Well most of you know what's going on but the blog deserves an update. Or really you readers need one/want one even if you already know most of the news.
Jay arrived in Tallinn on Tuesday morning Estonia time. But to say it was uneventful wouldn't be quite accurate. He had a one hour layover in Stockholm, and his plane was late getting there. So he had about 40 minutes to get off the plane, go through customs, go to transfer, get his boarding pass for the second leg, go through security again, get to the gate in on a shuttle that takes him to the little plane. Well needless to say, he panicked when he couldn't find the transfer area when he had only a few minutes left (the Stockholm airport is confusing). He had to tell someone his plane was about to leave and get help, and get rushed through security. They held the plane for him and he barely made it.
Though he made it to the plane in time, his luggage, however, did not. He did get his bags on Wednesday morning after the next flight came from Stockholm to Tallinn.
After all that he did get a nice surprise when he got done at the baggage claim office. He walked out and found Igor waiting for him with the kids! He was so happy to see them right away. I was just as surprised when I called to see how baggage stuff was going and Katya answered the phone.
They spent the rest of the day playing and spending time together, and eating junk food. Anja came over too and we talked to them all on Skype video. Katya's hair is strawberry blonde and Roman has blonde tips. They look like a candy cane together. Lol.
Yesterday morning (afternoon in Estonia) Jay and the kids went to Liina's office before court to discuss details and ride together. She freaked Jason out with info about the judge's history of hesitating with making decisions, and overall not knowing what would happen. But everyone was "hoping and keeping their fingers crossed". :-/
When he got to court, he found out that the lady at Social Welfare had talked to the judge the day before, but he couldn't get an answer about what was said. During the court hearing, though, the lady said that she believed that the kids should absolutely go with Jason because we have been talking to them for a year and a half and are already a family.
Jason also told me that the adoption file was 250 pages, and the judge said she'd read everything in advance. I assume all the legal stuff was in there too.
The court hearing lasted about 10 minutes, the judge asked no questions, Liina had no reason to speak at all, and the judge approved the adoption!!! So after all this time, the kids are finally ours!!!
Igor showed up at court too, though Jason and the kids rode with the lawyer, because he wanted to be there. Jason said he's never seen Igor so happy.
Kersti was also there, and Jason made all attempts to be civil. He said he believes from talking to her that she does want what is best for the kids, she's just not always doing the smartest things. She speaks as though she's intelligent, but she doesn't act that way sometimes. We all know people like that...
She also said that this case does not set a precedent for other cases. Apparently in Estonia the judges make their own decisions, and any Russian child's adoption would be up in the air as far as what the judge would decide until legislation is passed. Apparently there is still one judge in the courthouse who still openly believes that consent should be required. Even though that's completely absurd.
Plus they are all paranoid about the Russians getting mad after the fact, even though it was the Estonians who misunderstood everything all along. Russia never cared, and the Russian Embassy in Tallinn was alerted to this adoption taking place several weeks ago.
Anyway, that's pretty much all the details I have right now. They will be all coming home on the 22nd. I'll keep you posted on their activities as much as I can.
Congratulations to us!!! WOOHOOOOO!!!
Love,
Molly
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Monday, July 6, 2009
Update of all updates
Well most of you know what's going on because we've been keeping you posted along the way off-blog. But just for the sake of the rest of you (and those of you who just enjoy checking the blog anyway!), here is an update.
Over the last month the MSA has stalled us every chance they (she) got. What was supposed to take a couple days - getting the documents approved by the Minister (the head of the MSA) - took 3 weeks. It was a seemingly never ending cycle of "hopefully by the end of the week", "hopefully early next week", "hopefully by the end of the week", "hopefully early next week." Finally it was done and sent to the courts. Within a day the judge was assigned and the lawyers attempted to contact her about arranging a court date as quickly as possible. That was a Monday and the judge was out of the court house until Thursday due to a holiday on Tuesday and Wednesday of that week. So we waited till Thursday - and she wasn't available to speak to the lawyers. Jason flipped out that day - that was like the end of his rope! Mainly because the first email we got that day was from Rutt and her words were that the judge "refused" to speak to them. Of course Rutt didn't mean that she refused in the way that we would take that, to mean that she was like "no way, I'm not speaking to no stinking lawyer!" She just wasn't available. So she said to call back on Monday. We waited through yet another agonizing weekend. Monday the lawyers called and didn't reach her, so Liina wrote her an email explaining everything. The judge wrote back and said that she hadn't had a chance to look at the file yet, but when she did she would let her know. UGH!
Finally the next day, last Tuesday, we got an email from Rutt (promptly followed by a call from Diana) saying that they received our court date. It is August 13th.
We had mixed emotions at first. Huge relief to finally know that we're at the end! We know when the kids are coming home, at last!!!!!!!! But disappointed that it is not sooner. 6 weeks notice is more than anyone else has ever gotten. I don't know if the judge is on vacation in July or what, but that's what is probably most likely. So we're sad that the kids will miss our family vacation, and most of the warm weather where we could do the most fun things with them. We have to be grateful, though, that after all we've been through that 6 weeks is all there is left to wait.
So 5 weeks from today Jason will hit the road (or, uh, air.) to go get the kids. FINALLY!!!!!! (Anna and I will be staying home to save money and to avoid missed income for two weeks. As much as we'd all love to be there and I'm bummed about missing the court date.)
So that's pretty much it for now! We've been really busy the last few weeks, so I skipped some of the minute details. It's been a rough ride, to say the least.
We called the kids on Friday night when they returned home from camp. They hadn't received our emails yet, so they didn't know about court. Their reaction was a little tepid, but they insisted that they are really happy. I personally think that they will take a few days to really start believing that this is finally it, that everything will be fine now. They have been just as disappointed along the way, I don't blame them if they're afraid to let themselves be really excited. But today we started getting long emails from them again (after not having received any in almost a month - which was making us both worry). Here is what some of them say:
From Roman:
"it is a great news for us, Katya and I so happy we were sitting together and talked about it we both are so excited because we are going to be home with you very soon and with whole family, we were so happy just to talk about that! I love our family , our family going to be very good and very happy because your going to be our parents
with love roma and Katya"
"I want to ask you please do not get sad because we are going to be home very soon"
Katya also wrote one asking when she would be able to go to the hotel after Jason arrives, and said that she's very happy and excited that they will be coming home to be with us, and that she loves us very much.
So I think that their resilience is holding up just a little while longer. I think this will be finally over not a moment too soon.
I'll keep you posted on the plans. :)
Love,
Molly
Over the last month the MSA has stalled us every chance they (she) got. What was supposed to take a couple days - getting the documents approved by the Minister (the head of the MSA) - took 3 weeks. It was a seemingly never ending cycle of "hopefully by the end of the week", "hopefully early next week", "hopefully by the end of the week", "hopefully early next week." Finally it was done and sent to the courts. Within a day the judge was assigned and the lawyers attempted to contact her about arranging a court date as quickly as possible. That was a Monday and the judge was out of the court house until Thursday due to a holiday on Tuesday and Wednesday of that week. So we waited till Thursday - and she wasn't available to speak to the lawyers. Jason flipped out that day - that was like the end of his rope! Mainly because the first email we got that day was from Rutt and her words were that the judge "refused" to speak to them. Of course Rutt didn't mean that she refused in the way that we would take that, to mean that she was like "no way, I'm not speaking to no stinking lawyer!" She just wasn't available. So she said to call back on Monday. We waited through yet another agonizing weekend. Monday the lawyers called and didn't reach her, so Liina wrote her an email explaining everything. The judge wrote back and said that she hadn't had a chance to look at the file yet, but when she did she would let her know. UGH!
Finally the next day, last Tuesday, we got an email from Rutt (promptly followed by a call from Diana) saying that they received our court date. It is August 13th.
We had mixed emotions at first. Huge relief to finally know that we're at the end! We know when the kids are coming home, at last!!!!!!!! But disappointed that it is not sooner. 6 weeks notice is more than anyone else has ever gotten. I don't know if the judge is on vacation in July or what, but that's what is probably most likely. So we're sad that the kids will miss our family vacation, and most of the warm weather where we could do the most fun things with them. We have to be grateful, though, that after all we've been through that 6 weeks is all there is left to wait.
So 5 weeks from today Jason will hit the road (or, uh, air.) to go get the kids. FINALLY!!!!!! (Anna and I will be staying home to save money and to avoid missed income for two weeks. As much as we'd all love to be there and I'm bummed about missing the court date.)
So that's pretty much it for now! We've been really busy the last few weeks, so I skipped some of the minute details. It's been a rough ride, to say the least.
We called the kids on Friday night when they returned home from camp. They hadn't received our emails yet, so they didn't know about court. Their reaction was a little tepid, but they insisted that they are really happy. I personally think that they will take a few days to really start believing that this is finally it, that everything will be fine now. They have been just as disappointed along the way, I don't blame them if they're afraid to let themselves be really excited. But today we started getting long emails from them again (after not having received any in almost a month - which was making us both worry). Here is what some of them say:
From Roman:
"it is a great news for us, Katya and I so happy we were sitting together and talked about it we both are so excited because we are going to be home with you very soon and with whole family, we were so happy just to talk about that! I love our family , our family going to be very good and very happy because your going to be our parents
with love roma and Katya"
"I want to ask you please do not get sad because we are going to be home very soon"
Katya also wrote one asking when she would be able to go to the hotel after Jason arrives, and said that she's very happy and excited that they will be coming home to be with us, and that she loves us very much.
So I think that their resilience is holding up just a little while longer. I think this will be finally over not a moment too soon.
I'll keep you posted on the plans. :)
Love,
Molly
Monday, June 1, 2009
Nothing real yet
Our court petition made it to Liina on Friday, who sent it to Kersti along with all of the translated documents from the week before. Translations of our dossier were a lot quicker with a lawyer overseeing it! :)
Everything is in Kersti's hands as of this morning. She said she would prepare everything for court very quickly, but she couldn't give the lawyers any new indication of when court might be. So I asked Liina some follow up questions (she'll call me later today to answer) about how things work with getting a court date so hopefully we can at least get a little bit of a hint as to when it will probably be. But in comparison with when we got Anna - we formally accepted her referral mid October when she was officially available, got her court petition 10/31 (and it was sent through Diana to Igor to Kersti, so would have taken longer to get back to Kersti than K&R's court petition did), our court docs were submitted to court for her sometime after Kersti received back the court petition, and we had court on 1/22. Which means that we found out our court date for her less than 2 months after our documents were submitted to court.
From now we have 5 weeks till courts close. So that should mean that with a even a little extra effort there shouldn't be a reason not to get court before the closing. But we'll see.
It's tough waiting every day knowing you can hear something any time or you could hear nothing for weeks. But that is kind of what we've been doing for the last 9 months. At least Liina & Rutt will be staying on top of Kersti until it's done!
I'll keep you all posted!
Love,
Molly
Everything is in Kersti's hands as of this morning. She said she would prepare everything for court very quickly, but she couldn't give the lawyers any new indication of when court might be. So I asked Liina some follow up questions (she'll call me later today to answer) about how things work with getting a court date so hopefully we can at least get a little bit of a hint as to when it will probably be. But in comparison with when we got Anna - we formally accepted her referral mid October when she was officially available, got her court petition 10/31 (and it was sent through Diana to Igor to Kersti, so would have taken longer to get back to Kersti than K&R's court petition did), our court docs were submitted to court for her sometime after Kersti received back the court petition, and we had court on 1/22. Which means that we found out our court date for her less than 2 months after our documents were submitted to court.
From now we have 5 weeks till courts close. So that should mean that with a even a little extra effort there shouldn't be a reason not to get court before the closing. But we'll see.
It's tough waiting every day knowing you can hear something any time or you could hear nothing for weeks. But that is kind of what we've been doing for the last 9 months. At least Liina & Rutt will be staying on top of Kersti until it's done!
I'll keep you all posted!
Love,
Molly
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Quick News:
We got our court petition this morning from Kersti! Seems like she wrote it out and emailed it to Diana as soon as she found out that the lawyers had our documents (which Liina received late yesterday). I wish she would have sent it before so we could have saved a trip to Harrisburg apostilling one more document! But we'll probably have to go once or twice more after this anyway for one thing or another.
But anyway, this means a few things:
First of all, as soon as that document is done and sent to Estonia, then all documents will be ready for court.
Second - the MSA issues that court petition, NOT the court. Maybe Kersti has to have approval from court to do that for individual cases, I don't know. But either way when people receive their court petitions, that doesn't mean that the documents are already in court necessarily. Our documents are not yet in court.
Third - the second thing above is a good thing... That means that it can take relatively no time at all to have a court date scheduled from the time the dossier enters the court house. I'd been told before that you can possibly get a court date a couple weeks after you get a court petition. (Or it could be months too, it depends on the region... In Narva for example the papers could sit in the court house for awhile too, before the court date is scheduled. Tallinn is faster.)
Kersti asked Diana if we will have Liina represent us or if we will travel for the court hearing. Our answer was that Liina will be there either way, but Jason will plan to travel without me (so I can take care of Anna and save $ on plane ticket, as much as I'd like to be there). But Liina can represent us in court alone without Jason personally there if that means court can happen sooner. So basically to do whatever is fastest.
It seems like everyone is preparing and doing everything possible to get court immediately, under the crazy circumstances. After all, if we had to wait till September, it would be like our wait has started over from now and we will be a year late getting them home only because of their mistakes. Liina said she believes Kersti understands the urgency of the situation, and said that she now has a "good efficient communication relationship with her."
We got an invoice for the attorney's fees for April - and we were already over our 10 hour retainer before the month of May even started. EEEEEK. I don't know how many hours they likely used in May, but probably we'll owe a few more thousand to Liina before all is said and done. But as you all know, we'll do whatever it takes to get our kids home.
Recent emails from the kids (thanks again to Larisa for your help!!):
From Roman-
"I love you too very much and want to be with you. Say hi to all relatives and friends, we love them too. Thank you for doing everything you can. It makes me feel very happy."
