Best Day!!

***We are not supposed to share publically any pictures of our child, as she is not technically our child yet.  Her country is very private with their children, and out of respect for those laws (and also to keep ourselves from getting into any trouble and risking in any way our adoption), we are setting up a private blog to post pictures and video.  We would love for you to be able to access our private blog, so just email me at whitneybarrus@yahoo.com, let me know who you are and how you found the blog, and I'll add you to the list!***

I woke up this morning with major anxiety.  What if this child we were referred was severely delayed or had other problems.  This could change our lives forever.  I even had some very un-Christ like thoughts of, "What if she's not even cute at all!?".  I kept praying all morning that these feelings would go away.  After a while, I realized that what we had been preaching this entire adoption process remained true: every child deserves a home.  No matter what.  Whatever they look like, whatever their delays or problems, they deserve a mom and a dad who love them unconditionally.  I can never deny that we have been set on this path by our Father in Heaven.  Led every single step of the way.  I was reminded this morning that these are all His children.  We are all His children.  He loves us and wants us to be happy, and he loves the least of these children as well.  I knew that no matter who this child was, we could and would love her.  We would be her parents forever, whatever he earthly challenges might be.  I felt very at peace and knew everything would be okay.
After a breakfast, we were picked up at 9:20 by our facilitator and driver.

  It is crazy because it doesn't get light here in the winter until about 11:00 in the morning. It's so confusing! It feels so early, yet it's almost lunch time! We made it to the orphanage by 10:00, which was when our appointment was, and headed inside.

 

This is the outside of the orphanage later this afternoon when it was actually light

  We put some awesome booties over our boots and went upstairs to meet with the director.  The orphanage director is also a pediatrician, so she was able to tell us Dasha's entire medical history.  So our child's real name is Daria, but Dasha is the nickname for Daria.  They seem to have a very good medical history!  She had an open oval atrium defect, but it has closed on its own.  She is otherwise healthy!  She has strabismus (basically lazy eye) in her left eye.  The orphanage director told us that she does not walk or talk, but that is considered normal in a child with Down syndrome.  Her birthday is in May.  She will be two then, so she is currently almost 19 months.  They said that in general, she seems very alert and smart, even compared to other children with Down syndrome.  I was so relieved at this moment!  Her mother had good obstetrical care during the pregnancy and seems to have a stable home life.  Her parents gave her up at birth because of her diagnosis of Down syndrome.  She went straight to the orphanage from the hospital. If only they knew what they were missing out on! 
After the whole medical history, we gave the donation to the orphanage (our kids and nieces and nephews on Quin's side decorated bags on Thanksgiving and filled them with underwear, socks, pajamas, and toothbrushes for the children at the orphanage) as well as a present to the orphanage director and nannies. 

The director seems like a very nice lady and even smiled quite a bit, which is very odd in this country!!!  They are generally not too friendly here and are very guarded with their emotions.  We were asked several questions about why we are adopting a child with "this condition".  We have been asked this so many times that I'm exhausted of this question.  I knew we would be asked this a lot, but I just wasn't prepared for millions of follow up questions and looks you would give a person that just told you the sky was green.  EVERYONE we have encountered in this city thinks we are insane for wanting this child.  The answer I want to give to the question, "Why do you want this kind of child" is "What kind of child?  A beautiful, smiling, happy, loving, giggly, full of life child?  Because why wouldn't I want to adopt this kind of child!?!?"  Instead, I let Quin answer the questions ;) It's just better that way.
Anyhow, we went upstairs at this point into a really cute little playroom.  They are preparing for a New Year's celebration to be held on December 26th.  They were cutting out darling little paper snowflakes and they had Christmas decorations all around.  The workers all left and we waited for a bit for them to bring her in.  The orphanage director is the one that brought her in.  She was holding Dasha's hands and she walked in.  My heart melted.  It was just like when I saw my other three kids for the first time.  Absolute and pure love at first sight!!  I immediately started crying and just couldn't believe how lucky I was to be able to be her Mama some day!  She is perfect.  Beautiful, happy, innocent, and perfect.  The visit was exactly what I needed to cement in my head that this is the child that is meant to be ours.  We will do whatever it takes from this point forward to make that a reality!
She was not super cuddly at first (she seemed to want to, but it would only last two seconds and she would try to escape.  I think probably she's just not used to this kind of affection and it's overwhelming to her), but funny enough, she loves to hold hands.  If ever I got a hand free to play with a toy, she would try to grab my hand again.  You can tell she hasn't had much of a chance to play with toys before, because she really didn't know what to do with them.  After about 30 seconds in Papa's arms, though, and she was giggling like you wouldn't believe!  Her whole face lights up with delight and we were smitten!  We had so much fun playing and laughing, and by the end, she was my cuddle bug!  She wanted to be held and snuggled!  The funniest thing to me was by the end of our visit, you could tell she was getting very sleepy.  She was sitting on my lap, then all of the sudden she just feel asleep!  I got to put her on my shoulder and soak up every single second until the nanny came in to get her.  For the first time in her short little life, she had a Mama to fall asleep on.  She is the sweetest little bug!!!  I just wanted to run out of there with her and never have to look back.  I HATE that I have to wait four more months to be able hold her forever. 
As far as my physical assessment of her, the first thing I noticed was her extremely dry, cracked skin.  It is so sad!  All over her face and hands (so pretty much all the skin I saw) was so dry it felt like alligator skin!  I kept thinking, "Dang, next time I'm bringing the Aquafor!".  I seriously can't wait to get that poor dry skin cleared up!  Also, she had lots of blood behind one ear.  As I looked closer, it was all scratched up.  Her nails were kind of long, so I bet it itches back there (because seriously, it's too dry!!!) and she scratches it enough to draw blood.  Poor thing!  Also, her head has been shaved.  In the picture we saw from November, she had hair.  Now it's all buzzed off :( I don't know that we'll be able to find out why, but I did ask my facilitator.  She has some weird sores on her head, so it was hypothesized that perhaps she had some sort of infection on her head and that's why they shaved it.  Bummer.
We came home from the first visit, went to lunch, then got ready for our next visit.  The orphanage is about 45 minutes away from our hotel (mostly because of traffic).  Our driver came to get us at 3:30 and we got to the orphanage at 4:15.  We had a relatively quick second visit, but it was fun!  She was loving being cuddled right from the start of this visit!  The best part was that we got out a blanket we brought for her and showed her twice how to do peek-a-boo.  From then on, she would grab the blanket, throw it over her head, wait for you to say, "Where's Dasha?", then she's pull it down and laugh like crazy.  Cutest thing ever!!  One thing I did notice was crying coming from a nearby room.  This is actually really good news!  Kids that are neglected will quickly learn that crying doesn't do a thing, and they stop.  They turn their emotions inward and do things to self soothe, like rock, bang their head, or bite their hands.  The fact that a child was crying meant that they aren't being neglected too severely and was quite a relief!!  Our second visit wasn't super long, but it was long enough to love on her some more!  She is amazing!! 
Tomorrow our facilitator (whose other job is as a cardiologist.  Seriously.  I couldn't make this stuff up!) has to work, so we can't go to the orphanage in the morning :( We will go again in the afternoon, though, and sign some papers saying yes, we for sure want to adopt this child!!
Thank you everyone for following our journey!  We still need some prayers that the battling between our government and Dasha's government will not prevent us from adopting her!  Thank you!!