Foreign Adoption in Ukraine
While we were in Ukraine to adopt our children (summer 2005), the Ukrainian government was in the process of closing adoption applications in order to transfer the adoption bureaucracy from one ministry of the government to another. Our dossier was toward the end of the ones that still went through before everything closed.
The changeover to the new ministry has now taken place, and many of the dossiers that were in process back in 2005 have now been handled. We've heard that the acceptance of new dossiers for foreign adoptive parents should begin pretty soon. Besides talking with our agency, I've also been watching the website of the U.S. Embassy in Kiev, for they give copies of announcements from the Ukrainian government related to adoption. If you want to peruse their website, here's the address (with underscore between "amcit" and "adoptions"; and another underscore between "adoptions" and "eng"):
http://web.usembassy.kiev.ua/amcit_adoptions_eng.html
Gifts for Kola
After we mailed the dossier a few weeks ago, we made a trip to Target for everyone to buy gifts for Kola. Just as we've done for birthdays and Christmas, each child was given $5 to spend. Some of the children bought gifts for a child who's almost four (his current age). Others bought items more suited to a one-year-old, which was his age when they last saw him.
All of the children are very interested and concerned about the process to adopt Kola. I've noticed that Ruslan often plays with children that are Kola's age, and he may be trying to find out how his little brother will behave as a four-year-old. Bogdan and Ruslan have also brought home car seats, strollers, and dressers for Kola during their forays through the alleys of our neighborhood. When our first attempt at a shopping trip for Kola didn't work out, Luda burst into tears. Lena asked me over and over last fall if Kola would be home by Christmas. And Misha is very proud of the new bunk bed that he and Kola will share.
Every day, we pray during our devotions after supper for the Lord to be with Kola and keep him safe as he waits for us to come.
Purple Flowers and Greens
Since we lived in Germany in the early 1990s, Jonathan and I have the custom of
Kaffeetrinken every afternoon. We've continued this with the children, which for them is their after-school snack. We've been tremendously helped by our good friend Susan, a gourmet cook who has provided us with a wonderful dessert nearly every week since we returned with the kids in August 2005. Her gift is often an "adult" dessert for Jonathan and me.
Yesterday, we were feasting on some delicious chocolate cake. Most of the children, however, decided on an apple for their snack. And when they eat an apple, they eat the WHOLE thing--all that is left is one tiny stem. Apples are a real treat for Ukrainian children. A day or two after we met our kids, they took us off the orphanage grounds to an apple tree and filled several bags with fruit. They got in trouble with the orphanage director, and we learned from her that such trips are not allowed. I learned the Ukrainian word for "green" very quickly, since their term for this fruit was not
yablucko (apple) but
zeleni (green).
The children have continued to scout out apples in Forest Park. A few days after we arrived from Ukraine, I had run out of fruit and needed to make a trip to the grocery store. The boys realized that we were in need of food, so they went out and found a fairly large number of apples. While their intent was laudable, we had to find out which of our neighbors had an apple tree. We had lived in our house for six years without recognizing the neighbor's apple tree, and the boys had spotted it in only a day or two!
Ukraine is known worldwide for the richness of their agriculture, and our children show this by their love of fruits and vegetables. For the first several months after their arrival, I had to store all the fruit on the very top shelf of the panty. The bananas were even more tempting, so they were completely hidden in a bag. We also eat a lot of vegetables, with tomatos and cabbage as their favorites. Misha, however, has asked me not to send red cabbage in his lunch for school. Even though he loves to eat it, the other children tease him about eating "purple flowers." We are slowly moving from a diet of only raw vegetables to a few that are cooked. Jonathan and I have missed eating old favorites like green beans, asparagus, and cooked carrots! But I do have to admit that eating lots of raw vegetables IS pretty healthy.
Documents
Well, I had hoped to blog more often. But the reality of raising five kids is that ten straight days of illness and/or school holidays means that only the basics like dishes, laundry, cooking, and outside jobs get done. And also adoption documents. We heard Tuesday that Ukraine now requires that all dossiers include a copy of your deed or rental agreement. So in the midst of everything else this week, we made two trips to downtown Chicago to get a certified copy of our deed and then get it apostilled.
