Gotcha Day

Gotcha day...waiting on the couch in the lounge.

Finally, we’re posting some pictures from Gotcha Day! There are also some videos at the end of this post...some raw footage of Alex leaving the orphanage.

To be perfectly candid, Gotcha Day turned out to be fairly stressful. We spent the morning packing and cleaning up the apartment, and went to the orphanage a little later than normal—around 10:30. The plan had been for us to meet our facilitator there, finish up some paperwork, and leave with Alex by 1 p.m.—immediately after his lunch.

That didn’t happen.

When we arrived, our facilitator wasn’t there. We called her and found out that she was running quite late (like an hour). Okay, so we went to pick up Alex, who had been crying for us (we normally picked him up at 10), and went into our normal play routine with him—except of course we hadn’t brought the bagful of toys and books and goodies that usually occupied our time. By this time the swings had lost their appeal, and the slide had kind of been off-limits since the bloody nose incident (“Too much excitement!”), and it was brutally hot, so we took refuge on the couch in one of the lounges and spent a good hour and a half entertaining him with our family photo book and a few balloons I happened to have in a pocket. Eventually our facilitator arrived. When she did, she informed us that there would be a significant delay; the orphanage didn’t have the proper release paperwork on hand (remember, this was their first adoption), so she had to get some other orphanage to fax it over, and our attorney’s mother had died unexpectedly the night before, so our driver had to make the long trip into the next town to pick up Alex’s passport.

Fun with balloons

Ha ha. Well, you can’t help any of that, can you? But here we’d been stringing Alex along with promises of leaving for his new home in the wonderful car “soon, soon”—and now, not so much. We decided to accompany Alex to lunch to see how he was fed lunch (we’d only seen his second breakfast, and that was always away from the rest of the kids). We ended up being responsible for feeding Alex: bread, soup, and very hot apple juice in a glass bottle with a large nipple on it. There were only a few staff trying to feed quite a number of kids (spread out over a few rooms, I’m not sure how many). We had a few “visitors” from other kids interested in our attention during this time. All the same, it was very interesting to see Alex try to eat soup on his own—and noticing that he really couldn’t seem to drink from a cup (his tipping and sipping weren’t coordinated).

After lunch we went back downstairs to entertain Alex in the lounge again. Once again, no toys or anything to work with; the exercise room upstairs would have been absolutely sweltering. So to mix things up, I had Alex retrieve the balloon (we’d blow it up and let it fly away) by helping him walk across the room and then helping him bend down to pick it up. Well, Alex liked that game—but not the staff! We got “reined in” within ten minutes with the lecture about too much excitement and a strong suggestion that he’d be better off napping. By this time it was two in the afternoon and we had not had lunch, and we were exhausted and sweaty, and out of ideas for continuing to entertain him, so we took them up on the offer to return to our apartment while Alex napped. Boy, was he ticked off! And sad!

We rushed back to the apartment and grabbed a bite to eat and lots of fluids from a couple of street vendors—not really a proper lunch, but all of our food was packed away, and there was no time to go to the one sit-down restaurant in town. An hour later, we got picked up by the fellow who would be driving us to Kiev, four hours away. He spoke “a little” English (he was conversational but not fluent). He took us to the orphanage, where we were going to pick up Alex.

We ended up waiting for more documents to be signed, put our own signatures on some documents, and then they brought in Alex—refreshed, and ready to go. They also brought in his purple sweater, the same one he had worn almost every day during our visit. This was very ironic, given that everyone was sweating! The orphanage director gave us a hand-embroidered banner in a traditional Ukrainian design, painstakingly created by the children over the course of a year. We gave her grocery store champagne and chocolate. Yeah, not exactly an even exchange…we were blown away by the gift, and promised to hang it up in our house. We also brought lots of special treats for the children—bananas (which are very expensive there), juice, and “healthy” cookies. We’d also turned over all of the money from Alex’s government savings fund, which the orphanage used to buy seven sturdy windows, and meat (which is also apparently a rare treat).

One of the nannies, saying goodbye.

And then the rounds of good-byes began. The nannies who were present came by and said goodbye very tearfully, and the orphanage director followed us out to the road; she and one of the nannies stood in the driveway, tearfully waving goodbye as we drove away. She had made us promise to write and send pictures, which we are trying to do on a regular basis.

Susan, Alex, Luda (our facilitator), Tatiana (the director), and the orphanage doctor.

Saying goodbye to the mysterious, omni-present Andre, who helped us so much.

Outside the orphanage gate, we ran into another nanny who bid Alex a tearful
goodbye.

