Rewind Aug21 - Our appointment at the SDA

Still in Kiev. At 10am we had our appt with the SDA (something like the Minister of Youth). We had 1 hour to meet with a psychologist to review files for adoptable children. Our psychologist was a very young and soft spoken woman. She started off my asking/telling us the following:
= Verify our passports
= Confirm we had been approved in our home study for 2 boys ages 5 and under.
= Informed us that no healthy children under the age of 8 are available
= Informed us that the new age limit for healthy childre in 8 and older

She then proceeded to show us about a dozen different files. The first was the one we choose. His current name is "Igor". He was born April 13, 2004. In the aweful aweful aweful picture attached to his file he appeared to have red hair, splotchy skin and some rather frumpy body/face. A picture can truly say 1000 of the wrong words! He is really a blonde headed boy with blue eyes, tall and quite physically fit and the cutest laugh you have ever heard.

This was truly the most difficult hour of our lives to date. No labor pain I have experienced came close.

May I digress.
I was also very distracted. About 6 weeks ago someone had shown us a picture of a child with spina bifida whom she had met while adopting her son. (Even though Ukraine is a blind adoption, you are able to specially request special needs children). He was a doll and we were very drawn to his picture --- in fact they are still on my desktop. But after some research we were unable to come to a conscensus that we were able to care for this child. The second file shown to was this dear boy. I was a wreck --- clearly this was a sign --- we had been wrong that this child was not for us. There I was crying staring at this wonderful boy wanting desperately to trump my husband. But he said, no we have already talked about this boy and agreed we are unable to care for him. "D" said "I am sure someone is coming for him". To which I simply responded "We will make sure someone comes for him". So be prepared all, you have not heard the end of this dear boys story. We may not be his parents but we can certianly be there for him.

For the other PAPs, here is a summary of the files we were shown:

1. 4yo boy cleft palate
2. 3yo boy spina bifida
3. 4yo boy locked joints arthroposty? (dont really understand this one but he had had 4 surgeries already)
4. 8yo & 9yo boy/girl delayed spent 2 yrs on the streets
5. 8yo & 10yo boys FAE
6. 8yo & 10yo boys healthy (4yo sister who was not currently available but would be soon and wanted us to come back for her.)
7. 6yo & 9yo boys but 9yo was in Italy for 2 more weeks at camp and we would not be able to visit with him before court.
8. 5yo, 6yo & 8yo boy, girl, boy. delayed
9. 8yo & 9yo boys speech delays and heart murmurs. We debated so long over these boys as they were truly adorable.

Heading off to the orphanage. Will post more later!