Multiple topics and a picture

I have bronchitis, and am on my second round of antibiotics to try to conquer this thing. The new pills are huge and bright blue and stick in my throat all the way down. In the little bottle they gave me there are those little capsules that keep your medication dry. They are about the same size as the medication. Guess what color they are? Some brilliant pharmacist thought it would be cute to make them the same color blue as the medication. I have almost swallowed these little vials of poison several times already, and I've only been on this stuff for three days.

Our church is wonderful. New mothers get the first week of meals cooked for them by members of the church, and apparently adoption is no exception. This is especially nice for me since being sick and jetlagged at the same time makes me tired. I take nice long naps in the afternoon so I can recover my strength, and someone comes to our door around 5:30 with a nutritionally balanced meal (always with gravy--what is it with the gravy?!) AND desert. This is much better fare than we are used to having. Quick--let's go adopt another one so we can be well-fed again.

We got a call from the casting director of Charlie Wilson's War and she said that Inga is in the final round for being chosen to be in the movie. They asked for an outside picture of her so they can see her skin tone in natural light. So I dutifully took pictures of my child looking devastated and forlorn and then trooped down to our public elementary school to ask for a signature on the California work permit application stating that Inga has good attendance, good grades, and good health in her local public school. This is pretty amusing since she is homeschooled and they don't know her from Mary and the follow-up educational interviews are done by the district and not by the local school--but we got the signature anyway. I think it helped to mention that the film was being directed by Tom Hanks. Plus they love my boys there (Andrei and Alex take speech therapy twice a month at this school).

OK, here are two pictures of Sam, or Pavel, or Pasha. You can call him whatever you want. That's what I am doing right now, and it changes every other sentence. This kid is going to be schizophrenic. He fits beautifully into our family and is making trouble like only a two-year old can. I had forgotten how all-consuming a child can be who is developmentally at the stage where they are prone to accidentally killing themselves every third minute. Hmmm...if I need to go to California with Inga, can I take him along? Brad, what do you think?

The most amazing day

On our first day back from Sam's adoption I had the most amazing day. And not in a good way.
We made it back to Maryland on Saturday afternoon, racing from Connecticut to make it to a doctor's appointment before the office closed (it closes at noon on Saturdays). We made it just in time, and found out that Sam and I have some sort of Russian cold/flu thing, and he has an ear infection on top of it, and I have bronchitis on top of mine. So we headed home, prescriptions in hand. When we got there, after having been gone for two weeks, we realized that when we went around unplugging things before we left we had accidentally unplugged the freezer in the basement. Hundreds of dollars worth of food was rotting away, and a brownish disease-laden pool of thick liquid had gathered around the freezer and meandered across portions of the floor. I, being the idiot of the decade, opened the freezer door for some reason just to check and make sure it was really that bad. I almost fainted from the smell, which then of course did not go away regardless of how fast I closed that door immediately afterward.
So of course I went upstairs and didn't say anything because I didn't want to deal with it. I'm jetlagged (11-hour time difference), and I'm sick--at least I have a little excuse. I managed to forget about it until about dinner-time. I was starting to boil water for spaghetti when Andrei came downstairs, covered in something that looked like a nightmare version of last night's dinner. It was. He had thrown up all over his bed, soaking right through his comforter down to the two mattress covers and into the mattress. Everything had to be washed. Which led me down to the basement. Oh, yeah, the smell from the freezer was still lingering! I rinsed everything out (major chunks involved, not a pretty sight) in the utility sink and dumped it in the washing machine and started the laundry. Then I went upstairs to finish making dinner, Dan went to the pharmacy to pick up our prescriptions and some diet Sprite for the now three sick people in our home, and the kids proceeded to completely wreck every room in the house while our attention was elsewhere. Fast forward two hours. We had finished eating, and given everyone baths, and then for some reason everyone had to go to the bathroom, all at the same time. We have three toilets in the house, and there were five people who had to go. Elena didn't make it. She peed all over my bedroom floor, massive amounts of liquid that I did not know one person could possibly hold (let alone one of the tender age of 4). Andrei and Alex were standing right next to her, in their pajamas with the feet on the bottom, so I had to strip and wash them, too. Basically I had to re-give the baths I had just given. I almost laughed, the day was so disastrous. I'm glad I didn't--I needed to save that laugh for a few minutes yet. After washing the kids I went down to the basement to do yet another load of laundry. The basement was flooded. The extension plug that leads to the freezer also leads to the water pump down in the basement. Since it was not plugged in, the water that dumps out of the washing machine did not get pumped up and out of the laundry sink as it is supposed to, but instead got dumped onto our basement floor. I was flabbergasted. I finally laughed.
And this is the point where the person you marry really makes the difference. Dan cleaned everything up, and I mean everything. The house is now back to its original cheery 1960's bad wallpaper self, with a clean non-smelly freezer (empty) and a dry basement and laundry all done and put away. Dan took the kids to church this morning (Andrei and Sam stayed home with me since we were all sick), and fed them when he got home. I, on the other hand, got a massive nap this afternoon, and enough time to myself this evening to write this blog and catch up on reading everyone else's. I don't usually get to lounge around, but this time I'm just going to relax and enjoy it. What a day!

