Tuesday, March 20, 2007 - GOTCHA DAY!

Court is this morning at 10am. We are first up out of the 3 couples. I get up early so I can get ready and also pack our diaper bag. We are supposed to go to the baby home after court to be able to pick up Brooke and finally break her free. We leave for the court house a little after 9am. We hit the court house and walk upstairs. We are pretty on time when it starts. There is a total of 8 of us in there which consists of Steve and I, the translator Anfisa, the court recorder (who by the way in writing everything down on a piece of paper!), the judge (who is a man, very uncommon in Russia as I hear), the prosecutor and a rep from each baby home. We are in there for a little over an hour. It was actually pretty boring. The judge went through our dossier reading every document, reading us our rights, blah blah blah. All the same questions we were prepared for. Nothing was a surprise. Although us being in there that long was a surprise. I thought we'd be done in 30 minutes. With us running behind, I knew the others would be late as well. After everyone has said their peace, the judge leaves to go and make his decision. Right before he left, he asked Steve and I if we had anything else to say. He stood us up one at a time. Me being the idiot almost started to cry. I told him what a gift he was giving us. He said something back in Russian and everyone laughed with the exception of Steve and I as we didn't understand. I actually asked, OK everyone is laughing, what gives. Anfisa told me that the judge stated that he hadn't made his decision yet. OK, get me on a technicality! He leaves and it back in 10 minutes. We are able to walk out for a minute and get some cooler air. The court room was getting a bit warm. Ann and Dave are outside and greet us. They figure we are done. We tell them we have to wait a little bit more. The judge comes back and again reads a long big schpiel. Let's just get to the verdict. He finally gives it and we are DONE! The kids are ours and the 10 days is waived. We come out and now John and Christina have arrived. We all hug and fill them in on what will happen.

The bad part of this day is that we wait for the other couples to finish court before we can go get our baby girl. I ask Andrei when we can go and he says 2pm. EEKS! I am dying here. He says we have to wait for the court documents which are the "short" version. The official ones will be ready tomorrow. As we are waiting, we are trying to fihd out more info. We still don't know yet when we are leaving out of Orenburg and we have also heard that not all of the children will be coming from Orsk. We have heard that only 2 will be coming. They tell us because there is only one nurse, they can only bring 2 babies. Well, then get another nurse and car for Christ Sake!!! We get some of the answers and find out that we won't get Kyle until Wednesday but the time is still up in the air. Like I stated before, we are on a need to know basis and we just don't need to know anything. This is really just getting annoying. Can't SOMEONE just tell us how things are going to go.

After standing around the court house literally all day, we take off for some unknown destination. We find out that we are going to some other office building to do some paperwork ane then from there, we will be off to another building. I am really starting to get tired and I have to have my "A" game on when we pick up Brooke. While we are waiting for our paperwork, I sit in this chair and close my eyes. Andrei walks in and I ask Anfisa where Ann and Dave are. She tells us that Andrei has power of attorney for them so they don't have to be there. I look a little dumbfounded as we also had that. You know, it was one of 100 documents that we had to have notarized, authenticated and apostilled, sent to Russia to be translated, etc. Anyhow, we finally have the documents and can hit the road. I ask Andrei again, when we can go to the baby home. He now says 4pm. Good god. We had court at 10am. Like I said, we finally leave and head to the baby home. I have my change of clothes for her and her snowsuit. We again walk through the doors at the orphanage and go to the same room we have gone to the last few times. A worker comes in and wants the clothes she is going to be changed into along with a diaper. I hand them over and about less than 5 minutes later, Brooke comes through the door in her new clothes. They hand her over to me and of course, she starts to cry again. I feel so bad that we scare her and everything is just going crazy for her. Anfisa tells us that we will go and she will go through her schedule with us at the apartment. We quickly get her dressed in her snowsuit which is about 10 times to big but we make it work and we head out to the car. It's about a 20-25 minutes drive and she has finally calmed down a bit but is in a little bit of shock. We take her upstairs once we get there and get the snowsuit off. We set her on the floor and let her play with some toys that we have brought for her. Little by little we try to get close to her but it makes her cry. This is just breaking my heart. yena that morning had set up both playpen beds for the kids. We put her in oce of them and she really seems to like it in there. i am sure it is something she is very used to. Again, every time we get close to the crib thing, she starts to cry. We just sit in there and watch her.

We sit down and eat with the host family again and Andrei and Anfisa show up. At this point, this is not a good thing to see them walk through the door. I let Steve deal with it as I want to be with Brooke. he is trying to nail down this blood test that she had to have and if we really need it in order to get to the Embassy. Trying to get a straight answer out of him is like trying to nail jello to the wall. I hear Steve asking if he is 100% sure that if we get this blood test done that we will not have a problem at the embassy. Again, no straight answer. Whatever. i just have to hope at this point that we have heard from our agency and they said it was a go so I am going to put my faith and trust in them. Toward the end of the conversation, I walk over to the crib and Brooke allows me to pick her up. YEAH! It's the little things in life. Andrei and Anfisa leave and it's about 9pm. We get Brooke fed and put down for the night. She goes down pretty easily without much of a fight. We decide to go to bed as well as we don't know what the night will bring. What a hell of a last couple of days. I will really be ready when this is over and we are back home again. I like the host family house that we are staying in but it is HOT HOT HOT. I needed to have shorts and a tank top. They have radiators throughout the house and they can not control them. I read somewhere once that they are turned on in October and turned off at the end of March. Even the family has shorts that they walk around in. Oh well, we are making due! Key words here is ADAPT!

That is it for our Tuesday. We have our daughter and that is all that matters to me and yesterday can go down as a nightmare that we will put behind us.