Today is the last visit with Danielle. David has full blown cold symptoms. We told Irina and asked if we can stop to purchase a face mask and cold medicine. Irina stoped about a block away from the baby house, ran into the pharmacy and brought back two medical paper masks and a Russian version of Theraflu. We are very grateful, this will allow us to visit Danielle and not be afraid of passing on the cold. We arrived in the morning and Danielle was very happy to see us. We again spread out the toys and snacks. She ran to us and gave us big bear hugs. The medical mask David was wearing did not scare her at all. We did notice that several of the care takers wore them from time to time, so whenever there is a cold this must be common practice.
We were able to play with her for about a half hour alone while Irina left to get Danielle's social worker(sw). The sw will appear in court to represent Danielle's best interst. We sat on the floor and continued to play with Danielle during our interview. We reviewed the family history, the medical history and were asked if we were ready to accept a child with the family history and medical issues as presented. We told her we were very happy to accept Danielle and would love her. God had whispered a thought to me and I shared it with the sw and will share it now. "Danielle has been our daughter since conception, it just took us a little while to find her." Only God knows the reason for the amount of time it has taken for us to be together.
During our visit, Danielle continued to play back and forth between David and me. David and my attention became split between the sw and Danielle. So Danielle occupied herself and was now so comfortable with us, she had begun to go to the duffle bag and pull out the toys and snacks she wanted. The sw commented about how pleased she was with Danielle's comfort and attachment to us. The sw said it is very rare to see a child of her age become this attached/comfortable in such a small amount of time. She also commented on how prepared we were to test her development and could see we would provide Danielle with the necessary love and teaching toys to help her fully develop and grow. With a big sigh and thank-you we said bye to the sw. Irina left again to drop the sw back at her office, we only had about a half an hour before we would have to say good-bye to our Danielle.
This had been a big week for all three of us. We had spent eight hours over four days with Danielle. She became very tired and decided to sit down in papa's lap, wiggle herself into a comfortable position, layed her head back on papa's chest and went to sleep. Wow!!!! This little girl could not have said I LOVE YOU any louder than in her quiet trust of papa. I slipped over to take a picture and then we woke her up. We did not want her schedule to become messed up, her nap was coming up in about a half an hour. We laughed and got really playful with her to help her wake up. Then it was time to say Good-Bye, she had to go eat lunch. My comfort is knowing that God has known her from the foundations of the earth and the fact that she is being well cared for. She seems happy at the baby house and for now it is her home. I know God's timing is perfect and I must trust in Him.
Thank you all for your prayers,
David II, Debbie, David III, and Danielle Metzger
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Her Name will be Danielle
Hello Family and son,
Today we went to see N*** again, she came out running to see us. We were able to play for about 2-1/2 hours before she had to go eat lunch. We were able to talk to her caretaker today. A nice lady who knows her well. We gave her caretaker extra toys for the children in N***'s group, she was surprised and very happy to have the toys. She only wanted to be sure that I would not want them all back when we come back for N***. I told her they were gifts. N*** has been getting one gift per day from us and now all the children in her group have a new toy. When I took N*** back to her group yesterday, I saw shelves full of stacking cups and stacking rings. I will not be leaving the rings and cups because it looks like every adoptive parent brings those two toys, I am glad I have some other toys to leave with the group. I told the caretaker the only things I would like back are N***'s blanket I will be leaving for her and two disposible camera's I left today. I told her I would appreciate if she could go through the pictures with N*** on a regular basis. She seemed to understand completely the importance of the blanket and cameras and agreed to go through N***'s picture book with her. The rest of the toys belong to the group, unless N*** chooses a favorite. We had so much fun with N*** today. She added a new twist to our hugging game. She began to walk around our backs and play a type of peek-a-boo/hide and seek hugging game. She loved when I drew around her feet, so I did it twice. I also did her hands.
After we left the baby home, we went into Vladivostok to have our acceptances notarized and apostilled, then off to the MOE to drop off the forms. Now that we have signed her acceptance, we will start calling her by DANIELLE, the new name we will be giving her. We hope to see Danielle for our last visit tomorrow. The social worker will be interviewing and observing us play with Danielle so she can make a favorable submission to court. My only concern is that David has just come down with full blown cold symptoms and I have a scratchy throat. I hope we will be able to see Danielle, we video taped todays play time, so we can show the Social Worker the tape if necessary. We want to see Danielle again.
David we love and miss you very much. Hugs and kisses to all the kids.
