Petition and consent

Here's one good reason (from NPR.org) we are glad to be in Ukraine:

The National Weather Service says the storm could drop up to an inch of freezing rain and issued a blizzard watch for Tuesday and Wednesday for southern Wisconsin, northern Illinois and northwest Indiana. Five- to 10-foot snow drifts are possible, and the weather service said winds could reach up to 60 mph on Tuesday.

I had to get that out there first, though, because the other reason is much better: we have officially begun the adoption process of these three precious girls! In fact, today was one of the best days of my life.

It turns out that not only our notary but all the notaries in the province were out of their office on Friday. We met some Italians that morning, just before we first met our girls, who were there to pick up their child after starting in December and holding their breath over the Christmas break; when they found the notary closed, they actually went to another city looking for another one to get the passport application rolling and could not. The delay may end up making our trip more than 3 days longer because of the alignment of a couple of offices' schedules, but these 4 days of bonding made today's late-afternoon consent process a joyful and relational event for all of us. Considering that adoption is an awesome symbol of our adoption into our heavenly father's family, which happens when we accept him, we are thrilled that our children's acceptance of us was not a "Yes, but will you be there too?" or a dispassionate "Fine" but an immediate, delighted, public embracing of us when given the opportunity.

You probably want me to go back to the beginning. So I will. We met before breakfast and headed to the notary's office in time to get there when it opened. The Italians were already there with their little girl, upbeat but really chafing at the wait, especially when the notary ended up arriving more than half an hour late to unlock the door. She was young, jovial, and kind, though, not your stereotype of a notary (which is really a kind of lawyer), and she got our documents prepared very quickly. We did take a break while she was doing that, though, and had a coffee across the road while Val picked up the kids' birth certificates from the orphanage. We had to sign in a half dozen places, officially documenting our petition to adopt these specific children, and then after breakfast took the documents to the social services office so they could start their process. We already knew they were in meetings until lunchtime, but the arrangement was that in the afternoon we would all meet at the orphange for the consent process; Val was thinking we would not actually have playtime today.

Well, we ended up having a pretty long playtime, and it was great. The jewelry craft had dried and was ready to assemble, so all 5 of us had a good time at the beginning getting bracelets and rings put together and tried on. I had my best talk so far with the oldest girl while we colored, my first big, happy hug from the middle girl (who so far has stuck pretty close to Julie), and one whole matching game with the little girl on my lap (which turned out to be a very successful way to distract her from a balloon game that was starting to get a little too active, a victory in our first of what will be many battles of wills).

It was getting close to 5 and we were wondering if today's main focus was not going to work out after all when Val got a call from social services. We were just finishing the matching game when the chief walked in along with the orphanage lawyer; the orphanage psychologist also came to certify the statements. The chief asked as soon as she walked in if they wanted to be adopted and go to America with us, and the kids all said "Yes" so fast you'd have thought they were afraid of missing their chance if they answered slowly.

The plan had been for the youngest one to verbally consent before a small committee who would formally attest to it, but she spunkily insisted that she wanted to write it herself, which probably saved some hassle. So she strained over the paper, tongue out in concentration, copying out the formal statement with Val and the lawyer prompting her on spelling (including the Cyrillic version of our names). It took long enough for all three to write their consent statements that we had plenty of chance to enjoy the magical moment and get some cute video and pictures. Julie focused on keeping the little girl busy as soon as she was done, dressing her up in Julie's knit cap and scarf and sunglasses.

In case it's not obvious, my heart is already mush. In fact, I told Julie back on Friday night that I was feeling emotions that I hadn't felt since the year that we were dating, basically that here's someone that my life just is incomplete any day that I'm not with them. There have been other kids that we saw needed a family and we felt we could do that for them, but these kids felt from the beginning like they belong with us. I won't speak for Julie ("Yulia" in Ukrainian), but I don't think she could resist getting a crayon drawing today with a bunch of hearts and "____YJulia" and "JuliaY____" from someone calling her "Mama".

Tomorrow, medical histories from the orphanage doctor need to go to social services, who will prepare a new stack of papers to be sent to the SDA in Kiev. And we are now officially in waiting mode, although at least we get to keep visiting every day while we wait.