Friday, July 29, 2011

Riding the Rainbow Part 3

Our adoption paperwork process was quite an experience. I'll never forget the day we received our dossier packet by email shortly after our commitment was made. Contained in this collection of documents was our child specific petitions. These petitions contained our prospective sons' real life names and birthdays!


Gora Oleksiy & Dozhikhov Evgeniy Andriyovych

The very information that was needed to request to adopt them! I treasured these names and used them to pray for my future sons.

I had never seen names like these before. Last name comes first, first name in the middle, and middle name last! Very strange and new to me. Of course I did a little research and found that it was due to the patronymic naming system used in much of Eastern Europe. A child's middle name is a version of his father's first name. Zhen had three names, one was a patronym. Theo only had two names listed, no patronym, which caused me to wonder and speculate. Did his mother not know who his father was? Was she raped? Later I learned that the facilitators who obtained this information just didn't think it was important to include. No big deal.

Looking back, I can say that our paperwork went quickly and smoothly. At the time, though, it seemed to be one time-wasting drama after another. Getting the required information about our home from the county appraiser was like pulling teeth. I was convinced at one point that our adoption was over because of the resistance I encountered there.


Among my other possibly adoption-ending dramas was the day I was compelled to track our doctor down AT HOME to get a paper signed before an important deadline. As I stood on his doorstep, dying of embarrassment on the inside, I kept reminding myself that my boys lives were at stake. The very same day I caught my social worker at the salon and then later at hardware store after my notary stamped over her signature!

(It's pretty ironic that we have to prove we are not insane in order to adopt. The process is more than enough to take some of us over the edge!)

One other item of interest in the dossier packet was a blank power of attorney. Looking back, a bit wiser, something in my gut says it is not a good idea to sign and notarize and apostille a blank power of attorney and send it over to an Eastern European country.


It took us from the beginning of February until the end of May to complete our dossier and mail it to Ukraine. Not bad, huh? Our translated paperwork was submitted to the SDA, the Ukrainian adoption authority at that time, on June 3rd. We were invited for an appointment on July 14.

Our process in Ukraine was fairly predictable but periodically punctuated with weirdness. Next time...

1 comments:

Jill said...

Just catching up here. I finally figured out how to get your blog in my reader w/o the "Follower" thingy on the side. LOL Ya, I'm a little slow.

Anyway, ya, the blank POA...a little weird. But what about a blank CSP? Maybe you've touched on that and I haven't read it yet. I've been in contact with 2 families (adopting thru RR) that have COMPLETE dossiers in country - one even has a travel date - and they don't know YET what their child's real name is?!?!?!?! Can you believe that???? There is only one reason I can think of for the families not to be given that information. Perhaps I'm wrong, but the only thing I can think of is so that families don't switch facilitators. What a shame...Families should have every right to know their child's name and where they are going right away after committing to a child, or at a minimum before they send their dossier.