Waiting for Court, Waiting for the Birth Certificate

Vitals:  We finalized our plane tickets for this Thursday, November 18th.  Bill is so thrilled, he can hardly contain himself.  He's walking around the apartment singing "come FLY with me!" from the old American Airlines commercials.  He's not exactly Tony Bennett, but he has his own charm.

Details:  Day 46  --this one is flat-out dull, but I am recording it so the boys know what we went through.  Spare yourself.  I'm serious. 

On Wednesday, November 10, we went back to try again for court for Roman.  We thought about taking all the kids, but the day before had been such a pain that we finally decided to leave the older ones at our apartment. They were thrilled about this and we told them that, in all likelihood, the court would just be an hour, so we would be gone at the most two hours; leaving at 8:30 and back by 10:30.  (....note to my friends who are inclined to notice literary elements; this would be foreshadowing).

So, we took Ruslan only (leaving the other four at home) and went back to the bright pink court house in the neglected neighborhood.

We got ourselves upstairs, back in the same hallway and saw the same orphanage director and social worker from yesterday.  After about fifteen minutes, we we decided to get comfortable, after thirty, I started walking around with Ruslan, after forty five minutes, Nadya got out her computer and started working on another couples paperwork, after about an hour, they called us into the judge's office.

You may remember that we put this off for 24 hours so that a certain "prosecutor" could attend the hearing.  Well, we all filed into the room, Nadya, the director, the social worker, Bill and me holding Ruslan.  The judge and Nadya talked for a minute and we learned that the prosecutor was in the building, but could not attend the hearing.  He was going to skip out and 'sign' the minutes after we were done.

So, after a 24 hour delay, we finally had the hearing with the exact same number of adults in attendance that we had originally.  The hearing was pretty uneventful, except that the judge really seemed ...flat.  She asked us our name, address and motivation to adopt like the other judge, but never cracked a smile and seemed generally dis-interested the whole time.

You may have heard that Ukraine is in the process of passing a law that will cancel all adoptions from the US and a few other nations.  The bill passed it's first vote a few days ago and a second vote is coming up this month.  It could be signed by the president as early as the end of December.  Our adoption facilitators were confident that we were OK, but it was clear to all involved that if the judge kept delaying our paperwork, we could end up with a hearing after the new law went into effect and all would be delayed for at least six months.  

At the first hearing for Ruslan, the judge wanted to know why we were adopting.  We told one or two reasons, but the judge wanted more.  So Bill listed a few more reasons, and then she asked again, so I pitched in with some final reasons and then we were done.  For this hearing, we thought we'd skip a step and just list five or six reasons all at once, thus satisfying the quota right off.  This was a mistake.  Apparently, the key to a satisfactory interaction is not the number of reasons listed, but the number of times a judge says, "tell me more."  Sadly, we listed all our best stuff right away and were left repeating ourselves for the second and third go round.  At any rate, apparently we finally talked enough, because she approved us, much to the great relief of everyone present.  The orphanage director was so relieved she gave both me and Bill hugs and, I have to admit, it was a huge load off.

After that, Nadya and Oleg wanted us to come with them to try to get the elusive birth certificate for Ruslan.  We should have had it at least a week ago. I won't go into the whole long story, but the upshot is that Bill and I were left in a car with Ruslan while waiting for Oleg and Nadya to strong arm the vital records office.  Whatever they did, it worked, God bless them.  After about two hours in the car, they called Bill in to sign for the certificate.  Bill and I both had the same thought, --I could have gone back to the apartment with Ruslan while he waited to sign for the birth certificate, but there was no reason to mention it after the fact. 

We finally got back to the apartment about 3:00 then spent the rest of the day trying to avoid our children and vegetate in front of the TV.