Another Milestone

In the adoption process, there are milestones. You learn not to count time, because that gets too depressing. You count milestones: the paperchase (getting together a crazy amount of paperwork to document all aspects of your life), getting in your dossier (getting that paperwork notarized, apostilled or state certified and filed with the foreign consulate from where you are adopting), getting on a list and having some sort of idea how many families are in front of you, being close to next, being next, getting your date to leave, applying and receiving your visas to travel, meeting your child for the first time, completing the official bonding period, getting your pre-court date. These are the milestones that Larry and I have been through in the past few years.

After finding out that our pre-court date is this Friday, the next big milestone was a meeting between Adam's biological mother and the judge. What this meant was that our interpreter, Olesya, and our driver, Andre, went out to a remote village yesterday near the boarder of Russia to get Adam's biological mother and bring her to court. She came and was asked by the judge whether she still wished to give up her rights to Adam. She had already signed paperwork saying so before he was placed on a registry which makes him ultimately eligible for adoption. But part of the process here is that the biological family is asked againd during the adoption process. If she were to say that she didn't want to give up her rights, it would be an uphill battle for her and would ultimately be up to the judge to decide. This time, however, she said that she still wished for him to be adopted by the family that has been visiting with him for the past few weeks. This is a huge milestone for us and we believe that everything should be smooth from here on in.

We haven't taken many pictures of Adam in the past few days. I started getting sick yesterday and didn't visit with him today because the last thing we want is for him to get sick again and end up in the infirmary. So, Larry went alone. Adam was fussy for much of the time, so photos weren't in the cards. He still has an ear infection. This may very well be because he's teething. Nothing to take a picture of yet, but we believe that one tooth is about to break ground. We hope to see it while we are here. We hope to post some more photos tomorrow or Thursday.

On a final note, it finally got really cold. The high will not get above 20 for the rest of the time we are here. This is what we expected the weather to be like for the entire time we were here. We have been very lucky but our luck with the weather has finally run out. Now, it's just COLD.