Day 2: The Big Reveal

We had our DAP meeting Tuesday morning and it went very smoothly.  Very quick.  They gave us baby pictures of Charlie in exchange for a picture we brought so now I have a few pictures of him as an infant and toddler.  Such cute, chubby cheeks!

We met up with two other families who also had DAP appointments that morning and were part of the Reece's Rainbow team.  One of the families was even from Texas!!!  It was so good to hear English and words like y'all for the better part of the day.  We all had lunch together and then went our separate ways to each of our respective regions.  We had a SIX. HOUR. CAR. RIDE to our region.  (But I'm betting that is nothing compared to the one of the other couples who had a 10 hour overnight train ride with their three year old to their region.  That is the stuff my nightmares are made of.)  If you've never driven in U, it's an experience you won't soon forget.  They pay no attention to silly things like speed limits or sides of the road.  And the roads are full of potholes so if you aren't swerving around the car in front of you at one gajillion miles an hour, you're dodging the Grand Canyon sized potholes that threaten to swallow your tiny Eastern European car whole.  It was like a six hour roller coaster ride.  Thank God for Dramamine.

We got to our new apartment somewhere between 10-11 pm and the first thing I did was jump into our GIANT bathtub and relish in the most lovely hot water I have ever felt.  We have a tankless water heater in this place.  We had like five total gallons of hot water in the other place so I opted out of doing anything other than a quick sponge bath in Kiev.  Here's a quick tour of our beautiful apartment:

The amazing tub.

The equally as amazing shower.

My handsome hubby.  Who is sitting on the couch in heaven because he figured out how to connect his jump drive with 7000 movies on it to the tv so we have entertainment.  In english.

Our facilitator picked us up this morning and we drove the 30ish miles out of town to the orphanage.  The country side is beautiful!  Hilly and green with lots of trees in all sorts of colors since it is fall.  The orphanage was very nice, as were the staff.  We met with the director, assistant director, medical director and one of Charlie's teachers.  No one has ever adopted from this orphanage before so the staff was understandably a bit skeptical of us.  Once we got through the initial questions they took us to the classroom where Charlie was sitting, coloring.  They introduced us to him and y'all, it was love at first sight.  Well, for me anyway.  Charlie was WAY more interested in Brent.  And Brent's beard. And his hat.  He slowly warmed up to me.  That seems to be fairly typical though.  The kids are always initially more into Dad than Mom.  Any thoughts on why from the experienced adopters reading this???

We walked down the hall to the gym and Charlie held Brent's hand the entire time.  I couldn't stop smiling.  Though we had brought some toys Charlie was most interested in our phones.  We went through the photo album we brought with him and then showed him some pictures and videos.  We visited his room, saw where he slept and met his groupa and friends.  Charlie was so proud to introduce us and started to get a bit jealous when we interacted with the other kids.  We went back to the gym and hung out with him for another hour before it was time to leave.  He is everything everyone said he would be - sweet, affectionate and SO smart.  We are smitten kittens.  We will be visiting once a day for the next three or four days and then will hopefully get the director's approval early next week.

We took a lot of pictures and videos this morning but unfortunately I'm not allowed to post any pictures of Charlie until after court.  So the pictures of our bath tub will have to do for now.  =)  I can't wait to see how tomorrow's visit goes!