The strangest thing happened on my way to Russia today...

If documents could speak, that's what they would say. This morning I received a phone call from our adoption coordinator who informed us that one of our documents was not correct, and they needed the correct one in Russia ASAP so could I please mail it today. I did the correct amount of eye-rolling while speaking pleasantly on the phone and assuring her that yes, it could be done. Then I loaded the kids up in the car and ran around Maryland getting all of the necessary paperwork done in order to fix this little error. It took 6.5 hours. The last thing I had to do was FedEx the package to Russia, and when I went to Kinko's to grab an international airbill (I have tons of airbills for the US in my desk at home, but didn't have any international ones on hand, go figure) I decided to check and see how much this was going to cost and when it would get there. The guy at the counter took my package with his right hand, and proceeded to do almost everything with that hand while only using his left hand for balance. When I snuck a closer look, it seemed to me that he had the same issue in his left hand that Samuel (our hopefully soon-to-be son) has in his left hand.
It wasn't until I was driving home that the pattern struck me. Before each adoption, we have met someone specific who had the same issue that the child we were adopting had. The day before we flew to Russia to meet Inga we ran into a man with no arms coming out of Best Buy. Before we adopted Andrei we met a guy who had prosthetic arms and took him out to dinner so he could tell us all about them. Before we adopted Elena we "met" a girl online who ice skates and has two little arms just like Elena's one arm. I didn't actually have a conversation with the man behind the Kinko's desk like I did with the others, probably because I was trying to be overly sensitive due to a heated conversation on my Yahoo child amputee chatlist that involved annoying "all-bits" people (people with all limbs) who ask all the wrong questions. But it was fun to see this guy behind the counter nonetheless. It kind of validates this adoption. Which is what I need right now, because it looks like we are not going to make the March 1 deadline (when our agency loses accreditation) so who knows what will happen at this point. Please pray for us!
The package is going to cost about $130.00 to send, by the way.

Update

Our trip to Siberia at the end of January was really smooth. I won't bore you with the details (when things go well it makes for a very uninteresting story!), but the basics are that "Samuel" is really cute and amazingly sweet and felt like he was at home the moment he was in our arms. He cried whenever we left him, and ran to us on the last day of our visit. He actually looks a little bit like Uncle Rick. I would post a picture of him but I am not certain I should do that until he is legally adopted, since technically he is not our child yet. So instead here is a picture of one of our Siberian walks. Russian winters are beautiful!

We are hoping to go back to Russia for court on February 19. All of our paperwork on this end of things is ready, but there are still two key papers that need to come from Moscow that have not yet appeared. We will most likely not know until sometime next week whether or not we will be able to go when we hope to...if those papers don't come in time then we will be looking at a whole new set of rules and uncertainties because our agency loses accreditation on March 1. So, basically, we would really like to leave on February 19. Pray for this for us, please. Lots.

Pregnancy

I'm seven months pregnant. At least, figuratively speaking. Without the figure, I mean.

I am just getting to the part where I am having to PLAN for this new baby. I have had to start canceling appointments at the end of January, and am not allowing anything on the calendar for March (better scratch that surgery Alex has scheduled--again). The baby's crib is all set up, his clothes are set out, his special dishes are bought (each child has their own set of special dishes)--I have everything but the diapers. People are starting to ask about him almost everywhere I go, and I find myself saying the same things over and over again but I never get tired of it because it reminds me that I will see him soon. If I were pregnant, I would be "showing" enough right now to draw lots of questions and comments, both ignorant and informed. It's amazing the sorts of things people think about adoption! But those who have adopted already or who have close friends who have adopted always ask the really discerning questions, the ones that usually lead to deeper conversations. I am starting to get REALLY excited.

I wonder if pregnant mothers ever have the same sorts of fears I have. A new life, an unpredictable being who is joining your family forever, no matter what they look like or what their attitude is toward you or anyone around them. Many of these things must be the same. Many but not all. Will I love him right away, or will it take time? Will he love me back? Will I think he is the most handsome boy in the world, or will his habits annoy me? Did others hurt my little boy before I could get to him? Has anyone else loved him? Will anyone mourn for him when he joins our family? Will he cry for anyone when we take him away from all he's ever known?

Each child is so unique; just because I have parented before does not make me an expert on THIS child. And the greatest fear...will something happen to him before we can adopt him? I have a friend who was informed that the baby she was trying to adopt was going into the hospital for emergency surgery. My friend flew to Guatemala and was able to spend a few days with the baby before the child died in her arms. Or it may not be physical. Judges will occasionally decide that a family is not a right fit for a child...sometimes with good reason, sometimes arbitrarily. Nothing is guaranteed until the child is home. Until the child is born. And then begins a whole new adventure...