From Katya-
"I hope we can be with you [on vacation] in July. Do not worry, everything is going to be fine. I love you and Roman loves you too. Mom and Dad could you send us some sweets Roma wants them a lot and so do I, only if it is not hard for you. I think about Nastja, I wonder how she behaves good or bad. Mom and Dad I would like a plush toy for myself, for example a tiger or something else, only if you don't mind."
They're so sweet and funny.
More later!
Love,
Molly
But anyway, this means a few things:
First of all, as soon as that document is done and sent to Estonia, then all documents will be ready for court.
Second - the MSA issues that court petition, NOT the court. Maybe Kersti has to have approval from court to do that for individual cases, I don't know. But either way when people receive their court petitions, that doesn't mean that the documents are already in court necessarily. Our documents are not yet in court.
Third - the second thing above is a good thing... That means that it can take relatively no time at all to have a court date scheduled from the time the dossier enters the court house. I'd been told before that you can possibly get a court date a couple weeks after you get a court petition. (Or it could be months too, it depends on the region... In Narva for example the papers could sit in the court house for awhile too, before the court date is scheduled. Tallinn is faster.)
Kersti asked Diana if we will have Liina represent us or if we will travel for the court hearing. Our answer was that Liina will be there either way, but Jason will plan to travel without me (so I can take care of Anna and save $ on plane ticket, as much as I'd like to be there). But Liina can represent us in court alone without Jason personally there if that means court can happen sooner. So basically to do whatever is fastest.
It seems like everyone is preparing and doing everything possible to get court immediately, under the crazy circumstances. After all, if we had to wait till September, it would be like our wait has started over from now and we will be a year late getting them home only because of their mistakes. Liina said she believes Kersti understands the urgency of the situation, and said that she now has a "good efficient communication relationship with her."
We got an invoice for the attorney's fees for April - and we were already over our 10 hour retainer before the month of May even started. EEEEEK. I don't know how many hours they likely used in May, but probably we'll owe a few more thousand to Liina before all is said and done. But as you all know, we'll do whatever it takes to get our kids home.
Recent emails from the kids (thanks again to Larisa for your help!!):
From Roman-
"I love you too very much and want to be with you. Say hi to all relatives and friends, we love them too. Thank you for doing everything you can. It makes me feel very happy."
From Katya-
"I hope we can be with you [on vacation] in July. Do not worry, everything is going to be fine. I love you and Roman loves you too. Mom and Dad could you send us some sweets Roma wants them a lot and so do I, only if it is not hard for you. I think about Nastja, I wonder how she behaves good or bad. Mom and Dad I would like a plush toy for myself, for example a tiger or something else, only if you don't mind."
They're so sweet and funny.
More later!
Love,
Molly
Monday, May 18, 2009
Kersti's reaction
Today's events went as well as can be expected I think. Diana talked to Kersti, who hadn't at the time spoken to Rutt yet. Kersti told Diana that she was waiting for a letter from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs about the bilateral agreement, and after that she'd hopefully be able to submit the dossier to court. But she wanted to know how we would feel about sending her new originals to submit to court instead of her having to pull the old originals out of the court where we adopted Anna. Some of them might be out of date anyway. Diana told her that we'd already started to anticipate that and we would send over new originals as soon as we had them all. Diana said Kersti's tone was better than usual - like she was assuming that everything would go to court and be fine.
Later I got an email from Rutt saying she'd talked to Kersti and told her about the MFA's decision. Rutt talked to her about submitting the dossier and Kersti told her the same thing she'd said to Diana about our originals.
So it does seem like the letter from the MFA is doing its job!
I got an email from Anna Valentina yesterday (Katya & Roman's former caretaker). She said she wondered if it might be possible to get Estonian government to agree to allow the adoption without involving Russia because she was feeling like consent from Russia could not be gotten. I wrote her back and told her what happened - that we'd already tried that and seems like it worked.
We told the kids (in an email) that we were able to get part of the Estonian government to agree that consent from Russia is not necessary for their adoption, which would mean that their adoption problems were fixed and we just needed to wait for court again. They wrote back very excited about that! But none of us know how long it will take to get a court date from here.
We have been working like crazy since everything started to be resolved, getting new originals for our dossier just in case they asked for them. We knew they would not give us any notice about needing them, so we just planned for it just in case. It takes a few weeks to do, but fortunately we should have everything done by Wednesday morning. Then we can FedEx the documents to the lawyer, who will take them to Kersti. That means theoretically the documents could be in court midweek next week, and that leaves us roughly 5 weeks till the courts close for the summer. It seems like Kersti is willing to make this an urgent matter, so there is still a good chance that we could get squeezed in before courts close. Seems like the least they can do after putting us through all this for nothing!
That's all for today. I'll keep you posted!! Sooooo glad things are starting to go well for a change!
Love,
Molly
Later I got an email from Rutt saying she'd talked to Kersti and told her about the MFA's decision. Rutt talked to her about submitting the dossier and Kersti told her the same thing she'd said to Diana about our originals.
So it does seem like the letter from the MFA is doing its job!
I got an email from Anna Valentina yesterday (Katya & Roman's former caretaker). She said she wondered if it might be possible to get Estonian government to agree to allow the adoption without involving Russia because she was feeling like consent from Russia could not be gotten. I wrote her back and told her what happened - that we'd already tried that and seems like it worked.
We told the kids (in an email) that we were able to get part of the Estonian government to agree that consent from Russia is not necessary for their adoption, which would mean that their adoption problems were fixed and we just needed to wait for court again. They wrote back very excited about that! But none of us know how long it will take to get a court date from here.
We have been working like crazy since everything started to be resolved, getting new originals for our dossier just in case they asked for them. We knew they would not give us any notice about needing them, so we just planned for it just in case. It takes a few weeks to do, but fortunately we should have everything done by Wednesday morning. Then we can FedEx the documents to the lawyer, who will take them to Kersti. That means theoretically the documents could be in court midweek next week, and that leaves us roughly 5 weeks till the courts close for the summer. It seems like Kersti is willing to make this an urgent matter, so there is still a good chance that we could get squeezed in before courts close. Seems like the least they can do after putting us through all this for nothing!
That's all for today. I'll keep you posted!! Sooooo glad things are starting to go well for a change!
Love,
Molly
Friday, May 15, 2009
Relax this weekend.
Well we were supposed to find out this week what the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) would write in response to Liina and Rutt's letter about the laws. So we waited every day, hoping for some news... I told Jason that "this week" means at least Friday, as far as I'm concerned. Everything takes the absolute maximum (and then some) amount of time. So I asked Rutt yesterday if she still expected to hear this week. She said if she didn't get the letter by today she would call and find out what's going on. At 7:30 this morning I called Rutt (2:30pm in Estonia) and asked if she received it. She said no, and she said she'd call and talk to them. I asked her to see if they could fax her the letter, if it's been completed, so we don't have to worry all weekend. She agreed and said she'd email me as soon as she finds something out.
A few minutes later I got an email from her saying that the letter was mailed by the MFA but she hadn't received it yet, but she got an electronic version of the letter. So now we know what the MFA says! As we all hoped, they confirmed that CONSENT FROM RUSSIA IS NOT NEEDED for this adoption case. WOOHOO!!!
They said that the Russian Embassy should be notified that their citizens are leaving the country, but that's all. I called Rutt to get clarification. She told me that notification is simply that - notification. Not permission, not request, not anything that they would respond to. Seems to be a normal part of the procedure. I told her my only concern was that since Kersti was convinced by someone that the Russian Embassy has a problem with the adoptions of Russian citizens, that involving the Embassy at all might cause a problem. She said that was only in relation to getting documents from the Embassy (i.e. passports), was likely not true anyway, and there is nothing that is needed FROM the Embassy.
We did find out from Igor that the kids already do have travel passports. So as far as I know we'll just be leaving their names the same and using their old passports to exit, just to save time if nothing else. In the next couple weeks we should be learning more about the specifics of the document procedures. But the most important hurdle has been successfully jumped, finally. The MFA, who is the known authority on international law in Estonia, has said that consent is not needed.
Liina told me last week that if the MFA said that, then the MSA would absolutely have no problem proceeding with the adoption without consent from Russia. So I hope and believe that the only issues that will stand in the way now is minor stupid delays and the lawyers curbing any concerns that Kersti has regarding how to actually DO everything now. We're going to tell Liina and Rutt to impose their assistance continually until the end - making sure Kersti doesn't stall something in any way, and make sure that this notification to the Embassy is done properly so no problems come out of it. We're also going to ask them to aggressively push Kersti to do whatever she has to do to get us a court date before the court closing in July. It's been a year since we met the kids and submitted our dossier, and it would be completely unfair to have to wait until the fall again. After everything they've put us through, the least they can do is treat this like an urgent matter.
That's all the real news I have for now! I'll let you know what details I learn next week. Rutt is going to speak to Kersti on Monday and explain what the MFA said, and go from there.
Everyone can take a deep breath of relief for now, though, at least for the weekend! Finally some indication that we are winning this long fight!
Love,
Molly
A few minutes later I got an email from her saying that the letter was mailed by the MFA but she hadn't received it yet, but she got an electronic version of the letter. So now we know what the MFA says! As we all hoped, they confirmed that CONSENT FROM RUSSIA IS NOT NEEDED for this adoption case. WOOHOO!!!
They said that the Russian Embassy should be notified that their citizens are leaving the country, but that's all. I called Rutt to get clarification. She told me that notification is simply that - notification. Not permission, not request, not anything that they would respond to. Seems to be a normal part of the procedure. I told her my only concern was that since Kersti was convinced by someone that the Russian Embassy has a problem with the adoptions of Russian citizens, that involving the Embassy at all might cause a problem. She said that was only in relation to getting documents from the Embassy (i.e. passports), was likely not true anyway, and there is nothing that is needed FROM the Embassy.
We did find out from Igor that the kids already do have travel passports. So as far as I know we'll just be leaving their names the same and using their old passports to exit, just to save time if nothing else. In the next couple weeks we should be learning more about the specifics of the document procedures. But the most important hurdle has been successfully jumped, finally. The MFA, who is the known authority on international law in Estonia, has said that consent is not needed.
Liina told me last week that if the MFA said that, then the MSA would absolutely have no problem proceeding with the adoption without consent from Russia. So I hope and believe that the only issues that will stand in the way now is minor stupid delays and the lawyers curbing any concerns that Kersti has regarding how to actually DO everything now. We're going to tell Liina and Rutt to impose their assistance continually until the end - making sure Kersti doesn't stall something in any way, and make sure that this notification to the Embassy is done properly so no problems come out of it. We're also going to ask them to aggressively push Kersti to do whatever she has to do to get us a court date before the court closing in July. It's been a year since we met the kids and submitted our dossier, and it would be completely unfair to have to wait until the fall again. After everything they've put us through, the least they can do is treat this like an urgent matter.
That's all the real news I have for now! I'll let you know what details I learn next week. Rutt is going to speak to Kersti on Monday and explain what the MFA said, and go from there.
Everyone can take a deep breath of relief for now, though, at least for the weekend! Finally some indication that we are winning this long fight!
Love,
Molly
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
You know that game called "Telephone"?
Update!
I talked to Liina for about a half hour today. I love talking to her, she is very thorough and very determined. She likes to tell me all the details, which I love. But of course I can't write them all!
First of all, I got questions about whether this is a personal thing with Kersti that she just wants to stop this adoption no matter what. I can't list all the reasons why, but we definitely have enough information to know for sure that it's not personal. This is a country-wide problem from a misunderstanding and story that basically ran wild, and the story did not originally come from Kersti. All of the Russian children adoptions are on hold until this is resolved, not just ours. So resolving this would mean helping all of the Russian kids in Estonia.
By the way, we also learned enough details to marginally justify the kids having been given Russian citizenship. It might have been debatable on a number of topics, but it's too late now. They have Russian citizenship and dissolving it, even based on legal reasons, would be nearly impossible because that would mean involving Russia. Which obviously we're trying NOT to do.
The news from Liina today is basically this:
The bilateral agreement misunderstanding basically came from a diplomatic letter that was sent to the Estonian internal affairs office from Russia a long time ago, which was read and commented on in a letter to the MSA from someone at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (hereafter "MFA"). Both letters were very vague, and said that the bilateral agreement should be taken into consideration in regard to adoption of Russian citizens. No one looked into the law to check for exceptions. The primary exception being that it doesn't apply when the kids are going out of Estonia.
In the meantime, Kersti and the entire MSA, as well as the Citizenship and Migration Board, and other organizations in Estonia all came to believe that the consent from Russia was necessary for ALL adoptions of Russian children. From this came other stories about what the Russian Embassy is doing and saying, which can't be confirmed without risking inadvertently making the Russian Embassy interested in something they probably don't even know about now.
But basically Kersti was being told different things from different people and no one was figuring anything out. They came to believe consent was necessary for so many months, that when the lawyer came with all this new information it shook everyone up and now it just has taken a little time for everyone to re-collect their ideas and make a new opinion.
Liina tells me that the MFA legal department is analyzing this as a group - sitting down with all the laws and figuring out whether this adoption applies to us at all. She said they are international law experts and the ones responsible for writing bilateral agreements like this one in question. We expect to get their official response next week, but the unofficial word is that everyone seems to believe that it is very difficult to apply the bilateral agreement to our adoption. If that is what they write officially to the MSA, then the MSA will continue with the adoption. They will do what the MFA says, using that as the basis for setting the procedure to be followed. If the MFA gives a reason why the consent IS needed (which doesn't seem to be likely), then Liina believes that there must be a real reason that she is not considering (which will be outlined in their letter). So basically what they say, goes. If they decide the adoption is legal now, then everything is good and the kids can use old passports (if they have them - Igor is checking that now) and get out of the country with them in their old names. If they don't have them, then they'll get them in their old names before the adoption, I think. If the MFA says consent is needed, then the MSA will be able to communicate with Moscow with a clear expression of what is needed and exactly why. The reason no consent has been received from Russia now is basically the letter that was sent through Dmitry has confused reasons about WHY consent is needed. Which makes the Russians basically be confused and ignore it.
