>From baikaltour@gin.global-one.ru Fri Oct 3 10:22:13 1997 Subject: TGIF TGIF everyone! In our case, the "F" could stand either for "Friday" or "Final!" That's because our adoption of Benjamin became final today. The mandated 10-day waiting period expired at 1 p.m. today, so now Boris Yeltsin couldn't take Sasha away from us if he wanted to. Well, *he* probably could, but no one else! ;-) Though we knew there was very little chance that the court's decision to make Benjamin our son would be appealed, there was still an undercurrent of unease until today. Now we can plan confidently for the future with no worries other than the usual concerns that we have with all of our kids. Saying "our kids" reminds us of a funny moment that occured the other day. We asked Valentina to write down the names of all of our children in Russian so we could show it to them when we get back, and she did. We inspected them to see if we could make them out using our rudimentary Russian language skills, and after figuring out "Zachary," "Emily" and "Virginia," I (Kevin) turned to Valentina and asked, "What's this fourth one?" In response, I received an elbow to the ribs from my spouse with the comment, "We have *four* children now!" Yikes! Reality sets in... ;-) Today Valentina went to the court house for us and picked up our official adoption decree and took it to the public records building where Benjamin's birth certificate is going to be printed, and then took it to apply for his passport. The birth certificate will be ready tomorrow morning. The passport will be ready on Tuesday evening. Though we wish that they could have started this paperwork several days ago, we do understand that in order to follow the letter of the law, they couldn't. We also actually feel rather fortunate, all things considered. Our own passports took two *months* to acquire back in the U.S. Here they're cranking out Benjamin's in two days (not counting the weekend). We can live with that. On Wednesday morning at 10:20 a.m. we board a plane for Moscow. We'll arrive there at 11:25 a.m. (It's a six-hour flight with a five-hour time difference between the cities.) Our Moscow guide Sergei (whom we'll tell you about more later) will get us checked into our hotels, and then on Thursday we'll take Benjamin for his physical exam in the morning. In the afternoon I (Kevin) will go to the U.S. Embassy to apply for and await his U.S. visa. We're told that this will probably take several hours. Friday is a "cushion" day in case anything is delayed. We hope to spend it visiting Red Square, the Kremlin and whatever other sights we can pack into one day. Then, at long last, we board a plane for New York on Saturday morning. After an eight-hour flight (which will be only 90 minutes with the time change!), we fly to Cincinnati where we'll rendezvous briefly in the airport with Kevin's sister Ramona and her family, and then it's on to Greenville and Benjamin's true introduction into the family. It's a moment we've been waiting a long time for, and it's finally in sight. We'd like to report today on some of Benjamin's progress in the last 10 days. We are expecting that he will rapidly "catch up" in all categories in which he is behind, and so far that definitely seems to be happening. For the record, he was born on October 20, 1996 and thus is approaching his first birthday. (We're so excited about getting him home in time for a party with his siblings!) However, our previous experience suggests to us that he's at about a 6-9 month level in terms of both physical and intellectual development. But we can already see progress -- or at least we think we can! Here are some of the ways: -- We'll have him weighed officially again in Moscow, but our guess is that he's putting on weight quite rapidly. At least judging by how it feels to carry him around town! That's a really good sign. -- In just the last week he's begun to pull himself up to a standing position on a regular basis. When we got him he could only pull up to his knees. He doesn't "cruise" yet, but he's trying. Give it another week... -- Originally he could crawl, but didn't do it much. He preferred to lay on the floor until someone picked him up and moved him. (Not a bad strategy, actually... ;-) But now there isn't a nook or cranny of our room that he hasn't explored. We have to be careful not to leave the room door open or he'll be out in the hallway! -- He also will come to us when we call him or (more frequently) when we hold our arms out to him. He'll raise his arms in the universal baby "pick me up" gesture. He didn't do these things at all at first. This is not to say that he knows his name yet. He does respond to "Sasha" sometime, but not "Benjamin" yet. Soon! -- He is vocalizing a *lot* more. He'll "sing" to himself a good bit, and does a lot of babbling. Crying too, but I don't think that really counts. ;-) No real concrete syllables yet, but he's getting there. Every now and then he'll spurt out a "Da" sound, but we don't know if that's the first half of "Da-da" or just "Yes!" -- He is an extremely cheerful child. This was true from the start, but has become even more so as he's become comfortable with us. He's is very generous with his smiles, which we think you will all find to be his best feature. (Those dimples are very disarming!) From the moment he wakes up, he flashes them. The main time that he's fussy is during meals. He is *very* impatient to have his food brought to him! Assuming that he regularly had to wait in the orphanage, perhaps this means that he's leaving those memories behind already. -- He's already doing much better with solid foods. Though he has no teeth yet, he is able to gum a cracker or piece of bread into a gooey mess suitable for consumption (or smearing on Mommy or Daddy's shirt...). Like Milly, though, he does have a tendency to stick rather large pieces into his mouth at once, which leads to an inevitable gag and the reemergence of some of the aforementioned goo. Such is life... He couldn't really handle anything but formula or baby food a week ago. And *we* have been evolving a great deal too in the last two weeks. We didn't really stop to think about it until just recently, but we have really benefited from this time of bonding with Ben alone. We're already at a point where we consider him to be completely, irrevocably ours. The other day we likened the feeling to how it would be if we had brought Ginny on this trip with us. Just like Ben doesn't feel as if he "belongs" at the orphanage any more, we can't even picture him there now. It's hard to put this into words, exactly, but we already are having a hard time remembering what it was like *before* Benjamin came into our lives. We reflected on that a lot after we had Zack too (and each subsequent child). Does this make any sense? In any case, it's a wonderful feeling, and a great prelude to the feeling of having all *four* of our children together at one time. There has been one downside to this otherwise cheerful day. At this point we're going to editorialize a bit, if you don't mind. We've reached quite a frustration point with some of our countrymen and women whom we've met during our stay. Have you ever heard the phrase "ugly American" applied to someone who is not respectful of the culture of a country they are visiting? We feel like we're seeing a lot of that among other adoptive couples, and it has really begun to bother us both. Today we met a couple who could only complain about how long they have to stay, how awful the accomodations are, and how they can't wait to get back to America. No interest whatsoever in learning something about the city in which their child was born. Another couple we have met proclaimed that they just don't care about Russia. How can this be? How can you possibly not be interested in the country which defines the heritage of your child? It seems extremely unlikely to us that many of the couples we've met will make any effort whatsovever to emphasize the Russian heritage of their child(ren). Now, before we start to sound too pompous here, we have to stress that we too are very anxious to get home. We have not exactly become fluent in Russian in order to make our way more easily, and in previous messages we've made light of our situation by joking about some of the cultural differences that we find to be unusual. Still, we feel very strongly that there is a minimum level of interest to be shown and effort to be made, and we're amazed by how few of the American couples we've met have tried to reach this level. Even though neither of us have been known to be frequent museum attendees in the U.S., or ardent history buffs, we find this place completely fascinating *because* our son comes from here. Sorry for the ramble. We discussed whether or not we should share this with all of you, and (obviously) decided to go ahead. We want to thank you once again for all of your wonderful support. We have received numerous messages from friends and relatives expressing sympathy for the fact that the 10 days weren't waived, but these notes unanimously continue with encouraging words about cherishing this time to get to know both Ben and his city and country. We've been supported by these words, and have tried to do just that. Consequently, our stay here has been minimally stressful and infinitely rewarding. Thanks very much! More tomorrow. Talk to you soon! Much love, Kevin & Julie