Sweet kids

Hi everyone! Sorry I haven't posted anything in a couple weeks. I was in SC for a few days and also trying to get some dogs in here for training so we can make some money! It's been really slow the last couple months. Things seem to pick up and then slow down again. I think November will be better but still slow.

Not much going on with the process of Katya and Roman's release. We are supposed to get an update soon. In the meantime, we have been hearing from the kids a LOT. We got another set of letters from them in the mail. We had sent them envelopes with our address on them along with money for postage, and they sent one of those envelopes back to us almost right away. We will probably get more letters from them soon too. We told them to send letters, even if they couldn't get them translated first, and we would translate them here. We took pictures of the letters and emailed them to a Russian friend we've made over the last few months, and she wrote out what they said.

They say:
Hello mom and dad thank you for the money that you sent us I spent them so quick. At first I was taking by 10 Kroons to buy sweets and than rest 50 Kroons I spent on the ticket to children disco. Now I try to speak a little bit in English and hope that this quarter I will have a good grade. In a week we will have a fall school break. Thank you so much for everything, you are the best parents. We love you and wait for you. I am sending you flowers that I made by myself for you. I love you , Katya


HELLO mom and dad, Thank you for the letter and money that you sent to us with Katya. At first I bought some candies on them so I can give a treats to my classmates on my birthday. For the rest of money I got a ticket for a ice-skating ring. We celebrated my birthday at my group and I had 12 people that came for my birthday. My educator (or activity director) made a pizza and cake by herself we put eleven candles on the top of the cake and I could blow out them at first try! My guests were friends and students that I know for 5 years. I am doing good at school even with a math my grades are better this quarter that were last year. I am waiting so much for our documents to be ready so we can be with you.
With love, Roman

They sent little drawings and artwork things, and the flowers Katya refers to are these little green beads on wires that are twisted into flower shapes. Very cute. :)

We also get cute little emails from them very often, about every other day. They say they have been practicing English and if we want to call them then they will talk to us more in English. We plan to call them next week so we'll let you know how that goes!

One of the recent emails said:
You the most best parents
We love you very much
We can't be without you
We have sent you mail
We also miss you
We wait for you so much
Come soon.

Very sweet kids, huh? :) We feel so sad for them for having to wait. More sad than we are for ourselves.

Also recently Katya wrote back to an email Jason sent them telling them about the 6k race he ran in a couple weeks ago. She wrote that she is also fast and can beat Roman and Jason. LOL

I guess they don't suffer from an extremely low self esteem. ;)

More as we hear it, as always...
Molly

Neverending story

Hi all,
In answer to everyone's question: No they don't know how long it will take to do the next step. Signe says she has no idea. But she did ask Diana to help as much as she can with her contacts in Russia, so hopefully that will speed it up.
No other real news. We still might go on a trip to visit them, but we have to wait and see how things are going with the process and hopefully find out more about how long it will take before we plan.
As always I'll keep you all posted!
Love,
Molly

First part done!

Hey all,
We got a little news today. Diana forwarded this message from Signe:

"The Russian passpost has been issued for now and we go on with prosess to give up Russian citizenship and issue Estonian one."

More news as we get it!

Love,

Molly

Letters and emails!

Hey everyone! No news on the kids' papers, but we did get new emails and letters in the mail!!

We just sent them last week letters along with envelopes with money for postage, and extra money for each of them to spend on whatever they want (the equivalent of $10 each of the Estonian money we had left over). I guess they didn't need the postage because before they received the money they had already sent us another letter. But maybe they'll send more now that they can give the money and envelope to anyone.

Here's what the email said:
Thanks for the cash you us have very much pleased
We want that you were our parents

And the letters we got from them today say this:

Hello, Mum and Dad!
Thank you very much for the ball, a hat, chocolate, Orbit. Biscuits I keep for my guests who will come to my birthday on 12 October.
I visit trainings every day during 2 hours. On Fridays we play with other teams, we have won 5 games and lost only one!
At the end of October, when we have holidays at school, we will go to Sillamae town (North Estonia) for several days. There we will have some games with other football teams.
Katja and I are waiting when the trial begins. It was said, that we must wait a little, because we have no passport and there are some problems with getting this passport.
I want to meet all our relatives and be friends with them.
Miss you very much, love you,
Roma

(Clarification: Orbit is gum. Biscuits are Oreos. LOL "Trial" is our court date. Trainings are soccer practice. Roman is turning 11 years old on Sunday.)