Either way, the MFA will be helping clear this up. The best option is of course that they do write agreeing that the bilateral agreement does not apply to this adoption. That seems now to be the most likely scenario.
It's so nice to finally be getting to the bottom of all this. Liina thinks that it's all crazy that this has gotten so confused, lost in translation, blown out of proportion and took so long to figure out. But if it wasn't for her and Rutt, we wouldn't get anywhere because no one would have considered that they were wrong all this time.
I'll let you all know what we hear between now and the time when the letter comes from the MFA. But all of you please keep us in your prayers. It's a very stressful situation that has taken a huge toll on the whole family, especially us and the kids. Honestly I'm not sure how our nervous systems have survived this long.
Please, let all of this be over soon.
Love,
Molly
I talked to Liina for about a half hour today. I love talking to her, she is very thorough and very determined. She likes to tell me all the details, which I love. But of course I can't write them all!
First of all, I got questions about whether this is a personal thing with Kersti that she just wants to stop this adoption no matter what. I can't list all the reasons why, but we definitely have enough information to know for sure that it's not personal. This is a country-wide problem from a misunderstanding and story that basically ran wild, and the story did not originally come from Kersti. All of the Russian children adoptions are on hold until this is resolved, not just ours. So resolving this would mean helping all of the Russian kids in Estonia.
By the way, we also learned enough details to marginally justify the kids having been given Russian citizenship. It might have been debatable on a number of topics, but it's too late now. They have Russian citizenship and dissolving it, even based on legal reasons, would be nearly impossible because that would mean involving Russia. Which obviously we're trying NOT to do.
The news from Liina today is basically this:
The bilateral agreement misunderstanding basically came from a diplomatic letter that was sent to the Estonian internal affairs office from Russia a long time ago, which was read and commented on in a letter to the MSA from someone at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (hereafter "MFA"). Both letters were very vague, and said that the bilateral agreement should be taken into consideration in regard to adoption of Russian citizens. No one looked into the law to check for exceptions. The primary exception being that it doesn't apply when the kids are going out of Estonia.
In the meantime, Kersti and the entire MSA, as well as the Citizenship and Migration Board, and other organizations in Estonia all came to believe that the consent from Russia was necessary for ALL adoptions of Russian children. From this came other stories about what the Russian Embassy is doing and saying, which can't be confirmed without risking inadvertently making the Russian Embassy interested in something they probably don't even know about now.
But basically Kersti was being told different things from different people and no one was figuring anything out. They came to believe consent was necessary for so many months, that when the lawyer came with all this new information it shook everyone up and now it just has taken a little time for everyone to re-collect their ideas and make a new opinion.
Liina tells me that the MFA legal department is analyzing this as a group - sitting down with all the laws and figuring out whether this adoption applies to us at all. She said they are international law experts and the ones responsible for writing bilateral agreements like this one in question. We expect to get their official response next week, but the unofficial word is that everyone seems to believe that it is very difficult to apply the bilateral agreement to our adoption. If that is what they write officially to the MSA, then the MSA will continue with the adoption. They will do what the MFA says, using that as the basis for setting the procedure to be followed. If the MFA gives a reason why the consent IS needed (which doesn't seem to be likely), then Liina believes that there must be a real reason that she is not considering (which will be outlined in their letter). So basically what they say, goes. If they decide the adoption is legal now, then everything is good and the kids can use old passports (if they have them - Igor is checking that now) and get out of the country with them in their old names. If they don't have them, then they'll get them in their old names before the adoption, I think. If the MFA says consent is needed, then the MSA will be able to communicate with Moscow with a clear expression of what is needed and exactly why. The reason no consent has been received from Russia now is basically the letter that was sent through Dmitry has confused reasons about WHY consent is needed. Which makes the Russians basically be confused and ignore it.
Either way, the MFA will be helping clear this up. The best option is of course that they do write agreeing that the bilateral agreement does not apply to this adoption. That seems now to be the most likely scenario.
It's so nice to finally be getting to the bottom of all this. Liina thinks that it's all crazy that this has gotten so confused, lost in translation, blown out of proportion and took so long to figure out. But if it wasn't for her and Rutt, we wouldn't get anywhere because no one would have considered that they were wrong all this time.
I'll let you all know what we hear between now and the time when the letter comes from the MFA. But all of you please keep us in your prayers. It's a very stressful situation that has taken a huge toll on the whole family, especially us and the kids. Honestly I'm not sure how our nervous systems have survived this long.
Please, let all of this be over soon.
Love,
Molly
Saturday, May 2, 2009
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
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
Monday, April 20, 2009
"Just because."
Well we had to get our taxes done and we've been crazy busy with lots of stuff, so I'm sorry I haven't been able to again keep you guys updated about the craziness.
Here's a rundown... At some point in the last couple weeks we found out that the MSA is, in fact, still thinking they need consent from Russia after all. They decided that because Russia-Estonia relations are bad, they should avoid disapproval and get the consent anyway. Just because they want it. Apparently a judge was never asked and was never involved in this decision to get consent from Russia, or at the very least a judge was only asked in general terms off the record, unofficially. The case never went to court at all. The MSA is the one who decided to impose this requirement of consent from Russia, not a judge. It's nice to finally start learning the truth, now that someone listens to our questions and actually gets answers.
Since then we've been arguing the ridiculousness of their notion - since the consent doesn't seem to be possible, especially since there is no legal basis for Russia providing it. Secondly, singling out kids with Russian citizenship as the only ones who need these stringent paperwork requirements (and thereby preventing their adoption when stateless and Estonian kids can be adopted just fine) is discrimination. THAT is likely to cause more Russian disapproval than their not getting unnecessary consent.
These reasons, along with all of the laws explaining the Hague convention and the bilateral agreement, were put down in a very well written letter from Rutt to the MSA and copying the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The letter was written last week, with suggestions being made by us and by Rutt, and should be at the MSA soon if it isn't already.
In the meantime, today we got forwarded an email from Kersti saying that they are waiting for this letter from Rutt explaining why the bilateral agreement doesn't apply to this adoption, but even so - there are problems with figuring out immigration procedures without consent from Russia. They think that the Russian embassy will not give the kids travel documents, after their adoption hearing, without Russia's consent. I think that's just senseless speculation, as the issuing of a travel document has nothing to do with where they are going and why. It's just a document to leave the country, which they have the right to do. Anna's travel document was a non-Estonian citizen one-time temporary travel document, with an immigrant visa from the US embassy inside. So immigration to the US is the US EMBASSY'S decision, not Russia's. And as Russian citizens, they have the right to get a passport.
So we told Diana to ask Kersti that if the letter from the attorney proves the adoption is legal (which it does) AND we can find out how they can leave the country (which we will), will they let the adoption go to court. We'll see what she says. It seems like they are grasping at straws to justify needing consent from Russia. They are being paranoid. Especially after lots of kids have gotten out on Russian passports in the past. Diana says she still has never gotten a straight answer about WHY they think they really need consent from Russia at all. No one can figure it out. None of it makes any sense.
There were many many good points Rutt wrote in the letter. I can't list them all, but the letter was very convincing that he adoption not only is legal, but they absolutely SHOULD proceed with it.
On the one hand, it's good that the hold up IS the MSA after all. I think they are easier to convince than a faceless judge. The judges, according to Rutt, don't know the international adoption laws. They just know what documents are needed for the actual hearing. The MSA is supposed to do the rest. So when it comes down to it, I'm sure we'll play it safe and have Rutt there in the court room with us.
If the MSA continues to argue, they really have no justifiable reason for waiting for the consent. I think they will back down, especially if they start to realize that if they don't want trouble, they are messing with the wrong family.
On the other hand, it's so infuriating that they said they'd be cooperative, that they want the adoption to happen, and that they want us to hire an attorney so they can get help to resolve this. I really don't know if they are just stupid or if they are also intentional liars.
Anyway, we'll try to keep you posted. The story keeps changing all the time, so it's hard to keep everyone updated.
On other subjects, Anna is still doing great. She has a day here and there where she'll get in big trouble for something with us, but it's usually pretty mild compared to what a lot of people deal with, with older adopted children especially. She gets in trouble for things like pouting, arguing, small temper tantrums like a small stomp on the floor when we say no about something, being a tiny bit disrespectful, etc. That's mostly about it. She's really an awesome girl. She really responds well to our consistently allowing or not allowing certain things.
Some of you have asked how she's doing with learning the Bible. (My answer will make sense to most of you, but to those of you who don't know what I'm talking about here in parts of this paragraph, just filter it in your brain accordingly!) She's doing really well. She understands what we teach her from reading together (in Russian and in English) the "Learn from the Great Teacher" book and the Bible Stories book. She answers at every meeting, too. She asks good questions and I think comprehends a lot for never having learned anything. She didn't know who Adam and Eve were, for example.
Lately we've had more clues from her to her past, and interesting indications of her the way she views things. For example, the reason why her bio family's house was so bad wasn't because it was small and dirty, etc., it was because there was a mean cat who would scratch her. But it also had mice and ghosts apparently (no kidding).
To give you an idea of how she thinks about things, she asked me the other day if we have any other kids. I asked her if she sees them anywhere, and her answer was that hey might be in an orphanage somewhere. She also told me a different day that the reason she was in the orphanage was because their house was small and her mom had too many children, they didn't all fit. So she had to live somewhere else. So to her it's normal to be displaced to another house when you get more kids. I told her that's not true of all families. I told her that even if we had no money, too many kids, and a small house or no house, she would always be our daughter and she wouldn't be sent anywhere else ever. I think after we explained that, she started to act a little bit differently. I think she's starting to feel more secure. That was nice, after a rough couple of days where it seemed like she was comparing us to her bio parents unfairly. She stopped talking about them since then. She told me she was sorry, that she had one or two days where she was not so good (a little sad).
Lately there have been some funny sayings from her trying to get the English sentence structure and the right words. She says "Papa you now food my french fries" (which means she wants him to finish eating her french fries) and "Mama, we get food number 1 this one white and upstairs sauce?" Which means are we getting an appetizer, something white with sauce on top. She's really cute! :) Jason takes advantage and sometimes tells her the wrong word for something to just hear her say something funny. He always tells her, in the end, how to say it correctly. After she yells at him for joking around with her.
OK so I REALLY WILL get pictures on here as soon as I can. :) I gotta run for now. More soon.
Love,
Molly
Here's a rundown... At some point in the last couple weeks we found out that the MSA is, in fact, still thinking they need consent from Russia after all. They decided that because Russia-Estonia relations are bad, they should avoid disapproval and get the consent anyway. Just because they want it. Apparently a judge was never asked and was never involved in this decision to get consent from Russia, or at the very least a judge was only asked in general terms off the record, unofficially. The case never went to court at all. The MSA is the one who decided to impose this requirement of consent from Russia, not a judge. It's nice to finally start learning the truth, now that someone listens to our questions and actually gets answers.
Since then we've been arguing the ridiculousness of their notion - since the consent doesn't seem to be possible, especially since there is no legal basis for Russia providing it. Secondly, singling out kids with Russian citizenship as the only ones who need these stringent paperwork requirements (and thereby preventing their adoption when stateless and Estonian kids can be adopted just fine) is discrimination. THAT is likely to cause more Russian disapproval than their not getting unnecessary consent.
These reasons, along with all of the laws explaining the Hague convention and the bilateral agreement, were put down in a very well written letter from Rutt to the MSA and copying the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The letter was written last week, with suggestions being made by us and by Rutt, and should be at the MSA soon if it isn't already.
In the meantime, today we got forwarded an email from Kersti saying that they are waiting for this letter from Rutt explaining why the bilateral agreement doesn't apply to this adoption, but even so - there are problems with figuring out immigration procedures without consent from Russia. They think that the Russian embassy will not give the kids travel documents, after their adoption hearing, without Russia's consent. I think that's just senseless speculation, as the issuing of a travel document has nothing to do with where they are going and why. It's just a document to leave the country, which they have the right to do. Anna's travel document was a non-Estonian citizen one-time temporary travel document, with an immigrant visa from the US embassy inside. So immigration to the US is the US EMBASSY'S decision, not Russia's. And as Russian citizens, they have the right to get a passport.
So we told Diana to ask Kersti that if the letter from the attorney proves the adoption is legal (which it does) AND we can find out how they can leave the country (which we will), will they let the adoption go to court. We'll see what she says. It seems like they are grasping at straws to justify needing consent from Russia. They are being paranoid. Especially after lots of kids have gotten out on Russian passports in the past. Diana says she still has never gotten a straight answer about WHY they think they really need consent from Russia at all. No one can figure it out. None of it makes any sense.
There were many many good points Rutt wrote in the letter. I can't list them all, but the letter was very convincing that he adoption not only is legal, but they absolutely SHOULD proceed with it.
On the one hand, it's good that the hold up IS the MSA after all. I think they are easier to convince than a faceless judge. The judges, according to Rutt, don't know the international adoption laws. They just know what documents are needed for the actual hearing. The MSA is supposed to do the rest. So when it comes down to it, I'm sure we'll play it safe and have Rutt there in the court room with us.
If the MSA continues to argue, they really have no justifiable reason for waiting for the consent. I think they will back down, especially if they start to realize that if they don't want trouble, they are messing with the wrong family.
On the other hand, it's so infuriating that they said they'd be cooperative, that they want the adoption to happen, and that they want us to hire an attorney so they can get help to resolve this. I really don't know if they are just stupid or if they are also intentional liars.
Anyway, we'll try to keep you posted. The story keeps changing all the time, so it's hard to keep everyone updated.
On other subjects, Anna is still doing great. She has a day here and there where she'll get in big trouble for something with us, but it's usually pretty mild compared to what a lot of people deal with, with older adopted children especially. She gets in trouble for things like pouting, arguing, small temper tantrums like a small stomp on the floor when we say no about something, being a tiny bit disrespectful, etc. That's mostly about it. She's really an awesome girl. She really responds well to our consistently allowing or not allowing certain things.
