Friday, August 3, 2012
August Newsletter
We are so incredibly blessed to have our little girl home!! We have had so much fun getting to know her these past few weeks. Our feelings are mixed because in reality this only just the beginning and we at times feel like we are on a path of discovery with her, but at other times, it feels like she's been with us forever.
So while we are still getting to know her and will enjoy the process of seeing her little personality develop, we wanted to introduce her to you and give you a glimpse of what we are discovering.
Maya has a great little sense of humor and gets a mischevious look in her eye when she is "joking" with us. She is the bravest little girl we know - There are so many new and scary things in her world now. Things that you can see truly frighten her, but she is not easily spooked. She tackles things head on and we together deal with the fear. She is a survivor and a fighter. She is strong willed and quite stubborn. She is sweet, charming, affectionate and loves to cuddle. When she is someplace new or with new people she becomes very calm, quiet and observant. But at home and at our dacha with Zhenya's family she is very active and talkative. The girl is also physically one active little wiggle worm. Which after having one certain little Mr. wiggle worm, doesn't really phase us. Her favorite thing to do is to talk on the phone. I kid you not. Give her a phone and she is smiling, laughing, and off and talking.
We have loved these precious few weeks we have had with her and are having a blast watching her adapt and grow. We are amazed how smooth this transition has been and are so thankful for all of your prayers. Please continue to pray for her and for us as we continue strengthen our bond. Pray that each relationship will be sweet, special and strong, with her Papa, Mama and her brother.
ADOPTION update:
As we have mentioned before, Zhenya will be taking the first step and adopting Maya alone. He alone will be legally her parent until I can do it later on. This is, by far, not the easiest route, but the route we have decided on taking now. We hired a lawyer and it quickly became painfully obvious how much will need her help. As our represntative, she turned in Zhenya's adoption paperwork last Thursday. Fortunately she caught the judge before she left on vacation and was able to talk to her personally. However, it soon became clear that the judge absolutely does not want to take on this case. For every ridiculus question and statement that the judge had, our lawyer was able to answer and represent us well. We now have until August 14th to get a few more papers together and then if it's acceptable we'll be given a court date.
Please pray for the gathering of the rest of the paperwork, that it will be accepted and that we will actually be given a court date!!!
Thanks for hangin in there with us through all of this!
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
July Newsletter
What a whirlwind these past few days have been!!
Maya came home on Friday afternoon. It still feels so weird to say that! Today we are ending 4 full days of having her at home. Her adaption and transition period is so far, going incredibly smooth.
The girl is one happy little trooper. It has been a joy to watch her transform and relax in her new surroundings. She is soaking up the love and attention, we are pretty sure that she has never been played with at the orphanage how we play with her at home and she LOVES it!
OVERSTIMULATION
That is to say the least! She has been super happy and loving life, but at the same time you could see she was totally running on adrenaline and not sleeping as much as she needed to. But she seems to have a personality much like Ryan's, that she can go and go and is still as happy as a clam even without regular naps. We knew though, that this wouldn't last forever and thankfully yesterday and today you can see she's starting to come down a bit from her adrenaline high.
HIGHLIGHT
Pretty much everything about these past few days is a highlight! We constantly look at this little miracle scooting around our house and are amazed at God's goodness. Hearing her laugh and watching her discover the world around her are priceless treasures. But what I am most thankful for is that she already recognizes Mommy, responds and reacts with sheer joy when she hears my voice or sees me and has even fussed when I have left the room. Little things that you totally take for granted when you birth a child, that become even more precious with a little one who has to learn who and "what" Mommy is.
We find that we've had to re-educate ourselves in babyhood and are "happily" experiencing sleepless nights again.
We need your continued prayers in two ways.
1. Zhenya is going forward with the process to adopt her, but alone as a "single" father (with my persmission). The paperwork will be turned into the court next week. Pray that everything will be in order, acceptable and that we can get a court date!!
2. For Maya's continued adaptation into our home and family. Zhenya will be leaving for M.A. in Latvia Wednesday night and will be gone for 9 days. Pray for God's grace to help me through this next week.
