Wednesday and Thursday

Yesterday (Wednesday) was a bit hard for us. We went to our afternoon visit and took Bradyn to get his picture taken for his passport. He was such a good boy on the ride there. We were not allowed to hold him outside the baby house so the nurse held him while we rode. It was kind of crappy that I had to sit beside him, but I understood. We got back and played for a little while until we had to leave. Nadia took us to a fabulous steak restaurant called the Black Bull. Scott was a very happy guy since he finally got a steak. We walked back to our hotel and rested before going back. This was going to be our last visit so we were excited to get back and see him. When it was time we made our way back to the baby house for our evening visit. We played with Bradyn for about an hour and a half until he started getting tired. It was time to take him back to the caregiver. We said our good-bye's and of course I cried. We all knew I would. I mean come on who am I trying to kid here? I have prepared myself for this, but it's still tough handing over your child knowing you will not see him again for 6-8 wks. Scott did well as I knew he would, but inside I know he was hurting. We went back to our room after first making our regular nightly walk to the convenient store to buy cokes. I started loading the pictures and videos so that we could get a few downloaded for folks to see. Now here is where Scott broke down. Seeing Bradyn playing pulled at his heart a little. We love this little guy more than we can explain and we don't want to ever let him go. This will probably be the hardest thing we will ever have to do our entire life, but we will make it through together.
Today (Thursday) we made our trip back to Moscow. We arrived at the office to meet our new translator for the duration of our trip. We signed a couple papers and got all the information we needed to have ready for our next trip. Our driver took us to our apartment in Central Moscow to get settled in. We dropped off our things and headed out with our new translator to view the city some. This place in unbelievable! It's so big and the buildings are so gorgeous. We went to the famous Red Square and viewed all the buildings there. They took our breath away. Our translator stayed with us a while, made sure we knew how to get back to our apartment and then we were on our own. Thankfully, there are a lot of people here that speak English so we were good. We walked around a little while longer, stopped by McDonald's for some dinner, went to Cinnabon for dessert and headed back to the apartment.
We will go for our medical exams tomorrow, tour this place a little more, then get ready to head back home. This has been a great trip because we met our son, but we are ready to be back in the good ole USA! See you all soon.
Love Scott and Mel

The Official "Yes" Day

Today is the official day that we say yes we would like to adopt Bradyn and accept him as our referral child. We will go before a notary and sign the paperwork so that it will be official here in Russia. We also get his pictures taken for his passport/visa to be prepared for the 2nd trip when we bring him home with us. This will be our last day to visit him. I am not ready to leave him, but I feel at peace knowing he is eating well and being cared for the best way they know how here. He has toys and other children to play with. He will not have the attention he has had over the past 3 days, but it won't be too long until we can have him forever. I have held up surprisingly well leaving him each day only because I know I'm coming back. I pray God holds my hand this evening and tells me it will be ok to let him go temporarily. I feel sure Scott will be ok on the outside, but he will hurt on the inside as well. It's unexplainable the emotions we are feeling. Today around 10:15am, TN time, stop and say a short prayer for us. This will be 7:15pm, Russia time, and we will be leaving the orphanage from our last visit. In a way we are ready to be done with this week only because our wait begins for our next trip. The sooner the wait begins the sooner it ends. However, we are not ready to leave our son here. He has quickly began to bond with us a little and know our faces. I know we will miss him more than he will miss us, so that helps some. This experience is one we will never forget.
Love Scott and Mel

Day 2 at the Baby House

Today was a great day seeing Bradyn. He was so attentive and his personality really shined. Scott had him walking again with his help and we were throwing him in the air just to see him smile. Scott got him to actually laugh and then I tickled him and he laughed so hard. It was so cute. He responds well to our sound and his motor skills seem to be improving as well. It's amazing what a little interaction does for a child. It's getting harder and harder to leave him. We also got to take a few pictures and a video of another child who is waiting for his mommy and daddy to come back for him in a few weeks. They will be thrilled when we send that over to them. Tomorrow we will go to the notary to officially sign our acceptance for him and have his passport/visa picture taken. It will be a day to remember. We will post some more videos very soon...
Love Scott and Mel

Day One at the Baby House

Today, 9/27/2010, is the day that has changed our lives forever! We arrived at the baby house around 11 to speak to the doctor before going to meet our baby. The place was surprisingly nice and clean. There were a few older children, probably 2-3 years old going for a stroll with some of the care givers when we arrived. They had a small play area outside and lots of oversized stuffed animals inside everywhere. We went into the doctor's office to speak with her about all the medical issues we may be facing. She was very nice and let us ask anything we wanted. She provided all the medical information she had on the mother and the baby. Our translator Nadia did a fabulous job of letting us know what was being said. After we were finished, we went into what is called the music room to wait for them to bring him to us. He had just awoke from his nap and he had to be fed and changed so we waited about 20 mins. for that to be finished.The caregiver brought him through the door and the joy we felt is indescribable. He was beautiful! She handed him right to me. He just stared at me at first, I'm sure wondering, who are you? They were already calling me his mama. We played in the floor with him for about an hour and 45 minutes. We were amazed at how clean and healthy he looked. He was more advanced than we thought he would be. It was amazing to see how well he reacted to Scott considering he spends "0" time with men at the baby house because all the caregivers are women. Margaret, the lady that handles all the official documents while we are here, said he looked like Scott.
We did surprisingly well when we had to leave him. We were sad, but we would be back in a few hours. Our second visit was at 6pm, where we stayed about the same amount of time. This is going to sound crazy, but he already seemed happy to see us. He laughed a lot more this time and seemed to play a little more. This was a fabulous day and we can't wait to go back tomorrow. Until then, continue to keep us in your prayers.
Love Scott and Mel

