Day at Court

Wednesday February 7th

Hope everyone slept well and as you wake up on Wednesday morning you know all is well here in Moscow. We on the other hand hardly slept at all as we were a little nervous about going to court. While we were confident that everything would be fine, it is the unexpected things that we feared. We were picked up at 10:00am for our 11:00am appointment. We arrived at 10:30 and were met by Sergei our coordinator and an interpreter. The interpreter briefed us regarding how the proceedings would go . . . kind of normal stuff. She reminded us to talk to the judge and to keep eye contact with him not her. Joining us in the court room were a prosecutor, a court reporter and the social worker from Tyler’s hospital. The proceedings were formal and thorough as the judge looked at everything and noted it for the record. He asked each of us a few questions that were fairly straight forward, education, job, income, home, etc. He asked the social worker to speak and she testified that we bonded with Tyler and that she thought this was the best thing for him and she would recommend us to adopt Tyler. He than asked the prosecutor who stated she also supported the recommendation to adopt. The judge asked us each if after the complete review of the records we wanted to still adopt this child. We obviously answered in the affirmative. The judge jokingly asked if we were prepared for the kaos we were asking for. We laughed and said yes.

The judge than left the room for a few minutes and came back and read the decree saying we were approved to adopt Tyler and that his birth certificate should now reflect Tyler’s full name and us as the parents. There was no mention of our request for a waiver of the 10 days and we were told that the decree would be official in 10 days which we took to mean that it was not considered or rejected. So, while we can still visit Tyler we will not get custody until Tuesday February 20th. Day one is tomorrow and since day 10 would be Saturday, they don’t count it or Sunday and Monday becomes day 10 . . . which really means that it is a 12 day wait.

We continue to have difficulty with the internet and sporadically get a connection. When we did yesterday we hurriedly posted a blog. We did read a number of the comments and emails but did not have time to respond to everyone. We appreciate all of them and hopefully, we can get the internet solved and get online consistently so we can communicate with everyone for the next three weeks.