7/14/2007 Olivia's English

It is amazing how quickly Olivia is learning English, she says new words every day, sometimes several in a day. She knows all her colors and basic foods (she loves pickles and white bread with butter), she also knows allot of the animals. She also keeps saying "be careful" which is so funny to me with her limited English. She also learned "OWIE" on the plane on the way home since she is so sick.

7/13/2007 Sick since coming home

I have been sick since we have been home.. I constantly feel like I am going to throw up... even thought I never do... I have gone to the urgent care, and then the Emergency Room, and they both ran several tests, but still we haven't found anything technically wrong... so I am trying to get to see a gastrointestinal doctor this week.

7/12/2007 INS Appointment - Certificate of Citizenship

I when to the INS office to try and see how we get PROOF she is a citizen. We were initially told that all we needed to do was show her visa with her stamp and that was proof that she was a citizen. We learned from the social security office that this is not true. Then the INS office informs me that we will need to apply for a certificate of citizenship, which can take 30-45 days AND costs $215 AND we have to bring in 2 passport photos. I personally think that it is ridiculous that we have to pay for proof our daughter is a citizen. We have already paid a small fortune in fees, and paid the INS fees for permission to bring her home, and not we have to pay to PROVE she is a US citizen. It seems that everything is always such a hurdle.

When I got home from the office I called several offices (homeland security, social security, etc), I tried to explain our situation and that we really couldn't wait 30-45 days to get her social security number that we needed it to proceed with other things that our daughter needs to start her care. The social security office told me that if I can get a passport I won't have to get her certificate of citizenship. So I have scheduled an appointment for next week, lets keep our fingers crossed that they will issue a passport.

04/02/2007 10th Orphanage Visit

Our 10th visit... When we arrived at the orphanage today Olivia was waiting at the window jumping up and down. When she came in the room she seemed more excited then the last few days. We learned that she was crying when we didn’t come the day before, she said that she cried a lot… which surprised us since we had the translator tell her that we wouldn’t be coming. I worry if our court date is delayed that she will not understand if we have to travel home for weeks before the adoption process if finalized. So hopefully we won’t have to leave the country.

I feel bad that she was upset and worried that she thought that we had changed our minds on her adoption - especially when we just brought in the other baby (Pearl). Today Pearl was ill and had a fever. We also heard back from the department of education that they would not allow us to adopt baby Pearl - we will only be allowed to adopt one child - so we will proceed with Olivia’s adoption only.

If anyone knows someone that is interested in adopting Pearl is a SWEET baby girl. She is very happy and laughs a lot and likes to play. If she is this pleasant only 2 days after her surgery you can imagine what a delightful child she is the rest of the time. I wish that we could come back for her, but our children at home are already very sad that we have left and between the expenses to return, and all of Olivia’s medical needs I don’t think that will be possible, at least in the near future.

04/01/2007

Today we are not allowed to visit Olivia. We slept in a little and planned to go to a restaurant that was down the strip for breakfast at 10am, since the rest of the week we are at the orphanage we weren’t able to try their breakfast. We walked in slight rain all the way there to find they were closed even though we had specifically asked about their breakfast. We weren’t sure if they had different hours on Sunday, or why they weren’t opened. They have no signs on their door with hours or days of operation. We stopped by another restaurant they were also closed, so we decided to just head back to our hotel, since by this time we were pretty soaked.

Since we can’t pronounce the babies Kazak name I wanted to pick an American name for her, so that we can call her something besides “baby”. We tonight we agreed on Lily Pearl. Since she is Kazak she looks Asian (Olivia is Russian). We thought Lily was fitting, and we liked that her name meant Pearl and thought that was pretty so for now that will be her name. We realize the chances are very low that we will get to adopt her but we are embarrassing her for now. Worst case she gets to spend 2 hours a day with us and get extra attention. Well it is almost 1:00 am, so I better sign off for now.

03/31/2007

Olivia was waiting by the window as always; though she didn’t run right to us this morning. She wanted to play first. I think she is showing more signs of security. Though when they brought the baby in and papa was holding it she kept shaking her head no. I am not sure what she was thinking. We hope that she doesn’t think that we are considering another child over her. It is hard to explain things to her since we have the language barrier. We tried to make sure that she didn’t feel that we were focusing too much attention on the new baby.

We also had our translator explain that we would not be able to come on Sunday, but that we would come on Monday. Last night I had a dream that we were discussing the babies name and that we wanted to giver her the middle name Pearl, after my sister Stephanie… which was ironic since today we learned the baby’s name means Pearl in Kazak.

03/30/2007

There was some sort of even in the front of our hotel, so our driver was not able to pick us up from the front. She ended up parking several buildings away and come running up to us so that she could guide us to the cars. We were supposed to pick up the last medication, but now didn’t have time… she had already picked up the shoe cobbler, that we requested make some special shoes for Olivia, since she really can’t wear normal shoes. He came with us to the orphanage and measured Olivia’s feet and will make us some custom shoes. Olivia didn’t seem to mind the process at all.

We met with one of the nurses that said she took care of Olivia as a very small baby, and that she had worked at the orphanage for 33 years. We took her photo with Olivia. We promised we would make her a copy. At the end of our visit they took us into the doctor’s office to meet the baby we had discussed yesterday. We sat down and they handed her to us. She was very happy and smiled and laughed each time we tickled her. She seemed in a great mood for just having surgery. When she laughed you could still see stitches in her lip and all along the inside of her palette. She was a very sweet little girl. They said she loved to play and was happy. We told them that we would discuss her adoption and tell them our decision tomorrow.