See you soon,
Debbie and David
Today we went to see N*** again, she came out running to see us. We were able to play for about 2-1/2 hours before she had to go eat lunch. We were able to talk to her caretaker today. A nice lady who knows her well. We gave her caretaker extra toys for the children in N***'s group, she was surprised and very happy to have the toys. She only wanted to be sure that I would not want them all back when we come back for N***. I told her they were gifts. N*** has been getting one gift per day from us and now all the children in her group have a new toy. When I took N*** back to her group yesterday, I saw shelves full of stacking cups and stacking rings. I will not be leaving the rings and cups because it looks like every adoptive parent brings those two toys, I am glad I have some other toys to leave with the group. I told the caretaker the only things I would like back are N***'s blanket I will be leaving for her and two disposible camera's I left today. I told her I would appreciate if she could go through the pictures with N*** on a regular basis. She seemed to understand completely the importance of the blanket and cameras and agreed to go through N***'s picture book with her. The rest of the toys belong to the group, unless N*** chooses a favorite. We had so much fun with N*** today. She added a new twist to our hugging game. She began to walk around our backs and play a type of peek-a-boo/hide and seek hugging game. She loved when I drew around her feet, so I did it twice. I also did her hands.
After we left the baby home, we went into Vladivostok to have our acceptances notarized and apostilled, then off to the MOE to drop off the forms. Now that we have signed her acceptance, we will start calling her by DANIELLE, the new name we will be giving her. We hope to see Danielle for our last visit tomorrow. The social worker will be interviewing and observing us play with Danielle so she can make a favorable submission to court. My only concern is that David has just come down with full blown cold symptoms and I have a scratchy throat. I hope we will be able to see Danielle, we video taped todays play time, so we can show the Social Worker the tape if necessary. We want to see Danielle again.
David we love and miss you very much. Hugs and kisses to all the kids.
See you soon,
Debbie and David
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
God Answers Before Question is Asked
Hello Family,
This one will be a short praise. I ended my last email stating that we would ask for HIV and Hepititus C Tests to be updated for N***. We would petition for her adoption when the tests came back negative. We met with the doctor to get N***'s full health report and updates. As a normal part of N***'s schedule of testing she had HIV, Hep B & C testing completed on 3/5/08 and was negative for all the tests. Praise God, he had orchestrated our answer before we asked the question. We met the doctor and then were able to meet with N*** for about 45 minutes. This little girl has stole our hearts, we want to take her home with us now. We will wait for the LORD and pray for a quick return to Russia for our court appointment.
Thanks for the prayer, God is moving
From Russia with Love,
Debbie and David
This one will be a short praise. I ended my last email stating that we would ask for HIV and Hepititus C Tests to be updated for N***. We would petition for her adoption when the tests came back negative. We met with the doctor to get N***'s full health report and updates. As a normal part of N***'s schedule of testing she had HIV, Hep B & C testing completed on 3/5/08 and was negative for all the tests. Praise God, he had orchestrated our answer before we asked the question. We met the doctor and then were able to meet with N*** for about 45 minutes. This little girl has stole our hearts, we want to take her home with us now. We will wait for the LORD and pray for a quick return to Russia for our court appointment.
Thanks for the prayer, God is moving
From Russia with Love,
Debbie and David
Two Days in Vladivostok
It has been an exciting couple of days. My internal time clock is all turned around, we are 15 hours ahead of the East Coast of the US, so most of the time we are living in tomorrow. It is 2:00 am on Tuesday as I begin to write, it is 10:55 am on Monday for most of you back home.
Sunday around noon we arrived at our hotel and immediately wanted to take a nap. As we were registering, we met another adoptive mom who is on her second trip with her son. We put in a wake up call for 4:00pm so we would wake up and be able to go back to sleep through Sunday evening. Just before 4:00 we got a call from the mom I met in the lobby inviting us down to their family suite to meet and visit. We went downstairs to meet with them and saw the family suite the hotel has for waiting families. Here in Vladivostok, the judge almost always enforces the 10 day waiting period before families may pick up documents and then go to Moscow for processing through the US embassy. They had just picked up their son a couple of days earlier and are in the 10 day wait period. The suite had two bedrooms, a walk-in closet, one and a half baths, a full kitchen, with table and chairs and a couch and chair living area. They had Baby Einstein sign language on the TV and their son about 2-1/2 has learned many of the signs. I think they picked him up Friday afternoon. He was very lovable and was clearly a perfect fit for this family. God sets the orphans in families and God never makes mistakes. Yesterday, Monday morning , we went to the Ministry of Education to receive our official referral. We were referred a 20 month old named N***. The person who was supposed to interview us with a few probing questions about why we want to adopt was on vacation and her secretary was very busy, so we signed into a book of prospective adoptive parents, said speseeba” Thank-you. Our rep Irina ran the form down the hall for a stamp and we were done. It took about 10 minutes to receive our official referral, Thank you LORD, we took this as a sign of Gods hand working through this process. Back to the hotel for a quick nap and a quick lunch of tuna fish I had brought with us.
