The Little Guy

It is 2:15 a.m. on Tuesday. Yesterday we woke up at 2:30 a.m. and were ready to start our day. The restaurant doesn’t open for breakfast until 7:30 so we were very thankful for the apple rings the Godard’s gave us! We left the hotel at 8:45 to head to downtown Vladivostok to go to the Ministry of Education. Traffic was bad as usual. When we arrived at the MOE, we met with Tatiana. She gave us a huge smile when we showed her a picture of Blake. She was kind to us, but told us to be prepared for court. We should expect several questions about finances in court because 4 children are a lot to raise. We were thankful for the advice and signed the book to go meet the little guy. We then headed back to the hotel and grabbed some soup for lunch with Irina and Lana. We had about an hour to wait before heading out because he wouldn’t get up from his nap until 3:00. Typically the drive to Baby Home 3 is 1.5 hours. The roads are very icy and so it took us 2.5 hours to get there and another 2.5 to get back. We finally arrived back at the Vlad Inn around 7 p.m. I was so tired from being up so early and the emotion of the day. We grabbed a quick dinner and then were off to bed.

Below is a two part entry. The first part was started before we left home. The second part is my reflection from yesterday.

Entry written before meeting the Little Guy

Back in August, before we were registered, we were sent pictures of an adorable little boy. At that time we were nervous about a few items in his medical evaluation and needed more information. We learned that we were not registered yet and couldn’t get more information. We basically set the thought aside that this might be our son and began the wait to get registered. When we blogged about that little boy in August, a blogger friend Liz (known in our house as sunflowerjax) left a comment on our blog stating that we should take comfort in praying for him because we may be the only people who have ever prayed for him specifically. I vowed to keep him in my prayers. I never really prayed that he would be OURS. I just prayed for his well being and for his future family. Over the past couple of months I have felt a twinge in my heart toward him. Then once we were registered I began to really get intentional with my prayer - that God would let us know in our hearts exactly what we were supposed to do. Our agency mentioned having another referral and I found myself thinking "but what about the little guy?". Then Justin and I thought we should make sure that before we went forward at all we should see if he was even still available for adoption. We sent an email to our agency at 11:00 at night asking if he was still available for us to meet. I then realized how disappointed I would be if we couldn't go meet him. The next day when we got the reply that he was still available. I was so relieved and excited. Because of those reactions, I knew that God intended for us to meet him. Let me tell you what, I love the boy that is in that picture and in my heart right now. I am praying that we don't meet a totally different little guy while we are there and that God will allow him to be the best fit for our family.

Entry on December 6, 2010 – meeting little guy

I am sick to my stomach over the thought of how close we were to not coming to meet the little guy. He is so precious, sweet, and smart! He is walking and saying words like give, take, and knock knock :o) He loved the Gerber Puff snacks and very quickly figured out how to open the container. He could hammer shapes in the holes of the toy work bench and track objects with his eyes. He reacted to sounds and even began to sing (in an infant sort of way) a song while he was playing. All of the things that we wanted to see if he was developmentally capable of doing, he completely blew us away and showed us that he was more than capable. Another fear we had was that even if he was cognitively ok that emotionally he would not be. Well guess what, he removed all of those fears as well. He cried when the caregiver left the room (good sign for attachment); he was nervous at first to play with us (knew we were odd!); he cried real tears; he laughed at the squeaky giraffe we brought; he smiled at himself in the mirror; he cried again when the caregiver passed through the room; he gave us big hugs at the end of our visit and waved paka paka (bye bye).
God is so good and we are thankful that He never allowed our fears to change the path He intended for us to take!

(For those new to this process, we won’t be able to share his photo or name until the court decree is final on trip number two.)

We do have one big problem though. Our hearts are going to break in half when we have to say goodbye to him on Thursday!