Birthday Parties

This weekend Victoria attended 2 birthday parties. She painted the pottery masterpiece:

and had fun meeting the clown, doing the face painting, etc:


That got me thinking about her incoming birthday. It's not until December, but I thought I should plan something now, before we go to Ukraine. A friend of mine is opening The Little Gym franchise, and I think it's a good idea to have Victoria's birthday party there. And thinking about her birthday made me realize that if everything goes well, Raisa will celebrate her 10th birthday on the US soil! Her birthday is also in December, so (I keep my fingers crossed) if everything works the way we want, we'll have a busy end of the year!

Today marks 16 business days since our dossier was submitted to SDA. This Friday is a holiday in Ukraine (Constitution day), so our 20 business days will fall on Tuesday, August 28th. Most of the time it takes much more than 20 business days to receive an appointment date, so I'm not really hoping to get it next week. But it would be nice to finally have a date, start planning, get tickets, etc.

Additional days in Ukraine

It looks like the number of days we need to spend in Ukraine is increasing in geometric progression. Well, maybe in arithmetic, not in geometric (it's the former math teacher in me talking :) Yesterday the American Embassy in Kiev announced that the procedure to get the visa for adopted children has changed. Previously the process was to have the medical exam and the visa interview in one day (most of the time). Sometimes the visa was ready at the same day, sometimes the next business day. Now the process is the following:

"Parents must drop off all required documents at the Consulate no later than 12:00 noon on the business day prior to day of the actual visa interview. No appointment is required to submit documents. Visa interviews will take place at 2:00 pm on the day designated, and can only take place if we have already received all the required documents. We will make every effort to issue the visa on the next working day. However, it is important to note that additional checks are required by law if the adopted child is 16 years or older. These checks delay visa issuance by up to 72 hours. Please plan your travel accordingly."

So it's one business days to drop off the documents, second day for the visa interview, third day (hopefully!) to get the visa, and on the fourth business day people can finally leave the country. Basically another week. On a top of 10 days mandatory wait for the court degree plus 10 days wait for the passport plus unknown number of days while waiting for the court date, it comes to a long time. If in the past adoptive parents stayed in Ukraine approximately 4-5 weeks, now it's more like 6-7-8 weeks. We are definitely thinking about 2 trips now, it will be much easier financially (less days without a paycheck) and emotionally (less days without our kids).

Today is 11th business days since our dossier was submitted. Hopefully we'll know our appointment date in a couple of weeks!

The passport situation in Ukraine

The Ukrainian government recently decided to start issuing the new type of passports. Supposedly it was done to fight the corruption since all the new passports will be issued in Kiev and sent to the regions. Of course, THERE ARE NOT ENOUGH new passports! Some regions still have old passport blanks and people are still gettings passports. Some people are not as lucky. I know of several adoptive families who are currently waiting for 4+ weeks after receiving the court decree because the newly adopted kids cannot leave the country without a passport. A couple of days ago American Embassy released a notice where it says that in addition to the mandatory 10 day wait after the court, it's now necessary to wait 10 MORE days to get the passport. And the problem is that it could be more than 10 extra days to get a passport. So how long do we have to stay in Ukraine? Looks like instead of 4-5 weeks it could be 6-7 weeks or more.

I think in this case the best idea would be to do 2 trips to Ukraine. The first trip will be for the SDA appointment and court, then back home while waiting for the 20 mandatory days, and after that the second trip to finish the paperwork. Oh well, why is it getting harder and harder all the time?

We are on our 6th business waiting for the appointment date. I know of one family who was submitted on July 9th and received the word today about their appointment date on October 16th. They waited exactly 20 business days, as promised, so I hope we'll find out what our travel date is in another 14 business days, on August 28.

OUR DOSSIER HAS BEEN SUBMITTED!!!

It's hard to believe, but our dossier has finally been submitted! It was in our facilitator's hands since May 14, and he estimated it would be submitted sometime in July. He was actually right - it was submitted during "American hours" on Monday, July 30! Now the Department of Adoptions has 20 working days to go over our dossier and get back to us with either approval letter and a travel date, or rejection letter. Sometimes paperwork gets rejected by several reasons, but I really hope we will be approved. Lately the 20 working days are more like 30 working days, so I'm thinking we'll find out in about 6 weeks what our travel date will be. Usually it's approximately 3 months from the day of submission, so looks like it will be end of October - beginning of November.

A new picture

Here is Raisa on Deribasovskaya Street in Odessa:

Still no news

We are still waiting for the submission. I'm reading about the other families getting submitted, getting appointment dates, etc., so the process is working, we just need to wait a little bit longer. Per our facilitator, it should happen very soon. In this case we'll be traveling to Ukraine in the mid-October - mid-November.


In the meanwhile, here is a new picture of me and my firstborn:

Waiting for submission

Waiting, waiting, waiting. Our facilitator is hoping to submit our dossier in the early July - we are really hoping it will be the case! And our situation is not that bad. We know who we are going to adopt and sooner or later it will happen.

For some people it's not that easy. Since Ukraine adoption laws don't allow preselection, the families are usually presented with several profiles during their appointment in Kiev. But sometimes there are no healthy young children available on that day, so the families must make a decision - either accept a referral for the older child, or wait for another appointment. Currently, about 50 families are in Kiev waiting for 2nd or even 3rd appointments. Can you imagine how hard it is? One would ask: there are so many orphans in Ukraine, why they are not available for adoption? In order to be available for International adoption, the kids should be placed on the adoption registry: one month on the local level, one month on the regional level and one year on the national level. In theory, the children should be available in 14 months after they first were added to the local registry. But in the real life it's much more than that! For some unknown reason, it takes more than a month to transfer from one registry to another. I don't know why - it's just the Ukrainian way. So it's more like 16 - 17 months. Also, many children are lost in the system and are not registered at all! So while we are waiting for our appointment, we really hope the waiting families will find their kids and the waiting kids will find their parents soon.

Raisa on vacation

My friend Lena, who's Raya's legal guardian, took her to the Carpathian Mountains for a weeklong vacation. I'm so fortunate to have Lena - I don't know what we would do without her. Here are a couple of pictures from that place:

This is a lake next to the hotel:

This is a hotel where they are staying: