We have fallen in love!!!

Okay, for those of you waiting on the edges of your seats, we are finally back! It's 7PM, so it's been a long, wonderful day!!!! :)

I will skip to the part that interests you most and then detail the rest of our day. We met our Russian Sweet Baby at about 12:00 today. She is beautiful! She has dark eyes and dark hair and is 10 1/2 months old! We got the all clear from the International Adoption doctor today. He said that she looks wonderfully healthy. She is also developmentally where she should be and we haven't charted her height and weight yet, but I think she's definitely on the charts, which is rare for a baby in an orphanage. Plus, she is such a happy, laid back baby. She was very slow to warm up to us at first and cried a few times at first, so we just took it slow and followed her lead. After a while, she was babbling (also rare for orphanage babies) and smiling some and we even got her to laugh! She can crawl, roll over, pull up to standing position and even cruise (again, amazing for her circumstances). We even got her to clap, possibly for the first time! (Video to follow of this.)

You will hear her Russian name in the video, but we haven't decided on a name yet, but will have to before tomorrow morning when we sign the petition to adopt. We have some ideas, but will wait to release that until we are sure! :)

Here are some pictures and videos. We actually got to see her twice today for a total of about 3 1/2 hours. The first visit was 2 hours and then we had to wait on the doctor because traffic was bad, but we didn't care because we got to spend more time with her.

Okay, let me start from the beginning of our day. We were driven to the Dept. of Education today for our appointment to get our referral. We had an interpreter with us as this involved more than "please" and "thank you." I was expecting to see maybe one lady behind the desk, but there were 4. They asked us to tell them about ourselves, our home, etc. We did that and then they gave us a black and white copy of a photo of our baby girl to look at! They then asked if we wanted to meet her and we said YES! Here's a photo of the Dept. of Education right after this meeting:

Next, we were driven to the baby home where our baby has been waiting for us. I have a video of walking up to the baby home for the first time. The gentleman leading the way is our driver. Click on the arrow to make the video play and turn up the sound on your computer.

Inside (and out), we found this baby home to be incredibly nice! This is not the norm either when it comes to orphanages. Next, we waited outside of some frosted glass doors. We didn't know what was inside.

Inside was the playroom where we would wait to meet our baby girl. Here are photos of the playroom. These are little Russian chairs with a special kind of painting, the name escapes me:

Then, we went over the baby's history. She is fit as a fiddle! After this, they brought her in!

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Here is video of Dan holding the baby for the first time.

Video of baby smiling for first time, starting to warm up to us, but still tentative.

Crawling and sucking her thumb:

Babbling and playing w/ blocks:

Laughing:

Pat-a-cake:

Cruising:

That's all for now! We're exhausted but a great exhausted!