The Interview Day

Our morning visit was “bonding” as usual. It actually went fast because we were able to spend a lot of time out walking. Joe was able to get a lot of good pictures of the grounds at the orphanage and some of the other children (unfortunately we can’t load pictures to blogger form his camera). A lot of the rooms with the toddlers were out and about playing. It is so adorable to see them all. They mostly use the buddy system with a slightly older child helping a younger one. And boy do they love their pictures being taken! They ran right up to us, Joe kept scooting back to get a better picture and they would come closer. They also know that they can see the picture so they all took turns looking at them. I make it sound so nice, but it was slightly more chaotic than that. One little boy (with his “charge”) almost looked like he was going to cry because he wasn’t getting into the action. He was dragging the little boy with him to get closer. Fortunately Joe saw what was going on and took a picture of just the two of them and showed it to him. The whole thing was just so cute. We finally started saying “paka” (see you later) while their caregiver was trying to drag them all away. It breaks your heart to see how many wonderful children there are at the orphanage that still need homes. (Malutka houses 80-90 children between the ages of 0 and 4).

Now, onto our interview. Today was our interview with the Ministry of Education. This is the pre-court interview in which they asked us all sorts of questions regarding our finances, our experience with babies (next to none), etc. The oddest question was asked to Joe – whether he experiments with animals or people in his job. We were also asked if any of our friends or family members need organ transplants. They are very diligent to make sure what our motives for adoption are. Of course we think the questions odd, but know they have the best interest of Hannah at heart. They will now write up a report and submit it on our behalf to the judge for court. The whole thing took less than 10 minutes, just another step in the process.

Because we finished fairly quickly, we were able to visit with Hannah for an hour this afternoon. She was so funny, not quite happy and not quite completely grumpy. This is my favorite face of hers that she makes. She’s complaining about something! When I make the same face back to her, she just laughs!

And this is her lazy, just hanging out pose! She’s in the middle of rolling over when she decides to just hang out for a while and play….