Some of you have asked how she's doing with learning the Bible. (My answer will make sense to most of you, but to those of you who don't know what I'm talking about here in parts of this paragraph, just filter it in your brain accordingly!) She's doing really well. She understands what we teach her from reading together (in Russian and in English) the "Learn from the Great Teacher" book and the Bible Stories book. She answers at every meeting, too. She asks good questions and I think comprehends a lot for never having learned anything. She didn't know who Adam and Eve were, for example.
Lately we've had more clues from her to her past, and interesting indications of her the way she views things. For example, the reason why her bio family's house was so bad wasn't because it was small and dirty, etc., it was because there was a mean cat who would scratch her. But it also had mice and ghosts apparently (no kidding).
To give you an idea of how she thinks about things, she asked me the other day if we have any other kids. I asked her if she sees them anywhere, and her answer was that hey might be in an orphanage somewhere. She also told me a different day that the reason she was in the orphanage was because their house was small and her mom had too many children, they didn't all fit. So she had to live somewhere else. So to her it's normal to be displaced to another house when you get more kids. I told her that's not true of all families. I told her that even if we had no money, too many kids, and a small house or no house, she would always be our daughter and she wouldn't be sent anywhere else ever. I think after we explained that, she started to act a little bit differently. I think she's starting to feel more secure. That was nice, after a rough couple of days where it seemed like she was comparing us to her bio parents unfairly. She stopped talking about them since then. She told me she was sorry, that she had one or two days where she was not so good (a little sad).
Lately there have been some funny sayings from her trying to get the English sentence structure and the right words. She says "Papa you now food my french fries" (which means she wants him to finish eating her french fries) and "Mama, we get food number 1 this one white and upstairs sauce?" Which means are we getting an appetizer, something white with sauce on top. She's really cute! :) Jason takes advantage and sometimes tells her the wrong word for something to just hear her say something funny. He always tells her, in the end, how to say it correctly. After she yells at him for joking around with her.
OK so I REALLY WILL get pictures on here as soon as I can. :) I gotta run for now. More soon.
Love,
Molly
Monday, April 6, 2009
Rutt
So I think we've officially chosen an attorney. We are going with the lady who was the first one to tell us (and the one to tell us in the most detail) about how the bilateral agreement doesn't apply to this adoption. We got an email from her today with an engagement letter we have to sign, along with the amount they'll be charging us. Cheaper than some US attorneys I guess - $220/hour, but we have to prepay 10 hours for a retainer. We're of course happy to do it as long as it works! We feel pretty comfortable with this firm. The attorney we have direct contact with is nice enough, and seems to be very knowledgeable and thorough. Her English is perfect, too. And even though she's the primary contact for the case, it will be her, another attorney and the top partner of the firm who will be working on the case. It's a huge firm - 6 or 7 partners and about 80 attorneys. So it seems like our attorney (who has the nice Estonian first name "Rutt", and looks like she was recruited to law school from a modeling agency, along with all of the other female lawyers in Estonia) has a good amount of support even for things she won't know herself.
Once we can get the payment to them then they will get started, first of all by contacting the MSA. The MSA has a heads up and has promised to give the laywers whatever info they need.
That's all we have on that today... More tomorrow we hope!
Sunday morning we got an email from Katya saying that she was very upset because Roman said he didn't want to go to America anymore. Judging from the tone and content of her email, I told Jason it sounded to me like they got in a fight and Roman just said that to make Katya upset. So we called Katya just to make sure everything was ok and find out what in the world would possess Roman to say that. I was right - they were fighting and Katya was hysterical. Roman said what he thought would get the most reaction out of Katya, and it worked! She was freaking out. So we calmed her down, talked to Roman, who confirmed that he did in fact still want to come. We told them to stop fighting and told Roman not to say that again. Anna was a big help talking to them, too, to help us find out what was happening. She told us after we got off the phone that Roman was mad at Katya and said it only to make her cry. It's sweet, though, that the thing that makes her the most upset is anything having to do with not coming here.
Everything is fine now. Katya's emails this morning say that they are getting along again and Roman agrees to go to America again. LOL In the meantime, it seemed that she understood everything Jason said to her on the phone in English. She was answering him and not being bashful the way she usually is with English. So we exchanged a few emails this morning in English to test her out. She understands and writes English a lot more than she let on. But if you recall, this isn't the first time we caught her knowing more English than she seemed to. :)
We took some more pictures of Anna yesterday that I'll post up asap. She's tall and cute! Everyone comments on her never-ending legs. She's almost 5 feet tall and she's only 9 1/2! Like me, I guess. But she's all legs, for sure.
All for now!
Love,
Molly
Once we can get the payment to them then they will get started, first of all by contacting the MSA. The MSA has a heads up and has promised to give the laywers whatever info they need.
That's all we have on that today... More tomorrow we hope!
Sunday morning we got an email from Katya saying that she was very upset because Roman said he didn't want to go to America anymore. Judging from the tone and content of her email, I told Jason it sounded to me like they got in a fight and Roman just said that to make Katya upset. So we called Katya just to make sure everything was ok and find out what in the world would possess Roman to say that. I was right - they were fighting and Katya was hysterical. Roman said what he thought would get the most reaction out of Katya, and it worked! She was freaking out. So we calmed her down, talked to Roman, who confirmed that he did in fact still want to come. We told them to stop fighting and told Roman not to say that again. Anna was a big help talking to them, too, to help us find out what was happening. She told us after we got off the phone that Roman was mad at Katya and said it only to make her cry. It's sweet, though, that the thing that makes her the most upset is anything having to do with not coming here.
Everything is fine now. Katya's emails this morning say that they are getting along again and Roman agrees to go to America again. LOL In the meantime, it seemed that she understood everything Jason said to her on the phone in English. She was answering him and not being bashful the way she usually is with English. So we exchanged a few emails this morning in English to test her out. She understands and writes English a lot more than she let on. But if you recall, this isn't the first time we caught her knowing more English than she seemed to. :)
We took some more pictures of Anna yesterday that I'll post up asap. She's tall and cute! Everyone comments on her never-ending legs. She's almost 5 feet tall and she's only 9 1/2! Like me, I guess. But she's all legs, for sure.
All for now!
Love,
Molly
Friday, April 3, 2009
And now to Mister Interpret.
Step 1: Success!! The MSA is convinced that we are right. The info from the attorneys has made them believe that our adoption is legal. Diana says that everyone there is totally behind us, wants the adoption to happen, and they will support us. (!!!)
The only obstacle left is the following...
According to the MSA, the judge is the one who said (all those months ago) that Russia needs to provide consent for their adoption. Apparently this is only because of misunderstanding the bilateral agreement. But they believe that if an attorney presented the accurate application of the bilateral agreement to a judge, it has more weight than the MSA presenting it.
So it stands to reason that if several attorneys and the MSA now believe, based on clear law, that the adoption IS legal and the bilateral doesn't apply to us, then maybe just a meeting between an attorney and the judge would fix this all.
There's also a possibility that the case could go to a new judge, who would be presented with the legality of the adoption.
Then there's the possibility that whatever judge is presented with the legal information could still say no, for some unknown reason. In which case the attorney can "absolutely" (according to Diana) help find a judge who would allow the adoption.
So everyone's recommendation is that we have the attorney we choose take care of this situation with "the" and/or "a" judge. A lawyer can hopefully get somewhere quicker, and more effectively, than everyone else.
See, if they just told us what the problem was all along, we could have done this months ago! But it's impossible to get any questions answered. Once we found out that they believed that 1) the Hague was requiring this craziness, and then 2) that the bilateral agreement is requiring this craziness, it took us just a few days to find out that there really is no problem.
I regret being another one to make reference to television shows, I guess Dr. House is correct: If something doesn't make sense, then one of your assumptions must be wrong.
We're just so glad that the problem is NOT whether or not the Hague supersedes the bilateral, or something even more complex. It is simple: The bilateral agreement "might" require consent from Russia, but it does not apply anyway to adoptions where the adoptive parents are not citizens of the contracting parties - Russia and Estonia.
More on Monday, when we speak to the attorneys again... But for now, be excited with us! This amount of progress usually takes months! Now we just have to jitter all weekend until we can continue.
:))))
Molly
The only obstacle left is the following...
According to the MSA, the judge is the one who said (all those months ago) that Russia needs to provide consent for their adoption. Apparently this is only because of misunderstanding the bilateral agreement. But they believe that if an attorney presented the accurate application of the bilateral agreement to a judge, it has more weight than the MSA presenting it.
So it stands to reason that if several attorneys and the MSA now believe, based on clear law, that the adoption IS legal and the bilateral doesn't apply to us, then maybe just a meeting between an attorney and the judge would fix this all.
There's also a possibility that the case could go to a new judge, who would be presented with the legality of the adoption.
Then there's the possibility that whatever judge is presented with the legal information could still say no, for some unknown reason. In which case the attorney can "absolutely" (according to Diana) help find a judge who would allow the adoption.
So everyone's recommendation is that we have the attorney we choose take care of this situation with "the" and/or "a" judge. A lawyer can hopefully get somewhere quicker, and more effectively, than everyone else.
See, if they just told us what the problem was all along, we could have done this months ago! But it's impossible to get any questions answered. Once we found out that they believed that 1) the Hague was requiring this craziness, and then 2) that the bilateral agreement is requiring this craziness, it took us just a few days to find out that there really is no problem.
I regret being another one to make reference to television shows, I guess Dr. House is correct: If something doesn't make sense, then one of your assumptions must be wrong.
We're just so glad that the problem is NOT whether or not the Hague supersedes the bilateral, or something even more complex. It is simple: The bilateral agreement "might" require consent from Russia, but it does not apply anyway to adoptions where the adoptive parents are not citizens of the contracting parties - Russia and Estonia.
More on Monday, when we speak to the attorneys again... But for now, be excited with us! This amount of progress usually takes months! Now we just have to jitter all weekend until we can continue.
:))))
Molly
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Miss Interpret works in Estonia.
OK Peanuts! Here is the latest, with even a little breaking news as of a couple hours ago. So none of you have to be the last-person-who-hears-everything!
Where do I begin...
Who spends their spare time reading through the HAGUE CONVENTION ON THE PROTECTION OF CHILDREN AND CO-OPERATION IN RESPECT OF INTERCOUNTRY ADOPTION? Well, Jason sat down and read the whole thing. Guess what he found? Nothing. Well actually it was lots of pages of stuff, but nothing that requires Estonia to ask consent from Russia for the kids to be adopted. There was one tiny section that we thought might be misunderstood to make the MSA think they needed consent from Russia, but if you look at the context of two or three sentences together, it is talking about getting consent from people in Estonia, like biological parents, etc. In fact the entire convention says nothing about citizenship or consent from any other country. It always refers to children as "habitual residents" of a country, not citizens. Probably because the thing was written in the first place in order to protect children, knowing that there would be times where a child technically has citizenship of one country, but RESIDES in another. And the countries may not be friends. So to allow for these children to still have families, the convention allows for their adoption AS IS.
Yet the MSA wrote to the MOE (Russia) saying they needed their consent based on the regulations of the Hague convention. Why would they do that when 1) the Hague doesn't require it and 2) Russian's NOT EVEN A HAGUE CONVENTION COUNTRY!!!??? The only answer is that they misinterpreted the convention.
So we sent all of our research to Diana (about 4 pages worth) of excerpts from the convention, proving that the adoption is allowed under it. Diana called me and said she completely agreed, that the research we did was totally solid, and she forwarded it to Kersti (at the MSA) for a response.
A week later (after noise from us still, don't worry!) Kersti wrote back to Diana saying basically that the MSA legal department was looking into it and said that they aren't sure if the adoption should be processed under the Hague or under this other bilateral agreement between Estonia and Russia. They believe that this other agreement has more authority than the Hague. So I guess that means that they agree that the Hague allows the adoption, but that this bilateral agreement requires consent from Russia to adopt their citizens through Estonia.
In the meantime, we were witnesses of at least two other examples of the MSA grossly misapplying articles in the Hague convention. So why wouldn't they also be misunderstanding this other bilateral agreement? On top of that, why would ANYTHING supersede the Hague convention, when its sole purpose is to regulate international adoption and prevent countries from allowing things that the convention forbids? At the very least, the two international treaties would have equal weight in Estonia, since they signed them both. The bilateral would not have more authority than the Hague. But only one should apply to this, if they contradict, right? And if this bilateral agreement was so much more important than the Hague convention, why wasn't THAT the authority cited in the letter to the MOE instead of the Hague?
The research continued. We started contacting attorneys in Estonia. (Note: we have been told lots of times (not by Diana) that when dealing with Estonia that the best thing to do is to keep quiet and not ask questions. Obviously that doesn't work for us, so a small amount of aggression is now required.)
During this research we've talked directly to several attorneys, more than one person at the DOS in Washington regarding the Hague vs. the bilateral agreement, and other people. We've also used Kathy (who I'm sure you all are familiar with as one of the loudest peanuts on the comments section! Thanks Kathy! ;) ) as a human version of a Google search bar to help us research certain things on the internet.
We finally found out during our research what this bilateral agreement was called and got a hold of it. The Estonian to English translation is terrible and very hard to understand. There are two things interesting about it though. One is that the internet says it was terminated in 2005. So is it even still in force? We can't get an answer to that one yet. The other thing is that it seems (in reading the bad translation over and over) that in the adoption sections, that it only applies to domestic adoption within Estonia or Russia, not international where the kids are going outside Estonia or Russia. But what do I know?
So this morning we got an email from another attorney. Some attorneys write and say basically "We'd be glad to help, this is how you send us money." Others write and give their opinion right away. This is what this one said:
"The constitution of Estonia states that if laws or other legislation of Estonia are in conflict with international treaties ratified by the Estonian parliament, then the provisions of the international treaty shall apply.
However, the text of the bilateral agreement with Russia refers to a situation where the child is the citizen of one of the parties to the agreement (Estonia or Russia) and the adopter is the citizen of the other party (correspondingly Russia or Estonia). In the present case (as I understand) the adopters are citizens of a third party country."
I called this attorney right away to clarify that this means that in our adoption, the Hague convention would apply to us, and the bilateral would not. Reason being that the kids are not being adopted to Estonian citizens, so this is an international matter not covered by the bilateral and would therefore fall under the HAGUE!!!
