As promised, I will be adding blogs that tell the story of our adoption trip. This will be the first.
Our first miracle. Eric and I barely made it to Ukraine after our Aerosvit flight from JFK to Kiev was canceled at the last minute. They told us we were on our own to find another flight and that all flights from other airlines into Kiev were booked. There were over 300 passengers, mostly Ukrainians, waiting for that flight and you should have seen the panic. People yelling in Ukrainian and Russian, and a little in English. We were desperate to find a flight before all these people had a chance to. Luckily, Eric brought his cell phone just in case we needed it at JKF. So, while he waited in the second line to get information for a refund, I called our travel insurance company. They were able to book us a flight on Aeroflot, the Russian airline, for later that night. The only problem was that now we had a 6 1/2 hour layover in Moscow. Even though the airline problem was annoying and frankly terrifying, at this point we were just so relieved to have seats. If we had not found a flight leaving on Saturday, we would have arrived too late for our Monday morning appointment. Thus, there would be no appointment for us at all.
The rest of this post is taken from my journal on Monday, May 5th, the day of our appointment.
Yulia, Eric, and I were led into one of the offices. We had a different psychologist this time and she began by showing us three files -- Nina, Irina, and Alex (a boy). All of these children had substantial problems. AIDS, hip dysplexia, etc... We couldn't believe this was all they were going to show us. Yulia started asking about a girl from Donetsk, but her file was missing. The director came in and Yulia asked again about this girl -- same response. She asked when we could come back for another appointment -- May 14th. That was 9 days away. We said, "No". The director started looking through files that had just become available for international adoption. She showed us a file for a four year old set of twins. They were cute, but we were only adopting one. In the meantime, the director had two of the staff calling orphanage directors/doctors about two/three other girls. One of these was a little girl named Katerina. she was just shy of 1 1/2 years old -- her young age was a wonderful surprise, but the fact that she was born exactly one year after Chase was amazing. Yes, her birth date is 11/1/3/2006. Then they told us that her mother was born in 1977 -- just like me. We also found out she has two older silblings -- a girl (6) and a boy (4). She was left at the Maternity House after she was born, so she didn't know her mother or siblings. Her only medical condition was a heart murmur that may or may not need surgery when she is older. Katerina's picture was taken when she was two months old and she looked very cute. We had no idea what she was going to look like now, however, babies change so fast.
Katerina's file registration date is another little miracle for us. She was registered for Ukrainian adoption on April 27, 2007. One year later, April 27th, 2008, she became available for international adoption. The end of April and beginning of May are Ukrainian holidays. During the holiday her file became available and we were the very first couple to see it. I knew I wanted her, but they were still checking on another girl & Eric wanted all available information, but we both decided that we wanted to go see Katerina anyway. I definitely felt the spirit's quiet way of telling me she was the one, both at the SDA and a couple of other times through the rest of the day. After all we had gone through, we hoped she was the answer to our prayers.
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