Heaters and Blankets

End of Day 24

Vitals:  When we found out that Ruslan had a "surprise sibling" our friend Amy told us, "I think out of 100+ adoptions, this is probably the second time there has ever been a surprise sibling presented at the SDA" thus delaying the whole process for about a week. Well, congratulate us because we just found out that Roman ALSO has a surprise sibling.  Now we have to wait for THEM to be separated.  I don't think it will set us back as long, but it's still a delay.

Not so Vital:  Here is what Nadya wrote to me earlier today: "Roma has a brother who lives in another institution.  He's around 16. We had to get the same document to have their separation approved. We got it today. Now we need to wait a day or two to get our letter of conclusion from the Social Workers signed. To get it signed they will set up an appointment and we all will need to go and meet the Head of that District State Administration or his assistant.  It is a formality they want to follow and we cannot influence it. Tried. The day they sign it we apply to court. The SW said it is gonna be Thursday -Friday, maybe tomorrow but chances for tomorrow are little. It is a bit different in this district of Kiev, they give you a really hard time to get that letter of conclusion and you cannot apply for court without it. SO, we have to wait."

There is a ten day waiting period between the final court date (when the child is ours) and when we can actually remove them from the orphanage.  No one can explain the reason for this, it just IS.  We were hoping the ten day waits for the two boys would over lap a little.  We had been thinking of going to Europe/Germany when we thought they would overlap entirely.  When we realized that there might only be a five day overlap, we thought about an overnight train to Moscow.  (NOTHING is close to here, by the way.  Good Grief.)  But, if there is no overlap at all, we might not go anywhere. 


On the plus side, we all went to see Roman today.  He is still all smiles and happy as a clam no matter what happens.  He sees us, he smiles. We play outside, he smiles. He sits on a swing, he smiles.  He falls in the mud, he smiles.  We gave him the shape sorter today to see how he handled it.  He got the concept down pretty quickly, but I think he only got two shapes on his own.  Toward the end, he seemed to get the concept a little, but he is no where near where Ruslan is.  Ruslan put them all in on the first try and then completely lost interest. For Roman, I think this will be entertaining for a while. 

A second plus: we got the heat to work in our apartment this morning!  This is not to say that they turned on the radiators, but rather, we got the internal electric heating units to work. There is one in each room (kitchen, bedroom and living room). The one in the bedroom has been working all along.  I have NO IDEA how we got the other two to work.  We just kept fooling with them and one by one, they started shooting hot air.  This made the day MUCH more pleasant.  It also made laundry a lot easier... but I'll go into that later. 

We also got a fourth blanket delivered (as in we now have  Four Blankets for Four Kids).  It took almost four weeks to get that very basic step taken care of.  Anyway, now each child has their own blanket.  This is not to imply that there was any less fighting at bedtime, but rather more, since there were more items to covet.  Anyway, I had a ton of hilarious things to write about today, but then we got the message from Nadya and I lost all my steam. It's 9:30 and I'm beat.

More later!