Becoming the 4 McCaffery's

We've created this webpage for our family, friends, and future adoptive families to follow us in our adoption journey to Kazakhstan to become a family of 4. Thanks for reading, we hope you enjoy it!!

Friday, April 21, 2006

April 21st



Once again it’s cold and gray in Kazakhstan. In order to stay sane with 4 people in a 500-600 sq ft. apartment we have to think of goofy games to pass the time. This morning’s activities consisted of bath time, which Sam adores so much so that he can be undressed in less than 3 seconds, no exaggeration. The next game was named the “Icky Sam Shuffle” It started out simply as the boys running to Mama in the chair and then Mama lifting them up in the air a bit, but then Sam turned into Icky Woods and was a dancing machine with many silly faces; it was hilarious. Our photos today consist of Daddy taking his turn and giving the boys much better rides than Mama could give. Sam is definitely going to be the next linebacker or offensive lineman for the Nebraska Cornhuskers. He reminds me a lot of Rudy Rudebacher from Notre Dame. His fortitude is amazing and he is also a little comedian--what a wonderful combination. Ian is definitely our serious and sensitive one, though he has an amazing imagination and loves to tell us stories. If you looked at the two of them, you’d think Ian was the one who has been living in the Orphanage. Poor Ian is too slim; it’s good his Grammy Mim and Honey are coming to take care of him and his Daddy as I know they’ll both be well fed, loved, and spoiled!! It’s interesting to watch the boys together, even when they become annoyed with one another, within 5 minutes they’re secretly checking out what the other one is doing and within another 5 minutes they want to play with each other once again.
We had our interview with the social worker this afternoon; it ended up being Ian, Nell, Tim and our translator Aika sitting across a conference table from 4 very serious looking people. They asked us about 10 questions: how long we’ve been married; if we would leave the same inheritance to our new son as Ian; why we’re adopting etc… One lady, who is apparently the deputy of the director (the director was on vacation), was very caught up on the fact that we are adopting despite the fact that we are capable of having more biological children. She kept shaking her head negatively and speaking Russian with a look of disbelief in our answers. We’re not sure if she ever believed us, even though we tried to convince her that he would be treated equally. She just couldn’t understand why anybody would do that. I guess it’s cultural—we’ve heard that very few Kazakh people adopt—if they aren’t able to have a biological child, many won’t consider adoption as an alternative. I think that’s sad for the children. At then end, the deputy director (not sure if that’s her actual title) asked if anybody had any more questions (in Russian of course); the other three interviewers shook their heads no, then spysibo (thank you) and das vidanya (goodbye). We didn’t get any feedback at all, so I guess we “passed”.
While waiting for our interview, we met the Rose family briefly. They had their interview before us. We wished we had more time to talk with them but they were being led out as we were preparing to go in for our interview. Since most of the American families are adopting infants, we haven’t seen many Americans here—just a few at Johnnie Walkers—but we didn’t get to talk to them before they left. Infants are in a different orphanage called Nezabudka, where Vitaly was until he turned 4 yrs old last fall. Older children are not adopted as often as the infants, so we didn’t run into any adopting families at the orphanage where Vitaly was. Although we understand that many people want to adopt younger children, there are so many wonderful children at the other orphanages too.

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