Should I stay or should I go......

Update/Schedule

Today Monday, September 24th is day 10 of our mandatory two week bonding period.

We have a confirmed court date for Wednesday October 3^rd at 3pm. The judge will give her decision by the end of that day. We are reasonably confident that we will have no issues to get in the way of this process and our petition to adopt Veronika will be granted by the court.

Once the court date has passed there will be a two week notice period and then approximately two more weeks for paperwork and Veronika’s final papers and passport will be complete for her to leave Arkalyk, Kazakhstan. After the notice period her adoption will be final and she can leave the orphanage for good and stay here in the apartment with us. After these four weeks pass we will then go to Almaty to the American Embassy for medical clearance and review before being able to depart the country. So we are thinking it is early November at this point.

Many families leave after the court date and come back to Almaty a month later to go through the embassy procedures with their child. Meanwhile the child stays in the orphanage in Arkalyk the whole time you’re gone and arrangements are made to have the child escorted to meet you in Almaty. Doing it this way would mean that one or both of us can go home and spend time with Aidan while the paperwork is processed.

We’re weighing the ability to break up the time away from Aidan and the fact that Veronika has only known the orphanage so she will continue to be with all the people she knows already vs. the ability to let her leave that life as soon as possible and get some solid, 24/7 bonding time in during some or most of the 3-4 weeks we’ll need to wait out until we can finally leave Arkalyk and begin to head home.

This is the decision of the day – Is Tom going to Almaty after court to work out of an office there, will he head back to New York and then meet us in Almaty? Shall I stay or will I go….

Stay tuned for our decision in the next day or so.