Tag: Adoption

Travel – July 29-31

3 Comments
I some how left my baby. Like I said, it was the hardest thing I have ever done. I held it together for most of the trip to the airport. I only quietly cried once in the car. As we were walking to the security check though I could feel the tears coming. I just started bawling. I had hoped I would be able to keep Livi from seeing me cry but that plan was an epic failure. I was able to talk to her with out heaving though! I kissed her and hugged her, told her how much fun she was going to have, told her how safe she was and that Mommy and Daddy would be back in two weeks! I tried to sound excited but she was confused with all the tears. Even Jon got choked up. He “says” he didn’t shed a tear though. My sister’s helped save the experience for her though. They got really excited for her and had her waving and shouting how much she loved us through security. It made me cry more but I could hear that she was having fun.
We got through security extremely quick so we grabbed some comfort food/alcohol at Milestones to cope! We actually did need to eat dinner. Our plane was on time and we started boarding around 8:15pm. I’ve never been on such a big plane and have never actually seen a first class with my own eyes. It was a weird feeling being herded through the luxury seating like second class citizens. It reminded me of Titanic for some reason…
The flight itself was fine. I actually managed to get about 2-3 hours of sleep. I’m not sure what quality that sleep was and it only came with the help of a Gravol pill and two ibuprofens for my cankle pains. My feet ended up swelling a bit, despite my best efforts to move around and stay hydrated… I have a sneaking suspicion the salt infused plane food was what pushed them over the edge. We had a little turbulence over the ocean but nothing that deployed the air masks. I was so uncomfortable through most of it. The staff were not the friendliest people in the world either. I suspected they were on their last flight of their stint and crabby from their long shifts. In fact, most of the English people we ran in to today were not overly pleasant. One bus driver we had yelled at the entire bus for someone accidentally holding the call button down… We actually think it was Jon but we didn’t want to call attention to that fact after that.
We had decided to skip any excursion into London because we were both so tired, we weren’t sure if we had enough time to go in to the heart of London and we hadn’t researched it very well because it wasn’t one of my priorities for this trip. But, as we were walking through the dreary halls of Heathrow Airport I happened to ask an attendant where we could spend our 9 hour layover. She encouraged us to “jot down to Windsor castle”. She was actually quite helpful and does not fit in the same category of the English people I was talking about earlier. She gave us specific instructions for which bus to take and assured us Windsor Castle was quite close to Heathrow. We decided to go for it. I mean, when are we ever going to be in London again?!
Windsor Castle

The bus took about 30 min to get to Windsor and was quite a pretty drive. I couldn’t get enough of all the brick houses, town homes and bridges. It was like I was in a movie… Well, I’ve only seen them in the movies 🙂 Unfortunately, when we got to the castle it had just closed. Apparently, everything touristy closes early in England on a Saturday. It was the same problem we had run in to when I was looking in to going to Westminster Abbey during the layover. There was still tons of stuff to look at and do… Like the Thames river! Famous in lots of literature and where we were you could frequently see the Eton boys sculling. There is a large touristy shopping area there with cute shops and yummy looking food. We went to the King and the Castle Pub (I think that’s what it was called). It was a beautiful old building with real wood, broken stone, a tree in the middle of it’s patio and hanging flower baskets everywhere. Jon got his mandatory pint of Guiness and I had the deliciously cliched Fish n’ Chips! (Thanks Leanna and David!)

At Thames River

Guiness

Dinner!

We got back to the airport with more than enough time to catch our flight and found a Gordon Ramsay restaurant!!! Gordon Ramsay Plane Food. Neither of us was hungry but this restaurant was a must! I was so excited. We decided to go for dessert and coffee. Jon had Gordon’s Chocolate Pecan Brownie with Vanilla Ice cream and I, of course, had his Lemon Creme Brulee. Do you like how I’m calling “G” by his first name now? We now have a relationship so it is okay to be so informal. Let me tell you… this dessert is definitely the highlight of our trip so far! I took more pictures of the food than of the Castle! The maitre’d saw me taking pictures and came over to make sure everything was okay. He was worried something was wrong with the food and I was a food critic or something and was going to write about it 🙂 I assured him we were just tourists who had crushes on Gordon Ramsay. Then when he found out we were from Vancouver he told us to take as many pictures as I like because he saw what angry Canadians can do over just a hockey game! He was quite funny actually.

No creme brulee will ever be the same for me.
Tea with my own personal honey pot!

A few hours later we flew out to Sofia. We were exhausted and did not get very much sleep the whole trip. I think in the 27 hours we were in transit, I slept maybe 3 hours and Jon only got 1 or 2. Thankfully, we had arranged for our hotel to pick us up at 4am and take us directly to our room. After quickly saying hi to Livi on Skype and taking a shower we tried to get some sleep.