With all our hearts we thank you,
The 4 Shulgins!
Friday, June 29, 2012
Maya's coming home SOON!
The reason why they let Ryan in to see her, is because she is coming home very, very soon!! We turned in our final paperwork today and it was approved, accepted and the final paper will be ready next week.
So on Friday, July 6, 2012 Maya will be coming home!!
We are so excited, we can't stand it!! Thanks for all of your prayers!!!
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
First "Family" visit
Tuesday, June 26, 2012
Newsletter (June 26th)
Last month came with the news that our judge refused to open up and process our adoption case, stating that we had failed to meet her requirements for our documents. When all of our paperwork was handed back to us and the case closed, we were at a complete loss. Even though on that particular day it felt like we had just been hit by a truck, we immediately scraped ourselves up off the pavement and scrambled looking for answers and a way forward.
Phone calls, skype, emails, messages, running around... you name it, we were doing it. The one thing we knew for sure was that we had to find a lawyer that could help us through this. We had come as far as we could on our own and had now found ourselves in way over our heads. And when we went into details and explained all the nuances of our case to others (American lawyers, adoption agencies, international lawyers, Russian lawyers, etc.) they all gave the same advice. Our case was way too complex and complicated, we needed a lawyer to proceed further.
So, the hunt began. In Russia it's not so much what you know, but WHO you know that is important. Through friends and aquaintances we were put in touch with top notch lawyers who might be able to take on our case. It became clear to us that lawyer #1 was not our guy when, COUGH, he quoted his price at $45,000. We were then greatly relieved to meet lawyer #2 who was great. Very professional, helpful, trustworthy and was only asking for $10,000 (what a bargain!). We kept looking around and kept our ears open, but couldn't find any other options. Then, last week, a friend gave us another reference. We met with lawyer #3 last Wednesday. As soon as we left the meeting we knew we had found our lawyer. She was down to earth, kind, helpful, was easy for me personally to understand and talk to AND, drum roll please........was only asking for 40,000 rubles (roughly about $1200). Either way we didn't have a dime for any kind of lawyer expenses and knew that God would some how have to come through. We were confident that he would, but didn't expect for an immediate answer. An envelope with Maya's name on it was given to us a couple days ago by a young Russian family that are good friends of ours. When Zhenya and I went home and opened the envelope were shocked to find 40,000 rubles, the EXACT amount we needed for the lawyer! I still get choked up every time I think about it. We are so humbled by their love for us and their care for our little Maya, whom they've never even met. Not only that, but we have had family, friends and anonymous people give towards the adoption costs that have come up. So many people have already made sacrifices for our family and have been hard at work doing every thing they can to help bring Maya home.
During all of the chaos and craziness there was a very important piece of information that we found out.
FOSTER CARE IS AN OPTION!
What we didn't know was that Zhenya could apply to be Maya's foster parent AND it could be done without a court date or going through a judge! Which means we could actually bring Maya home while we continued to sort out the paperwork for the adoption process!! We already had almost all of the paperwork for it. So last week we started that process. Even though the process is pretty fast, there were 2 papers that we needed that could have take 5 weeks to get. Go ahead and ask....Did we get them in 5 weeks?? If you could hear me screaming and laughing, I would answer you with a big, fat, wonderful NO!! It took less than 1 week for both of them!!
Today we were able to turn it all in, to be carefully, painstakingly scrutinized by the appropriate personnel here. When she found everything in order and begrudgingly admitted that everything was fine, she sent us to be interviewed by the same nice lady who did our homestudy. And, if I do say so myself (well, actually my husband said this), it was my moment to shine! I was able to talk about Maya, our home, family and answer her questions. She now needs to write up a paper that we will take to another office to get their approval. Our estimated quess is that this will take a couple more weeks.
But ONLY a couple more weeks!!! Maya could be coming home very soon!!!
When I went to the orphanage today, Maya's doctor asked me if we still plan on adopting her after becoming her foster parents. OF COURSE!!! This is totally still the plan. The beauty of it is that she can be home no matter how long the adoption process will take. We are so excited and have been getting everything ready.