Adam had a school assignment this week, which I'll include here for you. The given assignment is in italics, followed by his answers. He first spoke his ideas to Jonathan, who then wrote them down for him. Then Adam recopied them in his own handwriting to turn in at school.
______________________________________________________________
Getting Documents for my Little Brother! Select something that is difficult.We want to get our little brother from Ukraine before anybody else gets him because he's our little brother. We have to raise money to get him and get a lot of documents together. This means getting them signed and apostiled downtown. Then we have to mail them to Ukraine.
Why is this a problem?It is a problem because you have to work hard at it, and then you have to get the sheets that you need from other offices as fast as you can.
How did you handle it?We handled it by helping our parents and by going downtown to apastile it and mailing the package to a lady in Ukraine. She translates everything into Ukrainian.
What did you learn?We learned that we have to work as fast as possible. We learned what it means to get some thing apostiled and how hard it was to do it.
Conclusion.I solved it by finishing it all and the lady is translating it all right now. When we get a call from the lady, we can go to the plane and fly to Ukraine as fast as possible. This is how I solved my problem. By. Adam Stahlke!
Who Will Watch the Kids?
That's another question that many people have asked us. While Jonathan and I are in Ukraine, who will stay with the kids? To answer that question, I'll first give a description of the adoption process in Ukraine.
After we receive our appointment date from the Ukrainian government, Jonathan and I will travel by plane to Ukraine's capital, Kiev. The day after landing, we'll attend our appointment with our facilitator, who will translate and guide us as we make decisions. Two years ago, the appointment was the time when we looked at the records of various groups of children to choose one group to meet. Now, since we are adopting a specific child, the process is not as clear to us. Very few people adopting in Ukraine have a certain child in mind, but our reason for doing so is a very strong one.
By the end of the appointment, parents sign papers and then receive a letter of permission that requests access to an orphanage to visit the child. Until you have this letter, you are not allowed to visit the child. That's why we could not see Mikola two years ago, even though we visited his orphanage and talked to the director about him.
Travel to "the region" takes place either on the same day as the appointment or on the next day, depending on the time of day the appointment is over. In our case, travel to Kilovohrad is a five-hour drive by car. Upon arrival there, we first visit the county office that supervises orphanages in that region. They give us a letter (addressed to the orphanage director), which grants us permission to see the child. Once again, the timing of the appointments with the county office and the orphanage depends on the hours that they are open to visitors.
Next comes the amazing moment when you first meet your child. It's impossible to describe, so I won't even try.
For a day or two, you spend time with the child and make the decision whether you want to adopt him. This is a very important step for the Ukrainian government, for they want to see how you bond with the child. Then you sign papers (in front of a notary) stating your intent to adopt the child. This is one of the most important legal documents in the process, which is an additional reason that we must both be there in person.
After signing, I will then fly back to the United States to be with our five children. Jonathan will stay in Kilovohrad and visit daily with Mikola as the paperwork makes its way through the local courts (probably two weeks). Then the adoption will be finalized in a court proceeding, for which I will have signed over power of attorney to Jonathan for my signatures. He will then travel back to Kiev with Mikola and take care of the paperwork required by the U.S. government. After about a week in Kiev, the two of them will fly home to be reunited with the family here.
It will be exciting and nerve-wracking for our five kids to be waiting in the States while these events are unfolding. They need an environment that is as comforting and secure as possible to help them through it. That's why I will fly back early, so they have at least one parent with them for most of the month that the trip for Jonathan will take. During the week or so that I'm gone, family members that are well-known to the children have offered to care for them. It's a real blessing to have this help, especially from people with whom the children feel so secure.
You may wonder how Jonathan and I chose which one of us would stay in Ukraine and which one would come home early. That was a long discussion, for there were pros and cons for each of us to do one or the other. We decided Jonathan should take the longer Ukrainian stint because his Ukrainian language skills are better, and he is more assertive if problems are encountered. I'm more involved at home with keeping the household functioning, which will help the children during a difficult time.
