Miracle!

I can't remember if I explained this already, but in case I haven't, here you go. First you compile all your documents into a file called a dossier. One of these documents is that form we need from the USCIS. Then the Ukrainian State Department of Adoptions, SDA, assigns you a submission date. The submission date is when they will review your file and decide if they will let you adopt. This approval takes about three weeks. Then, they assign you a travel date. The travel date is about three weeks after that.

So, right now we are trying to get a submission date. I believe that we are looking at the middle to end of April. I hope I'm wrong. I hope it's sooner. But, it is what it is and I will try really hard to stay patient.

Our agency emailed me yesterday asking me to find out a time frame from the USCIS. You all know that I have been calling the USCIS to find out a time frame, but I decided to call them one. more. time. before telling the agency what they had already told me. I guess I was hoping that they'd give me different information than before. No such luck. Again, I was told our application was in a pile of papers, waiting to be assigned a case worker. The lady told me it would be another two weeks at least before that happened and then another couple of months after that. Bummer. I asked if they were still expediting Ukrainian adoptions due to the moratorium. She said no, the only way to expedite is if you have a court date.

Well, you can't get a court date until you have a submission date. And you can't submit until you have that approval from the USCIS. I asked the lady if by court date she meant submission to the Ukrainian government, the date that the government must have that paper by and she said yes! That is great! So, as soon as we could get a case worker and be put into the system, we could go ahead and get a submission date and then they'd process our application. I emailed this information to our agency and she replied saying that they'd try to get a submission date and we could hope that the USCIS had our approval by then.

But then, drum roll please,

I got the mail. Sitting there amongst all the Tuesday ads were two letters from the USCIS assigning us fingerprinting appointments!!! This is great! This means that we can go in before our scheduled appointment, get printed and they will get the results to the USCIS and our case worker will process our app!! At least that is how it should go theoretically. I was overjoyed! I do think it's funny though that for more than two weeks now I have been told that our app was sitting in a pile and that we wouldn't get fingerprinting dates for another two weeks. Go government employees. So, pretty much they didn't even really check. If they had, they would know that we already had a fingerprinting date and that it was being mailed to us. Whatever. The important thing is that we actually have that fingerprinting date, which means we are in the system. And, according to the USCIS, we are two weeks ahead of schedule! Hallelujah!!

Tribute to Princess

This is Princess. Princess died Thursday.

Princess was born two years ago. We adopted him and his brother, Wilbur. Wilbur was the runt, thus the name. And Princess, well, what do you get when you have four daughters. One picked out Princess, Two picked out Wilbur. Huz had said absolutely no rabbits. He is the yes man, except when it comes to pets and kids. haha. So, the day we picked them up from our neighbor I didn't even have a cage for them. Soooo, I put them in the bathtub. Of course, all 400 of the neighbor kids came over to see the baby bunnies. As soon as Huz got home from work, one friend hollered at him that she loved our new, soft, little, baby bunnies. I was bummed. I had planned on keeping them in the bathtub until he noticed. He got that look in his eye, you know the one your dad usually gives you when you are wearing his patience thin, and said, "Wiifff." But by then it was too late. They were permanent members of our family.

Poor Princess the boy was doomed to his life. Someone casually mentioned to us that as the bunnies grew up, they may begin to fight because they were both boys and that we may need to separate them. So, when I hear the word MAY, I think maybe. What they should have told us was they WILL need to be separated. I thought that we would notice them fighting and not getting along and that if that ever happened, we would put them in separate cages. In the meantime they were keeping each other warm.

Little did I know that this was like a little bunny prison (if you get my drift) and that Princess's days were numbered.

One lovely spring afternoon in 2010, One's friend raced inside yelling, "Sister Holbrook!!! The raccoons attacked One's rabbit! Help!" Now, we had many raccoons that had caused many problems so hearing this I dropped what I was doing and ran outside. Poor One had taken Princess out of his cage to play with him and discovered he had indeed been attacked. It was like a bunny war zone. I really should have taken pictures, but it was so gory. Believe me though when I say that I am not exaggerating. It took me all of ten seconds to realize that poor Princess had not, in fact, been attacked by raccoons but by his very own brother!!

Princess was in shock. His tail had been chewed off (his vertebrae left exposed), along with his boy parts, part of his face, ear, left hind foot and the most ghastly of all (as if the previous weren't bad enough) were two giant holes in his hind quarters. I'm talking a good three inches wide EACH, and about 1 1/2 inches deep. It was disgusting. And my little kids had discovered this.

I left the kids with my sister (I think) and raced the rabbit to the animal emergency room. Huz met me there as I had called him and told him to. He stayed with the rabbit while I went home to finish making dinner and comfort the kids. Princess required surgery. And Huz actually asked me what I thought we should do-as if there were any question as to what my response would be. Several hundred dollars later our once free rabbit was back at home, in his own cage with bandages and medication. The medication had to be applied topically to all wounds twice daily and orally twice daily. If you think giving a toddler medicine is bad, try a crazed rabbit.

