Six years ago today, in a little room in Baby House #2 in Uralsk, Kazakhstan, we met this lovely little girl.
We were nervous, suffering from the exhaustion that comes along with jet lag, and unable to communicate with most of the people in the room. She was the third little one that we met. I had imagined prior to getting to this point how very agonizing this decision would be. It wasn't. A caregiver walked into the room holding her little hands, helping her to walk. I picked her up and she put her little head on my shoulder. That was it. My heart melted. I really didn't hear the medical information which was quickly read off and interpreted. (Honestly, I didn't miss much. Let's just say the info was pretty limited.) She was only in the room for a few minutes, but Keith and I both knew that she was ours. They gave us four hours to decide and let them know. It is a good thing that it wasn't an agonizing decision, because four hours isn't very long to make a life-changing decision!
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| I love that she still has this same adorable little grin! |
Here are a few excerpts from emails Keith wrote while we were in Kazakhstan:
"We still don't have salt. We walked a quarter mile down the road to the OPA department store yesterday and bought groceries. We forgot the Russian phrase book so when it came time to buy salt we were stuck. We meandered through the store looking and wondering. There were plenty of assistants who would have been delighted to help us, but how do you receive help from someone with whom you can't communicate? We saw what looked like oatmeal , so we bought some. We bought a fair supply of food and then needed one thing more yet – salt. We found a bag of something that looked like salt.
I asked the young man, "Is this salt?" He didn't understand. I performed a salt shaker motion, but he still didn't understand. I gathered that it wasn't salt, so I put it back on the shelf. Since I couldn't tell him what I really wanted we left without salt. We will take the Russian phrase book next time and eat bland food meanwhile."
"Right now Erin is pulling clothes out of the baby suitcase, wracking her brain as to how big she actually is and trying to visualize how everything will look on the baby. I can tell by the light in her eye that she is thoroughly enjoying herself. We are asked to provide clothes and diapers for her from here on. We are to bring about 7 diapers each day and a fresh set of clothes. Each day they will give us the dirty clothes back."
"Yesterday our lack of Russian got us into a little bit of trouble. We went down the street a block or so from the store, turned left and walked another several blocks to a little restaurant Katerina had told us about. When we turned to come back we ended up losing our way. So we walked aimlessly several blocks this way and that. I tried to call Katerina's cell phone but the call didn't go through. Nor did we know any addresses or the name of the store we had shopped at. Finally we saw a travel agency. Thinking they probably knew English I walked inside and asked if they could call Katerina for me. This they willingly did and 15 minutes later Katerina and Alex picked us up from the curb in front of the agency. Turns out Katerina knew the people at the travel agency. We were very fortunate and we content to stay at home the rest of the day, except to go the store again for a few groceries."
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| Annika with Kate, our interpreter and coordinator (she was literally the "in country team"!) |
"Today was another very nice day. We went to visit Annika first thing this morning. She acted happy to see us and we had a lot of fun playing with her. I threw her up in the air and she giggled and laughed. Then I grabbed her and gave her a big hug and lots of kisses and she just smiled and lapped it all up. What a dolly she is. We are beginning to love her very much. At the end of the visit when Kate took her away she held her hands out and wanted to come back to us."
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| May Day parade |
"On Monday or Tuesday we expect to meet the judge. Kate gave us an overview of what the prospective father is supposed to say during the court session. It is quite an exhaustive account of our family, our background, why we chose Kazakhstan, how we plan to care for our child, and whether or not we can support her financially. Then she dropped the bomb shell. This speech is to be presented by memory with no notes. So I will have my work cut out for me over the next few days. It all makes me nervous! I need notes! At least I will be presenting it one sentence at a time and Kate will translate it sentence by sentence. She assures us that if I say something wrong she'll correct it when she translates it! How convenient!"
As you all know, the judge said "Da!" to our petition to adopt and Diliara became Annika, our treasured little "Kazakh princess" daughter. We are so blessed!
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| Sleeping on the airplane between Frankfurt and Philadelphia |
