Friday the 19th was our day to be in court to petition to adopt Peter. Our court appointment wasn’t until 3:30 pm, so the morning was spent running errands to the notary (our new best friend) and saying a temporary goodbye to Peter. If all at court went well, as we expected it to, we would have a mandatory 10 day waiting period before the court’s decision would be final and we could move forward with the adoption paperwork. We had decided that despite the cost, we both were eager to come home, even if it was for just a few days to see Max.
So the question we were left with was how would we explain to Peter that we were going home to get things ready for him, and that I (Sherri) would be back in just a few days to get him. Ten days is a long time for a 3 year old! So we decided to appeal to his sugar tooth and organized a plan with his caregivers that they would carve out some one on one time each day while we were gone to let him look through the family picture book that we had created for him. We asked them to seal the conversation with a piece of candy reminding him that Mama would be back for him in a few days. Hopefully our plan will work. When Viktoria, our facilitator, sat down with us to try to explain the situation to Peter it was clear he had some level of understanding. His playful smile became serious and quite. Although it was hard to watch at the moment, his response was another good sign - a sign that he wasn’t ready for us to leave him.
Court was brief - only 30 minutes, with 10 of that being translation. The judge left us with a comment of “love him and educate him” - something that sounds so understood in our society, but is not always a given in life. We hopped the 4 ½ hour van ride from Rivne to Kyiv late in the afternoon, and on Saturday morning we caught our flight back to Nashville. Our travel time was about 24 hours from Kyiv to Nashville!
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