After several weeks of this, Princess began to recover. Eventually Huz decided we should let both rabbits out at the same time. This decision was obviously made while I was not at home. Wilbur went straight for Princess and both rabbits reared up on their hind legs and went at it. It was like a little rabbit boxing match. Did you know rabbits growl? They do. Huz separated them and I would've never known had the kids not busted him.

They eventually learned to just keep their distance from each other and we had a great time letting them out of their cages and playing with them and watching them bound across the grass. Less of a great time trying to clean their crazy massive amounts of poop (seriously, tons) from their cages.

I remember in our old neighborhood my kids would call their friends to come over and play. They would say, "We can get the rabbits out to play and then watch my mom try to catch them." Apparently it was quite a sight. I wouldn't know. I was too busy chasing circles around lilac bushes and lunging across the grass only to face plant empty handed.

When we moved, Princess became magic. As in he could escape from his cage. At first, I thought the neighbor kids were letting him out to play and then couldn't get him back in. Until the time we woke up one morning and Princess was sitting on our front porch. His favorite places were the front porch, underneath our back deck and our neighbor's front porch flower pot. We attempted tying his cage shut with layers and layers of twine until we could find something heavier to use that night. An hour later, though, Princess was hopping happily along the back grass. In desperation I found the biggest rock I could move. It is about the size of a basketball and I had to roll it. And I'm not a wimp. It was freaking heavy. I rolled it right up in front of his cage door. If I could barely move that rock, there was no way eleven pound Princess could. Except somehow he still got out. A lot.

Recently we saw him out the kitchen windows leaping through the snow as if he were taunting us. One and I raced outside and using our team efforts corralled him several times before actually catching him. One gets the credit for that. In shorts, she dove for Princess as if it were a volleyball. She had snow down her shirt, in her shorts, in her shoes, hair, face, but she caught him.

We had a funeral for Princess. It was a sad time for our kids. We laid him to rest near the creek in our backyard and piled rocks on his grave as a headstone (and so that any curious wild animals would have a very difficult time getting to his resting place). The top rock was, of course, the one that was in front of his cage. Hopefully it does a better job of keeping him in his grave than it did in his cage:)

USCIS, part 3

So, I called the USCIS again today to find out if I had been assigned a case worker yet. As soon as we are in the system, we will be able to get finger printed and hopefully that will move this step along. But, maybe not. But, it's worth a try.

Today, the person I spoke with at the USCIS was very polite and spoke kindly. The information she gave me was the same though, and that's discouraging. Am I in the system? We don't know. Is the processing of applications taking longer than usual? Yes. How much longer? It's about three to six months, but closer to three right this minute. Is Ukraine being given priority attention due to the potential moratorium? (this was the case early in February) We don't know. And we can't tell you. Should I just keep calling back to find out if I've been updated to the system? Yes. At least this time when I said thanks and have a nice day, she said you're welcome.

A new development in our story is that we are sending several of our documents to Ukraine on Saturday with friends that are traveling there to complete their adoption. This will help us get in line to get a submission date with the SDA. Approximately 3 weeks after we submit to the SDA we will hear from them a date to travel. Personally, I am hoping to submit in April and travel in May. That could be optimistic, but I hope it's realistic. I'm hoping to find out when SDA submission dates are being given tomorrow and then I'll know how far off I am or not.

To all my traveling friends-

Congratulations!! You've made it so far! Enjoy your time in Ukraine. We'll see you in a few weeks when you're back with your newest family members! Our prayers will continue to be with you. Safe travels and God bless!!

...and yes, I'm super jealous that I'm not going with you all:) Tell our boys hi!

USCIS, part 2

So, to all of my friends who have been through this and those who are going through this-I am feeling a little panicked!! I tried to get fingerprinted without an appointment, as I know many of us have done. The fingerprinting place would have done it, but we weren't in the system. As in, USCIS hadn't registered us yet.

Part of the problem is most likely the fact that I sent in the application without our home study to get things started. This was fine to do, as we were told by the USCIS and the adoption agency. We have received notification that they have our home study and our app, but we haven't been assigned a case number or a case worker. When I called to talk to someone at USCIS to find all this out, the woman I spoke with told me that it would be quite some time until we were assigned a case worker. She told me that there were cases still in their office waiting to be assigned a case worker that had been sitting in their office since THE BEGINNING OF FEBRUARY!!!!!!!

This is not good!! I told her that time frame surprised me as I had several friends who had submitted their paperwork and had received it in a much timelier manner. She told me that they must have just had better luck. Thanks a lot lady. I thanked her for her help and told her that I appreciated her explaining this to me. Then she just hung up. Without even saying your welcome, or thanks for calling, or call if you have other questions. So much for good old government customer service. Sheesh.

p.s. I knew there would be a part 2. grrrrr.

A Split Second

My little Ukrainian guy was a little younger than Four when his country became his legal guardian.

