Friday, February 1, 2008

From Russia With Love



Prevet everyone!

We have good news! We had our court appearance today, and despite being grilled by some very severe babushkas in uniform, our adoption of Roman has been officially approved by the Russian government. We now have to wait ten days until we get custody of him and can begin the US visa application. February 12th will be the day he officially becomes our son (we can't wait)!

Roman is getting very talkative, although he only knows a few syllables and doesn't say actual words. He does say "dada" "mama", and "papa." We're not sure if he only calls us mama and papa, as kids in orphanges tend to call all the women they know "mama" and all the men "papa." However, we haven't head him call anyone else mama and papa yet, so we're quite encouraged by that.

We were so excited yesterday as he made his first attempt at a real word... and it was an English word! We were reading a book to him with lots of animals in it. It had a fuzzy picture of a cat that he could pet, after we said "cat" a few times, Roman said "caaa", "caaa"! That's wonderful considering he has not heard much English.

These pics are from our Wednesday visit with Roman. Our camera is out of action at the moment because the orphanage electricty burnt out our battery charger (a Russian power surge was too much for it). Anyway, we hope to be able to take photos again soon. Meanwhile, Rich is working on a video. It was originally quicktime but he had to convert it to WMV, and something didn't work quite right. He's working away at it furiously anyway, thanks to everyone who offered tips on how to make it work!

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