Four Feet More

It has been a year since we officially became the parents of Vika and Eamon. So much has happened this past year. Our kids have grown by leaps and bounds as individuals, and we have grown as parents. Our lives have all changed so dramatically, that is is difficult to measure in words. I prefer to measure the way Jonathan Larson does - in love for this family that turns one year old today.

On December 19th of 2005, we were in Murmansk, Russia. It was very snowy and very cold - a climate entirely different from anything I had experienced during my childhood in Arizona and present life in California. We had been granted the last adoption court session of the year and were pretty sure the 10-day waiting period would be waived. Court was still a bit scary, however. The judge and prosecutor were both formidable characters. This was shortly after three widely publicized and horrendous incidents of abuse, in which Russian children adopted by foreign families were the victims. Despite this, court went well, and on December 20th, we were made the legal parents of Victoria Ina and Eamon Nikolay.

The first night with them was rough. Jeff had to leave the hotel to do some paperwork, and I was left alone with the kids. They went crazy! It was if they had been rendered temporarily insane due to the excitement of being someplace other than the orphanage. Jeff returned to see me staring in bewilderment at two children who were bouncing off the walls. I didn't quite know what to do, as we didn't have any disciplinary language on our Russian "cheat-sheet." Things began to calm down over the next day or so, and by the time we returned to Moscow, Jeff and I were starting to get into a parenting groove.

The trip home on Christmas Eve was both incredibly exciting and incredibly draining. Upon taking our seats on the flight out of Moscow, Vika decided that she didn't want to wear a seatbelt, and threw the most spectacular tantrum! She screamed for 15 minutes straight. All the other passengers were looking at us, some with sympathy, but most with irritation over our inability to "control" our child. Vika did finally calm down, and the rest of the flight went great. She and Eamon even did really well during the 6-hour layover we had in Germany (much better than Jeff or I, in fact). We knew Vika’s tantrum was due more to her fear of heading off into the unknown, rather than any seatbelt issue, but with the language barrier, comforting her was incredibly difficult.

Finally, after 30 hours of traveling, we touched down in California. My mom, stepfather, and Jeff’s daughter Ali met us at the airport and welcomed the kids with open arms. Thus began our life as a family, and Vika and Eamon's life as American citizens.

Happy Adoption Day, Vika and Eamon! You have given us more during the past 525,600 minutes than you could ever know.