One other note on top of that... The bilateral doesn't say they need consent from the other country. It says that if their family law requires it, then they need consent. Who knows if Russia's family law even requires it?
So the bottom line is that there is plenty of evidence that the Estonians can, should, and are protected by the Hague enough to allow this adoption, and that the Russians won't come blow them up for it.
Now do you see why I've had no time to write? Between reading two international treaties in three languages and talking to attorneys who speak five languages, and proving a government authority wrong, I'm swamped!
I'll keep you posted on their responses. Might take awhile. They "look into things" usually for at least several days. The good news is that there have been other times where Estonia insisted on something and then suddenly changed their mind when they got new information. We shall seeeeee....
Love,
Molly
PS- Katya and Roman's spirits are more up lately. Anna Valentina says that they carry pictures around of us to show to people, and that other kids are envious of their great parents. LOL We all want to be together so badly. Soon, we hope.
Where do I begin...
Who spends their spare time reading through the HAGUE CONVENTION ON THE PROTECTION OF CHILDREN AND CO-OPERATION IN RESPECT OF INTERCOUNTRY ADOPTION? Well, Jason sat down and read the whole thing. Guess what he found? Nothing. Well actually it was lots of pages of stuff, but nothing that requires Estonia to ask consent from Russia for the kids to be adopted. There was one tiny section that we thought might be misunderstood to make the MSA think they needed consent from Russia, but if you look at the context of two or three sentences together, it is talking about getting consent from people in Estonia, like biological parents, etc. In fact the entire convention says nothing about citizenship or consent from any other country. It always refers to children as "habitual residents" of a country, not citizens. Probably because the thing was written in the first place in order to protect children, knowing that there would be times where a child technically has citizenship of one country, but RESIDES in another. And the countries may not be friends. So to allow for these children to still have families, the convention allows for their adoption AS IS.
Yet the MSA wrote to the MOE (Russia) saying they needed their consent based on the regulations of the Hague convention. Why would they do that when 1) the Hague doesn't require it and 2) Russian's NOT EVEN A HAGUE CONVENTION COUNTRY!!!??? The only answer is that they misinterpreted the convention.
So we sent all of our research to Diana (about 4 pages worth) of excerpts from the convention, proving that the adoption is allowed under it. Diana called me and said she completely agreed, that the research we did was totally solid, and she forwarded it to Kersti (at the MSA) for a response.
A week later (after noise from us still, don't worry!) Kersti wrote back to Diana saying basically that the MSA legal department was looking into it and said that they aren't sure if the adoption should be processed under the Hague or under this other bilateral agreement between Estonia and Russia. They believe that this other agreement has more authority than the Hague. So I guess that means that they agree that the Hague allows the adoption, but that this bilateral agreement requires consent from Russia to adopt their citizens through Estonia.
In the meantime, we were witnesses of at least two other examples of the MSA grossly misapplying articles in the Hague convention. So why wouldn't they also be misunderstanding this other bilateral agreement? On top of that, why would ANYTHING supersede the Hague convention, when its sole purpose is to regulate international adoption and prevent countries from allowing things that the convention forbids? At the very least, the two international treaties would have equal weight in Estonia, since they signed them both. The bilateral would not have more authority than the Hague. But only one should apply to this, if they contradict, right? And if this bilateral agreement was so much more important than the Hague convention, why wasn't THAT the authority cited in the letter to the MOE instead of the Hague?
The research continued. We started contacting attorneys in Estonia. (Note: we have been told lots of times (not by Diana) that when dealing with Estonia that the best thing to do is to keep quiet and not ask questions. Obviously that doesn't work for us, so a small amount of aggression is now required.)
During this research we've talked directly to several attorneys, more than one person at the DOS in Washington regarding the Hague vs. the bilateral agreement, and other people. We've also used Kathy (who I'm sure you all are familiar with as one of the loudest peanuts on the comments section! Thanks Kathy! ;) ) as a human version of a Google search bar to help us research certain things on the internet.
We finally found out during our research what this bilateral agreement was called and got a hold of it. The Estonian to English translation is terrible and very hard to understand. There are two things interesting about it though. One is that the internet says it was terminated in 2005. So is it even still in force? We can't get an answer to that one yet. The other thing is that it seems (in reading the bad translation over and over) that in the adoption sections, that it only applies to domestic adoption within Estonia or Russia, not international where the kids are going outside Estonia or Russia. But what do I know?
So this morning we got an email from another attorney. Some attorneys write and say basically "We'd be glad to help, this is how you send us money." Others write and give their opinion right away. This is what this one said:
"The constitution of Estonia states that if laws or other legislation of Estonia are in conflict with international treaties ratified by the Estonian parliament, then the provisions of the international treaty shall apply.
However, the text of the bilateral agreement with Russia refers to a situation where the child is the citizen of one of the parties to the agreement (Estonia or Russia) and the adopter is the citizen of the other party (correspondingly Russia or Estonia). In the present case (as I understand) the adopters are citizens of a third party country."
I called this attorney right away to clarify that this means that in our adoption, the Hague convention would apply to us, and the bilateral would not. Reason being that the kids are not being adopted to Estonian citizens, so this is an international matter not covered by the bilateral and would therefore fall under the HAGUE!!!
One other note on top of that... The bilateral doesn't say they need consent from the other country. It says that if their family law requires it, then they need consent. Who knows if Russia's family law even requires it?
So the bottom line is that there is plenty of evidence that the Estonians can, should, and are protected by the Hague enough to allow this adoption, and that the Russians won't come blow them up for it.
Now do you see why I've had no time to write? Between reading two international treaties in three languages and talking to attorneys who speak five languages, and proving a government authority wrong, I'm swamped!
I'll keep you posted on their responses. Might take awhile. They "look into things" usually for at least several days. The good news is that there have been other times where Estonia insisted on something and then suddenly changed their mind when they got new information. We shall seeeeee....
Love,
Molly
PS- Katya and Roman's spirits are more up lately. Anna Valentina says that they carry pictures around of us to show to people, and that other kids are envious of their great parents. LOL We all want to be together so badly. Soon, we hope.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Ego boost from the Peanut Gallery
I don't recall ever seeing the Peanut Gallery on tv personally, so I guess I am too young for that. In fact my brother, who is 10 years my senior, told me on a couple of occasions when we were younger that I was, in fact, the peanut gallery. It was he who first tried to convince me of its existence. But now I can see that it does, in fact, exist in the comments section of this blog! Evidence at last!! :)
Thank you, though, to all you PG participants, for making me feel needed and demanded once again. I'm thoroughly apologetic that I have neglected you all for nearly a month! I can't hardly believe it. Time has just flown the last few weeks.
This is our busiest time of year with work, on top of the relatively smooth adjustments with Anna (which is what I'll try to remember to call her from here on out since we are the only ones who call her Nastja and only at home). She is doing really well, learns more English all the time, and really loves it here. She has a lot of friends and is very social. We went to a party for a family member of Jason's in NJ so all of Jason's Dad's side of the family got to meet Anna. Everyone was enamored with her and she went all over the room showing everyone pictures of her with DogDog, and Katya and Roman. She loves attention, and is actually very easily made jealous. So we have to frequently talk to her about that.
She has gotten good at accepting discipline and counsel from us. If she gets the impression that we're really upset with her, more than usual, she will get a panicked look on her face and start apologizing. That is a big change from the beginning, when she acted like she didn't care too much if she was in trouble. She does tend to hide her emotions somewhat, though. We're glad to see signs of that changing. Sometimes she gets upset missing her sister and Katya and Roman, and it's nice to see her show those feelings sometimes, so that she's not bottling them up.
She talks to Anja every week on the phone and tells her about all the dogs we've had here for training, all the fun she's having and the new food she's tried, and the new English she's learned. I hear her sometimes say English words instead of Russian accidentally in conversation. Once when she called Katya, the person who answered spoke Estonian and English, not Russian. So she had to say "Please can I speak to Katya?" It was cute.
We have been taking lots of pictures of her. I'll post some soon.
It's still very tough not having Katya and Roman here. The family is just not complete yet. Katya sent us an email yesterday that basically said that she is very sad sometimes that she's not with us, and that she was crying a lot. She said Roman tried to calm her down, and everyone was saying "don't cry, don't cry", but she couldn't stop because she isn't with us. She ended by saying that she doesn't want us to be sad, though. It was a very sweet but heart wrenching email. We feel so bad for them, they don't deserve to have to wait anymore! They have a great attitude and they never give up, though. We get long emails from them almost every day. It's amazing how communication with them has changed over the months. They used to often send very short emails and not always this often. Now they are more detailed and long, and constant.
We haven't heard anything new, other than that the MOE promised they'd write the letter but they just "need more time." In the meantime, the documents from their file (birth certs, etc.) were translated into Russian and sent to Dmitry, just in case the Russians later want them we don't have to wait longer to get those translated. Dmitry was to take those in to the MOE this week and "check on movement." We have thought of and asked about and tried everything that can possibly be thought of and asked about and tried to make this go faster. But apparently that's just not the way it works there. They'll do it when they feel like it, and they'll ask for money when they feel like it. I don't know if Dmitry is trying to get them to mention $ amounts or not, and if he isn't, why not. Diana says he knows how the system works and he will do what is the most likely thing to work. So we just have to wait. Diana is checking in with Dmitry constantly, so unfortunately we're still just stuck here waiting, and the kids are stuck waiting. As long as they get here, though, that's all that really matters.
So now I think you're all pretty much up to date. I'll do my best to write more often again so you guys don't get all up-in-arms. :) Thanks for the shoves, though!! We're off to a roller skating party.
Love,
Molly
Thank you, though, to all you PG participants, for making me feel needed and demanded once again. I'm thoroughly apologetic that I have neglected you all for nearly a month! I can't hardly believe it. Time has just flown the last few weeks.
This is our busiest time of year with work, on top of the relatively smooth adjustments with Anna (which is what I'll try to remember to call her from here on out since we are the only ones who call her Nastja and only at home). She is doing really well, learns more English all the time, and really loves it here. She has a lot of friends and is very social. We went to a party for a family member of Jason's in NJ so all of Jason's Dad's side of the family got to meet Anna. Everyone was enamored with her and she went all over the room showing everyone pictures of her with DogDog, and Katya and Roman. She loves attention, and is actually very easily made jealous. So we have to frequently talk to her about that.
She has gotten good at accepting discipline and counsel from us. If she gets the impression that we're really upset with her, more than usual, she will get a panicked look on her face and start apologizing. That is a big change from the beginning, when she acted like she didn't care too much if she was in trouble. She does tend to hide her emotions somewhat, though. We're glad to see signs of that changing. Sometimes she gets upset missing her sister and Katya and Roman, and it's nice to see her show those feelings sometimes, so that she's not bottling them up.
She talks to Anja every week on the phone and tells her about all the dogs we've had here for training, all the fun she's having and the new food she's tried, and the new English she's learned. I hear her sometimes say English words instead of Russian accidentally in conversation. Once when she called Katya, the person who answered spoke Estonian and English, not Russian. So she had to say "Please can I speak to Katya?" It was cute.
We have been taking lots of pictures of her. I'll post some soon.
It's still very tough not having Katya and Roman here. The family is just not complete yet. Katya sent us an email yesterday that basically said that she is very sad sometimes that she's not with us, and that she was crying a lot. She said Roman tried to calm her down, and everyone was saying "don't cry, don't cry", but she couldn't stop because she isn't with us. She ended by saying that she doesn't want us to be sad, though. It was a very sweet but heart wrenching email. We feel so bad for them, they don't deserve to have to wait anymore! They have a great attitude and they never give up, though. We get long emails from them almost every day. It's amazing how communication with them has changed over the months. They used to often send very short emails and not always this often. Now they are more detailed and long, and constant.
We haven't heard anything new, other than that the MOE promised they'd write the letter but they just "need more time." In the meantime, the documents from their file (birth certs, etc.) were translated into Russian and sent to Dmitry, just in case the Russians later want them we don't have to wait longer to get those translated. Dmitry was to take those in to the MOE this week and "check on movement." We have thought of and asked about and tried everything that can possibly be thought of and asked about and tried to make this go faster. But apparently that's just not the way it works there. They'll do it when they feel like it, and they'll ask for money when they feel like it. I don't know if Dmitry is trying to get them to mention $ amounts or not, and if he isn't, why not. Diana says he knows how the system works and he will do what is the most likely thing to work. So we just have to wait. Diana is checking in with Dmitry constantly, so unfortunately we're still just stuck here waiting, and the kids are stuck waiting. As long as they get here, though, that's all that really matters.
So now I think you're all pretty much up to date. I'll do my best to write more often again so you guys don't get all up-in-arms. :) Thanks for the shoves, though!! We're off to a roller skating party.
Love,
Molly
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Can't think of a good title. Sorry!
Hi! No real news to report. Nastja (Anna) is doing well. She is doing great in school and seems to really like it. She's learning English quickly and responds well to direction and guidance from us on misbehavior. :) She's a sweet girl! Today we had her spend 20 minutes writing down all the things she has to be grateful for because of being here and having been adopted, things that she would go without if she were still in Estonia. We did that because she gave us a hard time about sending Katya and Roman coloring books and a bag of candy without also buying her something during that same trip to the store. She didn't seem to understand at first that she has a lot more than they do, even though we are sending them a big bag of candy. I think she understands now, after we were able to explain in more detail and have her write the paper. I have to get it translated, but it looks like it's nice, with a lot of "love" and smilies on it.
Only news we have on Katya and Roman came from Diana on Saturday. She's furiously annoyed also that the letter from Russia has not been done yet, though she's not that surprised. She's getting really frustrated and basically let her sentiments be known to Dmitry. He said that the MOE has "promised" that they will do it, they just haven't had a chance yet. I hope those were actually their words. It's something at least. He said he would follow up with them again this week. So unfortunately, as much as all the go-getters in the family hate to do, we can do nothing but continue waiting.