So, that's how the trip looks (in sketch form) at this time. I'm sure, however, that there will be twists and turns that we can't anticipate right now. Hopefully, they will be positive ones. To keep our peace of mind, we put it all in God's hands.
Processing the Dossier
Many people have asked how soon we are going to Ukraine. That question is impossible to answer, so we have to be flexible. When people have biological children, they also don't know the exact timing either, so this situation is not unique to us.
We mailed the dossier last Friday to Darlene, the Ukraine adoption coordinator at Lutheran Social Services of New England. She is looking at all the paperwork to make sure it is properly done and complete. Assuming everything is ok, she will airmail it to Masha, our facilitator in Ukraine, who will also check the dossier for accuracy and completeness. At any point, we might have to redo some paperwork.
Once the dossier is approved by Darlene and Masha, we will send $300 to Masha by Western Union as her fee for translating the dossier. When she is done translating everything into Ukrainian, she will travel from her home in eastern Ukraine to Kiev and personally deliver the dossier to the Ukrainian government office that handles adoptions. They will look it over and decide if we look like good parents. (Since we passed muster last time, I'm assuming that they will decide in our favor.) Then they will send us a letter giving our appointment time to meet with them. Most adoptive parents get a month's notice before their appointment time. Two years ago, we received our letter ten days before we got on the plane. This year, if we do get ten days notice, it will mean seeing Mikola sooner.
Getting Ready for Another Trip to Ukraine
Last Friday, we submitted the dossier to adopt Mikola. He is the younger brother of our five children, Ruslan, Bogdan, Luda, Lena, and Misha. Now that our task of preparing paperwork is done, we wait for an appointment time in Ukraine.
It was late last summer that the whole process began. We received word on August 29 that Kola had recently been approved for international adoption. We had expected this news to come in the late fall, so it was a surprise to receive the word so early. Now we could move forward to get our homestudy updated and then assemble paperwork for the dossier.
While much easier than two years ago, the paperwork was still a big effort. All of our documents from the first adoption had expired, so we were starting over. That meant three separate fingerprintings, ordering new copies of our marriage certificate, new employer and doctor letters, etc., etc. But the good news was that we didn't have to choose an agency, take foster parent classes at DCFS, read lots of books, and make tons of decisions about what type of adoption to do. All those tasks were already done.
The document that takes the longest to process is the "Preapproval for a Visa" from the U.S. government. This is essentially a background check on us done before we travel to Ukraine. That way, if there's a problem, we're not waiting in Kiev for it to be worked out. Two years ago, this document came back to us fairly quickly, but we were told that now it takes 10-12 weeks. We submitted our application as soon as the homestudy was available (early December) and got fingerprinted at the first opportunity. Lo and behold, the approval letter arrived in our mailbox five weeks early (!) on Jan. 20. When I saw that envelope in our mail, my heart started pounding!
The following week was a rush of documents and appointments to pull the rest of the dossier together. We thought we had five more weeks, so while some documents were in process, others hadn't even begun. To give you an idea of the scope of a dossier, here's a list of what it includes:
Homestudy and Agency License
Copies of our Passports
Letters from Employers (job title, income)
Letters from Doctors (clean bill of health)
Marriage Certificate (recent copy)
Pre-Approval of Visa for the Child (from Dept. of Homeland Security)
Clearance from State Police (no criminal record)
Petition to Adopt
Commitment to Register Child Yearly
Power of Attorney forms for our facilitators in Ukraine
Each of these documents had to be notarized or certified, and then apostilled. An apostille is like a notary for the notary, and it's required for documents sent overseas. The Illinois Secretary of State's office gave us an apostille (gold seal and all!) for each document, which states that the notary we used is indeed on their list of current notaries. Compared to two years ago, we saved two weeks--last time, I tried to apostile our marriage certificate in Illinois. Because we were married in Texas, our marriage certificate must be apostilled in Austin, Texas. This time around we knew what to do. We had the county clerk in Houston mail the marriage certificate to Jonathan's family in Austin, and Jonathan's father helped us out by getting it apostilled for us.
