Ten Days and Counting

It was a successful morning for us in a Moscow Region courtroom. After fifty minutes before the judge and prosecutor, we were read the court's decision on our petition to adopt Andrik, and it was the words we were hoping to hear; "The petition is granted." The hearing was even easier than the first time since we knew what to expect and the questions from the judge weren't anything difficult or unexpected.

We were allowed to have Artem in the courtroom with us during the hearing and his behavior was excellent! He sat quietly as still as a three year old can sit during a boring court proceeding in a foreign language, but afterwards the prosecutor, our translator, and the baby home social worker kept telling us over and over how they could not believe how well behaved he was. Our translator told us that Russian children would "never behave so well" and that children are "practically forbidden" during the hearing. We were very proud of him. He sat on a bench behind us and at one point during the trial I could see the prosecutor looking at him smiling and laughing and I turned around to see him only to discover he had untucked his shirt and completely unzipped his tie. Despite that and a few announcements that he had just drawn a dog for us in his writing tablet, we couldn't have asked for better behavior.

Now we begin our ten day wait and anticipate getting Andrik from the baby home late in the afternoon on Friday the 17th.