Meeting the girls

We arrived in our city at 9:50am.  Fifteen hours on the train!!  Our facilitators went straight to work - they picked us up and we went straight to the social worker office where we turned in our paperwork from the capital and were registered for the two children.  The social worker asked a couple questions, but then stamped the papers and we were on our way.  We know from that she has questioned other families for about thirty minutes, but I doubt we were in there more than five minutes.

After that, we headed straight to the orphanage.  We met with the orphanage director and talked about the girls medical history.  We then got to meet these precious beautiful girls for the first time.  It is quite something - to hold these little ones and think "I am going to be taking them home with me in a bit and they are going to be my family." 

This is the younger of the two.  Her code name has been "Leigha", but we will be changing this (more on this later).  She didn't really know what to make of all this.  She smiled once or twice but otherwise just sat very still and watched everything and held tightly to fingers.

This is the older girl.  Her code name is "Aurora" (a name we love), but that name can be hard to say due to all the "R" sounds.  We will be changing her name to a close variant of her real name (more on this later) since she already has started learning her real name.  She cruises but doesn't walk.  She is a blast - she is into everything and likes to play with toys and pull things out.  She likes playing tickle and peekaboo.  She is very flexible and spent a good amount of time mouthing her shoe (to be fair, her shoe has a bunch of inviting bumps on it).

"Aurora" was very happy but very hard to catch on camera.  Next time we will use the faster shutter speeds.  Hopefully we will have some decent video the next time we visit also.