Change of Plans

2 Comments

We have a slight change of plans. Jon and I have changed all three of our flights to come home on August 14th. We still have the same departure date, July 29th. Yes, we are still leaving Livi in Canada.

I’m not entirely comfortable with this plan but I don’t think I’d be comfortable with anything at this point… unless all three of us could come home early! Everyone keeps telling me that Livi will be fine. Logically, I know she will be, but the thought of her needing me and me not being there kills me. She is safe, with people who love her, people who we trust and she will have tons of fun. People also say she has no concept of time. Mommy and Daddy gone for 16 days instead of 11 isn’t going to make any difference too her. We have Skype and will hopefully be able to talk to her almost every day.

The things that swayed our decision from me returning on the 9th with Jon and Sofie coming later was that with the flight we changed it too it won’t cost us any additional money, except of course for the hotel but Jon and Sofie would still need to incur those costs anyway. This also keeps us together for the plane ride home which may be stressful alone. Mostly, though, we are considering Sofie’s potential attachment issues. We think that it might make it harder for Sofie if we both go to get her then one of us leaves. She has had caregivers leave her her entire life. I don’t want her to think I am just another caregiver. I want her to know I am her Mommy.

It is a bit of a weird situation. I need to remind myself that I have two children who need me to do the best thing for each of them, yet I don’t have a firm attachment with one of them yet. Don’t get me wrong, I love Sofie more than anyone can love a child that they haven’t met yet. But I don’t have a relationship with her yet. I don’t know what she needs from me yet. She doesn’t know she needs me yet. I have a relationship with Livi who knows that she needs me. I also know that Sofie needs me more right now, even if she doesn’t comprehend it. She needs to know the love of a mother and father. Livi already knows that love and knows that we will return to her. I’m so excited to give that to Sofie too but every other part of me yearns to be with Livi.

I know we are doing the right thing, but that doesn’t make it easy. With this plan we are praying and hoping and crossing our fingers that her paper work will be in our hands by August 12th. To accomplish this, Sofie needs to get her passport applied for this week and the offices need to be operating at their best possible speeds. Pray. Please Pray. If it looks look like we are not going to get her paperwork by then, I may opt to come home a bit earlier and Jon will probably be the one to stay. I really hope it doesn’t come to this though.

Pot Hole

2 Comments

This morning we got the email saying that Sofie has a virus and is sick with diarrhea. Because of this she wasn’t allowed to travel today to go and apply for her Bulgarian passport and get her pictures for the Visa. This is a VERY frustrating bump in the road… It is even extra frustrating because we were originally told her passport would be applied for on July 18th. Our aunt eloquently called it a pot hole. It isn’t a devastating engine blow up but a damned pot hole that looses a hubcap and gives you a flat tire. 

With this new development, we figured we had three options….
1. Postpone the trip by a week – This option would still leave us feeling uneasy about the timeline, uneasy about leaving Sofie in the orphanage longer than we’d want, and cost about $1000-$1300 more. 
2. Leave as planned with an undetermined return with Livi – This option would cost us an extra $1000ish for Livi’s ticket but we could get a long stay apartment for about the same amount of money as the hotel we are looking at for a shorter time. We would have the extra stress of both kids and Livi with jet lag.
3. Leave as planned and one of us will return as planned while the other stays with Sofie until her Visa comes. This option means one of us staying alone and dealing with a Sofie, alone, on the plane home. There will be an extra $500ish in plane costs plus extra hotel costs.
Option 3 is what we are going with. None of the options are ideal but this makes the most sense. We already have child care all arranged for while we are gone. This way one parent will be home with Livi and another with Sofie and Sofie will be out of the orphanage as scheduled. Because of the legalities of Jon’s pre-adoption leave and adoption leave it also makes the most sense for Jon to stay with Sofie. He gets paid pre-adoption leave while he in in country but he can’t start his adoption leave until Sofie is in Canada. How ever we work it, this is going to cost us a bunch of more money that we don’t have. We are living in our line of credit right now. The month that Sofie gets home is going to be a little rough too because there is a waiting period before EI kicks in. 
Okay, enough complaining. I still get to see, meet, hold, hug and kiss my baby on Monday! Anido also said in the email that we can’t go to the orphanage until the Monday. I booked a night for us at Hotel Budapest in the city center for Jon and I to hopefully get some sight seeing in Sunday afternoon after a nap. Eeek! Only 3.5 days until we leave and 5 days until I get to hold my baby!!!