We had to work fast to get the state police clearance. The Monday after our "Preapproval for a Visa" arrived, we decided that the normal process of getting fingerprinted at the local police station was too slow. So we drove across Chicago to the firm of a private investigator that submits fingerprints electronically to the state police. It's $35 per person and worth every penny. We received our notarized state police clearance in the mail the following Saturday.
The petition, commitment, and power of attorney forms are prepared by our adoption agency in Connecticut. By last Friday, we had everything else ready and were waiting with bated breath for an envelope from them. Anticipating that the dossier would be sent sometime last week, we had already planned the celebration for Friday night--ice cream with the kids, then our first night out together at the theater since Spring 2005, with two sets of wonderful friends caring for the children. (It takes several people to watch our bunch!) That morning, both Jonathan and I met at home around 10:00 am, and he tried to track down our postal carrier. He didn't succeed, but found out that the regular postman was not working that day, and that the substitute would do our route after her own. When she hadn't arrived by 12:30, he went out looking for her. After some searching, he saw her truck a few blocks from our house, and she gave him our mail. The documents had arrived, and the race was on!
We had to drive to Concordia to type Mikola's identifying information onto the petition. Then we went to a notary on campus, who notarized the remaining documents for us. We had the four youngest children in tow, because the elementary school only had a half-day of school that day. The children were responding to the stress in us by acting out themselves, so it was a challenging time. Jonathan anticipated that getting the documents apostilled would be difficult for me if all four children came along, so he offered to keep the two youngest ones while I made the trip. But that gave him his own challenge--finding daycare for them in ten minutes before his 2:00 theory class! He rounded up paper and markers and sat them on the front row of his class with strict instructions not to make a sound! They behaved like angels, although the markers were permanent and didn't stay on the paper the whole time. Oh well, it was an investment in Mikola's adoption. And now Lena and Misha have a better idea what Papa does at his job.
In the meantime, I was racing downtown with Bogdan and Luda. Being older, they were more aware of the import of our task. The Illinois Secretary of State's office is in the Loop, and being a Friday afternoon, I was apprehensive we'd hit a lot of traffic. In addition, we knew that the Secretary of State office shut down the line before their posted 4:30 closing time, so as not to have lots of documents to apostille after hours. We left Concordia at 1:50, and God blessed us because the traffic was remarkably light, and Bogdan saw a parking spot on the street only one block from the office. We walked into the building at 2:15! I was carrying our entire file box of adoption papers, just in case they needed something that I wasn't aware of. We found the office, and there was only one person ahead of me in line! I quickly filled out the necessary registration form and gave them 14 documents to apostille. Thirty minutes later they were done! Wow! And how exciting to have two of our children helping me. Two years ago, apostilling in this same building, I didn't even know who our children would be.
(A funny thing about the Secretary of State's office. They have signs everywhere telling you to submit only one registration form, no matter how many documents you need apostilled. They must have a lot of people misunderstanding this instruction, because the best sign of all had the following wording:
If you have one document, fill out
one form.
If you have five documents, fill out
one form.
If you have fifty documents, fill out
one form.
Sure enough, while we waited, a woman asked at the desk if she should fill out two forms!)
By getting the documents apostilled that day, the critical step was completed. We drove back home, Jonathan ran out to get everything photocopied, and then we collected all the children to make the trip to the post office. In the lobby, Jonathan read the formal petition to them, explaining that we were requesting to adopt their brother. They quietly listened, which is unusual for them, and seemed to understand the gravity of the moment. Ruslan sealed the envelope and gave it to the postal desk clerk. Off it went! Jonathan and I shared a long kiss, and the children were embarassed: "Yuck! In the post office!" but we didn't care! After celebrating with ice cream (even though the temperature was only 9 degrees), we sped home and dropped the kids off with friends. We made it to the theater just in time, and enjoyed the play immensely. THEN, we had supper at 9:30 pm. WHAT A DAY!
