Memories of Our Trip to Russia

If you have not already, you will want to stop here and read the first post about Russia called Falling in Love with Sydney That post led to this one when people asked to hear more about our trip to Russia. This newer post is not so much about Sydney, but the details of our travel. 

While we were in Russia we were often at “the mercy” of complete strangers that the adoption agency had hired as interpreters for us. The interpreters knew all the ins and outs of the adoption process. They helped couple after couple through the process. Most of them spoke English very well and many of them had been to the states before. The whole adoption process had been sort of stream lined it seemed to us. We would go to one office, get the proper stamps and signatures, then take all of those papers to another office in a different building and exchange those papers for other papers with different stamps and signatures. We met some very interesting people and just like Americans, they came in all different shapes and sizes and all different personalities and attitudes. One of the drivers we had was a very tall, muscular man who could toss our large suitcases around like they were small toys. He drove very aggressively and was both gentle and intimidating at the same time. Once, we told our interpreter we needed to find a place to exchange some currency. The interpreter and the driver spoke back and forth in Russian. The driver did not want to take us to the places we had traded money before. Our interpreter said, “We go to the black market.” He “knew a guy” and we drove to a large roundabout with traffic flowing all around us. We saw a man standing on the edge of the median, shifting his weight from right foot to left. It was very cold out and the man had to be freezing. We pulled up and two tires of the car went up onto the curb. Our driver took our money and rolled down the window. He handed the man on the curb our money. The man pulled out a roll of bills so large they barely fit in his hand. He very quickly counted out the bills we needed. Our driver handed us our money and we were off. The whole transaction took only a couple of minutes. Shawn and I must have looked like we were in shock for quite a while after that.  

I believe it was on our first trip when the phone rang in the middle of the night. Shawn answered and it was a woman asking for John. Shawn explained he was not John. The woman said she was in the lobby and wanted to come up to his room. He hung up the phone and we figured it was probably a prostitute. We had been warned about them and thought we had picked a few out of the crowd while we were there. More than once I believe I uttered the phrase, “We’re not in Kansas anymore.”

That first trip, between visits with Sydney, we had a lot of time on our hands. The town the orphanage was in was called a village but was really not very small. We walked around some and found some interesting things to see. There was a fairly large building where people were selling their produce. There was a lot of raw meat lying in the open on tables with no refrigeration. Dogs were wandering around in the building and the smell was pretty strong. I have never been so thankful for the grocery stores in the USA as I was when I saw that market place. Americans are blessed beyond measure.

Our hotel in Moscow

On our first trip to Russia we met a couple on the flight to Moscow. They were on their second trip and were there to finish their adoption. Our paths crossed again on our last night in Moscow. They had their sweet baby girl with them. She was about two and a half and so precious. She seemed very comfortable and well adjusted for having only been with them a few days. She had on a corduroy dress and tights. She was sitting in an umbrella stroller and her parents were sitting across from us on a couch in the lobby of the hotel. The hotel we stayed at in Moscow was a very ornate and beautiful place. There were guards, large men in black suits, standing in the lobby examining everyone who entered or exited through the large area. Their faces were always expressionless but their eyes were continuously scanning. They made me feel safe and anxious at the same time. As we were visiting with our new friends Shawn noticed the toddler grinning and “flirting” with someone behind us. He turned to see one of those tough, no-nonsense guards with a huge goofy smile on his face. The guard had been watching that adorable little girl instead of the adults who were coming and going and his fearless threatening demeanor had disappeared as that sweet youngster beguiled him.

On our second trip to Russia, we left our kids at home sick. One had pneumonia, and the others were coughing. A couple of days after we got to Russia, we began to cough. I was coughing more than Shawn was and he was sure I was coming down with pneumonia. I insisted I did not need a doctor but Shawn was so worried about me he asked at the hotel desk about a doctor. They had a doctor in the hotel! She came right to our room. He had a stethoscope and listened to my lungs. She only knew a little English but after she listened to me a minute she announced, “No Pooh Moan EEYA” and she was gone. It was a strange encounter for sure.

