We were picked up as promised at 0945. Our 1000 meeting at The Deparment of Education to review our application fell through when the Administrator failed to show up. Rescheduled for 1400. We got back in the car and Natasha just drove us right over to the baby house. Five minutes later we were shown to the Baby House Director's office and Katja and Artome were brought in shortly after. It was an unbelievably magical and joyous moment after all of these months of anticipation!
All of the agency people had been telling us the last two days was not to be suprised when Katja cries at the meeting, she will know what it all means, etc... She did not, Artome did cry a little but did not make much noise. It was kind of a flurry of nurses giving encouragement to the kids in Russian of course, and just reaching out to hold thier hands. In a couple of minutes a nurse handed Artome over to Cecelia and we were all shown up to the visitation room. Sort of a hallway from the top of the stairs to the big room where Katja's group lives.
We stayed there for about an hour or so, We pulled out some toys that they played with a bit, but they had apparently been anticipating our arrival and had been quite worked up earlier in the day. Artome fell asleep, and Katja was giving nothing up.
Doctors and Caregivers filed through from time to time to see if everything was going O.K. I decided I should not be allowed to speak Russian to any one older than three, because so far they are the only ones that understand me.
We went to our rescheduled appointment at The Dept of Ed. at 1400. We had known what to expect (somewhat scary, but ok in the end) and it went just as promised.
We shopped to stock up the apartment (a story in itself), and went home to await the next day's visit and to toast our new family! It was the best day of our lives! Life is awesome!!!!!