Orphanage Day

Our time has been moved from 1pm to 11am today to visit the baby house. We are so nervous, but super excited. In a few minutes we will see our son for the 1st time. I now know what a mom feels when she is about to give birth and see her baby for the 1st time. It's so weird. To say that we have butterflies is an understatement. Once we see his little face I think the nervousness will go away and the joy and excitement will set in. We are blessed to have this day!
Scott and Mel

Our 1st Day

We made it to Russia safe and sound. Our flight was actually very nice. We cannot say enough good things about Singapore Airlines and their staff. The flight was only 10.5 hours total. We left at 6pm Sat. night, US time, and arrived in Moscow at 1:30pm, Sunday afternoon, Russian time. We had a little hiccup at first trying to figure out where to go and what exactly to do. We stood in the passport verification line (which was super long) just to find out we failed to fill out our immigration forms. No biggie though we just rolled with the punches, filled out the forms and waited in line again. After going through customs we met our driver holding a sign with our name on it. That was super exciting.
Our driver did not speak English and of course we don't speak Russian so the 3 hour ride to our region was pretty quiet. They drive like maniacs here. Not sure why they have lines on the roads because they don't use them at all. They whip in and out of traffic and cut other cars off like crazy people.
We finally make it to our region to meet Nadia our guide and translator. Thank goodness, we can now communicate with someone other than each other. She is very nice and helpful. She took us to our room and then took a walk around the area showing us where we could purchase items we needed, and places we could eat. We went to a cafe called The Wall and treated her to ice cream. We asked a ton of questions and she was very helpful in answering them. Nadia gave us some history on the area as well. She will be going to the orphanage with us each day. We make our 1st trip to see Bradyn tomorrow at 1 then again that evening. We will get to see him at the same time each day until Thursday when we will have to go back to Moscow. Nadia said the head dr. at the orphanage is very helpful with the children's medical information. She will answer any questions we may have and we can ask anything.
We will do our best to update videos after the 1st visit tomorrow. We don't know how much down time we will have because it's the 1st day and we have to speak to the dr. there then get the information back to our dr. at Vandy.
Scott and Mel

READY SET GO

Just bought a new video camera, case, extra battery and flash card, 1 extra battery for the regular camera, an external hard drive for the mac, and ear phones to listen to movies on the plane. Gosh it's costing a fortune just to take pictures and make videos of the little guy. ;)
I think we are as prepared as we are going to be for an 11 hour flight and stay in a foreign country. Please continue to pray for safe travels and a safe stay in Russia. Pray that there are tons of pictures we can point to since we will have no idea what anyone is saying and vice versa. Hopefully, we can lean on our translator for most of what we will need. Pray that our little peanut responds to us as well as he can and that there are no major medical issues that we were not aware of. Pray for patience if things don't go as smoothly as we would like. We both hate crowds so the busyness of Russia and the language barrier should be very exciting. Pray that we don't get too car sick on the 3 hour ride to our Region. Pray that we remember not to drink the water!! Just Pray, Pray, Pray and when you are tired Pray some more!
We have been waiting for this moment since January and now that's it's here we are both scared to death. Even though we know God has control of this whole situation, it's hard not to worry.
Scott and Mel

Hang tight my sweet boy!

“I prayed for this child, and the LORD has granted me what I asked of Him.”
1 Samuel 1:27

The Referral is Here!!!

Finally, we received our referral from Russia. Our agency called Tuesday, August 31 with the good news. "We have a boy for you to consider". Those were the magic words. I was in complete shock to say the least. I have played out this scenario in my head at least 100 times, but now that it was real I didn't know what to do or say. Chills came over my entire body and tears filled my eyes. She emailed the pictures and medical information within minutes. I quickly called Scott. OMG no answer, so I called his other cell and he answered, finally. I asked was he close by because we received our referral. He wanted me to go ahead and open the email then forward it to him. The 1st picture was amazing. He was absolutely beautiful! It's amazing how one little picture melted my heart in seconds. I wanted to pull him through the computer. This was the day we had been waiting on since January. We decided it was best to keep this a secret until we spoke with a doctor. There was no need in getting everyone's hopes up just to let them down if we had to say no to this referral. I had a week to give the agency an answer on what we were going to do. I called the international adoption clinic at Vanderbilt immediately to get an appointment. I sent all the information to the doctor Wednesday and she set up a phone consult at 9am Thursday morning. That morning, I had worked myself into a frenzy waiting on her call. I was literally slumped over my desk waiting to puke at any second. I wanted this call to be over one way or another. Finally, the phone rings. The doctor was very informative giving me more information than my brain could handle in one conversation. She explained everything in great detail. None of his medical information worried her in the slightest. He was a little higher risk because of his head circumference, but that's it. This was a stressful and emotional day. My anxiety had ended but the fear had set in. Do we accept him or not? Is the fear of the unknown too great of a risk? The clock could not get to 3:30 fast enough so that I could get home and talk things over with Scott. After explaining to him everything the doctor had explained to me his words were, "what's the problem?" "We knew he was going to be smaller than normal, so let's do this". Wow, I had been stressing all day and he's ready to go. We had to step out on faith just like all the times before and meet this little guy. God had led us this far, we cannot lose faith in Him now. We called the family and emailed the pictures to let them know. Everyone was filled with emotions and so excited. This was a day to remember for everyone. Finally, a face to put with the name we had given him since day one of this journey. We will be traveling for the 1st trip veer soon. Hopefully, if everything goes according to plan we will receive our court date sometime mid to late November to return and bring him home. What a Christmas this year will be. Please continue to pray for peace in our hearts and guidance as we travel to meet our son for the 1st time. Pray that we have a safe trip and that everything works out in our favor. God is good all the time!