In Moscow we saw many things we were curious about. We noticed that there were often men in uniform standing on the side of the busy street that ran parallel to our hotel. They had sticks or flashlights. They would point at a driver and wave them over to the side of the road. The driver would pull over and show the officer some paperwork and then be allowed to continue upon their way. Shawn noticed that the cars pulled over were usually Humvees and the drivers were usually dark-skinned. We saw other people in Moscow occasionally who were questioned by police officers.

We had been told that it would be best if we did not go anywhere without one of our interpreters, especially in a cab. So, we spent a lot of time in our hotel. Occasionally we met other Americans, some with a child they were ready to take back to the states and some waiting to meet their potential child. We ate most of our meals in the hotel. Meals in the morning were not the same kind of foods we would consider breakfast foods here in the states. There was a buffet of cold cuts and hard breads each morning. We usually skipped lunch to sleep. We never adjusted to the nights and days either trip. We were awake all night and exhausted during the day so we napped all afternoon if we were able.

The Golden Arches

Just a few blocks from our hotel in Moscow was a McDonalds and we walked there two or three times. Ketchup was on the menu. If you wanted it, you had to order it. There was a Hard Rock Café much further from the hotel and we walked there once. They spoke English at the Hard Rock and I felt right at home there.

Matryoshka Dolls from Russia

When we were in Moscow the first trip, we got brave enough to walk down to a very famous area called Old Arbat Street. It was not far from our hotel. It was closed off to traffic and it was an open market. If you’ve ever seen the old Disney move “Bedknobs and Broomsticks” and you can remember Portobello Road, then you can sort of picture Old Arbat Street. I could have spent days wandering around. It was amazing. I was interested in looking at things we could take home as souvenirs for the kids. I would never have believed how many different kinds of Russian nesting dolls there are. I wanted to fill my suitcase with them. We were able to buy the kids chocolate kinder eggs with tiny building sets inside and some other neat things. Venders were aggressive and they were all vying for our business. Many of them spoke English. On Old Arbat there were street performers and we even saw a strange group that was like pictures we had seen of the bald Hare Krishna cult members.

One day and night we stayed in an apartment on New Arbat Street, high above a busy area in Moscow. New Arbat is nothing like Old Arbat. New Arbat reminded me of Time Square in New York City. It was all lit up and new. The crowds were very different. We were able to see down onto the busy street and watch police officers on horseback. They would occasionally ask someone to show them some documentation. We were never stopped and asked but we always had our passports with us. Each time we stayed somewhere we had to have our passports stamped by the hotel. It was to show that we had stayed where the government had been told we were going to stay when we entered the country. Our interpreter told us the stamp was very important to get on our passports.

Both trips to Russia were ten days in length. When Sunday came around the first trip, Shawn and I had a worship service in our hotel room. Between our trips to Russia Shawn had done some looking online and found a congregation of the Lord’s Church in Moscow. He had an address when we returned. I was too sick to go, the weather was bitter, and Sydney was with us, but Shawn was determined to find a worship service. He hailed a cab in front of our hotel with the help of the hotel doorman. The cab took him to the address Shawn had. It was a building where a small group of Christians were meeting. They were so friendly and happy to have him, as any group of Christians would be. The service was in Russian but a young woman sat next to Shawn and interpreted for him. He found out that she had actually visited Kansas before. At the end of the service, the minister returned Shawn to the hotel. It is an experience he will never forget and although I was anxious about him being without one of the adoption agency’s interpreters, he was not afraid. I am so glad he has that memory.  

Before Sydney could leave Russia she had to be examined by a doctor approved by the embassy. He found that Sydney had an ear infection. He wrote down the name of an antibiotic and our interpreter took us to a pharmacy. We were able to get the medicine easily but no prescription had been necessary. Our interpreter explained that there was no need for a prescription for antibiotics there. All we needed was the name of the medicine we wanted to buy and the money to buy it. We later returned there and got some cough medicine because Shawn and I were both coughing. It did nothing for our cough. It was worthless.

