but I think we are at 109 now. He was convinced, before I shared with him what Mel said, that 2 months off for the courts means 2 months added to our wait. He didn't think so before, but now that we're getting so close to 4 months and haven't heard anything (since it's still August!), he started convincing himself it's not coming for awhile.

Part of the biggest trouble we've had with the wait is that we know how they were when we were there, and now we're missing it. Them being exactly the way we want them to be, and not knowing how long they will be this way. They will grow up, after all.

Mel says (and she is also a social worker in addition to a mom of 5 bio kids and working on her 5th total adoption!!!) that the kids are going to be young for a lot longer than American kids their age. Not only because of missing out on so much, not having been in a family, but because of their culture. Eastern Europeans let kids be kids a lot longer than we tend to here. Then there are the developmental stages they probably haven't reached because of the emotional inexperience they've had. She said by next summer we will probably want a vacation FROM them because they will probably be so joined to our hips.

I've also recently read on the Russian adoption message board that parents of adopted older kids from E.Europe often find that the kids are much more affectionate with their parents, even in front of their peers or in public, than their peers are, because of these very things.

I think it probably sounds silly that these are the things that we even think about. But you don't know what it does to you to have exactly what you want for 3 days, then have it taken away. Having them returned to people you don't know after you feel completely responsible for them, and fly across an ocean away from them. And then wonder what they'll think or feel or how they'll act when you finally (after an uncertain amount of time) see them again.

It's terrible. But, as I remind myself and Mel reminded me... It's worth it.

Always keeping you posted...
Love,
Molly

PS - No recent contact from the kids. They must be back in school now.

The Watched Pot

We've been back from vacation since Sunday (and it was official immediately as we had a total of 5 dogs in the house as soon as we got home, including Buddy and DogDog!). This week has been really tough, since we hoped we would have heard something by now about our court PAPERS if not our date. We did hear, while on vacation, that Diana has a feeling that we'll have court in September, which was nice since she rarely speculates on specifics. But at this point the first week of Sept. is out, since it's less than 2 weeks away. Every night Jason counts how many days to 9/15 (which would be 4 months from the day we submitted our papers) and crosses off the impossible days that our court date could be (everything less than 2 weeks away). Not that our court date HAS to come in 4 months or less, but about 4 months is the amount of time it has most recently been taking for families adopting from Tallinn orphanages. So obviously there's no hope of keeping our mind off of it now. I really can't explain how emotionally difficult this is. I can joke about it, but it really is very painful.

The court paper we're waiting for is the one where we list their new middle and last names. They need that before the court date can occur, but we could get that paper just before we hear our court date and just bring the paper with us. It would be nice if we had it already though!

We got three emails from the kids, I think, since my last post. Mainly the usual, which is really nice. There were a couple funny ones. One of them we couldn't figure out - the best we could do on the online translator and our limited knowledge was "Roman wants you to transfer his salute." We were like "what?????" So we asked for help from some other people who know Russian, and found out that it either says "Roman wants to send you his hello" or "Roman wants you to send him fireworks." Actually either of those would make sense, since our last package that we sent to them had good prints of fireworks pictures Jason took at a party we went to a few weeks ago.

Another funny one was this morning. The last line we couldn't translate hardly at all. We could figure out "We today" but that was it. Jason was all worried - What did they do today? What if it was something bad? LOL

Here's what the whole email said, translated:
We you very much love
We want more quickly to you
We miss you
Come again fast
Today we found with Roman a mouse!

So obviously it was nothing bad. :)

All for now!

Love,
Molly

Nope.

Hey! No, nothing is new. Not really anyway. We got the kids' beds. We ordered 3 pine platform beds - one twin, one full (to go under a good full size mattress we already had but the box spring was falling apart), and one queen (to go under a good queen mattress someone gave us awhile back, that we've been sleeping on on the floor!). Jason has been working on staining them. We have one of them done and assembled now. We're missing some pieces for one of the beds so we have to wait to put our bed together until we receive another leg, the bolts and screws, and parts of the headboard that are missing! But Katya's bed (the full) is done. Looks nice! So we have their curtains, bedding and beds. Now we just have to finish it up so we can get everything in its place and clean. It seems like every room is being rearranged. We're moving upstairs (to the "other" room above the kitchen), and the kids are getting the two downstairs rooms. The big room upstairs will still be the family room for now.

It's fun for me to set everything up. I like shopping for all this stuff! But we just hope we don't have empty set-up rooms for very long.

We've gotten a few short emails from the kids since my last post. The usual kind, nothing longer than a few words. But it's nice to hear from them!

We're going to our usual beach vacation next week and I'm looking forward to it. But we are (especially Jason) very disappointed that the kids aren't here in time for it. We didn't want to go there again without kids! :( But it's better than being home and being depressed! We can relax on the beach and be sad!!

That's all for now. Of course I'll keep you all posted if anything happens.

Love,
Molly