04/02/2007 10th Orphanage Visit

Our 10th visit... When we arrived at the orphanage today Olivia was waiting at the window jumping up and down. When she came in the room she seemed more excited then the last few days. We learned that she was crying when we didn’t come the day before, she said that she cried a lot… which surprised us since we had the translator tell her that we wouldn’t be coming. I worry if our court date is delayed that she will not understand if we have to travel home for weeks before the adoption process if finalized. So hopefully we won’t have to leave the country.

I feel bad that she was upset and worried that she thought that we had changed our minds on her adoption - especially when we just brought in the other baby (Pearl). Today Pearl was ill and had a fever. We also heard back from the department of education that they would not allow us to adopt baby Pearl - we will only be allowed to adopt one child - so we will proceed with Olivia’s adoption only.

If anyone knows someone that is interested in adopting Pearl is a SWEET baby girl. She is very happy and laughs a lot and likes to play. If she is this pleasant only 2 days after her surgery you can imagine what a delightful child she is the rest of the time. I wish that we could come back for her, but our children at home are already very sad that we have left and between the expenses to return, and all of Olivia’s medical needs I don’t think that will be possible, at least in the near future.

04/01/2007

Today we are not allowed to visit Olivia. We slept in a little and planned to go to a restaurant that was down the strip for breakfast at 10am, since the rest of the week we are at the orphanage we weren’t able to try their breakfast. We walked in slight rain all the way there to find they were closed even though we had specifically asked about their breakfast. We weren’t sure if they had different hours on Sunday, or why they weren’t opened. They have no signs on their door with hours or days of operation. We stopped by another restaurant they were also closed, so we decided to just head back to our hotel, since by this time we were pretty soaked.

Since we can’t pronounce the babies Kazak name I wanted to pick an American name for her, so that we can call her something besides “baby”. We tonight we agreed on Lily Pearl. Since she is Kazak she looks Asian (Olivia is Russian). We thought Lily was fitting, and we liked that her name meant Pearl and thought that was pretty so for now that will be her name. We realize the chances are very low that we will get to adopt her but we are embarrassing her for now. Worst case she gets to spend 2 hours a day with us and get extra attention. Well it is almost 1:00 am, so I better sign off for now.