In August 2008, we decided it was time to expand our family and started the process of adopting toddlers from Russia. Since we didn’t have any other children at home, and we ultimately wanted more than one child, we thought two at once would give the children someone familiar to play with while everything else around them was changing. We thought one boy and one girl between 12 and 36 months would be ideal. When our caseworker called in September 2009 (just weeks after we sent in our dossier), we were offered two boys at 17 months and 38 months. We agreed to consider these children…..and it was love at first sight. We were invited to Kemerovo in FEBRUARY to meet our boys for the first time. Minnesota gets cold, but Siberia in February is insanely cold! Almost a year and a half of waiting to meet these boys wasn’t nearly as hard as the 11 weeks we had to wait for a court date to become their parents and see them again. During those weeks we tried to be patient and prepare for their arrival at home. Being patient was nearly impossible with Russian adoptions to Americans in limbo, but our case worker did a great job keeping us informed of the status of our paperwork and the state of inter-country adoptions from Russia during the tumultuous time.
On Aril 26, 2010, we finally got the call to travel to Russia on May 5th to complete our adoptions. We had our court appointment on May 11thand were named the legal parents of Owen and Sasha, effective May 24th. We stayed in Kemerovo during the waiting period and tried to enjoy the time by visiting museums and walking around the city. Finally, the day came and we brought our sons home from the orphanage. We are grateful to the orphanage staff for taking care of our boys until we were able to bring them home. We are blessed with two happy, healthy, active sons. Sasha (our 2 year old) just started talking last week…. In both English and Russian! Owen is picking up new English words every day, and still enjoys laughing at mama’s attempts to speak with him in her limited Russian. They’ve learned to ride tricycles in the backyard and LOVE going to the park, playing in the sprinklers and going anywhere in the car!
As much as we love our new lives with our sons, there are those really challenging moments too! Neither of them likes going to sleep, being told “no” and a variety of other normal toddler challenges. All in all, we are blessed to have these great kids as part of our family, and we are looking forwards to all the experiences we’ll have with them in the coming days, weeks, months and years!
Thanks,
Laurianne