Gotcha!

Well, we didn't really understand how things would proceed today. We thought that we would visit with Max like usual and during our visit, we would receive a call from Natasha Li telling us that we should meet her at the orphanage director's office to sign some documents. We thought we would be taking Max with us at this point. Nope.

We did our two hour visit from 10am till noon and then we left and returned to the apartment to wait for Natasha to call. We ate lunch and then left at 1:45 to go see the orphanage director. He was busy, so we signed the papers and left his gift with an assistant. Then we went back to the babyhouse to get Max. They woke him up from his nap, changed him into the clothes we brought for him, and then brought him out to us. We got a little emotional watching his caregivers say goodbye to him for the last time. We left the babyhouse at 2:30pm Aktobe time (that's 5:30am back home) and here's our first photo as an official family. Natasha took this picture as we walked out of the babyhouse.



The drive to the apartment was a little overwhelming for Max. He had a death grip on our fingers as we rode the mile and a half. His eyes were bugging out as he took in all the sights. We finally got to the apartment building and climbed the 12 stories to get to the palace. Our elevators have now been down for the last three days (some palace!). Max spent a while exploring his new digs and it wasn't long before we were offering him food. We found some cookies at the market that were like the ones he would sometimes get at the babyhouse. Here he is enjoying his little midday treat.


We played for quite a while this afternoon. Here's some video of a little peek-a-boo game.

He has been coping pretty well with his new life. He cries during diaper changes and when we put him into his PJs, but the more heartbreaking time was that he cried when dinner was over. This was a serious cry. I guess he thought that he would just keep eating all night long, but he did NOT like when the table was cleared. He ate all of his oatmeal and an entire banana after he had already had that cookie as well as some Cheerios. He did not like the apple juice we got for him, but he LOVED the grape juice. We'll have to get more of that. We'll try milk in the morning with his oatmeal and maybe another banana.

We decided not to try to give him a bath tonight. We figured he had been through enough for one day, so we'll give that a shot tomorrow. Bedtime was a bit of a challenge as well. He cried when we put him into his crib, so we pulled him out and all three of us laid down on the bed until he was relaxed. Then we tried again to put him in the crib. Again, more tears. But this time, we just tried to soothe him in the crib and after a little while, his eyes started to get heavy and he fell asleep holding on to his squishy bus from Uncle Tim and Aunt Shannon. All in all, the bedtime routine took about 45 minutes. Not too bad at all. We're hoping that he makes it through the night, but we're not counting on it. We moved the crib into our bedroom because there is no air conditioning in the spare bedroom and it gets a little warm. Also, it'll help having us so close, so hopefully he won't get scared if he does wake up.

It's about 10pm now, so we're gonna watch some TV on the computer and then get to bed.