Days Two and Three

Ok, I promised another post but I was beat. Here goes.

So, our attorney, Bruno had told me to be ready we would go to court in Nereta.

He arrived just before 8. We had accidentally left Nauris' bag in Bruno's car. I accidentally took Bruno's bag into the house. He didn't realize it, but he realized I took the wrong bag in. I swapped them out and we were good. Had we just left we would have been unable to do anything and wouldn't have known after the two hour car ride from Riga to Nereta. Good thing I trust my instincts.

So the car ride was long. I am glad it was just me. Bruno isn't much for small talk. His English is pretty good, but not always up for small talk. We also didn't know each other all that well.

Latvia doesn't look all that different than Iowa or Wisconsin. The fields grow different crops, the earth isn't as black as in Iowa, the fields are tilled differently, but a farm is a farm. Sure the buildings are older and of a different style but it's a field and some barns.

40% of Latvia is covered in forests. Logging is a major industry. They do what we failed to do in the USA and the logging industry still doesn't like to do, the Latvians replant everything they cut down. I passed many open areas with little trees. Exactly the same kinds they had logged off, either birch or some sort of pine.

There was a little snow. Bruno said it was all from last week. There was some flooding in the fields. Just poor drainage. It's been about freezing most days. So only a little melts mid-day then refreezes.

The roads were pretty good. All two lane and Bruno scrupulously follows the speed limit. He's an adoption AND traffic lawyer. Lots of Latvian drivers like crazy. They pass into oncoming traffic and very closely. Slower drivers put their right tire nearly on the shoulder routinely to let cars pass. Several times cars end up three abreast on a two lane highway! Fun times. At least I was in a Volvo (and older one) I'd probably survive. Bruno was nearly killed 30 years ago in an accident so statistically, I'm pretty safe. (Head on collision, he said it displaced his stomach into his chest. Spent 4 months in the hospital)

Bruno explains Nereta is where the Latvian trio's parents are from. The father died in an auto accident and mom couldn't handle it and made bad choices. They spent almost two years in an orphanage. The last three or more with their foster parents. (Who are wonderful, they sent us a link a radio program about them and these kids. It's 35 minutes long! It may well be about their adoption as they sang a song in it they sang for us. It's sad, called, "Mommy don't go" We took her foster kids. Gadzooks that was hard to listen to.

So we get to Nereta. There is a hearing with the chairman of the orphan court, Inga (I think that's her name, same woman as the day before) She is again smartly dressed. Cute grey shoes, perhaps a bit of a metallic sparkle, a white ribbony bows on the toe. Black skirt and shirt. Trendy brown shawl sweater. Somebody pays attention to European fashion. The vice-chair is there. She is rather matronly in a blue and green pink print dress. Other woman is a bit younger and just has a shirt, sweater and the unfortunate habit of wearing leggings as pants. The appearance of professionalism is striking. It's clear who the boss is, despite being younger than the vice-chair.

Hearing begins, all in Latvian. Bruno translates the important stuff. I have to state we want the children. I answer questions on our first day. How communication is going. Do our biological children accept them? All my answers are satisfactory. They vote. Three votes to allow the adoption. Then Bruno says, "There it is done. The mother's rights are severed." I thought this was already done. I guess it was, but perhaps this is more final. So for the second day in a row, I have taken these children from their mother. This a different mother, this is from their biological mother. I'm not melancholy the way I was Wednesday. This is what must happen. It is right that it happens. She did what it took to lose them forever. I will take no joy in this though. It is a sobering thing. It would be best if their parents would have been able to care for them, of course. It is always what is best. This is just what is second best. So now they are our responsibility, formally. Not our children yet, but we are their guardians. Interestingly, my wife doesn't appear on all of the paperwork. Some of it, yes. Much of it though, is in my name only. It's from a combination of coincidence (my name appears first on the I-800A the Us gov't ppwk) and a patriarchal society here in Latvia. So this is my ass and on my head. Great. No pressure. :-) Who am I kidding? I love it. I want the duty and responsibility, it's what makes me tick.

We leave and head to a different town. Start with A and has about 15 letters. Bruno says if we can get the regional court ppwk started early it will be good. It's 47 km to this other town. It's bigger than Nereta. We file the ppwk and then must wait for about 30 minutes while they process things. We grab some coffee and some lunch. Bruno berates me for only having a sport coat on. I humor him and put on my jacket (and take my sport coat off) My navy sport coat is 100% wool, it's probably warmer than my mid-weight jacket I brought. He is pleased as he didn't want me to be cold while we walked to lunch.

We get the paperwork back from the court and head out. Bruno's car will run on gasoline or Autogaze, basically liquid propane or natural gas. It's half the cost of gasoline. We drove around this town looking for it. Asked 4 people. Nobody knew or gave us good directions. We just left. About 5km out of town we came across a station that had it. Looked for 20-30 minutes for something if somebody had known where to go, would have taken us less than 10 minutes to find.

We head back to Riga. Bruno is chatty. We talk about his daughter who has worked in several different countries for the Latvian gov't. We talk about crime and racism in Latvia and America. It's clear he's probing a little bit. He wants to make sure that Iowa is safe. We talk about drug problems in our countries and schools. Again, he is chatting me up with a purpose. It's very clear he takes his job seriously. When we talked about drinking I told him once upon a time I had something of a problem. "Oh? how long ago?" He wanted to know. I told him twenty years, when I was in college. "Oh? No problem." He shared his stores of drinking (remember he was in the Soviet army for three years) everything makes him sick, even beer. All he drinks is milk and coffee and water. He also told me that after high school he failed out of technical school (because he wasn't good enough at math) but went back to school to study history and law. For 10 years he worked as a tanner in a factory 8 hours a day and went to school three hours after that, every day. I'm a bum and a turd compared to this guy.

