We've seen her!

Note: this post has been reposted and the original comments were lost.

We made it here exhausted but on time with me only having to rearrange everything in our suitcases one time to make the Aeroflot folks happy, but I know y'all aren't interested in hearing about our journey at this point.

We have photos and video. She is beautiful. And very happy and content. There were a few times when she seemed to be studying us intently, and she has a scowl that makes her mama proud....maybe she will look like me after all, LOL! C is in love with her, too. We had a rather trying and unexpected 4 hour wait today at the Department of Education and took a rather different series of psychological tests there and were interviewed by the psychologist about our parenting style and eventually had to meet the lady we needed a signature from at the orphanage. If she had met us on time this morning, we could have visited N from 1-3:30 (when she goes down for her second nap of the day). As it was, we finally arrived at 2:45.

They brought her in as I was filling out three forms and after I finished, as C was filling out his part, I went to her caregiver and she came right to me.

We brought some toys to play with her. She is teething and if I had known, I would have brought teethers. Everything goes right to her mouth. She makes great eye contact, follows us with her head, giggles, babbles, reaches for interesting things, and will look for something that is hidden in front of her. She was not at all happy when I tried to put her down to see if she would crawl and we got her so close to her naptime that she was rubbing her eyes and a little indecisive about what would make her happy toward the end, but all in all she was very mild tempered and easy going. She's wonderful. And tiny. I never thought I'd have a baby this small!

We got full medical disclosure and I have sent that to the doctor back in Denton and we will see what he says, but unless he pulls a huge red flag out of thin air, we just can't imagine that she won't be ours. We are so very happy.

There were many times during our visit (well, most of it, actually)that I was so focused on her I forgot there were other people in the room. Our coordinator and translator were translating medical info and there was a lot of activity that we did not have to worry about because with such limited time with her, we wanted to just focus on her and they wanted that for us as well.

We got a few pictures...it seems as though we took tons, but afterward I realized we didn't. We have already watched all the videos multiple times and I know we need to take plenty tomorrow to last us because leaving her will be hard.

I would have posted last night that we got in, but I am not even sure I could get an internet card when we checked in at 1am and in anycase, our translator, Zhanna, gave us two and only two very firm orders within minutes of meeting us before our flight in Moscow: sleep and eat breakfast. She thought this might be hard for us, but then, she doesn't know me! So we were in bed at 2:00 (and I had no trouble sleeping...no nerves. (Getting here was the hard part and we are here.) It's a good thing we ate a big breakfast because we got zero lunch today. We are at a very nice hotel and the breakfast buffet is great. We will hit it early tomorrow because w get to see N twice: once from 9-10 before her nap and again from 1:20-3:00 before her nap. I'd love to get some more toys for tomorrow afternoon but I don't know if we will get a chance to go to a store.

Our translator is fabulous. She is very calm and has done this for many years. She tells us what we need to know when we need to know it and is cognizant of our jet lagged state, although I am not jet-lagged now but C is. In fact, he is snoring on the bed right now and was a space cadet most of the morning. I'm wide awake. We decided that since I live on Russia time when I am at home, I am in my element and I was actually jet-lagged last week, with all the early mornings I had.

Well, I have been uploading video and photos during this blog and now I need to go write the doctor. I will check in again tomorrow night. We have to pay for internet and I don't know how much is left on this card.