Fasyo Harasho (Everything is OK)

Tonight will be one week since we’ve been home and we’ve been REALLY busy.  It’s been a challenge to get her on a normal sleeping schedule and getting her to take naps (spatkeys).  She goes to bed in her bed, but then wakes up around 1AM and comes into our room, crying.   We let her fall back asleep in our bed for now, but soon we’ll be carrying her back to her room.  Today we slept until almost 6AM, which is a big improvement from the 4AM it was.  She wakes up and then starts whispering to us and then gives me some kisses.  Then, she says she’s hungry, so we get up and start our day. 

We’re still figuring out what foods she will eat.  She loves fried or hard boiled eggs.  She loves yogurt and any kind of fruit.  She has even drank chocolate milk, but not regular milk yet, we just call it “chocolate”.  We tried to make a yummy beet salad for her, similar to what she loved in Ukraine at Michael and Diane’s house, but we must have done something wrong because she would hardly touch it.  If anyone has some Ukrainian salad recipes (cabbage or beet) please feel free to share them! J 

She enjoys watching music DVD’s and reading books.  She’s had a lot of fun playing with other kids, too.  Her cousin, Emily, is also 4, so we thought she would help teach Anja some English. Instead Emily started running around speaking “Russian”.  It was hilarious!  It’s fun to see her interact with other children, and also fun to watch them  interact with her.   She adds a “ka” to some of our words.  We’ve heard, yum yumka.  And bye-byeka.  Her best phrase so far is “yummy yummy to my tummy” – which is obviously from us as we try to convince her to try to eat “our” kind of food.  

Thanks again to everyone for following our blog and for all your prayers to get us through this amazing journey.  It’s so great to be home, to be a family, and to begin the next adventure of being parents.  We love this little girl that was chosen by God to be our daughter.  She is truly a blessing as is all the family and friends that supported us as we fought to bring her home.  I’ll continue to try to do updates to share what’s going on.  But, for now, we’re busy being first time parents and trying to get everything done in a day that needs to be done. 

Home At Last

Praise God, Anja is home! What a relief it was to finally land in Denver at 11pm last night.  Our Anja was a trooper during the exhausting 30 hour plus return home.  Shortly after we posted our last blog we found out that the other flight to Munich had been canceled. At that point we had been in Kiev airport for over 12 hours. Lufthansa put us in the airport hotel which helped us catch the 5:35 am flight to Frankfurt. We were put on the wait-list for the Frankfurt to Denver flight so we opted to take seats on the flight to LAX with a guarantee of getting home that day. We had a long enough layover in LA for a quick couple hours in a hotel to refresh and meet up with her aunties and cousin in California.  Then, she slept on the next flight to Denver.  We woke her up, and she was ready to meet the rest of her new family that could be there.  Our parents, after anticipating all day finally got to meet their new grandaughter. Even her Colorado cousins, Emily and Henry got to stay up late to greet her - thanks Uncle Dave and Auntie Lori! :) .  Thank you so much Barbara, Luda, Ryan, Tabitha and Oleg for being there too!

We're trying to catch up on our sleep today, but Anja's too excited to sleep!  There's a lot going on and a lot of new things to see and do.  We're hoping tonight she gets caught up and we do to.  We wanted to share a few pictures from last night.

The DIA arrival

This morning she is happy at home with all her new fun things.

Get me out of here!

6:30 am flight to Munich CANCELED. Flight to Frankfurt overbooked. So we decided to get on the 5 pm to Munich and spend the day at the airport instead of coming back tomorrow. (Munich gives us more options to get home if something else went wrong.) We just found out that the 5 pm flight to Munich is over 2 1/2 hours delayed. So now we are sitting at a restaurant upstairs in Kiev airport waiting out the next few hours. Last night I joked with Michael asking if he had a spare tire in his car because nothing has been easy with this process and I figured it was likely that something else would go wrong. We never figured on the flight being canceled. Luckily Anja has been an angel. Janelle and I loaded up our bags on a luggage cart and made a bed on top for Anja. As long as we keep moving she is relaxed. So we have been pushing that cart all day. We have made a few American friends in the airport that also had plans messed up by this flight being canceled. Everybody has an interesting story when you get out here. The guy behind us in line had a Colorado Eagles hat on - he was from Berthoud, with a team doing HIV research. Hopefully we can get something else out of Lufthansa for this mess of a trip. Free hotel room and three upgraded tickets would be great. 

