Court Follies - Moscow Trip 2, Day 3B

I've been trying to think of a catchy way to start this blog. Something other than the normal picture or "we're parents!" announcement, but I think the court hearing has just exhausted the brain! You're just going to have to settle for...

A picture...

And an announcement...

WE'RE THE PEANUT'S PARENTS! WOOOHOOOO!!

Honestly, it just doesn't feel real! I suppose in 10 days it will feel REALLY real. On July 9th, we get to pick up our little boy (how cool does that sound??)

So here's how it all went...

We were picked up at about 8:20 and arrived at the Moscow Region Courthouse around 8:45. Can you imagine no traffic in Moscow?? Well, we experienced it! Our translator probably said everyone was still sleeping after watching the soccer match and partying last night. Our court time was a 10:00 so we sat in the car for a while and then headed in side around 9:00.

We went through the passport check and then through security and headed up to the 5th floor. It's a new building and was very nice - very sterile looking. We tried to find out what room we would be in but they didn't have our name on the agenda. That made me a bit nervous but our translator seemed to be okay with it. Around 9:30 the Social Worker for our orphanage came over. We hadn't met her prior to today. She looked at the pictures we brought and commented on what a happy guy we had and how it appears he has taken a liking to us.

At about 9:45 the other couple from our agency that had court next arrived as did S, the head of the Russian part of our agency. We were called into the courtroom around 10:15 and then waited until about 10:30 for the judge to come in. She took the remaining documents we had submitted as well as our passports. We introduced ourselves and then she spoke briefly with the social worker.

After a few minutes, we were asked who would like to speak and so I stood up. What did I say? I absolutely have no clue. Something about loving this child, being prepared to parent him, how we have a loving home, etc... I honestly am not convinced she was even listening. I continued to stand while she asked questions about Alex. Do we have a good relationship? Why does he live with us? When did he come to live with us? Is he accepting of the child? And then I sat.

She asked to look at pictures and commented on how the Peanut was laughing in all of them. She passed them to the Prosecutor who said something about how our house is on sticks. Sticks? Huh?? The way our property is graded, the front porch is stilted (otherwise it would be crooked). Apparently, they thought we had a house on sticks. Too funny.

The social worker was asked to give the Peanut's history. She got into the foster care situation and the judge voiced her opinion about the broken system. It turns out (sit down to hear this...) the family made 150,000 rubles for having our child in her home for 5 months. That's just about $7,000. The judge and social worker talked for what seemed like forever about the flawed system and how it was unfair to do that to a child, etc, etc... It was quite interesting. Keith was asked if he agreed with everything I said and he said yes. I don't know why I volunteered to do the speech - he got off easy.

After that, she started going through our documents. This is where the real fun began. She came up to our Warranty Deed and read through it. She said she did not have a document saying we owned a house. We explained that the deed is the document showing that. She argued that no, the deed only shows the property. Being that this was my second dossier, I couldn't remember which document she was talking about. She was looking for a document that said our house is X sq ft with X number of rooms. The warranty deed only says we own property which contains one unit. We said that the homestudy contains specifics about the house and she said it still doesn't prove we own a house.

She explained to our translator that just because we own land, doesn't mean we own a house. She said that we could be living in a tent on our property. Ummmm... do I look like the tent living kind?? I've camped once in my life and it was for less than 24 hours in the Florida Keys and there were snails falling out of the tree on top of the tent. No thank you.

Long story short, she was not a happy camper. Keith and I were whispering about how we could call our neighbor and have them go get our deed or the tax commissioner's letter (that I needed for our first agency). Keep in mind, it's 3:00 am at home. The social worker ends up going to get S to have her come in and explain. S brings the document over to us and plain as day it says "So and So owns this piece of property and Unit One in such and such subdivision". So we explained that and what do you think happened? The judge said it doesn't prove we own a house. Oyyyyyyyyyyy.... Svetlana convinced her to continue without it and she did.

She left to deliberate and then came back in about 5 minutes later (11:35) and announced us as the parents of the Peanut!

We walked out of there in a complete fog. Like Lea said (Lea and John had court today too - right after us) - you feel like you just got done taking the SAT or a big test - just completely burned out. From there we went to McDonald's for lunch, to the CSS office to pick up someone and then to the Notary to sign power of attorney over to our translator. Keith is now sound asleep and I'm blogging. Trying to stay away so I can sleep past 3 in the morning. :-)

Tonight we're going to dinner with a group of people. We're trying to work out the logistics for that but hope everyone is able to join us! Tomorrow we're going to try to sleep a bit late (we wake up at 5 each day. It stays light until about 11 pm and gets light around 4/4:30 am) and then we'll go exploring and on Sunday Mandy and Alex get here! YAY!

Oh, as a side note, we're staying at the Marriott right now using points. I'm only a silver elite member so we don't get the concierge floor or anything fancy. We stopped in the bar last night to have a beer. 1 beer each. The total? $40. I kid you not. 1 cup of coffee and 1 Pepsi light this morning? About $15. We can't wait to get to an apartment and start cooking!

Have a great day!

One very happy new Mama!