March 16
“The Meeting”
Today we finally met Julia. I will first describe her as best as I can and then rewind to the events leading up to the moment. She is precious. She has bright blue eyes with long eye lashes. Her skin is fair and her hair looks to be coming in dirty blond. She is small, but looks strong and healthy. She was timid of us, as expected and I don’t think she had ever seen a beard before, so she seemed kind of frightened of that. So, as I write this entry, Ethan is shaving off all his facial hair (yes, I have been asking him to do this for 9 years of marriage, and it took five minutes with his daughter and it is a done deal). We were only able to spend five minutes with her, so there is little else to say besides we feel that God has blessed us in a most unbelievable way by putting this sweet little girl into our lives.
The morning began with the translator coming to pick us up; we then went to the Department of Education where we were interviewed by them. Questions were asked such as “What kind of child are you looking for?”, “What do you do for a living”, “Are you prepared to deal with any health problems the baby may have” and “What about your son Caleb, is he healthy?”. It was laid back and the Minister of Education was very kind. From there we went to the Baby House. It was amazingly clean and nice. Bright colors on the walls, the floor was spotless and the caregivers seem to really love the babies. We waited for about 45 minutes in the hallway. Finally we were asked into Dr. Rimer’s office, the director of the baby house. There she sat with our social worker and two other ladies. No one acknowledged us when we walked in, we sat down in the office and they begin to show us children that we could choose from. First we see this precious little two year old boy, he waved at us and says “paka” which is goodbye in Russian. Ethan leaned over to me and said, “That could be Micah”. Then, another little baby girl was brought in with a seizure disorder and a little girl who had some mental handicaps, but looked to be a bundle of fun.. Then, we waited a good 20 minutes while the ladies who were discussing our case were talking very loudly to each other regarding some of the paperwork in Russian. I started to get a little nervous thinking, “Are they going to send us home without a baby, couldn’t they talked about this before we traveled three days to get here?” Finally, they looked over at us and smiled like it was no big deal they had all been yelling at each other in Russian and in they brought our beautiful baby girl. She had on a sweet little pink dress and sweater with tights with flowers on them. I held her, there in the office with everyone staring at us. She was scared, but seemed to calm a little as I rocked her. Like I said, she was not a big fan of the beard. They then took us into her play area which was a big room with toys, walkers, and play pens. There were about 9 other babies’ ages 6 months to a year. This broke mine and Ethan’s hearts. We just want to scoop them all up and take them home! I know they are being well cared for, but they need families. Funny though, all the little babies were staring at Ethan, like they had never seen such a thing, a man with facial hair. When we walked back into the play area, Julia saw her caretaker and of course began to cry for her. Which is normal and healthy, and it was time for us to go anyway. So there we left her. We will go back to visit every day from 2p to 4p.
Otherwise all is well here. Caleb spent the morning with the girl who is going to be his nanny during the trip while we visit Julia. Her name is Kate. She speaks English and has been a friend of our interpreter for 7 years. Caleb took to her, but apparently had Kate looking all over the hotel to see if she could help him find his dada. We explored the hotel some today and there is a gym with a basket ball hoop. So, I imagine we will be spending many an hour there.
Thanks to all of you for your love and prayers. We feel blessed beyond words and know that the hand of God is upon this adoption of Julia.