INTRODUCING..........Hannah Ailina

After almost a year…here she is…our new daughter, Hannah Ailina! And this is our first family photo!


We started out the day at about 945am playing with the 3 girls from yesterday. Our translator left to go pick up another family from the airport and said she’d be back at noon to pick us up. We thought this meant we’d spend the morning with all 3 girls and then decide when Olga came back. Well, not so. At about 1045am who we think was the orphanage director and another lady (we hadn’t met either previously) came in and said “Choose One”. Those words were almost the only English they knew. We were completely caught off guard. We had discussed the 3 girls in detail and did some research. We even called a pediatrician I knew in Amsterdam to help. All 3 girls were behind developmentally, which we expected. One little girl melted our hearts, but she was a lot more under-developed than all of the other babies. It was heartbreaking to decide and we didn’t have much time. When the pressure was really on, Joe panicked and could give no sane advice, so I looked down and saw Ailina full of smiles and giggles. Our choice was made! Anyone says this is easy is crazy.

After switching rooms, we spent the remainder of the morning with Hannah Ailina until noon. During our 4 hour break, we had lunch at our apt. and then went to a mall nearby. We bought Hannah some bibs since she seems to like to spit up and her outfit was smelly (guess we should get used to that). Then we bought us some shower shoes, really necessary. I said our apt. was great but the shower was less than desirable (and I’m a somewhat of a clean freak). After a short nap, it was back to the orphanage.

We got to Malutka at 4 and picked up Hannah from her room and gave her her first bottle (well, not really her first but our first). She’s definitely an eater and drank it within minutes. We spent the rest of the time (until 6pm) playing in the sports room. We had a lot of fun and got even more giggles out of her…I should mention, the room now has 4 other families in it with their little ones, mostly babies. It’s a bit chaotic already and we’re told there will be many more families coming this week. Because of all the delays, it seems like everyone is now traveling.
After Malutka, we went out to dinner with our new neighbors, 2 Americans also adopting from Malutka at a restaurant nearby and now sleep…being parents is exhausting. : )

Now for some statistics…Hannah is 7 ½ months old, born on September 4, 2005. She currently weighs 6.4 kg and is 65 cm. She has strawberry blond hair and hazel eyes (or as Joe thinks, brown). She was premature (born in the 36-38 week) but is growing fine. We don’t know anything about her birth mother but this afternoon Olga gave us a little piece of paper from the maternity ward where she was born and had her birth information.