Monday October18, 2010 - Hopefully this will be the week of our court date!

After a relaxing weekend, its time to get this party going. We are excited about making some progress this week, unfortunately it is the kind of progress that is completely out of our hands. All we can really do is wait - and spend time with Max and DJ!
It's a beautiful but cool sunny Monday morning, with the fall colors changing the view every day. We are grateful to our lawyer Natasha for letting us stay in her house - it is very comfortable and helps us deal with the boredom of the wait. If only she had the satellite dish we had last week in Kiev...;^)
We aren't sure if Gregori understood to show up this morning, so we call Natasha the translator and ask her to make sure he's coming. We plan on visiting the boys in the mornings this week, and let them keep with their afternoon routines of classwork and naps. We feel like we have definitely bonded with them, and I believe we can honestly say that we love these kids!! Hard to believe that you can say that so soon, but after spending three weeks with them back in August, and then missing them the entire month of August - we truly feel like they are our babies and we can feel that they sense that as well. I wasn't sure how that was going to work, cuz - well, I've never done this before! It's hard to explain and some would challenge the idea, but we are so happy to be able to call these boys our own and we feel very lucky to have them in our lives!!! Knock on wood...


 

Sure enough, at 9:45 we climb into Gregori's taxi and he takes us to the orphanage. They ask us (via sign language and Emma's Ukrainian) if we would like to play with them outside as everybody is feeling better and its a beautiful day for the playground. We say yes and she heads off to get them bundled up in winter clothes. What a sight as they come walking down the hall with their nurse, looking like Michelin Men in round balls of clothing with huge smiles as they spot us waiting for them. They look so cute with their winter coats and stocking caps, trundling along without a care in the world. We do our usual greeting, with hugs and kisses and requests of "my machina???", as in 'where is my car???'


 

We head out to the playground and immediately fall into the routine we had last summer with the slide and merry-go-round and see-saw. The light is perfect and I get some really cute pictures of the boys (like I don't already have thousands, right?), including some classic sunglasses photos. DJ climbs up to the little playhouse on top of the slide and takes it upon himself to start cleaning the floor of leaves and stuff. He is so sweet with the way he takes care of his little brother while taking care of the world around him - as if its his responsibility to make things right, no matter what it is. And Max is just Max - he is just hilarious...always cracking me up with his facial expressions and actions.

 

We pull out the bananas and oranges, as well as their cool sunglasses and they just bounce around "happy as Larry" (an English expression of Emma's - no idea...not sure who this Larry dude is...), playing with each other and calling out to us to help with them whatever it is they want help with. "Mama - _______", fill in the Ukrainian phrase...or "Papa - _______". I think DJ's asking for me to help him look for fallen nuts from the tree. It doesn't really matter, it's just nice to hear them call for us, and its fun being around them, as exhausting as it can be sometimes.

 

I few minutes later, Goldie and Alon come out to the playground with their little girl and we introduce our two boys to their 18 month old baby girl. Max offers her some of his banana, speaking in Russian to her of course, and she responds to him with a smile. I wonder if they know each other back in the 'crib'. They don't hang around very long as they just want to spend quiet time with their little angel, and this ain't the place for quiet time. So they head over to the baby playground and we continue the madness that is us. We have a saying in the family..."its okay, I'm with the Dannemillers...".



 

Per the routine, the boys get bored of the slide and see-saw, so we head over to the swings and the bigger merry-go-round on the other side of the playground to enjoy the rest of our visit. We are trying to work on their English vocabulary (and by English, I mean American...:^), and DJ seems to be picking it up pretty good. Max is still in his Russian baby-talk phase, but I'm sure they'll both pick it up pretty quickly when we get home. After a very energetic morning at the playground, including hard work on DJ's part as he takes it upon himself to try and clean up all the fallen leaves, it time to start the process of bringing them back inside. Remember how much Max used to love this part last summer? I pick him up and put him on my shoulders and bounce him all the way back - it seems to work for the most part, altho he knows what's going on and isn't happy about it. But we get them in and say goodbye until tomorrow.

I get a call from Natasha in Kiev and I'm hoping she has good news about our court date, but all she wants to know is when we will be home. Natasha has a new couch and chair ready for delivery to the house for our living room in front of the fireplace. Okay - that's be nice, but what about the court date - has Lesya worked her magic with the SDA yet??? No news yet, but she will call when she hears something. Until then, we wait...

 

Back to the house for lunch and a quiet day of reading and resting. Natasha arrives with the new furniture and I help her get it all situated into the living room. I pay her for ten days of rent and thank her for the new furniture - this will certainly make it nice to enjoy the fireplace. She even has her men chop up some more firewood for us, and then she leaves us to it. Emma is invited by the older worker to take a tour of the building works going on above us. She is taken by the hand ("I felt like the Queen...") and escorted up the make-shift stairwell to the third floor construction site. I had gone up to see it over the weekend and I can tell you that the safety standards in this country would not hold up to an OSHA inspection. Regardless, it is an impressive project and will result in the nicest and highest house in the neighborhood!



 

At 3:45 Gregori arrives to take us to the Supermarket where we load up on supplies in preparation of possibly having Goldie and Alon over for dinner. It is quite the market actually - you can buy everything you could ever imagine, and it's very cheap (compared to the high cost of clothing!). Emma buys the ingredients she needs to make my favorite dish, sort of a paela caserole dish with shrimp, chicken and sausages mixed with rice, peppers and tomatoes. No grilled ham and cheese tonight baby!! While we're at the store I get a call from Goldie and they can't make it tonight as they are meeting with their lawyer (who happens to be our lawyer Natasha - the only game in town for adoptions), and so we decide we will meet for lunch tomorrow at Camellia's.

The rest of the day is spent enjoying our new furniture, reading by the fire and wondering if we will every hear from Lesya about our court date. We feel so bad that Vanya is back in that horrible place, wondering if he'll ever see us again. Was it all just another viscious joke like when his parents abandoned him??? Or was he really heading to America like we told him? Hang in there boys - we're doing everything we can, which in reality is not very much. Hopefully we'll hear some good news tomorrow.
Good night John-boy...