We were picked up at 2:00pm for a 1-1/2 hour trip to the baby home in Ussyrisk where N*** lives. We were taken upstairs to a very bright room, nicely decorated, it had a piano, 3 large 8 x 10 rugs in the middle of the floor, about 30 toddler chairs and several toddler benches lined the walls. A full bay of windows lined one wall, so the room was very sunny. The room also had a puppet stage and aquarium. They must use this room for general assembly and music for the children. We took along a duffle bag full of toys and several toddler snack foods which I had packaged in plastic Easter eggs. We got on the floor, spread out about 4 toys around us and set the snacks nearby.
Our rep, Irina, went and got N*** who was all dressed up to meet us. She had on a pink taffeta and lace dress, pink tights, a beautiful sweater over the dress, bright yellow sandals, her hair had been recently cut and she was very clean. Our rep was telling her she was meeting mama and papa as she came into the room. I thought we were supposed to wait till we accepted her to tell her we are mama and papa, but she is so young and not speaking much, they must figure it is OK to do this. She stood about 6 feet away from us and was visibly shaking and scared. I rolled a ball to her and she picked it up and with coaching from Irina, she walked the ball to me. Irina said to bring her into my arms and hold her so I did, I am so used to allowing children to make the first move toward affection that this seemed foreign to me. She was shaking, but she liked being held. I held her and talked to her. I had a list of Russian words and phrases on the bench beside me, and spoke several words hoping to comfort her. The word Hello seemed to be recognized and comfort her. Irina wanted me to pass her to David, but she had just gotten a little comfortable with me and does not see men often and has never seen a beard on a man, so we let her just snuggle into my lap till she was more comfortable. David held out an open egg of snacks and she timidly took one at a time and ate them while she studied us and began to settle down, she only had one moment of almost tears when I tried to pass her to David the first time. She was trembling and as stiff as her clothes, but she liked being held. She was not interested in the toys, but was very interested in the snacks, we started with Gerber fruit puffs, then we tried the Gerber rounds, but they were too hard (bad package of product from the store, our son loved them, but they were never too hard for him), then she had the Gerber fruits, our son calls them squishy fruit. She tried gold fish but only had 3 of them before delicately taking the fourth from her mouth and handing it to me, so no more goldfish for N*** for now. Then she had a Gerber breakfast bar, I broke into pieces and put all the snacks in the plastic eggs and she picked them up one at a time and was clearly enjoying the snacks. During this hour of snacking and holding we were able to pass her to David and he kept being the snack provider so she could learn to trust him. I had put a sticker of a puppy and a sticker of a butterfly in the eggs with the snacks. She enjoyed looking at the stickers, I put the puppy on the back of my hand and the sticker of the butterfly on the back of her hand, she was enjoying studying the stickers. We began to remove and replace the stickers from hand to hand, after a couple of sticker moves, she was able to remove a sticker and put it on someone else’s hand, remove it again and stick it back on her hand. After about an hour of holding and snacking I began handing her stacking rings one at a time and she would very quickly stack them on the stacking pole, she had played this game before. We introduced toys one at a time quickly advancing from very simple toys toward much more advanced toys, testing her capabilities. The toy I had brought out she really liked was a set of gears on a plastic board that lights, the gears turn and has music when a button is pushed. She only had to be shown two times how to push the button and she was able to remove the gears, switch them around, use two hands to figure out how to push the gears into the correct placement to snap in place, she mastered this game in just a few minutes and also played with the game continuously for over ten minutes. She accidentally dumped all the gears off the game and was able to replace them all back on the game by herself. She showed us a very good attention span, and the ability to problem solve as she moved the gears around the board. She was interacting with us as she played and looked us in the eye as she interacted. She was able to recognize different things when the word was spoken, she would look towards the item that matched the word, she did squeal one or two happy words that seemed to be appropriate but in Russian, so we are not sure what she was saying. She began playing with us like she had known us forever. We began a game of saying can I have a hug in Russian, and N*** would run into my arms for a hug, then David would say can I have a hug and she would walk towards him with smiles and laughter and fall into a big hug, then she would run back to me, then walk back to David and so on. She still prefers the mama, very normal for 20 months. Irina came in to tell me some information from her social workers file, so I was distracted taking notes, but I would look over at N*** and David and they were playing and laughing and she was now fully enjoying Papa. He had brought out the stuffed animals and she was hugging the stuffed animals with great joy each time she was prompted. As our time ended, we gave N*** two stuffed animals to keep, at the end of the week we will give her most of the toys, we will keep the toys that light up and make sounds to bring back on our second trip to help her remember us as it may be four to six months before we can return for her.