The train ride from the Moscow to the orphanage (and visa versa) was probably the worst part of our Russian experience. It was a night train that took ten hours. We were not sleeping at night because our days and nights were flipped. We stayed awake, uncomfortable, the train lurching side to side, and we watched the clock. There was nothing to see. The train stopped often. We avoided the ten-hour train ride once. On the second trip we flew into St. Petersburg instead of Moscow and only had to ride the train for six hours instead of ten. The agency did not seem to appreciate that we asked them to do things differently though. Although our hotel accommodations were always nice and there was never a glitch when we were to meet an interpreter or anyone else, when it came to that train ride, our convenience was not their priority. We really hated that train.

I do have one funny story about the train. The doors to the sleeper cars slid open like a closet door. The bathroom facilities were similar to that of an airplane. It was tight quarters. We are pretty sure that the waste from the toilet and sink flushed right onto the track below us, although we could not prove it. One night on the train Shawn returned from a bathroom break and he was in a real hurry to get back into our room. He had accidently slid the door open to the room next to ours. He walked right in on a large snoring Russian man. The light from the hall shone right onto the man’s face but he did not wake. Knowing he could not make excuses in the native tongue, Shawn hoped no one was going to follow him and demand an explanation. We still laugh when we recall that incident.

The view from our hotel window in the village where Sydney was born was of apartment buildings. We also saw apartment buildings when we drove from one location to another. They were nothing like I am used to seeing where I live, although I am sure there are areas in the USA that are similar. The windows usually had plywood over them. The balconies were boarded up. There was no color and everything looked old, depressed, and dirty. On the other hand, the people we saw were usually dressed very nicely and were stylish, especially in the cities. Everyone seemed to have a cellphone too, just like we do in America. The people we encountered were almost always friendly and polite.

Almost all our experiences were good ones while we were in Russia… if you do not get me started about that train ride. HA. However, I do have one story to tell that I hate to remember. We were expected to give gifts and tips to everyone who helped us with anything at all. The adoption agency staff in the states suggested we take things from here with us that we could give as gifts. They suggested playing cards, hats, or bandanas with the American flag on them, calendars with scenery from America, or candy. We did as they suggested but the people who helped us in the offices with paperwork or in the orphanage did not seem interested in those things at all. We gave our drivers and interpreters tips of cash several times and they were appreciative. One of our interpreters insisted that we needed to give Sydney’s doctor liquor as a gift. Shawn said that we would not be giving anyone liquor. The first time we visited the doctor, we gave him one of the gifts we had brought with us and the interpreter handed him a bottle of liquor from his bag. When we left, Shawn told our interpreter that it had better not happen again. Shawn was very irritated at the interpreter for not respecting our wishes. I was of the opinion that the liquor did not come from us so it really did not matter that much and I did not want to sour our “deal” with the agency but Shawn did the right thing. He did not want our name or our arrangement to have anything to do with alcohol. Ironically enough, in the end, it had everything to do with alcohol, right down to the baby’s birth mother. In Russia, every store we entered seemed to have shelves and shelves of alcohol and small sections of merchandise or food. As much as I hate to see alcohol in my local grocery store in America, I am thankful that it is not nearly as permeating as we saw in Russia.

One of the last things we had to do in Moscow before we went home was to take Sydney to the American Embassy and get her visa. It was an amazing experience. Our interpreter was not allowed to enter the building at all because he was not an American citizen. He left us at the door with our huge manila envelope of paperwork and gave us instructions. We found the room we needed and could not believe our eyes. There were at least thirty other American couples there for the same reason we were. Some had more than one child with them. The stream of people coming through never slowed. We were there for about one hour. I remember thinking maybe there was only one day a week for this particular step to be done. Surely this many babies were not adopted hourly, every day, all week long. When I asked I was told that it was that way all day long, every day. Less than twenty four hours later, we were on a plane with a lot of those same people. All those babies that were once in orphanages are in homes now. I am so glad so many were able to find homes before the ban on adoptions to the United States.

