We have turned in our request for Court!

Today, we were able to turn in our court papers. This means that on Thursday, we will be told our court date. It seems that we will have court on Monday. It is possible we will get Thursday or Friday. We are thinking Monday. It was anti-climatic. We walk in a room, hand over our passports, they look through our encyclopedia (dossier with translations) and then we walked out. It took 3 minutes tops.

Next we visited with our son, Maksim. We had a talk with him this morning about the court date, the adoption, the law of Kazakhstan and apples. Lena translated and of course he probably did not really understand what we were trying to say. But we wanted him to hear that we are doing the best we can to be able to not say goodbye anymore.

After our talk, we ate an apple - Maksim's absolute favorite and snuggled. Maksim was very loving and kept hugging and kissing Momma and Papa. I love you so muches all around. Then Momma and Papa had a surprise for Maksim. We brought Little Leap Lagooshka. It is a Leap Pad brand talking frog that teaches about the alphabet. He loved it. Hugged LittleLeap. Kissed LittleLeap. Carried LittleLeap around. And pushed the buttons like DJ Jazzy Jeff. "M says M says M says O says ooohhh M says M says C C O O says oohhh." It was pretty funny. Momma predicted the noise we'd hear.

Some of the children came in from their walk and we shared (tried hard to share) Little Leap. One of the caregivers took the froggy into the room and let the children play. Maksim made a grunt grunt I want want noise. I told him over and over that we will share Little Leap. It worked out okay and all the children loved to push the buttons and listen to the music. When it was time to go, Maksim cried. Momma hugged him and let him cry. One of the caregivers came in and told him not to cry. What! Let my son cry and be snuggled!! Don't tell him not to cry. This is part of our bonding. Once they asked him to stop, he immediately jumped down and tried to leave us. Arrgghh! I know that they are trying to help the children. But I am trying to help my son, too. I think that his crying about his toys and us leaving is just fine, thank you. Oh well.

We came home for lunch and Momma and Papa had a nap. :)

The afternoon was just as fun. We played with Little Leap and ate crackers. Papa brought Maksim some roasted sunflower seeds to try. He really liked them and tried to open them, too. A budding seeder. Papa was so proud. He drank a little water, we played with Plastini (playdough) and Little Leap some more. We cut our visit short because we were having dinner with a large group of adoptive parents. Again Maksim was very upset when we left. This time, no one interrupted and Momma held Papa and Maksim while we dealt with the impending
separation. Maksim really belted out some sobs. Papa says he milked it - but we were very happy about that. At the end, Momma was covered with Papa and Maksims tears. When Maksim sat up, he wiped off my sweater and chest from all of the snot and we laughed. Then Momma tried to find some tissue to blow Maksim's nose. All she could find was her fancy (and very nice on the nose) scarf. Blow!!! Momma loves Maksim's buggers. :) Really.

Dinner with everyone was great! It was nice to be out for some conversation. We were at the opposite end of the table from the Gaines family so we did not get to talk to them too much. :( We did sit next to the couple from South Africa. We feel that they are kindred spirits. :) They get to leave Ust with their son, Michael on Thursday! How wonderful! We are excited for them.

Another fantastic day in Kazakhstan. We feel very blessed.