In the meantime we talked to the kids on Saturday, still receive constant emails from them, and Nastja talked to them on the phone yesterday also. Katya said she has been reading a book about Jesus that we gave her, called "Learn from the Great Teacher." :)) She really does seem to truly appreciate everything we give her, it's so sweet.
Anyway, Katya and Roman once again send their love and greetings to everyone.
More soon I hope!
Love,
Molly
Only news we have on Katya and Roman came from Diana on Saturday. She's furiously annoyed also that the letter from Russia has not been done yet, though she's not that surprised. She's getting really frustrated and basically let her sentiments be known to Dmitry. He said that the MOE has "promised" that they will do it, they just haven't had a chance yet. I hope those were actually their words. It's something at least. He said he would follow up with them again this week. So unfortunately, as much as all the go-getters in the family hate to do, we can do nothing but continue waiting.
In the meantime we talked to the kids on Saturday, still receive constant emails from them, and Nastja talked to them on the phone yesterday also. Katya said she has been reading a book about Jesus that we gave her, called "Learn from the Great Teacher." :)) She really does seem to truly appreciate everything we give her, it's so sweet.
Anyway, Katya and Roman once again send their love and greetings to everyone.
More soon I hope!
Love,
Molly
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Explanations
Hi again!
To answer your questions - the girl with Nastja in one picture is her sister Anja.
The game we were playing in another picture... The kids like Jason to swing them through his legs (sliding their feet on the floor) like in swing dancing. They particularly like it when we are all on ice skates. LOL Katya came up with the idea of everyone lining up like that to see how far her feet go through.
Jason's back was sore after awhile.
And yes, I am young for the age of my kids! ;) We like old kids, they are interesting. Young kids are fun too, but the older kids are less likely to find families I think, so we love them just as much. I think these particularly kids enjoy our young age, though, because we enjoy doing the same activities they enjoy and we can keep up with them.
Also, I forgot to tell you all - Nastja decided to go by "Anna" as the shortened version of Anastasija. We still call her Nastja at home, though, because it's already a habit. Sometimes she jokingly corrects us, but not usually. It's so strange to refer to her as "Anna" to other people, though, because in my mind that's not her name! But that's what she's called at school and all new people we introduce her to.
Hope this clears things up. :)
Love,
Molly
To answer your questions - the girl with Nastja in one picture is her sister Anja.
The game we were playing in another picture... The kids like Jason to swing them through his legs (sliding their feet on the floor) like in swing dancing. They particularly like it when we are all on ice skates. LOL Katya came up with the idea of everyone lining up like that to see how far her feet go through.
Jason's back was sore after awhile.
And yes, I am young for the age of my kids! ;) We like old kids, they are interesting. Young kids are fun too, but the older kids are less likely to find families I think, so we love them just as much. I think these particularly kids enjoy our young age, though, because we enjoy doing the same activities they enjoy and we can keep up with them.
Also, I forgot to tell you all - Nastja decided to go by "Anna" as the shortened version of Anastasija. We still call her Nastja at home, though, because it's already a habit. Sometimes she jokingly corrects us, but not usually. It's so strange to refer to her as "Anna" to other people, though, because in my mind that's not her name! But that's what she's called at school and all new people we introduce her to.
Hope this clears things up. :)
Love,
Molly
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
School & pictures
Today was Nastja's first day of school. I think things went really well. We walked her to her classroom and talked to her teacher for a bit. We also talked to her after class. It seems like all the teachers try to be involved as much as possible in helping her out and showing her what to do. The guidance counselor took her out of reading time and just did some English lessons with her privately with a picture book. Everyone said that she seemed to adjust quickly, be smiling and enjoying herself. She made friends with the girls who sit next to her, giggling with them and having a good time.
We went to Joanie and Julia's house after school so we are just now doing her homework (math). Jason has been working for 35 minutes with her so far. She gets frustrated and stops trying to figure out the multiplication. I admire his patience! She told him that 4x6 in Estonia is 21, and just because it's 24 in America doesn't mean that's right for her! Even the calculator is "it is America! Estonia, no! 21!" LOL She doesn't get that math is the same everywhere. Right when Jason gave up and told her to put 21 if that was her answer, she chose to agree with him and put 24. We are also having trouble convincing her that she should write a 1 like a 1 and not like a 7. Once in awhile she seems to forget that we're not stupid and she should listen to us! LOL
We missed her today while she was at school, but we had a lot to do at the house. We can't seem to get much done when she's around! :)
Here are some pictures for you all. Some from the trip and one from here of her with DogDog.
More soon!
Love,
Molly
We went to Joanie and Julia's house after school so we are just now doing her homework (math). Jason has been working for 35 minutes with her so far. She gets frustrated and stops trying to figure out the multiplication. I admire his patience! She told him that 4x6 in Estonia is 21, and just because it's 24 in America doesn't mean that's right for her! Even the calculator is "it is America! Estonia, no! 21!" LOL She doesn't get that math is the same everywhere. Right when Jason gave up and told her to put 21 if that was her answer, she chose to agree with him and put 24. We are also having trouble convincing her that she should write a 1 like a 1 and not like a 7. Once in awhile she seems to forget that we're not stupid and she should listen to us! LOL
We missed her today while she was at school, but we had a lot to do at the house. We can't seem to get much done when she's around! :)
Here are some pictures for you all. Some from the trip and one from here of her with DogDog.
More soon!
Love,
Molly
Monday, February 9, 2009
All fun and games
Hey!
Thanks for all of your comments. Visitors are welcome anytime, Rachael!!! :)
Everyone is settling in very well here. Nastja is adjusting very quickly and we've had very few issues with her at all since we got home. She is becoming increasingly sincerely affectionate, listens well, testing very little, and has stopped many of the things we told her we would not allow (constant baby talk requests for things, demanding something, arguing, grunting instead of using words, etc.). She really tries to improve things when we explain them to her. She's very sweet!
She wants to play and be doing something all the time. She loves the dogs and keeps herself occupied with them quite a bit. We let her watch Spongebob Squarepants sometimes on tv, but mostly she is outside with a dog or asking us to play a game with her.
We thought about it a lot and considering her age, how much she enjoys other children, constant activity and needs to learn English quickly, we decided to go ahead and put her in public school for now. We don't know what we'll do with the three of them once the other two are also home, but for now we think being in that environment would be better for her than being home always. Bonding is going well enough that we don't think she needs more time to get used to being home. I'd rather get her into a more permanent routine. She loves details and routine, so I think that also would be better for her than delaying. With many other kids, my opinion would be quite different.
She seems to really like being here so far. She likes the mountain scenery in the area. She also has commented that the food in America is very good, compared to food in Estonia which is "yuck very bad!"
She is a very good eater. She tries everything. Even if she is reluctant to try something at first, she will say no, watch us eat it for a minute, and then will ask for some. She does that with a lot of things. If she's afraid of a certain activity or doesn't think she'll like anything new, she'll refuse at first and then agree in a couple minutes. But anyway, she will ask for apples and carrots like they are candy. She also loves Cheerios, yogurt, eggs, all kinds of fruit, peanut butter, cheese, chicken. She's gotten away from constant requests for junk food. I think she's enjoying having good real food around instead of junk. She still loves chips (which she calls chipsy), but we don't let her eat them. ;) But it's nice because she's very easy at restaurants and to cook for at home. I think she's lost a couple pounds since we got her. Every time we were at the orphanage the only food we saw left out on the table for anyone to eat was always cookies or some other junk food. And I know she likes to snack throughout the day. I never saw apples or peaches laying around like we have here, so she just reaches for that now.
We haven't seen any evidence of any crazy behaviors that we've read about. We told Diana how well she's adjusting and she said that's really fast. So we're lucky I guess!
We have been getting emails from Katya almost everyday. Here are a couple:
1) thank you mom and dad I will ask brother we are going to wait we want to know when we going to leave to usa we want to be with you we miss you so much we love you mom and dad say hi to grandpa and grandma and Nastya we love you very much
2) thank you very much I will wait I miss you so much and every night I look on the picture were we are with you I think of the time together and how we played together and did other things too
say hi to Nastya I love you so much and here is my smile for you =)
Here's one from Roman:
thank you mama and dad you take such a good care about us we love you so much I want a car with remote control and I want to see you soon I think we will see each other soon I love you very much and want to be with you
We also came home to find a letter from Katya and Anna the caretaker that was mailed mid-December. It just arrived while we were gone. Here's part of what Anna's letter said. We thought it was interesting to see what she wrote before we even saw the kids again.
yesterday Katya visited me and we made a card with her for you
Roman made a card for you too
they love you so much with all their hearts like you are their birth parents. they are very nice and truly good kids
there is only few children in orphanages like them. they are not angry but very kind and with a good attitude
they are able to be happy and able to make happy others all they need is a warm loving family. orphanage can not give it to them no matter how great it is its only orphanage- governmental institute.
Katya's letter said similar things as her emails, and also said to say hello to all her relatives in America. :)
That's all for now! More soon. :)
Love,
Molly
Thanks for all of your comments. Visitors are welcome anytime, Rachael!!! :)
Everyone is settling in very well here. Nastja is adjusting very quickly and we've had very few issues with her at all since we got home. She is becoming increasingly sincerely affectionate, listens well, testing very little, and has stopped many of the things we told her we would not allow (constant baby talk requests for things, demanding something, arguing, grunting instead of using words, etc.). She really tries to improve things when we explain them to her. She's very sweet!
She wants to play and be doing something all the time. She loves the dogs and keeps herself occupied with them quite a bit. We let her watch Spongebob Squarepants sometimes on tv, but mostly she is outside with a dog or asking us to play a game with her.
We thought about it a lot and considering her age, how much she enjoys other children, constant activity and needs to learn English quickly, we decided to go ahead and put her in public school for now. We don't know what we'll do with the three of them once the other two are also home, but for now we think being in that environment would be better for her than being home always. Bonding is going well enough that we don't think she needs more time to get used to being home. I'd rather get her into a more permanent routine. She loves details and routine, so I think that also would be better for her than delaying. With many other kids, my opinion would be quite different.
She seems to really like being here so far. She likes the mountain scenery in the area. She also has commented that the food in America is very good, compared to food in Estonia which is "yuck very bad!"
She is a very good eater. She tries everything. Even if she is reluctant to try something at first, she will say no, watch us eat it for a minute, and then will ask for some. She does that with a lot of things. If she's afraid of a certain activity or doesn't think she'll like anything new, she'll refuse at first and then agree in a couple minutes. But anyway, she will ask for apples and carrots like they are candy. She also loves Cheerios, yogurt, eggs, all kinds of fruit, peanut butter, cheese, chicken. She's gotten away from constant requests for junk food. I think she's enjoying having good real food around instead of junk. She still loves chips (which she calls chipsy), but we don't let her eat them. ;) But it's nice because she's very easy at restaurants and to cook for at home. I think she's lost a couple pounds since we got her. Every time we were at the orphanage the only food we saw left out on the table for anyone to eat was always cookies or some other junk food. And I know she likes to snack throughout the day. I never saw apples or peaches laying around like we have here, so she just reaches for that now.
We haven't seen any evidence of any crazy behaviors that we've read about. We told Diana how well she's adjusting and she said that's really fast. So we're lucky I guess!
We have been getting emails from Katya almost everyday. Here are a couple:
1) thank you mom and dad I will ask brother we are going to wait we want to know when we going to leave to usa we want to be with you we miss you so much we love you mom and dad say hi to grandpa and grandma and Nastya we love you very much
2) thank you very much I will wait I miss you so much and every night I look on the picture were we are with you I think of the time together and how we played together and did other things too
say hi to Nastya I love you so much and here is my smile for you =)
Here's one from Roman:
thank you mama and dad you take such a good care about us we love you so much I want a car with remote control and I want to see you soon I think we will see each other soon I love you very much and want to be with you
We also came home to find a letter from Katya and Anna the caretaker that was mailed mid-December. It just arrived while we were gone. Here's part of what Anna's letter said. We thought it was interesting to see what she wrote before we even saw the kids again.
yesterday Katya visited me and we made a card with her for you
Roman made a card for you too
they love you so much with all their hearts like you are their birth parents. they are very nice and truly good kids
there is only few children in orphanages like them. they are not angry but very kind and with a good attitude
they are able to be happy and able to make happy others all they need is a warm loving family. orphanage can not give it to them no matter how great it is its only orphanage- governmental institute.
Katya's letter said similar things as her emails, and also said to say hello to all her relatives in America. :)
That's all for now! More soon. :)
Love,
Molly
Friday, February 6, 2009
Home bittersweet home!
Hey! We're home safe. Kathy is here with us this morning since we have no car. She brought us home last night. We have to go car shopping tonight or over the weekend (our car was totaled right before we left, for those of you who don't know!). So Kathy is the subject of constant UNO playing card requests and a silly Russian card game that makes no sense!
We're so glad to be home. Water that tastes like NOTHING (instead of chalk), food that we recognize and doesn't cost 3 times the amount it should, and our own bed!
All for now, just wanted to let you all know we made it. :)
Love,
Molly
We're so glad to be home. Water that tastes like NOTHING (instead of chalk), food that we recognize and doesn't cost 3 times the amount it should, and our own bed!
All for now, just wanted to let you all know we made it. :)
Love,
Molly
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Short update for you who have withdrawals.
Today we got everything packed, pretty much, and we're leaving in a few minutes to go visit with Katya and Roman one more time before we leave. We'll just be with them for an hour or two. Everyone pray for our nerves, sanity and emotional stability, it will be tough! As of now, we've received no news that makes this leaving easier. At least not anything definite. Due to my natural abilities to alter the way I feel by thinking a certain way, I will be upset but controllable. I hope I can convince Jason that we will be seeing the kids again soon. Otherwise he may be the one kicking and screaming not to get on the airplane!
Nastja's been much better the last couple days. I think it just takes time for her to respect us and also see that when we say something, we mean it. I hope she continues to improve and doesn't regress after going home! She is nice to have around when she isn't being obstinate.
Nastja is considering having everyone call her by her new middle name or a different shortened version of her full first name. When she decides, I'll let you all know.
Bye for now, gotta go soon!
