We met our daughter!

After a restful but not quite long enough night of sleep, we woke up bright and early this morning for our appointments.  We had our appointment with the Ministry of Education office first at 8:30.  Since we've already been through this process, we really weren't nervous for this as we knew what to expect.  Val drove us to the appointment and then he stayed in the car while we followed Olga into the building.  This made us a little wary because she speaks no English.  Once we were inside, we met Lena who served as our interpreter for the day.  She was very friendly and helpful.  She told us that she has been interpreting adoption information for families for over 13 years.  The meeting went well. We saw a picture of her when she was a newborn and  Olga was given a form to be completed at the end of the week with either a "yes" we choose to offically adopt this child or "no" we don't.

From there we left to go to the baby home but stopped at the notary on the way for Olga and Lena to take care of something for another client having court tomorrow.  Once we arrived at the baby home we had to stay in the car for a little bit while Olga when in to talk with the director/head doctor.  She came out to tell us that we would need to wait a little longer because the director was still in another meeting but she shouldn't be much longer.  During this wait we were able to speak with Lena who asked us a lot of questions about Pittsburgh and gave us some information about Perm.   Once the director was ready to meet with us, we had a very informative meeting.  She shared with us a lot of information regarding the baby and we were able to ask all of the questions we had.  We left the meeting feeling very informed (not how our meeting with the director of Andrew's orphanage went) and they promised to make us a copy of her daily schedule including what/how much she eats for tomorrow's visit.

 

After we met with the director, we actually had to drive to a separate building to visit the baby.  This orphanage is quite large and is made up of 3 buildings.  Once inside, we were led to a "visitation area" with 2 rooms that are used for prospective parents to visit with the children.  While we waited for them to bring her to us, we saw another family leaving the other room.  We learned that their child (a boy) had just turned 1 and he looked quite healthy (chubby in another word) which was comforting to see. 

They brought the baby to us (around 11:30am) and we had a great visit.  She didn't cry when she was brought to us but seemed a bit skeptical at first.  The doctor we have spoken with at home (who watched her video) said we want her to be that way as it is a good sign if a child of her age isn't overly welcoming of strangers.  After a few minutes she warmed up and let us hold her.  She seemed to take quickly to John (we might have a daddy's girl on our hands like our mama's boy at home).  We placed her belly down on a blanket on the floor with a toy across the blanket.  She lifted herself up and 1/2 crawled, 1/2 scooted herself to get the toy.  She can sit up by herself and when we tried to stand her up she put weight on her feet but needed held onto or she would fall over (all good developmental signs according to our doctor).  We brought some stacking blocks with us and after showing her how they work, she picked up the blocks and tried to stack them herself.  They eventually went into her mouth, as did almost everything else she could get her hands on.  She currently has no teeth, so we took that as a sign that she is possibly working on her first tooth or she was ready for lunch...or most likely both :)  Oh, she is starting to get some hair now but of course that's just a teaser because we aren't sharing the color :)

We were only able to visit with her for about 30 minutes due to us arriving so close to lunch time.  They are pretty strict about keeping the children on schedule.  Her caretaker said that due to her meal/nap schedule, it would probably be best for us to visit her in late afternoon every day.  Once we returned to our hotel (around 1:00pm), we reviewed our notes from meeting with the director and realized that we wrote down her 9 month weight incorrectly (they use grams and we didn't notice our mistake at the meeting).  She weighed a little over 16lbs at 6 months and according to our notes, she is only 9 lbs now - definitely not right!  She is a pretty solid, health looking little girl :)  We will have to get the correct weight tomorrow.

We took advantage of having a free afternoon (without a 3 year old to keep us busy) and took a nap!  Tomorrow Val and Olga aren't picking us up until 3:30 due to their busy day (taking another client to court), so we will be able to sleep a little later than we did today.  We are now off to the mall that is only 200 yards from our hotel to check out the grocery store (to buy some water) and the food court to get some dinner before Skyping with our "baby" at home.