We were with N*** for about 3 hours total, this is very unusual, and they usually keep the visits to around 2 hours. The assistant orphanage director and Irina were both impressed with how prepared we were to meet with N*** and test her abilities, apparently they see several parents bring one toy and expect to play two hours with one toy. Most parents going through this process are first time parents and we have experience with our son. We also have a wonderful advantage of close friends the Lord has provided who have been wonderful counsel and example about this adoption process as they have completed it two times. Thank you God and thank you Vicki and Greg.
We were very impressed with N***, we do not fear the affects ******* may have had on this child and will hear her medical from the doctor tomorrow morning. We will pay for testing for HIV and Hepatitis C from an independent lab. She has tested negative for both of these tests one time, but we would like them to be done again. We feel God has lead us to N*** and she will be our daughter, the tests are just a formality. We will have time with N*** today; we may have to bring her into Vladivostok to have the blood tests where they can do it in one day. They may also be able to get one day results in her city, we will discover this all today.
I hope you all have been touched by this telling of our journey so far. May God bless you all.
Love from the Metzgers, David II, Debbie, David III and Danielle (N***)
Sunday around noon we arrived at our hotel and immediately wanted to take a nap. As we were registering, we met another adoptive mom who is on her second trip with her son. We put in a wake up call for 4:00pm so we would wake up and be able to go back to sleep through Sunday evening. Just before 4:00 we got a call from the mom I met in the lobby inviting us down to their family suite to meet and visit. We went downstairs to meet with them and saw the family suite the hotel has for waiting families. Here in Vladivostok, the judge almost always enforces the 10 day waiting period before families may pick up documents and then go to Moscow for processing through the US embassy. They had just picked up their son a couple of days earlier and are in the 10 day wait period. The suite had two bedrooms, a walk-in closet, one and a half baths, a full kitchen, with table and chairs and a couch and chair living area. They had Baby Einstein sign language on the TV and their son about 2-1/2 has learned many of the signs. I think they picked him up Friday afternoon. He was very lovable and was clearly a perfect fit for this family. God sets the orphans in families and God never makes mistakes. Yesterday, Monday morning , we went to the Ministry of Education to receive our official referral. We were referred a 20 month old named N***. The person who was supposed to interview us with a few probing questions about why we want to adopt was on vacation and her secretary was very busy, so we signed into a book of prospective adoptive parents, said speseeba” Thank-you. Our rep Irina ran the form down the hall for a stamp and we were done. It took about 10 minutes to receive our official referral, Thank you LORD, we took this as a sign of Gods hand working through this process. Back to the hotel for a quick nap and a quick lunch of tuna fish I had brought with us.
We were picked up at 2:00pm for a 1-1/2 hour trip to the baby home in Ussyrisk where N*** lives. We were taken upstairs to a very bright room, nicely decorated, it had a piano, 3 large 8 x 10 rugs in the middle of the floor, about 30 toddler chairs and several toddler benches lined the walls. A full bay of windows lined one wall, so the room was very sunny. The room also had a puppet stage and aquarium. They must use this room for general assembly and music for the children. We took along a duffle bag full of toys and several toddler snack foods which I had packaged in plastic Easter eggs. We got on the floor, spread out about 4 toys around us and set the snacks nearby.
