We met our son!

Today we had our appointment with the Ministry of Education office. We were a little bit nervous for this meeting because we weren't quite sure what to expect and what, if any, questions they were going to ask us. After sitting in what we can only describe as completely utterly ridiculous traffic (making New York city look like an open freeway), we made it to the appointment and met Natasha (our agency's employee here). She was not what either one of us expected but she was friendly and speaks English (with a very heavy accent though). The meeting went well and we were not asked any questions. We saw a picture of him when he was only 2 1/2 months old and were given very little information on him (less than what we were previously told and nothing recent).

From there we left to go to the baby home. Having Natasha in the car was nice because she pointed out many things to us and gave us several history lessons. Once we arrived at the baby home we thought we were going to meet with the director (who is a medical physician) first and then meet him....BUT, she was busy so they brought him right into us.

It was a wonderful visit. He walked in (with assistance, because his shoes were way too big) and was placed in a big container of plastic balls (a miniature version of one you would see at Chuck E Cheese). We went over to him and he did not seem afraid at all. He did seem a little uncomfortable sitting in the balls so Natasha suggested we take him out. Laurie picked him up and he sat on her lap playing with a ball we brought..actually, more trying to chew on it than play with it. He spent a lot of time looking at John since he is not used to seeing men. He did go to him though and sat on his lap. He liked to feel John's face because it was a little rough and he's not used to that. He played with all of the toys we brought and attempted to put everything in his mouth. We were able to get a couple of smiles out of him and took several pictures. The visit lasted a little less than an hour but it went much better than we ever expected. He was quiet and serious most of the time, taking it all in but didn't cry at all! He seemed as comfortable with us as he could given the circumstances

Once they took him out of the room, the director came in and talked to us. We were able to ask a couple of questions but most of our questions were answered already between either what she had to tell us or by Natasha earlier in the day. We did learn that he is now 17 lbs 12 oz and 28.3 inches tall - so, he hasn't grown very much since our last update in October but he didn't seem overly small to us. They advised us before we left home to bring a sewing tape measure to get a measurement of his feet (so we would know what size shoes to buy) so we are going to measure him tomorrow to check the accuracy on at least the height. We also learned that he already has 8 teeth and by the way he was chewing on everything - more are on the way :)

We get to only visit with him once a day, which is disappointing after originally hearing we would probably get to go twice a day. Tomorrow our driver is picking us up a little early so that we can do some shopping and then we go for visit #2. We are off to get some dinner now as breakfast and lunch consisted of a granola bar and some twizzlers in our hotel room :)