It's official! We are now parents!

Today started off differently than any other day so far. We awoke much earlier than usual in order to be at the notary's office by 9am. We got there a few minutes before 9 am and they weren't open yet. We thought it would be very shortly when they opened the doors....it wasn't until 9:45am! And as you all know...I am not that patient of a person to be waiting that long for no reason! Anyway...we got the needed paperwork....we were working on things for after court, getting ahead of the game never hurt.

We left there and went for our visit with Blue Eyes. We made him play inside today because we were wearing our court clothes and didn't have time to go and change them if he got us dirty. And if we went outside, the child would have gotten us dirty. We gave him the gerber baby yogurt melts for snack for the first time today and he LOVED them! Of course, most kids like anything sweet. We'll have to save some of those for the airplane! We played with the bucket and shovel again today. He kept walking Papa (or Papi as he sometimes calls Left Brain) down the hallway to get more buckets out of the closet. It was cute...he kept saying, one for mama. He wanted me to have a bucket too....even though there was nothing to dig inside! Ha!

After our visit with Blue Eyes we were picked up by Sasha the driver. He took us to the market to get groceries for the time Oksana is away. We plan on cooking more because we aren't able to order in restaurants much. We ate lunch in a little cafe inside the grocery store. I got this vegetable pot pie looking thing that had melted cheese on top. It looked delicious but in fact it was full of eggplants and was the nastiest thing I have had during my stay here. YUCK! Oksana said she usually likes those, but it was a horrible recipe. Left Brain had a sandwich that was a chicken sub. He liked it ok. We left there and took our groceries back to the apartment really quick before heading to Ochacov for court.

Court was at 2pm and we had to wait a few minutes for the judge and the two jurors to arrive. Even though Oksana was translating most things for us...we still didn't know much about what was going on. Oksana told us that this judge didn't do these kinds of things much and was reading straight from the paperwork. It lasted until about 3:30pm. The judge asked us what we had for the boys...like a house, clothes, room to play outside, etc. She also asked us why we wanted to adopt from Ukraine and how did we end up adopting period. Also, what did we want. This one was one that we rehearsed with Oksana because it was an odd question. We had to say that we wanted to be their parents, adopt them, change their names to Max and Miles, get new birth certificates...but not change their birth dates or birthplaces on the certificates. It was a mouthful but we managed! The orphanage director, prosecutors office, inspectors office all had to say that they didn't object to this adoption. Thank goodness no one had objections because no family member or Ukrainian citizen had visited either of our boys. This helped us out alot! Court recessed at around 3:30pm for the judge and jurors to make a decision on our approval or denial. There were a few mistakes in some paperwork on Blue Eyes...this birth year was 2009, which was wrong. The judge let us go on with court and fix that stuff later...thank goodness! Whew! They went ahead and gave us the court decree dated today which they didn't have to because of the mistakes. This was GREAT because prolonging the court decree would have pushed back the ten days to more than ten. The judge and jurors came back around 4:45pm and gave us all that we requested! We are parents of Mr. GQ and Blue Eyes! Everything will be legal after the 10 days but Oksana says nothing will happen to hinder the process during that time. We are parents! Whoo-hoo!

We visited GQ after court and he was in a good mood again today....it didn't hurt that we brought him a Batman figure. We were only able to play with him for 30 minutes because we were late due to court. We made the most of our time playing outside with the new Batman figure.

Around 5:15pm we headed back to Nikolaev for our celebratory supper. Sasha recommended an Italian restaurant that turned out to be really nice. It was absolutely DELICIOUS!! I had a four cheese penne pasta dish and Left Brain had a steak. It was the best meal we have eaten since being here....we are still stuffed! Now we are back at the apartment....waiting to introduce you to our children. Without anymore waiting....here they are....

Introducing...

Mr. GQ

Birthdate: May 9, 2004

5 years old

And....

Blue Eyes

Birthdate: August 3, 2006

3 years old

This is the building we had court in

These are the proud parents right after court! YAY! We have two boys now!

Left Brain and I ate dinner at an Itailian Restaurant to celebrate our adoption

This is our translator Oksana...she has made everything possible so far. YAY for Oksana! We are so grateful for her!