Got home around three. Kids playing, Wendy tired from parenting solo all day.
We made dinner, pork chops, fried potatoes and green beans. It was good. Kids ate right up.

After dinner, I went out shopping with Jaenelle and Nauris in tow. I wanted the extra hands and some time with my two eldest. It was after 7 and cold, but we walked briskly the half-mile to the shopping center.

We looked all over. Almost all clothes, jewelry stores and perfume. We went to a Drogo, yes a store called, Drugs. Sort of a Walgreens but almost all makeup. We did find a few more kitchen items. Plastic wrap, baggies a few other things.
Went to the Rimi their "Hypermarket" Picket up bread, milk, juice, cereal etc. Had several heavier things. Once the basket was pretty full I was going to take it from Nauris. I tried to. He wouldn't give it to me. Flat out told me no. Then said what I could only surmise was "I can carry it" We checked out and Jaenelle and Nauris carried everything. Independent things they are. (those are Wendy's words, everybody say HI! to Wendy, she is reading over my shoulder as I write this)

Bedtime is good. No issues. I get a hug from my eldest son. I do like that. Strike that, I love it.

Day Three.

Bruno calls in the morning during breakfast. (they love rasin bran cereal, it's different here, has raisins and other dried fruit)  He has the bill for all of his fuel expenses. 50E. That's fine. He wants to talk too, about things.

We have school. We start with the ABC's. First in English then in Latvian. We have flash cards for English. Dite and Nauris know many of the letters and words already. We then do the alphabet in Latvian. We know ummm, nothing? Nauris helps us learn the letters by drawing pictures on the flash cards. The first picture is of an Aka. We don't know what an aka is. The translation app didn't know either. He drew a very nice drawing of a well. You know, bucket, little hutch over the round stone well? He draws more pictures as we need them. He went to art school and it shows.

School is just finishing up and Bruno arrives. Wendy takes the kids outside and Bruno and I talk. We will be here until at least the 23rd of March. Perhaps longer depending upon how fast we can get paperwork done. We talk some more. Mostly about adoptions he's worked on. He doesn't like to have Latvians adopt kids. Too often they don't tak e care of them as well and they tend to shop around. Also, the kids that he sends out of the country end up with parents that send them to college and such. He said he has people complain to him that he is selling "the brains of Latvia" (yes people accuse him of selling children) He disagrees. They are better taken care of and kids that stay in orphanages until they are adults don't do so well. What's more they don't go to college and have to trade to support themselves. He thinks it's better doing what he does. He's been doing it 20 years, I'll trust his judgment on that one.

After a quick lunch we go to the Riga Central market. It's cold. Below freezing. It's maybe a mile. There is a big open air market with people selling produce. We pick up a number of things. It's no more expensive than Iowa, often ridiculously cheaper. A kilogram (2.25 lbs) of carrots for .6E  (about .63 US) Some things are close to the same price. Stawberries (which we don't buy) are 5.50 a kilo. Still good but the strawberries are 2-3 times larger than in the US, so we would only get a few.

We do get a big jar of Latvian honey, which is supposedly very good and something they are very proud of. Tomorrow we will have pancakes for breakfast with jam or honey. We will see how Wendy does. I don't doubt her skills. (as she just questioned that I questioned them, be quiet and let me type Wendy

Made spaghetti sauce tonight. I used too many bell peppers and couldn't cut them up enough with the letter openers we have for knives (they really ARE knives but are so dull they can hardly cut butter let alone produce) It works out. Tastes like sauce, thanks to the fresh herbs and the really fragrant and wonderful dried spices we bought) just doesn't look quite right. Only had kielbasa for sausage. It worked, who cares.

Boiler stops working just before we serve dinner. No hot water to wash and our radiators won't work. Apt manager comes and gets it started. It was a problem later as we didn't have hot water for showers. Just the little boys got clean. Hopefully it works out tomorrow.

My back was killing me after standing and stooping for so long. Kids were wound up and required a little discipline. At one point this afternoon, Jack took a thump to the head and his chin hit the floor. Tear, accusations. Everybody had to sit down. New kids are scared, this is the first "OK everybody knock it off!" moment. Jaenelle won't stop interfering and trying to explain while I talk to Jack then try to talk to Dite and Alekss. She get scolded. Tears. OUR FIRST DRAMA! HOORAY!!!!  Kids are sheepish about doing anything. We had to tell them they weren't in trouble and could go play. They weren't moving until we said so. Somebody has them trained and it wasn't us.

Evening worked out. Had to put our thumbs on them a bit to get them to go to sleep. They went to bed readily, but stayed up talking. Wendy did get a story read to the little ones. They curled up next to her and listened intently. Good mommy time and Curious George is universal.

A good couple of days. As Wendy said, "We've only had them two and a half days. It seems like longer. It's just our family." I agree. It's just, normal. The seven of us. Seven. Holy @#!#$

This Sunday we will go to the Theatre with the kids and with Janis and Lilita. She called and emailed today and asked us to go with them. They are bringing some of their other children I think. We need to figure out where this is and what is showing. We will dress up. They sent dress clothes with them. Should be an experience. Apparently, the kids have been before.

Until next time!! Atta! (bye in Latvian) Look up goodbye. It's a mouthful.