Days of Elijah Picture Catch-up & Court & Today

I guess I haven't posted any new pictures in a few days, so I'd better get on that! I have more to say at the bottom, but enjoy these first. :-)

Having fun wearing Daddy's gloves

Exploring nature - I had a hard time keeping him off the ground while picking this up though. He is going to have a blast next spring/summer playing outside.

Ok, this was a different visit from above. Do you notice the clothes are the same? Do you notice the background in this photo? Yes - we were inside. The playroom has windows all along one side. Granted it is a little cooler in there, but the nannies didn't want him to get cold. :-)



Yes...same visit...Pat is very comfortable in a t-shirt...

Signing Mama on Pat's face - so much better than pushing us away :-)

His version of Papa on Pat. :-) By the way, a couple times today (Sunday), he signed Papa and walked to the door to look for him. Great that he gets it! Sad he's gone home - for both of us. :-(

First time on the round swing

Tuckered out and hangin' w/ Papa

Different visit - same snowsuit. :-) He is really starting to enjoy the photo album more and more.

Last night, one of the nannies had brought in treats for the boys. Elijah is eating his cracker. Ummm...not I'm not sure how strict is gluten-free diet is. LOL I'll post a picture or two of his "tablemates" after I have the court decree in hand. But really, I can't help it if some other kids happen to be in the photo, can I?

This morning - notice is clothes? He looks like a boy today! YAY! :-) He discovered how to open up a zipper on my bag that has the hand wipes and hand santizer in it. Smart lil' fellow...

This morning we were sent to the cool playroom again. He kept this hat on for about 10 milliseconds. Glad the one Sarah made for him ties on.
 I got to play with the other boys last night too. Have I mentioned lately what a lil' honey Shea is? Yep, I thought so. :-) This morning he scooted over to me as soon as I came in and ask for the "machina" (which is car in Russian). I gave him one to play with and he gave it back at the end of our visit.

Here's a few videos from the past few days. LOVE this boy!!!

We really had a lot of fun last night. One of the nannies had turned on the TV and turned up the music (Russian equivalent of Brittany Spears...). The nannies were trying to get the boys to dance. It was very cute. Elijah was dancing a bit more than this, but of course, like all kids, won't do it for the camera.

Improvising in the orphanage

Ok, I wanted to tell you about our court date. This is mostly for the RR families coming here soon, but feel free to read even if you aren't one of those lucky families. :-) So, Friday, we went to our visit as usual. Yulia, our facilitator called us about 12:15 and told us to be ready at 1pm to be picked up by the driver. It was a very rainy morning, and we bought an umbrella at the market on the way home. By the time the driver came, it had turned to snow. We got to the court house about 1:15 or so. (It took 15 min to get there and only 5 to get home...Pat said it was b/c of one-way roads and traffic. Glad he's got it figured out, 'cuz I never will.) We sat and waited and did some people watching. The booking for the jail was in the same hallway as we were waiting, so we saw a couple guys come by in handcuffs. That is GREAT people watching. :-) Anyway, our appt was at 2pm and finally at 2:30 or so we went in. Note to other RR families. If you have the same judge, there is a 2 inch step down into her office. You might want to look for it and not stumble like I did! LOL

So, we are in the judge's office for court, not a court room. It's a fairly large office, and the Social worker that we met the first day, the orphanage lawyer, the prosecutor and one other person I think we're all sitting around the front of her desk. We sat in a back corner on benches w/ Yulia translating for us. The judge read all the formal stuff, we gave her our passports, asked us our names, DOB, what we do for a living, etc. The SW and orphanage lawyer told about the child and we learned some new things about his parents we didn't know before.  Yulia is amazing to translate all this while they keep talking. They didn't pause for translation. They asked Pat how much money he makes, a description of our home, how many bedrooms (which since we only have 3 makes for an interesting explanation), will he have his own room (no), easy stuff like that. She also asked why we would want a child "like this" when we have 5 healthy biological children. She asked me who takes care of all the housework, cooking, cleaning, etc with 5 children. I said "Myself and 4 oldest children." :-) It was funny as she asked if we had a washing machine. I said yes AND a dryer too. :-) (They don't have dryers here.)  Most of these questions the SW had already asked us the first day. Oh, we showed her our photo album too. The only thing she asked that caught us a bit off guard was to see photos of us with Elijah. Of course, we didn't have any printed, so we just let her scroll through the camera. I had a couple of goofy photos on there while trying to get pictures of signs out the bus window, but I guess she didn't care!  LOL I think that was pretty much it. Pat had to state our petition to the court, which Yulia had prepped him on beforehand.

We then stepped outside and waited while she decided the case. I wasn't too worried about it at this point as I thought it had gone pretty smoothly. They called us back in, read some legal stuff, and then said, "Congratulations, you are parents again."  Yippeee!!!!  Praise the Lord, great things He hath done! :-)  I'll let you guess if I started crying or not...by the way, I wasn't the only one.

So, we went back out to our bench in the hallway, watched another guy in handcuffs come by, and waited for Yulia to check over the court decree to be sure there were no errors in it. That way when Marina comes back to help us finish up, she can just grab it and start on our paperchasing day. Woohoo!

Tonight, I attended church again. It was very nice to have a different thing to do. A missionary from a different area for Ukraine preached (in Russian), so I sat in back w/ a young lady that translated for me. I got the gist of it. Then, the pastor and his wife took me out to eat at the Moscow Hotel. It was very, very nice. At Judy's recommendation, I had a Casear's salad and some pasta dish with chicken and shrimp in it. Yum!!! Then, they brought me back home and I was able to give them all of the Christmas gifts I brought over for the kids in the church. It is so wonderful to be able to give and bless others, as SO many have given SO generously to us to get us here to bring Elijah home.

Well, thanks so much if you actually read this far! It is about 12:50pm at home and according to the Lufthansa webpage, Pat's flight arrived about 15 minutes ago in O'Hare! But, I guess they have a bit more snow there than here and it looks like his flight to ATW has been cancelled. :-(  But at least he is in the right country, not stranded in Iceland or something, and is within driving distance if it comes to that. Please pray for his safe return home.