Jodi Speaks Her Mind

Day 3: We say YES - Sept. 6 9/8/2007

We got up right at 6 and checked e-mail. There it was… with a time stamp of 5:54 am. Way to go, Dr. S! The e-mail explained the possible change in prognosis, but the Dr. clarified that it is not a serious problem, and if it does become an issue, it is treatable with medication. (We love you Dr. S., but you could have put that in the last e-mail!). But God was in control, and now we breathed huge sighs of relief, as we now felt we could move forward with the solid backing of our Dr. and peace in our hearts that we did our due diligence in preparing ourselves for her medical issues. Actually, in this second e-mail the Dr. offered us some clarifications on her prognosis that on some issues was better than before. We were practically floating by now and we were very excited to feel like now we had a truly solid “YES, we will adopt her.”

Then, as if the good news wasn’t good enough, we had a scheduled phone call with Adelina! We got to hear her voice and tell her how much we loved her and missed her. She has had a great week, but it was just so wonderful to make contact. We were missing her so much!

Our visit this day was a really good one, and we noticed we were both feeling warmer towards Anna and more relaxed. I think we had both feared getting too attached before everything was really decided, and now we were free to think of her as the girl who will become our daughter and not just the girl who might become our daughter. Believe it or not, it’s a huge difference! Pics from this day are here.

After our visit today, we met our facilitator downtown to go to the notary’s office to sign our paperwork stating our decision and signing the medical conclusion - basically our acknowledgment of having received the medical conclusion. After this point, we are not permitted to change our mind based on medical grounds. I had no idea we were expected to sign this, but it makes all the more glad that we explored her medical issues as thoroughly as we did.

Our next stop was a photo place where we got prints made of a selection of our pictures with Anna. We had purchased her a little pink photo album that looks just like a little purse - so cute! It snaps shut just like a purse and is perfect for her. We brought a selection of pictures of us and Adelina and our home and cats and added at the front of the album all the pictures we’d chosen of her and us. Hopefully with repeated viewing we will become familiar faces to her and the transition out of the orphanage won’t be as traumatic.

The remainder of this day was very pleasant. It was our last night in Vlad and though we had planned to maybe go out to dinner with another family, they were unavailable, and in the end we decided we liked the idea of staying in and getting all our stuff in proper order for our departure tomorrow. I called and ordered pizza and salad for delivery… in Russian! Wow, go me. It is one thing to get by face to face, but I wasn’t sure if I could manage over the phone. I actually went up to the reception desk hoping they would help us and she just wrote down the numbers (which I already had) and said, “call one of these. I think they should speak English.” Yeah, right. Oh well, nothing ventured, nothing gained. We got our salad and pizza right at our hotel room door, and it was much cheaper than eating out at a restaurant. The pizza was quite good, too, which was lucky because that is not always the case over there. We worked on communications, and the photo album for Anna as well as a matching one for ourselves (and Adelina). We uploaded some more video and charged all our devices for the last day and trip home. We packed our stuff, and though we had hoped to get to bed early, we did get to bed by 10, so not too bad.