Our rep, Irina, went and got N*** who was all dressed up to meet us. She had on a pink taffeta and lace dress, pink tights, a beautiful sweater over the dress, bright yellow sandals, her hair had been recently cut and she was very clean. Our rep was telling her she was meeting mama and papa as she came into the room. I thought we were supposed to wait till we accepted her to tell her we are mama and papa, but she is so young and not speaking much, they must figure it is OK to do this. She stood about 6 feet away from us and was visibly shaking and scared. I rolled a ball to her and she picked it up and with coaching from Irina, she walked the ball to me. Irina said to bring her into my arms and hold her so I did, I am so used to allowing children to make the first move toward affection that this seemed foreign to me. She was shaking, but she liked being held. I held her and talked to her. I had a list of Russian words and phrases on the bench beside me, and spoke several words hoping to comfort her. The word Hello seemed to be recognized and comfort her. Irina wanted me to pass her to David, but she had just gotten a little comfortable with me and does not see men often and has never seen a beard on a man, so we let her just snuggle into my lap till she was more comfortable. David held out an open egg of snacks and she timidly took one at a time and ate them while she studied us and began to settle down, she only had one moment of almost tears when I tried to pass her to David the first time. She was trembling and as stiff as her clothes, but she liked being held. She was not interested in the toys, but was very interested in the snacks, we started with Gerber fruit puffs, then we tried the Gerber rounds, but they were too hard (bad package of product from the store, our son loved them, but they were never too hard for him), then she had the Gerber fruits, our son calls them squishy fruit. She tried gold fish but only had 3 of them before delicately taking the fourth from her mouth and handing it to me, so no more goldfish for N*** for now. Then she had a Gerber breakfast bar, I broke into pieces and put all the snacks in the plastic eggs and she picked them up one at a time and was clearly enjoying the snacks. During this hour of snacking and holding we were able to pass her to David and he kept being the snack provider so she could learn to trust him. I had put a sticker of a puppy and a sticker of a butterfly in the eggs with the snacks. She enjoyed looking at the stickers, I put the puppy on the back of my hand and the sticker of the butterfly on the back of her hand, she was enjoying studying the stickers. We began to remove and replace the stickers from hand to hand, after a couple of sticker moves, she was able to remove a sticker and put it on someone else’s hand, remove it again and stick it back on her hand. After about an hour of holding and snacking I began handing her stacking rings one at a time and she would very quickly stack them on the stacking pole, she had played this game before. We introduced toys one at a time quickly advancing from very simple toys toward much more advanced toys, testing her capabilities. The toy I had brought out she really liked was a set of gears on a plastic board that lights, the gears turn and has music when a button is pushed. She only had to be shown two times how to push the button and she was able to remove the gears, switch them around, use two hands to figure out how to push the gears into the correct placement to snap in place, she mastered this game in just a few minutes and also played with the game continuously for over ten minutes. She accidentally dumped all the gears off the game and was able to replace them all back on the game by herself. She showed us a very good attention span, and the ability to problem solve as she moved the gears around the board. She was interacting with us as she played and looked us in the eye as she interacted. She was able to recognize different things when the word was spoken, she would look towards the item that matched the word, she did squeal one or two happy words that seemed to be appropriate but in Russian, so we are not sure what she was saying. She began playing with us like she had known us forever. We began a game of saying can I have a hug in Russian, and N*** would run into my arms for a hug, then David would say can I have a hug and she would walk towards him with smiles and laughter and fall into a big hug, then she would run back to me, then walk back to David and so on. She still prefers the mama, very normal for 20 months. Irina came in to tell me some information from her social workers file, so I was distracted taking notes, but I would look over at N*** and David and they were playing and laughing and she was now fully enjoying Papa. He had brought out the stuffed animals and she was hugging the stuffed animals with great joy each time she was prompted. As our time ended, we gave N*** two stuffed animals to keep, at the end of the week we will give her most of the toys, we will keep the toys that light up and make sounds to bring back on our second trip to help her remember us as it may be four to six months before we can return for her.
We were with N*** for about 3 hours total, this is very unusual, and they usually keep the visits to around 2 hours. The assistant orphanage director and Irina were both impressed with how prepared we were to meet with N*** and test her abilities, apparently they see several parents bring one toy and expect to play two hours with one toy. Most parents going through this process are first time parents and we have experience with our son. We also have a wonderful advantage of close friends the Lord has provided who have been wonderful counsel and example about this adoption process as they have completed it two times. Thank you God and thank you Vicki and Greg.
We were very impressed with N***, we do not fear the affects ******* may have had on this child and will hear her medical from the doctor tomorrow morning. We will pay for testing for HIV and Hepatitis C from an independent lab. She has tested negative for both of these tests one time, but we would like them to be done again. We feel God has lead us to N*** and she will be our daughter, the tests are just a formality. We will have time with N*** today; we may have to bring her into Vladivostok to have the blood tests where they can do it in one day. They may also be able to get one day results in her city, we will discover this all today.
I hope you all have been touched by this telling of our journey so far. May God bless you all.
Love from the Metzgers, David II, Debbie, David III and Danielle (N***)
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