For those of you who were planning on being at the airport when we arrive, figure on the same time, the next day. 

Heading HOME

It's 4AM here, and in a few minutes we'll be leaving for the Kiev airport.  We get in at 4PM Denver time.  It's going to be a long day, but we are heading home so it's a great day too!  Sorry we haven't been able to blog, it has been so busy.  Since the morning we got off the train in Kiev it was really busy.  Our driver got in a little accident on the way to the medical, so while she was arguing with cab driver she hit, we took a cab to the embassy.  We got the paperwork we needed, then went to the doctor for Anja. Instead of staying in Kiev overnight, we were welcomed in by the Kushinikov's (again!) to stay with them.  It's so comfortable and it's great because they can speak Russian and communicate with Anja.  They have been such a true blessing to us throughout this whole experience.  The next day, Diane drove us back into Kiev to pick up Anja's visa, and we breathed a sigh of relief because everything was done.  But we were wrong... Thankfully Valentin called us on Wednesday to check on our itinerary and advised us to get Anja a German Transient Visa because we have two stopovers in Germany.  We woke up Casey's mom (sorry, again!) to see if we could change our flights, and also headed back into to Kiev frantically to the German Embassy to get that done.  There was no room on the other flights, but fortunately, the Visa process went really smooth and finally we are ready to come home. 

The rest of our time has been completely filled with this energetic little girl. :)  We've had a lot of fun our first few days as parents and we've been completely wiped out when it's her bedtime so we go to sleep then too.  I can't imagine being here without Casey and doing this on my own.  I'm so thankful he was able to stay the whole time with me, he's such a great daddy.  It's time to go and load up, I just wanted to give an update on the latest. Anja talks about going to America every time we get in the car she thinks that where we're headed.  This morning it's really happening - Hallelujah! 

Happy Family - Day 2

Today was a busy, fun, challenging and rewarding day.  We finally have a moment to blog because she is asleep.  We're pretty proud of ourselves because it's only 8pm here.  However, let me back up, she didn't want to have anything to do with going to bed last night.  She tried on all her clothes and was into everything!  We finally wore her out at 12:30am and she was up nice and early at 7am.  It was a typical rough first night.  The excitement wore off and exhaustion came on, but she was in a totally different environment so it was understandable she was having trouble finding the peace to sleep.  She was so wound up and has never been in a different bed before.  We got experience crying with real big tears, fake whining crying with no tears, and everything hyper in between.

We had an easy morning, and had the driver pick us up at 10:30am to take us to a Cherry Pizza/Fun Zone place-Chuck e Cheese Ukrainian style.  After trying to convince her with no luck that pizza is delicious, (she wouldn't even try it) she settled with some fruit salad and then it was time to play.  It was so fun to watch her enjoy the "bounce" area.  It brought tears to my eyes to watch her start off so timid, then get so adventurous and silly out there.   She was just a regular kid enjoying herself in a fun indoor playground.  She wasn't ready to leave, but we wanted to try to get her back in time for her regular nap time.  She got in the car and Oleg asked us "where to", and Anja told him to go back to where we just were (in Russian).   We're glad she had fun, and can't wait to do more stuff like that with her back home. 

Needless to say this afternoon, the nap didn't happen.  And, that's why she's asleep at 8pm, and we will shortly be joining her.  Tomorrow night we take the overnight train to Kiev, and I'm sure will be another fun experience with our little girl.  It's all part of the journey and the memories that will be part of her story.  Here's a few pictures of her today. 

Happy Family

No tears, just "Lets go, lets go" (in Russian) within minutes of arriving to the orphanage. She was ready to go before we even had her completely changed into her new clothes. Once we got in the car, according to Anja we were going to America. Andrew had to tell her though that we weren't going to America yet, not for a few more days even though all of us are more than ready to. Making dinner, giving Anja a bath (she stood up the whole time because she is used to showers), and making sure Anja doesn't get into something she shouldn't have been keeping us busy for the past three hours. This parenting thing is tough, especially since she can't understand what we are trying to tell her. We are looking forward to her going down to sleep. Bedtime is supposed to be at 9:00 but she is way to excited to go to sleep.