We aren't there yet, but this is HUGE!! Please pray for us these next couple of weeks that there will be no hitches in the fostering process and that Maya can come home.
Thank you for praying, for giving, for running errands for us stateside, for watching Ryan for us so we could run around, for asking, for laughing with us and crying with us.
We are so blessed to call you our family and our friends. We couldn't ask for better support.
The Shulgins
Phone calls, skype, emails, messages, running around... you name it, we were doing it. The one thing we knew for sure was that we had to find a lawyer that could help us through this. We had come as far as we could on our own and had now found ourselves in way over our heads. And when we went into details and explained all the nuances of our case to others (American lawyers, adoption agencies, international lawyers, Russian lawyers, etc.) they all gave the same advice. Our case was way too complex and complicated, we needed a lawyer to proceed further.
So, the hunt began. In Russia it's not so much what you know, but WHO you know that is important. Through friends and aquaintances we were put in touch with top notch lawyers who might be able to take on our case. It became clear to us that lawyer #1 was not our guy when, COUGH, he quoted his price at $45,000. We were then greatly relieved to meet lawyer #2 who was great. Very professional, helpful, trustworthy and was only asking for $10,000 (what a bargain!). We kept looking around and kept our ears open, but couldn't find any other options. Then, last week, a friend gave us another reference. We met with lawyer #3 last Wednesday. As soon as we left the meeting we knew we had found our lawyer. She was down to earth, kind, helpful, was easy for me personally to understand and talk to AND, drum roll please........was only asking for 40,000 rubles (roughly about $1200). Either way we didn't have a dime for any kind of lawyer expenses and knew that God would some how have to come through. We were confident that he would, but didn't expect for an immediate answer. An envelope with Maya's name on it was given to us a couple days ago by a young Russian family that are good friends of ours. When Zhenya and I went home and opened the envelope were shocked to find 40,000 rubles, the EXACT amount we needed for the lawyer! I still get choked up every time I think about it. We are so humbled by their love for us and their care for our little Maya, whom they've never even met. Not only that, but we have had family, friends and anonymous people give towards the adoption costs that have come up. So many people have already made sacrifices for our family and have been hard at work doing every thing they can to help bring Maya home.
During all of the chaos and craziness there was a very important piece of information that we found out.
FOSTER CARE IS AN OPTION!
What we didn't know was that Zhenya could apply to be Maya's foster parent AND it could be done without a court date or going through a judge! Which means we could actually bring Maya home while we continued to sort out the paperwork for the adoption process!! We already had almost all of the paperwork for it. So last week we started that process. Even though the process is pretty fast, there were 2 papers that we needed that could have take 5 weeks to get. Go ahead and ask....Did we get them in 5 weeks?? If you could hear me screaming and laughing, I would answer you with a big, fat, wonderful NO!! It took less than 1 week for both of them!!
Today we were able to turn it all in, to be carefully, painstakingly scrutinized by the appropriate personnel here. When she found everything in order and begrudgingly admitted that everything was fine, she sent us to be interviewed by the same nice lady who did our homestudy. And, if I do say so myself (well, actually my husband said this), it was my moment to shine! I was able to talk about Maya, our home, family and answer her questions. She now needs to write up a paper that we will take to another office to get their approval. Our estimated quess is that this will take a couple more weeks.
But ONLY a couple more weeks!!! Maya could be coming home very soon!!!
When I went to the orphanage today, Maya's doctor asked me if we still plan on adopting her after becoming her foster parents. OF COURSE!!! This is totally still the plan. The beauty of it is that she can be home no matter how long the adoption process will take. We are so excited and have been getting everything ready.
We aren't there yet, but this is HUGE!! Please pray for us these next couple of weeks that there will be no hitches in the fostering process and that Maya can come home.
Thank you for praying, for giving, for running errands for us stateside, for watching Ryan for us so we could run around, for asking, for laughing with us and crying with us.
We are so blessed to call you our family and our friends. We couldn't ask for better support.
The Shulgins
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