Love,
Molly
Nastja's been much better the last couple days. I think it just takes time for her to respect us and also see that when we say something, we mean it. I hope she continues to improve and doesn't regress after going home! She is nice to have around when she isn't being obstinate.
Nastja is considering having everyone call her by her new middle name or a different shortened version of her full first name. When she decides, I'll let you all know.
Bye for now, gotta go soon!
Love,
Molly
Monday, February 2, 2009
Bla bla bla
Hey again!
Not much new to report. Finally we got some sunlight the last couple days. Which also means it's colder. Highs in the 20s usually, and at night it's in the teens. It feels colder than it does at home when it's the same temperature, though. That's probably just because we spend more time outside. Instead of just between the house and the car, we walk everywhere.
Tomorrow we might go to a science museum with Nastja. It's apparently a lot like the Liberty Science Center (for those of you near NYC), or like Discovery Place (for those of you in the Carolinas). It's a 15 minute walk from us, but it's only $3 to get in, and we have the whole day to kill. I'm tired of being here with nothing to do with a 9 year old who is easily bored.
Nastja's still doing fine, but we have to be super strict with her. I think if we let her get away with anything, we'd be creating a monster. She is a pain sometimes! Cheating at UNO, purposely irritating us, arguing, pouting, behaving like a baby complete with baby talk. Stuff like that. Nothing crazy, so we can't complain too much compared to what a lot of parents have to deal with with their new kids. I just can't wait till she learns more English. It's so hard to communicate do's and don'ts with a child who just hears an firm tone and gibberish from us! It's so frustrating.
Wednesday we see the kids again for an hour or two after school to say goodbye. Then Anja comes over at night to spend the night and go with us to the airport Thursday morning to see us off.
Lastly, the only news from Estonia/Russia today is this: As we knew a few days ago, Anna (kids' former caretaker) apparently has a friend whose uncle is the 3rd person down from the president of Russia. She is going to try to get help from this person also. So today Kersti (Estonia MSA) contacted Diana to get Dmitry's contact info so that Kersti can keep Dmitry in the loop about this additional angle of possibly resolving this mess. Now there are two ways of potential resolutions, and everyone is aware of everyone else's efforts so that everyone is on the same page.
I'll keep you all posted, of course! We're still hoping we hear something encouraging by the time we leave.
More soon! Goodnight!
Love,
Molly
Not much new to report. Finally we got some sunlight the last couple days. Which also means it's colder. Highs in the 20s usually, and at night it's in the teens. It feels colder than it does at home when it's the same temperature, though. That's probably just because we spend more time outside. Instead of just between the house and the car, we walk everywhere.
Tomorrow we might go to a science museum with Nastja. It's apparently a lot like the Liberty Science Center (for those of you near NYC), or like Discovery Place (for those of you in the Carolinas). It's a 15 minute walk from us, but it's only $3 to get in, and we have the whole day to kill. I'm tired of being here with nothing to do with a 9 year old who is easily bored.
Nastja's still doing fine, but we have to be super strict with her. I think if we let her get away with anything, we'd be creating a monster. She is a pain sometimes! Cheating at UNO, purposely irritating us, arguing, pouting, behaving like a baby complete with baby talk. Stuff like that. Nothing crazy, so we can't complain too much compared to what a lot of parents have to deal with with their new kids. I just can't wait till she learns more English. It's so hard to communicate do's and don'ts with a child who just hears an firm tone and gibberish from us! It's so frustrating.
Wednesday we see the kids again for an hour or two after school to say goodbye. Then Anja comes over at night to spend the night and go with us to the airport Thursday morning to see us off.
Lastly, the only news from Estonia/Russia today is this: As we knew a few days ago, Anna (kids' former caretaker) apparently has a friend whose uncle is the 3rd person down from the president of Russia. She is going to try to get help from this person also. So today Kersti (Estonia MSA) contacted Diana to get Dmitry's contact info so that Kersti can keep Dmitry in the loop about this additional angle of possibly resolving this mess. Now there are two ways of potential resolutions, and everyone is aware of everyone else's efforts so that everyone is on the same page.
I'll keep you all posted, of course! We're still hoping we hear something encouraging by the time we leave.
More soon! Goodnight!
Love,
Molly
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Rimi Hypermart
Good morning everyone! (Middle of the night for you though!)
I haven't been on the computer at all in the last couple of days, except when necessary for the translator. We got Katya and Roman Friday afternoon, after picking up Nastja's completed immigrant Visa (all documents complete for her now!). Then we went shopping at the "Hypermart" grocery store for Nastja's goodbye party. That was fun having three kids plus Igor running around a store throwing stuff in our cart. There ended up being one or two things that were actually edible to me, which were my dinner! LOL It was mostly these pastry things filled with tuna or mushrooms or ham, as well as fruit and cookies. Katya was cute, she always tried to choose the cheapest options. When we looked for a cake she picked the cheapest one as the one she wanted.
Usually the goodbye party is at the child's orphanage, but in this case for some reason they decided to do it at our apartment. So we had Nastja's former caretaker Anna, and the lady who was her caretaker before Anna, Igor, Igor's daughter, Vlad (Nastja's brother), Anja, a little girl named Ilona who lives at Nastja's orphanage, and the 5 of us. We played hide and seek with all the kids, competed in our best break-dancing headstand handstand moves (I impressed everyone with my favorite break dancing freeze, which they all failed to learn how to do!). Jason impressed everyone with how long he can hold a hand stand. Katya was the best at doing a bridge (backwards on the floor with stomach in the air) and holding it for a long time.
Yesterday we went to the indoor water park again in the morning. We were supposed to go to the Tallinn zoo in the afternoon with Anna, but the kids begged not to go. I think it's just too cold for them to be outside that long. We went to that festival last weekend and were all chilled to the bone. But Katya said she just wanted to be at the hotel and playing with us, not going out somewhere. So the most we did was watch a movie and eat dinner and went ice skating. We played Uno and hide and seek a lot.
Nastja's doing great. She is so much easier when the other two are around, and we can't wait for them to be home for her benefit too. It'll be good to have some time to bond with her alone, and she needs a lot of teaching for boundaries and rules. She doesn't do anything really bad, but she tests a lot. She argues, she whines like a 2 year old when she wants something, and if you tell her that if she does something again she'll get a certain consequence, she will do it again just to see if you will actually follow through. Which of course, we do! Other than that, she's got a ton of great qualities. She's very affectionate, loves to be hugged and loves to tell us that she loves us. She also doesn't pout much. If she gets offended at something (such as being told no, or being punished), it takes less than a minute to get over it. That's something her caretaker and her sister also told us at different times, that if she gets upset, it lasts no time at all.
Anja also told me that she is purposely disobedient on small matters at times, but she hopes that she will become "quick-witted and obedient" in our environment. I think she'll present normal challenges for a kid her age, for the most part.
Some of the most irritating things - like baby talk - I think will go away when she knows more English. We are looking forward to getting her home, and getting home ourselves, although we're not looking forward to leaving especially if we get no news about the kids' paperwork.
We are still going to leave Thursday, so no changes there. We have to go to Nastja's orphanage and pack her stuff tomorrow, and on Wednesday we get the kids in the afternoon again, and Anja will be spending the night and going with us to the airport to say goodbye. Since those plans were suggested, we decided to stay.
All for now! I'll get more time during the week to write again I probably. Hang in there till the next episode!
Love,
Molly
I haven't been on the computer at all in the last couple of days, except when necessary for the translator. We got Katya and Roman Friday afternoon, after picking up Nastja's completed immigrant Visa (all documents complete for her now!). Then we went shopping at the "Hypermart" grocery store for Nastja's goodbye party. That was fun having three kids plus Igor running around a store throwing stuff in our cart. There ended up being one or two things that were actually edible to me, which were my dinner! LOL It was mostly these pastry things filled with tuna or mushrooms or ham, as well as fruit and cookies. Katya was cute, she always tried to choose the cheapest options. When we looked for a cake she picked the cheapest one as the one she wanted.
Usually the goodbye party is at the child's orphanage, but in this case for some reason they decided to do it at our apartment. So we had Nastja's former caretaker Anna, and the lady who was her caretaker before Anna, Igor, Igor's daughter, Vlad (Nastja's brother), Anja, a little girl named Ilona who lives at Nastja's orphanage, and the 5 of us. We played hide and seek with all the kids, competed in our best break-dancing headstand handstand moves (I impressed everyone with my favorite break dancing freeze, which they all failed to learn how to do!). Jason impressed everyone with how long he can hold a hand stand. Katya was the best at doing a bridge (backwards on the floor with stomach in the air) and holding it for a long time.
Yesterday we went to the indoor water park again in the morning. We were supposed to go to the Tallinn zoo in the afternoon with Anna, but the kids begged not to go. I think it's just too cold for them to be outside that long. We went to that festival last weekend and were all chilled to the bone. But Katya said she just wanted to be at the hotel and playing with us, not going out somewhere. So the most we did was watch a movie and eat dinner and went ice skating. We played Uno and hide and seek a lot.
Nastja's doing great. She is so much easier when the other two are around, and we can't wait for them to be home for her benefit too. It'll be good to have some time to bond with her alone, and she needs a lot of teaching for boundaries and rules. She doesn't do anything really bad, but she tests a lot. She argues, she whines like a 2 year old when she wants something, and if you tell her that if she does something again she'll get a certain consequence, she will do it again just to see if you will actually follow through. Which of course, we do! Other than that, she's got a ton of great qualities. She's very affectionate, loves to be hugged and loves to tell us that she loves us. She also doesn't pout much. If she gets offended at something (such as being told no, or being punished), it takes less than a minute to get over it. That's something her caretaker and her sister also told us at different times, that if she gets upset, it lasts no time at all.
Anja also told me that she is purposely disobedient on small matters at times, but she hopes that she will become "quick-witted and obedient" in our environment. I think she'll present normal challenges for a kid her age, for the most part.
Some of the most irritating things - like baby talk - I think will go away when she knows more English. We are looking forward to getting her home, and getting home ourselves, although we're not looking forward to leaving especially if we get no news about the kids' paperwork.
We are still going to leave Thursday, so no changes there. We have to go to Nastja's orphanage and pack her stuff tomorrow, and on Wednesday we get the kids in the afternoon again, and Anja will be spending the night and going with us to the airport to say goodbye. Since those plans were suggested, we decided to stay.
All for now! I'll get more time during the week to write again I probably. Hang in there till the next episode!
Love,
Molly
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Before someone flies over to beat an update out of me.
Thanks again to everyone for their wonderful comments! I'm sorry I can't keep up with the demand for updates! ;)
The kids went back to the orphanage Sunday night, which was beyond difficult for us all. Katya has this habit of hiding sadness so as to not make other people sad, and she insists that no one else be sad so that she doesn't get sad. So when Igor got here, she got involuntarily despondent and teary eyed, then tried to hide it. We asked her why she was sad, and she responded defensively (in Russian) "I'm NOT sad." She turned away to wipe her eyes, but I saw her anyway.
As soon as we're with them, we are as happy as can be. As soon as they're gone, we're immediately extremely upset. It's not like the fun and happiness lasts after they're gone. The spirit and energy they have - it leaves with them.
They were with us again Tuesday afternoon for a few hours. We went to McDonald's, then came back to the apartment where they immediately consumed a dozen eggs, a half of a huge bar of dark chocolate, a package of ham, and probably some bread too. You'd think they never get to eat. I know they eat, but I'm sure it's different when you have choice of food that you LIKE. I told Jason it would be like having to live on that gloop they ate in the Matrix, and then when you have a chance to eat a hot dog, you're going to eat 10 hot dogs.
Although today we stopped at Nastja's orphanage to grab some more clothes for her, and the caretaker fed us coffee, tea, and this apple danish thing, and cookies. It was good.
Then we went ice skating, which is an outdoor rink right next to our apartment. That's always a lot of fun, and we get fought over (particularly Jason since he's such a good skater) to be skated with.
All three kids have just been so wonderful. Nastja is very sweet, always telling us how much she loves us and is happy she's going to America with us. She is also picking up some English because we make her repeat objects and other phrases. We'll say things in Russian and then English and have her repeat it. Like she'll go "uh uh uh Mama - cle-eb, pajaloosta?" and I'll say "da, adeen cle-eb... (one bread) Now say 'Mama, may I have BREAD PLEASE' ", and she'll repeat it.
She also LOVES to be hugged and kissed. So with all three kids we spend a lot of time randomly going up to them, squeezing them, kissing their face and telling them we love them.
Wednesday afternoon we spent doing the rest of Nastja's exit paperwork. We picked up her passport, after going to the store to buy a cake for the passport lady for doing her passport in 2 days instead of the "up to one month" that is officially the wait time. Then we went to a translator lady to pick up the translation of our court documents. Then we went to the US embassy and finally got to speak to an American for a change! We filled out the forms for her immigrant visa, and we go back Friday to pick that up. Then everything is done.
We've learned that doing the processes here are basically a wait and see type thing. Every step of the way we have no idea when something is getting done, and a vague idea of where Igor is taking us the next day when he comes to pick us up. There is no point in asking, we just follow and do. Igor always seems to be in a hurry, too, and doesn't know what to do with himself if has to sit still for awhile. We went to a restaurant yesterday for an hour because we had time to kill before the Embassy appointment. And he literally stood by the table looking around and pacing for 10 minutes before he finally sat. He also rushes ahead all the time, leaving us behind to figure out which way he went. It's become almost a game. Where's Igor?
Now to answer your questions about Katya and Roman's documents. We learned more reasons why suddenly their citizenship was a problem. Here's the explanation:
The Hague convention covers international relations among many countries. Some countries are a party to it and some aren't. The US is as of 4/1/08, Estonia has been for years, and from what I can tell Russia recently became part of it. It changes some of the adoption processes if you adopt from a Hague country vs. a non-Hague country. The paperwork is more regulated (meaning it is more difficult). Prior to 4/1/08, people could do paperwork processes with all countries as if they were non-Hague, because the US was not a Hague country. But after that, the paperwork had to be streamlined along with the Hague requirements, which has caused a lot of people issues with their adoptions. Not so much us, though, because we had our immigration paperwork done before 4/1.
