We Met Her!!

Wow, what a day! We started the day out by meeting with the adoption ministry for about and hour. There were 10 other people in the room besides Jon and I. I was nervous but everyone was so so nice and it all went smoothly. We were prepared that they would ask us questions as to why we would adopt a child with Down syndrome but we didn't end up getting asked anything. We found out a lot about Nadja's birth family and I started to tear up. A very sad situation for her family. They love her so very much and this has been a heart breaking decision for them. Grace has 2 older sisters ages 12 and 13 who are also having a hard time with this. Grace also has a 1 year old baby sister. You will notice that sometimes I use Nadja and sometimes I use Grace. We are torn as to whether or not we will change her name at this time. Nadja's parents named her and we really like it but realize no one will pronounce it correctly back home. As for right now, we are calling her Nadja as that's what she knows. Ok, so back to our day. After our appointment, we went to the orphanage. We donned some lovely gowns and they brought Nadja to us. SHE IS SO PRECIOUS!!! Truely an angel! She is much bigger AND heavier than we thought and hope our 18 months clothes we brought will fit. According to her psychologist, developmentally she's around 12 months which is better than we expected. She is so ready to crawl and would bear a little weight on her legs. She's babbling and very observant. I tried to show her how to sign "daddy" and she came so close, THE FIRST TIME!!! So she put her hand by her mouth instead of forehead but I was impressed as she is already imitating! We got that on camera :) We spent a few minutes with her and then took off to go have her passport photos taken. She is such a good little girl and never fussed. Her hair is so long and she has the biggest brown eyes I've ever seen. Once we got back, Jon and I spent a couple more hours with her and observed her eating a bottle. That was interesting. The hole in the nipple is HUGE and she wore a lot of it but overall, I was impressed how she manipulated the nipple in her mouth. Kids with Down syndrome naturally may have feeding issues because of the tongue thrust and on top of that, she has a cleft palate. Amazing how kids can adapt. She does have a cold right now and quite a bit of nasal drainage and quite a bit of her bottle came out her nose too. We'll have to get a surgery date soon for her once we're home. That may help with her frequent upper respiratory infections as well......we hope. I would love to share all about her birth family but for their privacy I will not on here. Plus it's Grace's story and she may share one day if she chooses. I will tell you though that Grace's social worker told us that both Jon and I look a lot like her birth parents. Crazy huh? So tomorrow is Grace's 2nd birthday and we have a few treats lined up. They didn't want us buying a cake for the kids so we brought natural fruit snacks and balloons. There are 40 kids in Grace's unit alone so it should be fun. Well, it's 12:10am and we go back at 9:30 so we're headed to bed. Check out our montage from today!!!

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com