Our Application To Adopt

Needless to say, we accepted our referral. I wish I could get on a plane now and go back to the orphanage and see him now! To officially move forward, we have to file an application to adopt. We will also need powers of attorney down the road so Mike can come back and work and I can deal with the paperwork and bring Zachary home. This is the point where we HAVE to pick the name. I wanted Mikhail as that is his birthname. Michael wanted Michael. I then thought about Russian tradition (middle name after the father), and we then decided on Zachary Michael. Got our application to adopt filled out and had a courier go get it apostilled (learned about this great courier who can make the trip to Lansing for us and we don't have to take off work or wait in lines). A family was traveling to Moscow yesterday, and should have our application delivered to the Russian coordinators today. Hopefully, it will get filed first of the week. We have been told that there is a possibility we will know our court date by the end of the week. I am SOOOOOOO hoping that this is true. I will feel so much better with a date set in place. Zachary's birthday was Friday (May 12th). I thought about him all day and wished I could have made his 1st birthday special for him. But, we are trying to bring you home Zachary, and will have a 1st birthday with you when we see you. Then, today is Mother's Day. Funny, when we started this whole process I was hoping to be a mom by last December. That did not happen and I have had my heart broken along the way. We hosted a 10 year old boy for 6 weeks and wanted so much to adopt him. I had a bad feeling about the situation because after being in the reaccreditation nightmare, our boy was taken in by a patronat family. This means he was no longer at the orphanage and was placed with a foster-type family. I turned to Zachary as one last ditch effort to make adoption work. After finding out about our DOE appointment, we learned from another host mother that indeed, the patronat situation means he is not adoptable. This would have been devastating to me if I had not turned to Zachary. The phrase everything happens for a reason seems to have deep meaning. We are happy that Anton has found a family. So, hopefully next Mother's Day will finally by my day. So, I will TRY to be patient through the week. But, I'm praying hard for a court date.