Tuesday's Post

It’s Tuesday, the 20th of December, and sunny with blue skies, probably 40 degrees. It’s so nice to know that in two more days, the sun will be shining on a Dannenfelser family of three!

We had our second-to-last visit at the baby house today with Aidan! He was just a little fussy this morning, a little tired, we think. Not quite his usual jovial self, but still happy to see us and still in fine shape to sit in mommy’s lap and play with his Lobby lobster and to bang pieces of puzzle Ernie’s face together. He loves to make noise, however he can. He also, as I’ve said, really loves to watch other babies and other people. He babbles when he hears talking and performs his sucking/laughing act when everyone is laughing. He’s so much fun to watch. He really pays attention to everything around him and takes it all in. We gave him extra kisses goodbye since we won’t see him again until tomorrow morning.

For lunch we went back to the hotel to get ready for our pre-court at 2:00. The traffic on the road was especially heavy today, I suppose because everyone was returning to work after the holiday. I must note that we are continually surprised how many pedestrians are out and about, at all hours of the day. Even though we’ve been told that many people can’t afford cars (which, by the way, is “machine” in Russian), we still understand that most have 9 to 5 work days. So all the foot traffic in Uralsk – men and women, young, middle-aged, and old – throughout the day – begs the question, what is everybody doing? Where is everyone going?

Anyway, back to the day’s events. We just grabbed some granola bars again for lunch and changed into our suits and waited for our driver to pick us up for court. No afternoon visit with Aidan today, which was tough. As far as pre-court, we really weren’t particularly nervous, because we had some idea of what to expect. We arrived at court a few minutes early and waited our turn to meet with the judge. I was a little surprised that the courthouse is very similar to those at home – several courtrooms with lists of the day’s pending cases on bulletin boards out front, a security guard in the lobby, and an assistant similar to a judge’s bailiff. Our pre-court was held in the judge’s chambers, was brief, and gave us a very good idea of what to expect tomorrow. We are continually grateful for everything that Olga and our interpreter (and WPA!) have done throughout this process. We really have the best people here on our side.

We met with Olga and Assia (and Kris and Dan and Ann) afterwards at the hotel to discuss court tomorrow. If all goes well, we’ll be parents by this time tomorrow! The big day has almost arrived!

We’ll see you then!