THIS TIME NIKOLAI ASKS FOR A TV; WE SAY NO; MARIA WANTS TO SEE THE KIDS; WE SAY GET RID OF THE LICE FIRST

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

The phone rings early this morning; Pippa says one word to Nikolai: “Yelena”.

We’re still in limbo waiting for the court decree that won’t be ready for us to pick up until the end of day, Wednesday. That will surely throw us into another week in Kiev.

So, we have Vasilly and Yelena pick us up at noon and we head downtown. We pass a Vote Orange polictical rally.


We have lunch at a Japanese restaurant that doesn’t live up to the kid’s favorite: Yakitoriya.

Andry is in a bad mood again. Pippa, through Yelena, asks him what’s the problem. He replies that she/we don’t control Olya; that Olya does not stop when we tell her to stop.

He is referring to the “tickling” that Olya continued to do on Andry after he asked her to stop and Pippa did as well. He certainly has a point: Olya gets into “roughhouse mode” and doesn’t know when to quit. Andry is not accustomed to dealing with a little sister and Olya in turn, doesn’t see the warning signals from an older brother when he wants to be left alone.

We tell Olya what Andry has said, and Olya puts her head down and stays silent. Then Andry wants to know why she is doing that and so we have a chance to tell him that he has hurt her feelings. We tell Andry that tickling is Olya’s way to be affectionate with him; she doesn’t know any other way. I (Ron) tell Andry that Olya does the same to me, that while I wish she would hug me more often, Olya finds it easier to tickle me than to hug me. She will hug me at night and anytime I ask her to hug, but any other time, the best I can hope for is her steel-spring-like fingers digging into my underarm. Finally a smile comes on Andry’s face and the tension is gone for a while.

We take this time to talk to Andry about the phone calls from Nikolai. We tell Andry that we are going to call Nikolai and tell him to stop asking Andry to ask us for things or money. Pippa asked Andry if Nikolai had asked for anything yesterday when they talked on the phone. Andry says “yes,” Nikolai had told him to ask us to give Maria a new TV set for her upcoming birthday.

We explain to Andry how unfair it is for Nikolai to do that to Andry, that Nikolai should not get Andry to do his begging for him. Andry agreed that we should tell Nikolai this.

Unfortunately the next topic we had to discuss with him was the phone call we had to make to Maria. We had to tell Maria that until she and Nikolai both had gotten rid of their head lice by using the medicine we bought for them, we could not bring the children into physical contact with Maria and Nikolai. Andry seemed ok about the necessity to tell Maria our conditions.

Dealing with the birth parents is complicated. They are from a different era and mindset which is even farther away than Ukraine is from the United States. It would be a lot easier to just ignore them. But since Maria and Nikolai are important to Andry we are trying to create a structure so he can have a continuing, positive communication with them, if he chooses.

We made the calls in front of Andry who listened carefully (but this photo doesn't show it.)



Olya seemed totally disinterested. But she was still not over Andry’s rebuke. When we have a chance we’ll explain all the issues that Andry is having to deal with and give Olya some techniques for “handling” Andry. But we’re trying to learn some of these techniques ourselves.

From the restaurant we head over to Podil and “Radioactive”, the film production studio owned by Roman who offered to have one of his tech guys look at Olya’s broken computer. We drop off the computer.


Here is Olya waiting a couple of minutes for Roman to look at her ailing computer. She is very careful with her things and very sick over dropping her computer.


The patient.


Roman assessing the damage so he can tell his tech guys.

As we leave Olya flashes Roman one of her wide smiles and says earnestly “thank you for trying,” and we drive to the internet café, “Vault”.

On the way, Olya looks at me (Ron) and says, “What do I want with another brother? This one is a MESS.” Her comment was a reference to the continuing tease I do with her by asking, “Olya, tell me the truth. Do you have any other brothers hiding in the bushes in Ukraine?” The day so far has been nip and tuck between Olya and her brother.

I (Ron) leave Pippa, Olya and Andry at the internet cafe to play “Counter Strike” while Yelana and I go and see if Western Union really works in Kiev. It does, and I pick up my “wired” cash. Then join the gang at the Vault.

While Ron and Yelena were gone Andry and I (Pippa) played Counter Strike. We were the good-guys working together to fight the terrorists. (Since only two can play Olya volunteered to play a different game.) Andry taught me lots of tricks and I killed my share of terrorists. It was a good mother/son bonding experience.

After I completed a half hour of play I was exhausted. I needed a kafe s melakom to recover. Olya took my place and she and Andry teamed up. Half an hour later the kids bounced up to me and my coffee, rattling off how well each other had done in the game. A little terrorist killing had helped them patch up their bond.


The healing powers of Counter Strike.


Maria calls and says they are in Kiev at the dentist. Can we meet them? They have pears and more decorated eggs for us. Yelena is tight on time and only Maria has done the hair treatment. We tell them we will see them Monday when they are back in Kiev for their next appointment.

As Yelana and Vasilly drop us off at the apartment Roman calls. They have fixed Olya’s computer; we can pick it up in the morning! Upstairs Olya and Ron watch Seinfeld reruns. Andry comes into kitchen where I am cooking veriniky. He wipes off the dining table and asks, “what now?” He wants to help me fix dinner!

While Ron works on the computer, I finish off the evening playing cards with Andry and watching a movie with Olya. Everyone is happy again.