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Mommies Don't Give Their Kids Away

Sydney, September 2014

Sydney will soon be eleven years old. She lived her first ten months in an orphanage in Russia. In Russia the law at the time of her birth was that an abandoned child had to wait six months to make sure no relative came forward to claim them before they could be put up for adoption. We got Sydney’s picture in August of 2004. She had just become available for adoption and our adoption agency wanted to know if we would like an invitation to visit her. The adoption process took eight weeks between our initial visit, which they scheduled for October, and the adoption date in December. We stayed two weeks when we visited Sydney, actually seeing her only twice, spending an hour or two each time. We came home and returned in December for the adoption. That trip also took two weeks but most of it was spent with Sydney in our care. I have many blog posts I could write about those two trips and I plan to. I’ve touched on some of this before. See: A Sparkling Personality

Sydney has Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, thus making it hard for her to understand difficult concepts and retain things she has learned. I have often told her the story of her adoption, explaining that I did not give birth to her but got her from a hospital (which doubled as an orphanage.) Even so she continues to forget and ask me about her birth sometimes as if I were her birth mother. Because we adopted Sydney at a young age and she has no memories of her previous life in Russia I have not spent a lot of time reassuring her about being in her “forever home” as I would have a child who was adopted later in life. I wrote a book for Sydney when she was around five or six years old to help her understand. She loves to look at it and she loves it when I read it to her. She has a paper copy and I keep a copy on my computer. I update it from time to time, making it just a little bit more detailed and adding a new picture or two. I’ve attached a copy to this post.

I dread the day Sydney finally realizes that she had to have come from somewhere and not just originated from a crib in an orphanage. I dread the day she asks me just whose tummy she did grow in. I’ve thought about the things I can say. “Your first mommy loved you so much she wanted you to have a better life with a mommy who could take really good care of you.” How does that sound? It might be the truth. Maybe. Perhaps, “I don’t know” will be what comes out of my mouth. Or maybe, “Go ask your dad.” I love that little girl so much I don’t want to hurt her or even plant a seed that might someday grow into hurt.

I was motivated to write this blog post this evening when Sydney did ask me a question that knocked the wind out of me. I thought she understood the concept of adoption and family, even if she does not understand the origin of life. Out of nowhere this evening Sydney asked me what happens to kids when their parents have to move to a new house. I must have looked at her a little funny because she went on to say, “Like, if you and dad move to a different house, do you find someone else for me to live with or do you take me with you?” For a second I could not breathe. I had no words at first. I reached over and pulled her onto my lap and said, “Sydney, you are my little girl. You go wherever I go. Mommies don’t give their kids away.” Then I choked up again because I remembered she had already been given away. Thank God she’d been given away. Given to me. I only wish I had been the one to give birth to her and to have been able to nurture and cherish her as she deserved those first ten months.

As the hours have ticked by since Sydney’s question, I have considered where it could have come from. She does have friends who live with grandparents instead of parents. She knows children who have their custody shared by two households. She has asked me in the past to explain why some kids have stepsisters and stepbrothers. Sydney even had a friend briefly a couple of months ago that was in foster care. I THOUGHT I had done a pretty good job of explaining these things to her.

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He's my brother

In the past few days I have seen three beautiful stories about boys with autism, and the bond they have with a sibling. I was especially moved by a video I saw yesterday about a young man named Spencer Timme, whose older brother has autism. Here’s the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHC0FzywHGY 

In one of my previous posts called “birth order and siblings have made a difference,” from May 12, 2012, I talked about how beneficial it has been for Tate to interact and be taught by his siblings. You can go to that post and read some specific lessons Tate’s siblings have taught him. Here's the link: http://quirks-and-chaos.blogspot.com/2012/05/birth-order-and-siblings-have-made.html 

Tate would definitely be an entirely different person if he did not have siblings. Spencer says in the video, “Not one person understands him the way I do,” I completely understand what Spencer is saying. Tate’s siblings know his quirks and what he likes and doesn’t like.  Understanding autism isn’t easy but Tate’s siblings have become quite the experts. Connecting with Tate is difficult. To communicate with Tate you have to be able to think like Tate. I don’t mean you have to have autism. I mean you have to think about what Tate is thinking about (or NOT thinking about) and understand how important the unimportant things are in his world.  His anxieties and obsessions are often in the way. If he is focused on an m&m that he dropped and cannot retrieve, you are not going to be able to talk to him about anything else until that HUGE problem is resolved. Eight hours later he may still be bringing up that m&m and you have to understand how important that lost piece of candy was to him. Minimizing an event like lost candy, while NOT minimizing the anxiety over the lost candy is like a tight-rope-walk. Tate lives in a very small world and he likes it that way. He doesn’t enjoy new experiences. He knows the name of a very few people and interacts with very few people. You have to be a very important person in Tate’s world before he will remember your name…or a cartoon character. He never forgets a cartoon character.  Ha!

