Wednesday August 11, 2010

This is it! Too much sleep the day before brings a restless sleep last night, not to mention the excitement of what today will bring. Coffee and breakfast, showers... we are ready! As promised at 10:40 am Irene and our driver are waiting outside to drive us to the SDA (State Dept of Adoption) for our 11am appointment. We drive through the busy Kiev streets past all of the historical churches, statues and monuments including the Great Gate of Kiev (the Golden Gate), made famous in Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition" - a piece I played in high school which always inspired me to come and visit.
The office of the SDA is located near the bottom of an ancient cobblestone street in the shadows of a stunning Orthodox church with magnificant spires of blue and gold. This church was built by the daughter of Peter the Great, Empress Elizabeth. The beginning of the currently standing St. Andrew's Church began with the arrival of the Russian Empress Elizabeth. She decided to construct a summer residence for herself, consisting of a palace and a church. The palace was to be located in the Pechersk neighborhood while the church was to be on the Andriyivska Hill. On September 9, 1744, the official ceremony starting the construction of the St. Andrew's Church began with the Empress laying the first three founding stones herself 
It needs a bit of fixin up but it's pretty impressive. As we wait to be called in, we sit nervously and we wait...

 

It is a beautiful sunny day with a cool breeze, however, it is a bit unsettling to be waiting in a dumpy parking lot outside a dumpy building watching people come and go talking on their cell phones while we patiently sit on an old wooden bench. Finally about 11:30 Lesya comes out and takes us up the stairs and into a small office, cluttered with folders dating back to the 1900s and pictures of children on the wall. Lesya tells us we will be meeting the SDA pyscologist who will ask us questions about who we are, and why we want to adopt from the Ukraine, merely a formality she explains. After a few stressful moments, the pyscologist arrives with a stack of files, sits down and starts going through the formalities and questions (translated by Lesya), and begins to show us children that are available. The ten or twelve that are put in front of us all have severe disabilities, ranging from HIV, epilepsy, a midget, and other problems such as vision issues, heart deformities, and mental retardation. Very sad indeed - but they know we won't take any of these, so they pull out what they knew would tug at our heart strings, the two boys that Lesya mentioned on Monday - the three and four year olds with the 11 year old brother. We are immediately taken in by their pictures, their healthy appearances, and the fact that one looks like me and one looks like Emma. The four year old has this look of confidence with a cool smile, almost as if to say 'yes, I am a Dannemiller'.
So after a few minutes (or was it hours), we talk it over with each other, discuss options with Lesya and decide to make the trip to the orphanage to meet Maxim and Dennis. Both of us are a bit shell-shocked and our heads can't stop spinning, but heh - this is what we have been working so hard for. The reality of it all just seems a bit overwhelming, we stagger out of the office and take in the cobblestone street life and hold each other, trying to catch our breath and regain our composure. I tell Emma that it is what we wanted and what we have been working towards and that it is not final until we meet the boys and agree that we can actually handle three of them. Neither one of us are convinced we can do it but heh, let's go and see them and take it from there.

 

Hungry and in need of a drink we all head to an Irish pub for a Ukrainian lunch while Lesya makes call after call after call to her various contacts to arrange our visit. Tomorrow we will return to the SDA to obtain permission to visit the orphanage and then on Friday we will take the four hour drive to the small town where they live.

The rest of the day is a blur.

That evening we spend the night in our flat, talking about what we think, our thoughts, our fears, and feelings of excitement flowing through our heads. The night fades away as we come to grips with the idea of raising three young Dannemiller boys. "...the eleven year old will help us with his younger brothers...we bought a five bedroom house for a reason...Emma's brother has three kids why can't we?"
All of these thoughts go racing through our heads to the point of exhaustion. As we lay in bed and drift off to sleep, we begin to talk about options for names once they become US Dannemillers.
Good Night Kiev.