Hello, Mum and Dad!
Today we got a parcel from you, thank you very much! We are very happy! Especially I am thankful for earrings, they are really beautiful.
I do not go to school now, because of being ill, I had a cough and a temperature. But now I am getting well again and on Monday will go to school.
I also visit some extra lessons to learn faster English!
Roma and I are very often thinking of you, missing you. Wait and it is sure we come.
I liked your photos very much, especially Mummy's one, where she is near the seashore. She is very beautiful there.
Thank you for Katja's and Masha's photos, they look very happy. Masha looks like her sisters. Send them my regards.
We also send our photos. We went to Poltsamaa (south Estonia) for autumn days. We played there and had some competitions.
Love you very much,
Katja

(Clarification: Katja and Masha are their friends who were adopted by a family in Texas last June, remember. Camp in South Estonia or Katya being sick must've been the reason we were not getting emails from them for a couple weeks.)

Here are the pictures they sent, and the artwork they drew for us.












I assume the extra people on the left is a boy from their camp and a teacher. I think Katya's animal picture is a cat or a bear. Very cute. :) Roman appears to like abstract artwork. Interesting!

It was so nice to hear from them. We miss them so much! They are so sweet.

That's all for now.

Love,
Molly

We want quickly a life

Hey all,
We haven't heard any news from Diana since Friday. I am trying not to call her because even if I do, it won't help. If there is any news, she'll call me. Asking questions rarely gets us anywhere.
But we did get emails from the kids finally so I thought I'd let you know what they said:

"We also you love we very much without you miss we want quickly a life with you." (or, "to live with you")
"We have you sent letters with almost you have received or not." (They sent letters and want to know if we received them yet)
"Thanks for gifts we are glad. Greetings forward to Masha and Katia I am very happy for them. Mom, can you ask Masha’s email address for me, I want that her and I start to write to each other."
(Masha and Katia, remember, are their friends from their group who were adopted in June by a family in Texas. We met Katia while we were in Estonia.)

All for now. Nothing else to report. Still trying to hang in there! It really helps to hear from the kids.
When we get news, more emails, or the letters they mentioned, we'll let you know!

Love,
Molly

Step Five.

I said it before, I'll say it again... Adoption is only for the thick skinned and those who are masters at the 5 steps of coping:

Step 1: Denial
Step 2: Anger
Step 3: Depression
Step 4: Bargaining
Step 5: Acceptance

I'm sorry for not posting recently. It's been a rough week of trying to find out any details from Estonia about what's going on. Diana has been breathing down their necks like crazy and finally heard from Signe via email yesterday the following:

According Estonan Cityzenship Act child can have citizenship if there is clear h ehas no right to some other cityzenship. In our case the children has right to mother’s cityzenship and we have to fallow the Russian demands. Right now the application has been given to Russioan Embassy (in the first week of September) and next step is to give up the Russian citizenship on the reason to have Estonian one.

I will keep you informed about the situation.

So basically they're back to square one because Russia has a claim to their citizenship. At least they're not further behind because they continued the Russian application just in case Estonian naturalization wasn't going to work. Legally it might have been possible to get Estonian citizenship first and bypass the Russian process, but they say that the interpretation of the law is different depending on who you ask. Therefore they would hit roadblocks trying to do it that way. So now they'll go for the Russian citizenship, get it dissolved or signed away by Russia so then they satisfy the Russian requirements to have received that citizenship first, and THEN they will apply for Estonian citizenship. Then they have to get passports, then we have to wait for a court date. Yeah.

We finally have resigned ourselves to the realization that we aren't getting the information and answers we want. We just have to wait, and it will likely be several months from the way it sounds. We're just expecting the worst at this point. We've gone through the whole rants of "I can't handle weeks of not knowing how long it will take, week after week waiting for something to happen!", and that is not going to get us anywhere. What are ya gonna do? So we've just decided to expect it to take forever and then if it does, that's what we were planning for.

Don't know what we're gonna do in the meantime. We might go visit them in the winter when we're slow with work. Depends on what happens between now and then.

The only good thing is that everyone is still adamant about one thing: We will get the kids. That is not in question. It's just a matter of when. We might need to update our dossier. We might need to get an addendum for our home study and a new USCIS approval because Katya will be 13 next June and if there's a risk of it taking that long we need a new approval because currently we're only approved up to age 12. But that's only an issue if it takes until next year to get this done. So we'll see. It's all just paperwork, not anything failure-related. Unless you consider the longest ever Estonian adoption to be a failure! But MAYBE it won't be. (Oh wait, that's step 1... Oops.)

So that's the latest. I didn't want to talk about it all week, so forgive me for being in hiding. I wanted to hear something better before I updated everyone.

To answer other questions: We've not heard from the kids at all in 2 weeks. They haven't been on the computer at all, I assume because of school. I know they haven't been on the computer because Katya hasn't logged into her limpa.ru account (that social networking site like myspace.com), which I know she would have done had she accessed a computer at all!

I'll keep you all posted. Hang in there with me, all you emotionally invested blog obsessed readers! ;)

Love,
Molly