May 12: The Day Jason Left Vidnoye

I'll start to recap the days we spent in Moscow on this exciting third trip. Some of these posts are going to be very long and will have LOTS of pictures, so hang in there. The trip posts have always been more of a journal for Jason to read later on. The site serves many purposes and sometimes I am writing for him more than a general audience.

The mix of pictures includes shots taken by myself, Lori, and Lori's sister Stacy.

The first day was a "typical" first day. We left on Wednesday May 10 and arrived in Moscow the morning of Thursday May 11. The only business activity we performed was to go to get Jason's birth certificate registered. We did that soon after we arrived in Moscow. It was a relatively straight forward process.

The next day was anything but typical. It was the day Jason got to leave the orphanage to live with his parents. Talk about a full agenda. This was the planned order of things:

1) Get Simone's birth certificate registered (same step we did the day before).
2) Go to Vidnoye and get the adoption registered.
3) Go to orphanage to get the kids.
4) Go back to the registry in Vidnoye to pick up the documents.
5) Go to Filatov clinic to see Dr. Boris.
6) Go pick up passport.

Somewhere before step #1 and after step #2 we bought cakes for the orphanage. It's a tradition for the workers to have a tea party to celebrate when one of the children leaves. Both couples bought a cake since Jason and Simone were in different groups at the orphanage at didn't have all the same caregivers. There are so many people coming into this orphanage I expect there to be a lot of diabetics among the workers. I would think they would get tired of eating cake all the time. Here's Wendy and I with our fine cake:


We arrived at the registry early. Here's the four parents waiting outside, we showed up a little before they opened to guarantee Lori and Antoine got served ASAP.


Most of the office Wendy could easily navigate through, but this hallway was a little too low for my tall gal...


The first step of the day wasn't too bad. We were in and out relatively quickly. Next was the drive to Vidnoye. On a day when there isn't traffic we could get there in about 45 minutes. This day? Well, we had a lot of traffic getting to Vidnoye. Once we got to the outskirts of town there was a backup for some reason. Our driver Vladimir chose to go out of the way to avoid it. He knew better than us, we trusted. Along the way we passed a billboard for an Italian Bistro named "Pronto". Someone trying to motivate Vladimir, I think.

Once in town we stopped at the ZAGS office for the Leninsky District. Vidnoye is in the Moscow Region, Leninsky "district" for lack of accurate translation. Anyway. Here's the obligatory sign.



And here is Antoine waiting outside. In the foreground is the office. In the background are apartment complexes. In the cities you find nothing but apartments. In the countryside you'll find summer vacation houses. These are the well known "dascha's" people flock to in the summer.


Once the paperwork was dropped off, it was processed by the workers there. While they worked on the papers, it was off to the orphanage for the meeting we've been waiting for.

For something we've been waiting for so long to accomplish, our farewell at the orphanage was a little different than I had imagined. We were so rushed to get the day's tasks done we didn't really have a lot of time to spend there. I felt I hardly even said a proper thank you to some of his caregivers such as Tatiana who rode with us in the car on the infamous passport photo excursion, or Larissa. One woman who I didn't even see was Rema who we saw a lot of on the first trip.

We spoke with the head doctor for a few minutes who gave us his daily schedule -- when Jason slept and when and what he was fed. She also gave us a certificate and a cross that he wore when he was baptized by an Orthodox priest last November. One trip #2, his caregiver Tatiana told us they also had the outfit he wore from it. I told the head doctor about that and she had someone retrieve it for us. I am amazed they kept them for the children. The cross and the gown were the only posessions our son had of his own and they were the only things that left the orphanage with us.

The head doctor also gave us a couple pictures from the day in October when Jason arrived at the Vidnoye orphanage. We have pictures of him taken at 2 months and 7 months of age. It's nice in the future he will have a couple pictures of himself prior to when we met.

One of the grand ceremonies of receiving your children at the orphanage is the dressing "ceremony". The orphanages don't like the parents to take the clothes the children are wearing with them, so the parents bring a going away outfit. Here's a picture of Jason and his gal-pal Simone -- making her first appearance on this blog -- about to get changed out of the orphanage clothes. I don't know what the Russians were thinking putting my boy in black tights. If you think this outfit was bad you should have seen his "duds" on the third visit of the second trip. The four of us (me, Wendy, Lori, and Antoine) have a pact about certain things about the adoptions. Our saying when we need to invoke this pact is, "What happens in Russia -- stays in Russia." Jason's outfit that time certainly requires me to invoke that clause. I just won't embarrass my son like that.

And here's mama Wendy and mama Lori dressing their children in their going away outfits.


A couple of the caregivers came by to wish the children well. Larissa had some touching things to say to Jason just before he left. It was really sweet. I missed some of it because I was listening to the doctor. As I said before the whole thing was rushed.

After some goodbyes came the great escape. "We're going to Finland!" That's an inside joke. Wendy and Lori joked one day when we got to outside with the kids that they could just make a run for it and see how far they could go.

Here's some various shots of us leaving. Notice how wide the smiles are on all our faces???


After that was a ride back to the ZAGS office in Vidnoye to sign the papers we had dropped off for processing. We made it to the office 4 minutes before it closed for lunch. Whew! For such a happy day, all the rush rush rush back and forth really made it more stressful than I imagined. If I had it my way just getting the kids should be the only task of the day. It's really asking a lot of nervous wrecks like me to have to do 5 or 6 other things on top of having one of the greatest moments of your life occur.

Here's Jason on the car ride back to Moscow:

And Simone flashing her big blue eyes:

Along the way we passed near Leninsky Prospekt which is the road that the big statue of Robo-Yuri is located. A tunnel carried us underneath the road so I couldn't get a close shot of him, but here's Uncle Yuri from a distance giving his approval to the day's events. You can see him poking above the structure with the blue trimming in the middle of the picture.


Once again we hit bad traffic getting back to Moscow. As we approached the center of town, the call was made to bag the doctor visit which was easily rescheduled for another day. We then went to pickup Jason's Russian passport. This allowed him to leave Russia. With that in hand it was back to the hotel where we could finally be a family together.


Father and son finally united.

Mother getting her son ready for bed:


In a pious moment at the hotel room, Jason Alexei prays with his hands folded, "Dear God please stop my papa from calling statues of cosmonauts my uncles!"

That's all the pictures from this day. What an emotional day. It's the day we finally became a family.

There were many bad times during the long process that led us to Jason. Such things as waiting for accreditation to happen, slow downs in Russia, threats of moritoriums, trying to decide to fire our original placement agency, and others all were major tests of our perserverance.

Our friends really supported us during those times and we honestly probably couldn't have hung on like we did without their support and encouragement.

The story of Tom Stafford having a firm conviction of wanting "Russians in his generations" according to his friend Alexei Leonov inspired me more and more as we went through the process. Knowing I had that same firm conviction kept me focused on the end of this process.

One song I listened to a lot was by the group Jars of Clay called "God will lift your head." It's an old hymn that they reworked with a modern sound. My favorite line was this:

"Through waves and clouds and storms He gently clears the way. Wait 'cause in His time so shall this night soon end in joy."

Our nights of joy started one week ago on May 12. We have a great little guy and we love him very much. How did we ever live without him???