Birth order plays a role in the way any child develops but being one of the youngest of seven has given Tate many advantages. His older siblings have helped him to grow and cultivate many of his skills. They push him to try new things and they often provide him with experiences he could not have had without them. They expand his small world by forcing new experiences on him. They bring their many friends and activities into Tate’s world too. Tate doesn’t always welcome these things but we don’t allow him to choose. If he were in charge, he’d never leave the living room and the television set, except to visit the kitchen. One evening this past week, Tate led our evening prayer and he asked God to “get Levi out of my life.” After the “amen,” we told Tate it was not kind to ask God to eliminate a brother, but we were all struggling to keep a straight face. It seems Levi had walked through Tate’s room a couple of times that evening to retrieve something and Tate had not taken kindly to Levi being in his room. Levi’s trespass was on Tate’s mind, and like the lost m&m, it could not be disregarded by Tate. Tate’s fury over Levi’s infraction is especially funny because the boys have shared a room for the majority of Tate’s life. Levi is never unkind to Tate and has taught Tate many things, but Tate has become very territorial about the bedroom. I suppose I can look at the bright side.  Tate is not anxious about being left alone in the room. He loves the independence.  Looking at the bright side is just another thing we have all learned, courtesy of Tate. 

Of course, Tate has one younger sibling, and that has advantages as well. Sydney is a great teacher. She and Tate are on similar levels in some academic and developmental areas right now. I know it won’t be long until Sydney becomes an “older sibling” to Tate, instead of a younger sibling though. She can already do things that he cannot. She communicates better than he does and her motor skills far exceed his. Today at school, Tate was asked to explain who Sydney was. Of course, the expected answer would have been, “She is my sister.” Tate did not give the expected answer. He said, “She is a kid from Russia.” Who else would describe their little sister of eight years as “a kid from Russia” but Tate? She was born in Russia. But, was “a kid from Russia” the RIGHT answer? Not really. It is misleading. Tate just doesn’t get the whole “communication thing.” In the first place, he probably did not understand WHY he had to explain who Sydney was because of the “theory of mind” thing I have blogged about before. He doesn’t understand why you cannot SEE what he sees and think what he thinks. He assumes that everything he knows, you also know. Therefore, why would anyone not know who Sydney is? In the second place, Tate doesn’t see the importance of developing peer relationships or having conversations and sharing information. So, he probably didn’t care if anyone else understood what he was saying or not. He was only attempting to have a conversation at all because it was part of a social skills lesson his mom and teachers insist he takes part in as part of his school day. Thirdly, Tate cannot separate the details from the main ideas. He gets caught up in trivial information. Instead of telling someone the plot of the story, he wants to talk about the tiny detail in one scene. We see this happen all the time and it is typical of people with autism. 

In the video, Spencer Timme says of his brother: “He has the ability to make everyone around him happy” and  “He makes me a better person.” I think Tate’s siblings would say the same thing of him. My heart swells when I see Tate’s siblings interact with him. He keeps us laughing. He makes us all so happy. He is sweet. He is funny. He has taught us all how to be better people. Who doesn’t need someone like that in his (or her) life? Who wouldn’t want to have a brother that helps them to be a better person?   