Today has been a long day driving around Donetsk going from office to office, until we got to the orphanage at 5:30 pm, the most energy we exerted all day was lifting our arm to sign a paper. We are making up for it now though running after Anja.

We really are blessed. She is adorable and we are so thankful for her. We are mostly emotionally relieved now that she is with us but won't be completely until we are home next week.

Anja in her new clothes ready to leave the orphanage. 

We are all sooooo happy to leave the orphanage forever!

When we got home papa and Anja got in a standoff over who gets the TV remote. When Anja started pouting, jumping up and down, papa showed her that he can jump as well. She thought that was funny.

And then papa put on cartoons...

The Final Stretch

Friday, February 5^th, is the 11^th day, the day we get to pick up the court decree and run all around this area to get Anja’s new birth certificate and Ukraine passport.  Once all that is done (and in Donetsk it can all be done in 1 day!)  we’ll head to pick up Anja from the orphanage.  It’s so unbelievable that the day we’ve been waiting for is almost here!  We’ll bring her a complete change of clothes, because we’re told that they don’t let her leave with anything she’s used to wearing.  We plan to bring a cake or cookies to celebrate and share with everyone.   We have gifts for the director and the mama’s that have been Anja’s caregivers for the past few years.   Then, we’ll bring her to her new “temporary home” in Donetsk.  Because we can’t do anything at the Embassy until Monday morning we decided to stay the weekend here in Donetsk.  It will be just the 3 of us, hanging out in our apartment.  It should be a great adventure as we will really get to know our daughter and she will really get to know us. 

Sunday night we’ll get on the overnight train to Kiev.  I wish we were flying, but the airport is pretty far from where we need to be in Kiev and the train station puts us right in the right spot.  Oh, just another joyful part of the ride – Casey’s actually happy we get to ride the Ukraine train one more time.  It’s all part of the adventure. 

Monday morning at 7AM, our facilitator, Valentin, will meet us at the station and we’ll head to the doctor for Anja’s required medical exam.  Then, we bring everything to the US Embassy to apply for her Visa.  We’ll stay the night in Kiev and by Tuesday afternoon everything should be ready to go.

Our flight home is scheduled for Thursday.  One week from tomorrow!  As you can see, it’s going to be another busy week for us with a lot of excitement.  We’re praying for everything to “go as we hope” starting with picking up the court documents on Friday morning so we can get every step completed and bring her HOME!!   

Groundhog Day

A fellow Ukraine adoption blogger said to us that this ten day wait period feels like Groundhog Day and he couldn’t be more correct! Janelle’s mom asked why we don’t blog much anymore but that is because every day is exactly like the last and there is nothing interesting happening to us here. We love our visit with Anja everyday however we wish we had something else to do. I’ve been tempted to find a hardware store to buy a shovel to help the old ladies attempt to clean the snow off the sidewalks, not only because I feel sorry for them but also because I am so bored. We have been to all of the restaurants in Donetsk with English menus and have been tempted to start writing reviews because most of them that were listed in out travel guide from the US have gone out of business. Besides McDonald’s we have found a few that are pretty good. Today our highlight was going to a cafe called “Cherry Pizza” and we go there often. Not only does it have the best pizza in town, it is cheap. Janelle and I can each get our own pizza and sodas for under $8.

As a dairyman I was looking forward to giving some milk to Anja figuring there isn’t a better food our there for a growing young girl. Two days ago I gave her some strawberry milk and she spit it out. What kid doesn’t drink milk? A few days before that we gave her strawberry yogurt and she loved that so I knew the berry taste wasn’t the problem. I also asked the orphanage director the other day if I could bring a bunch of milk to the orphanage for the kiddos but she said that she wouldn’t know what to do with it. I couldn’t believe it! That explains why Anja doesn’t like it…she’s never had it. The director did say that I could bring yogurt so I went away somewhat satisfied. The picture below of Anja with the “milk mustache” is actually her drinking a yogurt drink, which is what they use for the “Got Milk?” ads in magazines and such. Go figure…