Pre-court Day

Today we will have a morning visit. Pre-court is at 2 and we’ll go in series.
Yesterday we had normal visiting times. Our coordinator, Nadya, arrived during the second visit. She is the woman who met us at the airport in Almaty two weeks ago. She, with her daughter , whose English is good, will be our coordinator and her daughter our driver/translator in Almaty. We haven’t seen Nadya since that very first meeting, so was good to have her back on the case. Nadya sat in on the visit with Sultan and Susan asked her what she thought of the grandmother situation and she said that she thought it was going to be alright, but that if the grandmother came back, we would have no choice. She described the grandmother as “Bad woman, veddy bad woman.”
After the visit all we came back to the apartment, Nadya, Almira, Igor, Susan and I to go over business things, most specifically money. Tomas was making dinner, paprikash, a Hungarian beef stew, and the apt. smelled great. Marie and I served tea. We felt like we got points just for being good hosts. (Odd how you see every little nuance as being a pint for you or against you.) The first order of business was to review the gifts we had brought. It can’t be stressed enough in our paperwork that we have waded thru in this process that THESE GIFTS ARE NOT BRIBES. These gifts are NOT bribes. SO we need to say it again? These gifts are in NO WAY bribes. So there is absolutely no confusion here about the purpose of the gifts. Anyways, Susan showed them the gifts we brought for the women who work at the baby house. There was conflicting info about what to bring; silk scarves vs beauty products. Susan spent an inordinate amount of time and energy on these items and was relieved and thrilled when they were praised highly. Thanks go out to Caroline one of Susan’s online acquaintances who steered her away from the recommendation of fashion scarves and wallets… (they sound like Mother’s Day and Father’s Day gifts! Really. How many scarves and wallets does a person really need?) … and grooved her into the really appreciated gift: cosmetics and perfumes. Anyways, the plethora of Burt’s Bees kits, calendars from the Cape, assorted nail polishes, lipsticks and little makeup bags hit the right not and Nadiya’s announcement, as “Veddy nice. Veddy nice.” Nearly made the whole adoption nightmare worth it.
Then into the kitchen for the private conference about money. We paid Nadia our per diem expenses for the first 15 days. She asked for the big cash lump sum payment and Susan asked if we could make that after we got custody of Sultan, feeling like no tickey, no laundry. Nadya agreed.
Speaking of Sultan, he was kind of bratty this afternoon, just when we wished he would behave. He was into everyone’s stuff, tossing toys and squealing. Not so cute, but he has been a little too perfect. I think he is getting bored. I know we are. The visits follow their own routine; go thru the packs, pull out the favorite toys, phone adaptor, calculator, cell phone, put them in the lego truck, zoom around the room until bored, play with the box of toys Tomas and Marie gave him, jump on the lid of the box until it comes off, get Susan to fix it, off, fix it, off, fix it, off. His new trick is playing with the key to the room we’re in. He needs help getting the key in and likes to turn it with the door open so he can see the way the latch works.
Dinner was great; paprikash, rye bread, salad. We had a good talk about parenting, sharing ours hopes and fears We’ll cook tonight; roast veggies and chicken. We’ll have the other couple, Alaina and Andrew, over for dinner and laundry in a few days. Their apartment doesn’t have a washing machine.
We had more fun exploring the market. I could spend the day there just people watching. The people here are such a mixture of European, Slavic and Asian groups and the combination can be exotic and striking. Hardly anyone speaks English, so communication is difficult, but they don’t have a lot of attitude.
Yesterday in traffic we were next to a car driven by a guy in his twenties with his mom in the front and his sisters in the back. He turned up the tunes and started bobbing his head forcefully and his sister pulled his hair. We were watching all this and when they realized we were, they laughed and we laughed. Flashes of gold from their teeth. One last point in our favor was seeing the social worker at the market (speaking of gold teeth- her most distinguishing feature), and warmly greeting each other. We felt that had to count for another point in our favor.
So wish us luck this afternoon. Full report tomorrow!
Much love,
S & K