I saw a photo of Matt Damon the other day. He looked awful. (No offense, buddy) He looked over weight, sloppy, and his hair was grown out a bit. Hopefully he's assuming a character for a movie and hasn't let himself go like that. I hope he can go back to his "Bourne" look soon. haha

It was weird. He looked like a regular joe schmoe . He could've been anyone you see at the grocery store every day. Then, I had this moment, you know the kind where you have enough thoughts flood your mind that it seems an entire hour or more has passed by, yet it has only been a split second. In that split second, this is what happened in my mind:

I thought about how with a personal trainer, chef, hefty income, any one of us has the potential to achieve the "Bourne" look. Any one of us, given the resources, opportunities and education could have endless possibilities. Who's to say I'm any smarter or more successful than another who has had less an opportunity. Who knows how many Bill Gates or Oprah Winfrey's or Einstein's are in the world at any given time, only to remain unrealized due to their country of origin or their gender or birth order.

Which led me to her. The boys' biological mother.

Behind every orphan, every fostered child is a biological parent who for some reason, usually many reasons, is no longer the suitable caretaker of their own child. It is true that these biological parents have had their rights stripped from them due to choices they have made. They behaved in an irresponsible and sometimes dangerous manner. Losing guardianship of their child was a direct consequence of the life style they chose.

But then I thought of her. A woman whose history I only know a small part of. The part I know is ugly. It's enough reason for anyone to judge her, to be disgusted with her, to make assumptions about her, to even hate her. But in that moment, my heart broke for her and I loved her.

What had led her to this chapter of her life? I don't know for certain how things played out, but from the conversations we had with BoyOne and the information we know from court documents, I can almost guess. I think it started out alright but then, somewhere along the way, a path of pain and heartache was taken.

I choose to believe that most people are inherently good. We all come from the same amazing, loving Father, so how could that not be true? I think a lot about the life of an orphan. The sadness of the events that led them to that place. The loss they have experienced. The pain that they have suffered. The heartache they endure. The statistic they are and the likelihood of the statistic they will likely become.

When I look at Four, I can't imagine my life without her. I can't imagine doing something that would terminate my right to be her parent. I can't imagine what it would be like to not wake up to her "toddlerness." (yes, I just made up that word) I can't imagine what it must be like to wake up each morning without her and remember that I had done something to make that happen. I can't imagine the unbearable pain that I would feel. I can imagine what it might lead me to. I imagine that there must have been some terrible things going on to lead me to that point.

And that is where that split second brought me to. Imagining how hopeless and sad and impossible her life must have been for her to have not been able to stop all of this from happening. Imagining how she must feel every day-if she allows herself to think of her precious babies. Imagining that she had done everything she could and that she loved them so much and that life just didn't work out the way she had hoped it would. Because of where she was born, because of her gender, because of the lack of resources available to her, poor decisions were made. I'm not trying to make excuses for her, I know that what she did was not ok. I also know that she lives with that every. single. day. No matter how hard she may try to forget and how uncaring she may seem, she is still a mother. And as a mother, I feel her pain.

Good Laugh

Funniest thing just happened. Here I am, sitting at my computer, which is in the kitchen, looking at quilting websites when, out of the corner of my eye, I see One trying to shut herself in the fridge while she mutters to herself,

"I wonder if the light goes off when the fridge shuts..."

A Little Something

Congrats to a couple of my friends whose adoptions were just completed officially by the courts of Ukraine and to those who just received their travel dates to start that phase of the adventure. Hopefully we're just behind you!! Except I just called my doctor and the results of my blood work won't be available until next week. ?!?! Huz had his draw on Monday afternoon and his results were back Tuesday at 2. I was a little worried thinking that maybe something was wrong and that was the hold up. I started thinking back to all the needles that had been poked into my body during my pregnancies. But the doctor assured me that it always took his office this long because they send their blood work out for these particular tests. Of course they do. I should tell you right now that I have the worst luck ever. And Huz, well, he is quite the opposite (that's how he ended up with me. hehe:) In all honesty, I think he is my one lucky happening that I'll ever have). Seriously, if we were having a contest to see who could get home first and he was in Idaho and I was at the market two miles from our home, he would win. My kids never want to drive with me because something always holds us up. Like the time there was some random dog on the middle of the highway out for a Sunday stroll and everyone was afraid of hitting him (it's a narrow two lane highway) so traffic was literally stopped for like 1/2 an hour. I finally got out of my car and got him when I got close enough to see what was going on. But we are way off subject. Anyhow, should've gone to the other doctor. Oh well.

My good friend is leaving for Ukraine in just a couple of weeks and has offered to take a little something to our boys for us. So, what do you give a couple of orphans who will end up sharing whatever is sent with everyone around them? I've already sent candy, matchbox cars, ping pong paddles and a net that can be attached to any table, and pictures. I know they love pictures, so we'll send some more of those for sure. I was trying to think of something different, though. It needed to be something that was small, too, because there is not very much luggage room. Today while we were out we decided to look around a bit to see what we could find. We finally came across something that we hope will be a hit: a whoopie cushion.