By the time we left, it was 4 p.m., and we had a four-hour trip ahead of us with a kid who wasn’t about to fall asleep in the car. And of course, no car seats, which meant trying to manually hold the shoulder belt away from his neck. I can summarize this trip by simply saying that we drew on all of our resources to entertain Alex during that time. Also, at one point we found ourselves on a deeply rutted country road passing chickens and pigs and cats on stone walls, driving very slowly and carefully. I turned to the driver and asked, “Um, this is the road to Kiev?” He just laughed.

On the way to Kiev, at last

By the time we reached the outskirts of the city, I had resorted to letting him pull on the seatbelt for the empty seat next to him and then letting it snap back, which he found hilarious. The driver was less amused but didn’t say anything, which is good, because Alex had started hitting for entertainment by this point.

We arrived in Kiev around 9 p.m. and got settled into a nice, but not air-conditioned, apartment on a busy street in an upscale neighborhood. I went out in search of easy food and managed to locate a McDonald’s. Our Kiev facilitator had admonished us not to settle for McD’s, but we were tired, hungry (no supper), very hot, and stressed.

Susan modified the one big bed in the apartment to be sort of safe for Alex, and tried to get him to sleep. She slept in the same bed while I took the couch. Did I mention how hot and very noisy (from cars in the busy street) this nice apartment was? Alex would not settle down, and actually began hitting Susan at one point. I think he finally fell asleep around 10:30.

The next two days were spent trying to mollify a very wigged-out kid in that hot little apartment. We did a lot of walking around Kiev trying to find a place to eat with an angry kid. (I am recalling one scene in particular where Alex started shouting, “No! No!” very angrily and very loudly at the top of his voice when I tried putting him in the stroller—in front of a sizable lunch crowd at an outdoor café. I picked him up and walked away carrying him. Nothing to see here, folks!) We did have a nice time one day at one of the rare playgrounds several miles from the apartment; we played for a while, then ate a sumptuous dinner at the pricey, pretentious restaurant on the grounds. It was very good, and Alex ate up quietly. Another time, desperate for decent food that wasn’t McDonald’s, but not willing to risk a restaurant (this was after a rough few hours), we bumbled our way through a very upscale deli—six young women behind a counter, waiting for us to choose food we didn’t recognize using our facilitator to kind of sort of translate over the phone. I finally just asked them to recommend a few things to eat, which they did. Turned out to be a very expensive meal—our most expensive of the whole trip—which we divided up over two nights. I have to say, the food was some of the best I have ever tasted.

Eating in a "Coffee House" restaurant (that's the name of the place, only in
Russian--it's part of a chain). The little tantrum incident took place on the
sidewalk right outside.

Trying to get Alex to drink something was a challenge--he had difficulty
coordinating his cup-tipping and swallowing, so we made it a priority to
find a bottle.

First bath, in Kiev...we did a lot of bathing, to calm him down.

After the bath.

Strollering for miles and miles through Kiev, during the craziness of the
Eurocup Football Tournament.

At the playground in Kiev.

A fancy restaurant in the park.

Alex loved everything we fed him...the restaurant went well!

Then there was the upscale children’s store, where we bought Alex’s sling and a few other items. The staff there was amazing in that every single woman wore a deep frown, and seemed deeply unhappy to be there, and even more annoyed to be serving us.

The night before our trip home, I managed to get Alex to sleep by walking him around in the sling—for an hour or so, both up and down the very hot twelve flights of stairs (did I mention it was hot?), and outside, and back and forth in our living room. I managed to get him to sleep in the sling, and was so proud that I actually took some pictures—which woke him up. He didn’t go back to sleep until nearly 11 p.m., spending much of the time wailing pitifully and trying to kill us. Well, as best as he could considering his size and all. He was obviously as tired, exhausted, and stressed out as us.

Supposedly asleep in the baby sling. Ha!

We took another few hours to pack, then caught a few hours’ sleep before being awakened at 3 a.m. by our driver (“Wakey wakey,” he says over the cell phone—ha ha) to begin a grueling 24-hour journey back to the U.S.

I should say, we spent a good part of that last night on Facebook, frantically asking our Reece’s Rainbow adoption friends for advice and prayers. Boy, did they come through, offering great advice (“Crush the melatonin tablets into some food”) and tons of prayers and supportive comments. The flight home was stressful, but manageable—Alex did okay the entire time, other than a five-minute screaming fit on the first flight that woke half the plane with a start.

Home stretch...the last flight, from Chicago to Minneapolis. At this point we'd
been traveling 24 hours. Alex managed to sleep for about three or four hours.

Looking at a magazine. Alex probably spent five or six hours flipping through
magazines on these flights. Notice how Susan has to hold his feet in place
to keep him from sliding down.

People ask whether we had fun in Ukraine. I am sure over time we will forget the stressful parts and remember some of the funny moments, the wonderful, wonderful people, and some of the beautiful aspects of the trip. But writing this reminds me of why this has been one of the hardest few months of my life—and why I am so glad to be home, and so glad things are going so well with Alex.