Winnie's Litter

I spoke with Hubby early this morning and he made it home safe and sound, if not a little aggravated as a couple of different routes home from the airport were flooded (it always seems to flood in that area this time of year) and he had to take detours.

Hubby did have an interesting experience while killing time in his Kiev hotel room on Monday. He was watching out the window and saw several military vehicles pull up and special forces guys pile out and start moving around the neighborhood so he thought “ this is better than TV in Ukrainian” so he pulled a chair on his balcony and started watching the show as several more security forces entered the area and started spreading out. Pretty soon he noticed one guy watching him and then a few more. It wasn’t too long before he heard a banging on the door and he answered it and there was a Ukrainian military or police official there. Hubby gingerly opened his coat in order to show he wasn’t a threat and handed him his passport, the guy didn’t want it (probably already knew everything there was to know about him already) and just told him “ No Balcony, George Bush Condoleeza Rice, No Balcony” so Hubby said sure. The guy left and Hubby turned off his room lights and peeked through the curtains and watched the presidential motorcade go by. We just can’t get away from presidential motorcades as we have both been run off the road by a president when we lived in Little Rock when Clinton was in office. You’d think in Ukraine we’d be safe from that anyway.

This orphanage here is doing a brisk business lately, they must have turned in tons of kids all at one time to the national registry. Since we’ve been here we’ve seen a Ukrainian couple and a Spanish couple leave, three American couples (ourselves included) have court and start the 10 day wait. There is a Ukrainian couple in process, and a new Spanish couple showed up today. The playroom is overflowing in the afternoons and it’s difficult to play as three couples have brought along older children as well. Mornings are somewhat less crowded as the Ukrainian couple only comes in the afternoon and not everyday as they have to drive some distance, however we are usually not allowed to use the big therapy playroom as they have physical therapy sessions going in the a.m. The director has tried to stagger our visitation times but we overlap quite a bit. Ugh I’ll be so glad when this “visiting” my own son is over.

From what I gather when our translator visits with the Ukrainian couples it’s quite a process for them to adopt as well. The first couple that left had been visiting their boy for almost four months while things worked through the process. The couple that’s in process right now are really only starting to get rolling and have quite a ways to go. Now I don’t know if the four months includes completing some sort of home study and background checks etc but if it doesn’t I can imagine they get rather aggravated at us rolling in and doing it in about a month. I will say the children the two couples adopted are beautiful and look perfectly healthy and are normal size, where the children the international group is adopting are very small for their age.

A funny Sonny Boy-ism Hubby reported to me this morning. “ I miss my little brother so much!” Nice sentiment, however I don’t know that you can miss someone you’ve never met. No word on missing Mommy and Daddy though.

Well I had contemplated going to the internet again tonight as I thought I might get a reply from Hubby, however it’s raining now and dark so I’m either going to dive into the stash of movies (thanks GS) or try to find someway to read. I’ll post this tomorrow on my afternoon hike.