We are Three

Today it happened.
Today we became a family. After all the craziness and the ups and downs, it’s happened. Sultan is officially John Sultan Whitney Loucks.
Court happened at 10:30, right as scheduled. Marie and Tomas went first, at 10, and when they came out, and their 2 week waiting period was waived, we knew there was really a chance. The court lasted for about 20 minutes or so. Susan thought it went relatively fast, Kyle, waiting outside, thought it went impossibly slowly. The judge asked all the basic questions- why do you want to adopt, what is your name, who will care for the child, etc., the woman from the baby house read the medical report (intending to make his physical health- which is great- appear dire and in need of immediate attention), the social worker read something. The prosecutor did his job suggesting that the waiting period be enforced. However, the judge ultimately granted the adoption, and then waived the 2 week waiting period. Susan cried and we both continue to be amazed and really calmly happy.
The rest of the afternoon was taken up with rushing around filling out paperwork in one location and more paperwork in another, picking up the new birth certificate, and Sultan’s official adoption certificate. Later, the whole group (all three couples, and the the team came over to our apartment where we got our final bits of information- briefly, it looks like we’ll head to Almaty Friday, and if everything falls into place, we’ll be free to leave for home by Wednesday night. All our possible flights are in the am, so we’ll research whether our KLM flight flies on Thursday. Another scenario is that we leave on the 13th as originally scheduled. This would get us into Logan on the 13th as well. We are so happy and relieved to have come this far. All the credit goes to our team of Nadia, Igor and Almira, who really hustled and worked very hard.
We won’t pick up Sultan until tomorrow and we are missing him. We didn’t see him yesterday either so we’re jonesing. Tomorrow we’ll go to the baby house one last time to get him. We’ll bring some treats for the kids and the nannies.
Tonight is a perfect ending to a monumentous day. We just made dinner for the other couple, so that we could all be together- and so they could do their laundry- and it was great. It’s fun seeing how creative you can be with meals when the shopping is so different and when you know we only have the fridge another day or so. Anyways, everyone is watching a DVD together, and then we’ll walk Andrew and Alaina halfway home.
Tomorrow we head to the baby house around 2, they think, and then we begin our life as a family. Any suggestions on what to do next? What do 3 years olds eat? What do they do? What should we do? Actually, I’m mostly kidding. We can’t wait to be in his circle of energy again. We’re going to have a ball!
They are unsure of where we’ll stay when we get to Almaty. Right now there’s a big oil conference going on there and all the hotels and short-term apartments are booked. It should all clear out by the time we get there Friday, but it’s anybody’s guess, right now, where we’ll end up. They are hoping for three separate apartments near one another, which we all agree would be great.
So, if you have a pre-blog life to get back to… you can. We’ll keep posting, or at least we plan to, but the moment we all have been waiting for is just around the corner. The adoption is complete, the waiting period is waived, tomorrow Sultan comes to live with us and we start to function as a family.
We’ll keep you all posted.
Much love and thanks to everyone for your continuous… everything: prayers, notes of support, good vibes, phone calls, advice, blog comments,…all of it.
We really, really appreciate it, more than you’ll ever know.
Until we blog again…
Oh yeah, one last thing… well, two.
You are going to LOVE Sultan. Really. He is a pistol.
And lastly,
YAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!