Thursday, October 20^th 2011

3 AM- Couldn’t sleep so I decided to work for a few hours. This is 6PM at home so I was able to return some phone calls and Christy awoke too so we even got to talk with our boys. The gym opens a 6AM here so I decided that I would try to work off some of this good food.

9 AM – I still wasn’t adventurous enough to try the raw meat or fish at our daily breakfast buffet (Picture below). We did meet another couple going through an adoption at the same agency there. It was sure nice to find people that speak our language to talk about adoption.

10 AM – Yuri & Irene pick us up and we head for the baby home. I still can’t believe the traffic here. You don’t see any large vehicles and all of the small ones are inches apart. We accelerate to 60 and back to 0 in a block. Horns are always honking and lots of shouting. People here don’t even move out of the way for ambulances.

11:30 AM - At the baby home we got to spend our last two hours with baby “A”.

She is getting more comfortable with us each day, giving more smiles and giggles. We even found her ticklish spots today and were rewarded with the sweetest laughter. She has really enjoyed all the toys Christy brought for her and spent a lot of time playing with them and impressing us with her development. Christy also got the chance to photograph where baby “A” usually plays and were she sleeps. Christy was really impressed with how clean everything was and the effort that has been made to create a cheerful environment. There was a table and chairs where the children eat. (No high chairs). There is a play pen the size of Queen Size bed that all of the babies can play in together. They also have a ball pit (Picture below) and a big rug with toys on it. She talked with the speech therapist who visits the baby home to do therapy and got the feeling that all the workers really care for the children. At the end of a quick two hours we had to say good bye to our little girl and we both had tears in our eyes knowing that it could be months till we see her again.

5:30 PM  - It took us 2 hours 45 minutes to go the 40 miles from the baby home to our motel. Apparently, the president is in town and the police block off a large part of the roads leading to downtown for security purposes. I worked for a couple hours and then we got ready to go out.

8PM - We met up with the couple that we had met that morning who are from Connecticut at Mi Piazze Italian restaurant. They were really nice and he is a world traveler with his business. He thought we were silly for not venturing out much past our block and the business district. They have already adopted a boy from Kazakhstan which required they reside there for 10 weeks straight. This certainly made our adoption seem much easier.