Four years ago (yesterday) we crammed into a little court room and requested that a Russian judge please please allow us to be Oliver's parents. I felt calm in my head. I knew we did everything we could. Jumped through every hope in front of us and all that was standing between us and Oliver was this judge. My head was calm, but my heart was week. I answered my questions in a voice I tried so hard to keep from shaking. Over and over again I tried to explain why we were adopting and not having a biological child. After 20 minutes, that felt like an eternity, the whole thing was over. One moment we are not parents, and the next we are...that's just crazy. Well, the judge said yes, so I suppose I was a parent then, but then I had to wait ten days...which was actually more like 13. Thirteen days is a long time to be alone in Siberia and it's a really long time to be told you're a parent, but you don't actually have said child...sigh. I slightly regret not requesting to stay in the town near his orphanage, but I didn't want to rock any boats. I just went along with the plan and made the most of my time in Kemerovo.
Had Oliver not been adopted, this is the year he would have moved from the baby house to the real school aged orphanage and there his odds would have dropped even more. I wonder about those other kids in some of Oliver's orphanage photos, were they adopted by Russians, by others, or have they moved on to the big kid orphanage? Who is loving on them? Keep praying for Russia. The adoption ban is totally lame. There are hundreds of thousands of kids waiting to be adopted and the number is only growing.
