Back from Russia

Dawn and I got back Thursday night from Russia. Does it make sense to anyone else when I say the trip was too long, too short and very rushed? Let me explain a little:

Too Long - Being away from our kids here at home was hard. We had difficulty with our cell phone and could not call home for a couple of days. To make things a little more stressful, we thought we were staying at one motel in the region where our referral was located only to learn we were staying at another when we arrived. The families watching our kids would not know how to contact us in an emergency.

Too Short - We only got to spend a few hours over two days with the little boy we hope to adopt. More time would have been nice just to be able to get to know him and to let him get to know us.

Rushed - Get off the plane, Try to get acclimated to time change. Up at 4:30 AM to travel to region. Drive to region, spend some time with little boy. Drive back to Moscow. Get up at 6AM to get ready for medical screening. Go to hospital and spend 4 hours visiting 8 doctors. Eat dinner, go to bed, get up at 4:30AM to get ready for trip home. Arrive at airport at 7:30, clear immigration and come home.

I wish I could post pictures, but that is no allowed by the Russian officials until after the adoption is finalized. He is a wonderful little boy with very long eye lashes. He is three years old and is a very happy little boy. This was great to learn. Some children are not very happy and they have very good reasons for being like that. They read his complete file to us and asked if we had any further questions or concerns. We asked about food allergies and they did not know of any. They asked if we desired a new medical evaluation and we told them a new evaluation was not going to make any difference. I guess some parents ask for this, but it would not change our mind in anyway. We want to adopt him and that is that. Some argue that they need the evaluation to prepare themselves properly. I can see that, but Russian medicals are written in such a way as to scare the living day lights out of anyone regardless of your health status. When we get home with him, we will have him checked out head to toe by the IA Clinic at UAB. On Tuesday afternoon we signed papers of intent and had them notarized for court.

The detsky dom was very, very clean and had a wonderful director. You could tell she really cared for the children and was so sweet and kind to them. She showed us his bedroom with all the little beds in a row and where they kept their things.

We learned that if we had received our US Immigration clearance already they would have given us a court date. I am going to follow-up on that Monday to see what the status is. They have had our application for over two months and we have not even received our fingerprint letter. Anyway, if we do not go to court within 90 days, we have to travel to Moscow and have our medicals completed again.

I'll try an post a little more detail later. We are still trying to get back on our schedule here.