Update! Spencer made another video!
Spencer Timme's Second Video 

A Sparkling Personality Has A Price

When my first six babies were infants, they were held for hours upon hours. They were talked to, sung to, cuddled, and snuggled often. Almost every noise they made was acknowledged and responded to, if not by me, then by another family member. My babies were socially educated from the minute they were born and they developed personality very quickly. Of course, the first five babies were typically developing and soaked up everything around them like a sponge. Tate did not. He could not. His brain was not able to understand much of the communications or the social world around him. I saw some of the evidence of this early on and one thing that was different about Tate from infancy was that he did not like to be sung to. He did like to be cuddled, held and rocked but he wanted silence. Unlike my other babies, he did not enjoy hearing mama sing. My voice isn’t the most beautiful voice but I can carry a tune and my other children have enjoyed being sung to immensely. Not Tate.  The louder I sang, the louder he cried, so I stopped singing and learned to rock quietly. If he was hurt or upset and I gently said “shhhhh” as I tried to comfort him he took great offense. The “sh” sound was NOT allowed either. I had to warn people not to “sh” Tate and once in a while one of us forgot and he would wail. It was one of the many quirks we lived with and I chalk it all up to autism. 

This blog post isn’t really about Tate and his quirks today though. I have been thinking a lot of about the “what-ifs” concerning Sydney lately. Sydney laid in a crib for most of her first ten-and-a-half months. She was not talked to, sung to, cuddled or snuggled. She was not carried around. She was changed and fed on a schedule with a bottle that was propped. In an earlier post I discussed her feeding schedule and how I changed that immediately upon taking custody, thus helping her stomach issues tremendously. What if, she had been fed appropriate amounts for her small stomach in much more frequent feedings? What if she had been changed as needed, bathed more often, not tortured with the itch of scabies, talked to, held, and carried around sometimes? What if she had not been neglected? So many of Sydney’s behavioral issues are blamed on the diagnosis of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, and probably rightly so. However, would the FAS be so severe if the neglect had not been there? I will never know for certain because I will never get to go back and give Sydney those hours and hours of interaction that my first babies were given. Would Sydney have been much like Tate: unable to understand, in spite of all the attention? After all, her brain had been damaged by alcohol in the womb. Of course I believe Tate would be so much more handicapped if he had been in Sydney’s situation for the first ten months of his life. So therefore, the reverse must be true. I doubt there are too many people who would argue. We saw how fast a little attention could result in a lot of progress before we had even finished the adoption process. 

When we were in Russia to visit Sydney in October of 2001, one of the first things we noticed was her lethargic personality. I said more than once to Shawn “she doesn’t have any sparkle behind her eyes.” We assumed she had brain damage but did not know much about FAS. We did ask if her birth mother had consumed alcohol and were assured that she had not. The second time we visited Sydney in the orphanage we were with her in a playroom full of children. Sydney was probably the youngest in the group and she was not usually included in playgroups. That was for the older children who were crawling and walking. At eight-and-a-half months Sydney wasn’t sitting up, crawling or even cooing or jabbering. She was silent. When she cried, she just hummed. During that visit we met a girl working at the orphanage who was from Germany and could speak English very well. I was able to ask her some questions and she asked the nurses and interpreted their answers for me. We had noticed a baby, close to Sydney’s age or a little younger, sitting in a bouncy chair across the room. That baby was very interested in her surroundings, trying to make eye contact with anyone who would look her way, and she was making a lot of happy noises. I asked the nurse why there was such a difference between that baby and Sydney. She told me that Sydney had never had a visitor, while the other baby had a mother who visited her and fed her a bottle every evening. THAT baby had known a mother’s love. Sydney had not. We told Sydney’s doctor later that we were concerned about Sydney’s lethargy and the fact that she was not being given any individual attention. He told us if we left him one hundred dollars he would hire someone to hold Sydney and play with her for an hour a day until we returned for her on our appointed court date, two months later. Shawn immediately handed the man a $100 bill. When we returned in seven weeks to take Sydney from that place, she was a changed child. She had personality that we had not seen before. She was active and much more engaging. She also had seven new teeth. When we had visited her two months prior she had none. She still didn’t make any noise other than a hum but she had some “sparkle.” Shawn and I will always say that it was the best one hundred dollars we ever spent. Of course, that fee was a drop in the bucket, compared to all the other adoption costs but it was one that jump-started Sydney’s personality and slowed down the effects of all the neglect.      

If only those first ten months of learning and growing emotionally and intellectually had not be stolen from Sydney. If only she had been handed to a mother who would love her and nurture her from day one. Every baby deserves it. 

Sydney, before we added the "sparkle."