But, because of the Hague rules between Estonia and Russia, there are laws that must be followed in cases where there are children of another citizenship available for adoption. This is world-wide rule with the Hague convention. It says that the adoptees must have permission from the country of their citizenship in order to be adopted.
There is also a contract between Russia and Estonia regarding all international relationships between them, and there are a couple paragraphs within that contract about adoption. It also says that if there is an orphan of the other country's citizenship living within the opposite country, the country of citizenship must release the child officially for adoption.
From what we can tell either Russia recently became party to the Hague, which caused this to now be more of a followed law than in the past, or no one knew of these laws until recently when a couple cases were about to go to court and all the documents and laws are reviewed in preparation for court. Then it was seen that Katya and Roman (along with a couple kids being adopted to Sweden, and several Estonian domestic adoption cases) need this letter from Russia to avoid international conflict for not following 1) the Hague regulations and 2) the Russia/Estonian contract.
It does not matter that they were born in Estonia and have lived here their whole lives. It's just the law. They have Russian citizenship. They have to be released by Russia. It doesn't matter if they had a lawyer. Estonia is following international laws by asking for permission. It's still dumb, but it's just the way it is.
We did see the letter that went to the MOE. It states something like "In accordance with the Hague Convention article xyz paragraph 123, we are requesting approval for bla bla bla". So that gives us more reason to think that Russia will have no problem doing this.
Lastly, the only other update I have is that Diana talked to Dmitry and said that his contact at the MOE said that they have the request, they know what it's about, they understand what they have to do, and as soon as they get done with emergencies from just having reopened after a 2 week close, then they'll get to it. So it does sound like they have no problem doing it. We just don't know when and we don't have any official confirmation to ease our minds. So we just have to wait and see, true to the formula of adoption.
At least now we know personally that adoptions can and do go smoothly in Estonia! Kersti (at the MSA here in Estonia) also said that once they get that letter, then everything is good to go. They will likely need a different immigration process than a stateless or Estonian child would have, so they are working on the details of that now. But there isn't anything else that stands in the way. Still, since the Estonians have no idea how to deal with this, they are naturally skeptical, which has been discouraging. We have to remind ourselves that they don't know how to take care of this because it's never happened before, and they themselves don't have contacts at the MOE. That is why Diana and Dmitry are helping.
That's the best explanation I can give for now! Of course it's hard to get any info because of all the people here Kersti speaks the best English, and even then sometimes she can't find the right word. So we hear conflicting information, confusing information, and sometimes just information in Russian. LOL
Per suggestions, from now on until we are home I'll probably just write short updates so I can actually get them posted. I have no time, except while everyone else sleeps, to be on the computer. So now that I've gotten to tell you guys all these details, the rest will be probably short and sweet till we go home.
Jason wants to leave early since we'll be done with the papers early. I don't know if we will yet. We're just sick of being here, and we can't really see the kids much during the week anyway. I'll keep you posted.
Sorry again for taking so long to update you all!! Thanks for patience. ;)
Love,
Molly
The kids went back to the orphanage Sunday night, which was beyond difficult for us all. Katya has this habit of hiding sadness so as to not make other people sad, and she insists that no one else be sad so that she doesn't get sad. So when Igor got here, she got involuntarily despondent and teary eyed, then tried to hide it. We asked her why she was sad, and she responded defensively (in Russian) "I'm NOT sad." She turned away to wipe her eyes, but I saw her anyway.
As soon as we're with them, we are as happy as can be. As soon as they're gone, we're immediately extremely upset. It's not like the fun and happiness lasts after they're gone. The spirit and energy they have - it leaves with them.
They were with us again Tuesday afternoon for a few hours. We went to McDonald's, then came back to the apartment where they immediately consumed a dozen eggs, a half of a huge bar of dark chocolate, a package of ham, and probably some bread too. You'd think they never get to eat. I know they eat, but I'm sure it's different when you have choice of food that you LIKE. I told Jason it would be like having to live on that gloop they ate in the Matrix, and then when you have a chance to eat a hot dog, you're going to eat 10 hot dogs.
Although today we stopped at Nastja's orphanage to grab some more clothes for her, and the caretaker fed us coffee, tea, and this apple danish thing, and cookies. It was good.
Then we went ice skating, which is an outdoor rink right next to our apartment. That's always a lot of fun, and we get fought over (particularly Jason since he's such a good skater) to be skated with.
All three kids have just been so wonderful. Nastja is very sweet, always telling us how much she loves us and is happy she's going to America with us. She is also picking up some English because we make her repeat objects and other phrases. We'll say things in Russian and then English and have her repeat it. Like she'll go "uh uh uh Mama - cle-eb, pajaloosta?" and I'll say "da, adeen cle-eb... (one bread) Now say 'Mama, may I have BREAD PLEASE' ", and she'll repeat it.
She also LOVES to be hugged and kissed. So with all three kids we spend a lot of time randomly going up to them, squeezing them, kissing their face and telling them we love them.
Wednesday afternoon we spent doing the rest of Nastja's exit paperwork. We picked up her passport, after going to the store to buy a cake for the passport lady for doing her passport in 2 days instead of the "up to one month" that is officially the wait time. Then we went to a translator lady to pick up the translation of our court documents. Then we went to the US embassy and finally got to speak to an American for a change! We filled out the forms for her immigrant visa, and we go back Friday to pick that up. Then everything is done.
We've learned that doing the processes here are basically a wait and see type thing. Every step of the way we have no idea when something is getting done, and a vague idea of where Igor is taking us the next day when he comes to pick us up. There is no point in asking, we just follow and do. Igor always seems to be in a hurry, too, and doesn't know what to do with himself if has to sit still for awhile. We went to a restaurant yesterday for an hour because we had time to kill before the Embassy appointment. And he literally stood by the table looking around and pacing for 10 minutes before he finally sat. He also rushes ahead all the time, leaving us behind to figure out which way he went. It's become almost a game. Where's Igor?
Now to answer your questions about Katya and Roman's documents. We learned more reasons why suddenly their citizenship was a problem. Here's the explanation:
The Hague convention covers international relations among many countries. Some countries are a party to it and some aren't. The US is as of 4/1/08, Estonia has been for years, and from what I can tell Russia recently became part of it. It changes some of the adoption processes if you adopt from a Hague country vs. a non-Hague country. The paperwork is more regulated (meaning it is more difficult). Prior to 4/1/08, people could do paperwork processes with all countries as if they were non-Hague, because the US was not a Hague country. But after that, the paperwork had to be streamlined along with the Hague requirements, which has caused a lot of people issues with their adoptions. Not so much us, though, because we had our immigration paperwork done before 4/1.
But, because of the Hague rules between Estonia and Russia, there are laws that must be followed in cases where there are children of another citizenship available for adoption. This is world-wide rule with the Hague convention. It says that the adoptees must have permission from the country of their citizenship in order to be adopted.
There is also a contract between Russia and Estonia regarding all international relationships between them, and there are a couple paragraphs within that contract about adoption. It also says that if there is an orphan of the other country's citizenship living within the opposite country, the country of citizenship must release the child officially for adoption.
From what we can tell either Russia recently became party to the Hague, which caused this to now be more of a followed law than in the past, or no one knew of these laws until recently when a couple cases were about to go to court and all the documents and laws are reviewed in preparation for court. Then it was seen that Katya and Roman (along with a couple kids being adopted to Sweden, and several Estonian domestic adoption cases) need this letter from Russia to avoid international conflict for not following 1) the Hague regulations and 2) the Russia/Estonian contract.
It does not matter that they were born in Estonia and have lived here their whole lives. It's just the law. They have Russian citizenship. They have to be released by Russia. It doesn't matter if they had a lawyer. Estonia is following international laws by asking for permission. It's still dumb, but it's just the way it is.
We did see the letter that went to the MOE. It states something like "In accordance with the Hague Convention article xyz paragraph 123, we are requesting approval for bla bla bla". So that gives us more reason to think that Russia will have no problem doing this.
Lastly, the only other update I have is that Diana talked to Dmitry and said that his contact at the MOE said that they have the request, they know what it's about, they understand what they have to do, and as soon as they get done with emergencies from just having reopened after a 2 week close, then they'll get to it. So it does sound like they have no problem doing it. We just don't know when and we don't have any official confirmation to ease our minds. So we just have to wait and see, true to the formula of adoption.
At least now we know personally that adoptions can and do go smoothly in Estonia! Kersti (at the MSA here in Estonia) also said that once they get that letter, then everything is good to go. They will likely need a different immigration process than a stateless or Estonian child would have, so they are working on the details of that now. But there isn't anything else that stands in the way. Still, since the Estonians have no idea how to deal with this, they are naturally skeptical, which has been discouraging. We have to remind ourselves that they don't know how to take care of this because it's never happened before, and they themselves don't have contacts at the MOE. That is why Diana and Dmitry are helping.
That's the best explanation I can give for now! Of course it's hard to get any info because of all the people here Kersti speaks the best English, and even then sometimes she can't find the right word. So we hear conflicting information, confusing information, and sometimes just information in Russian. LOL
Per suggestions, from now on until we are home I'll probably just write short updates so I can actually get them posted. I have no time, except while everyone else sleeps, to be on the computer. So now that I've gotten to tell you guys all these details, the rest will be probably short and sweet till we go home.
Jason wants to leave early since we'll be done with the papers early. I don't know if we will yet. We're just sick of being here, and we can't really see the kids much during the week anyway. I'll keep you posted.
Sorry again for taking so long to update you all!! Thanks for patience. ;)
Love,
Molly
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Life and love
To the faithful and pestering fans:
OK fine! I'll write, even though I'm exhausted and tired and sleepy. So I'm sorry if I repeat myself repeat myself.
Last night we stayed up really late with the kids, playing games and talking on the online translator. Anja (Nastja's 16 year old sister) came over last night for the weekend also. She is so sweet and so happy for Nastja.
This morning we got up early to go to the waterpark before Anna (Anja's current caregiver, Roman and Katya's former caregiver) came over to take us to this festival in a park in Tallinn. So we are all tired and on about 4 hours of sleep.
We had a GREAT day. Roman and Katya have been perfect. From the moment we picked them up and hugged them both tightly, both of us doing everything we could to keep ourselves together, they just picked up where they left off when we left. There is nothing that has changed, which means Jason's fears were over nothing. They just fit so perfectly with us, their personalities. And with Nastja too. We just can't imagine our family without them. We HAVE to get good news before we leave or I think we just might both have nervous breakdowns. Imagine having to turn your kids over to someone you don't know, where they hate living, and not know when you'll ever see them again. It's a pain that no one should have to even consider, and so far I try not to think about it because it is just too difficult. Neither of us ever cry, but if it crosses our mind, crying is all we do. The kids keep having to console us. They even told us not to worry, that even if we are apart they love us still and that they are happy knowing they have parents who love them, even if we are not together. That reaffirmed to us that even if we keep their hopes up for however long, months on end, that we are doing what is best for them to keep their hopes up.
Their new director and some of the people at the MSA feel differently, though. If it wasn't for Anna, I think they would discourage us visiting them at all. Kersti (MSA) told us on Thursday that they personally would not tell them that things will work out, because they do not know that for sure, and they don't want them to get their hopes up. But in this case, it is apparently too late. We said yes, it was already too late when we met them in May and found out the problem in September. We were already family. And that at this point, it is better for the kids to have hope than to have doubts. Kersti agreed with that.
The new director asked to meet us before they came with us this weekend. Of course we were charming as always ;) so that was no problem. But at first they said ehhh I don't know maybe not - about having them after school during the week. Anna talked to them and arranged to bring them to us most days, on her DAYS OFF. There are just so many loving people helping us, we're so grateful that we're not completely surrounded by problems and people who don't care.
So Katya and Roman go back to the orphanage tomorrow night and will be here Tuesday afternoon/evening and Wednesday afternoon/evening, and then on Friday for the weekend again. Same for the week after and then we leave on Thursday the 5th.
Anja is still here (until tomorrow when Katya and Roman go back to the orphanage also) and has been wonderful. She is 16 as of November. Anna (caretaker) was here most of the day also and took us to a festival in the park. She spoke to me at length, asking me if we would want to take Anja also, because she is wonderful and would love a family like ours. I agreed that we think she is wonderful, I told her that I didn't think it was allowed to adopt children of that age to America because she is 16. But we would do what we can for her as far as visiting or staying with us if she could come to America another way. Anja had already said she would try to get permission to visit us in the summer after her graduation.
We can't afford to adopt anymore kids after K&R, anyway, and in talking about age I said it might be weird that I'm only 12 years older than her. LOL Turns out her bio mom is only 35, with 6 kids (including Nastja and Anja, Vlad the 12 year old boy, and 3 babies, all but the youngest baby in the orphanages). But we would do whatever we could for Anja. She is very special.
Later, Anja commented that dinner together with all of us at the apartment (at the table, complete with prayer) was very special. She started crying and told us that she thinks that we are the best parents in the world, that she was wondering earlier why God would allow her to live such a life, with a mother who doesn't love her, and that she is so glad that her sister will be with us and be loved. And that she herself is happy when she is with us. It made us so sad for her. She acts very adult-like, sometimes we forget that she is 16. But then we could see how everything effects her too, even as a mature person. Now we feel like we have the biggest family of kids that live in another country. LOL We told Anja that now that we are Nastja's parents, she is also family and she now will always have a family who loves her. She was very happy to hear that, I think. She is also always very appreciative of everything. She thanked us many times for the excellent day and every small thing we do for her. She said where they live is very strict and even with family rules this is so much better, being with us. It sounds like even though the orphanage has loving caregivers and it is a safe place to live, they go without a lot of life's necessities. Being really loved, for instance. Being treated individually as appreciated and enjoyed. It's just heartbreaking.
Tomorrow we're going to the waterpark again. I am going to talk to Anja more about what she said about God. It will be interesting to see where that conversation goes.
Anyway, that's the update!
And finally, here are a couple pictures I got uploaded and exported to JPEG format. It takes forever, so sorry it's taking forever.
:)
Love,
Molly
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