Day 3 - Say Hello to Darya!

Our first picture together with Darya!

Thursday 10 am - Petro time!!!! Today we met our new little daughter Darya ( the nick name for Darya in Russian is Dasha and all the baby house staff calls her Dasha). First we had to go to the government office to pick up the social worker who will be checking in on our vists and then say her piece on our court date on how the visitations went. We then drove to the baby house which currently houses 79 children between the ages of 0-4 years old. We were then taken into an office and asked several questions from the baby house doctor and then she perused through a big pile of profiles and told us that Darya was a match for us! She then made a quick phone call upstairs to ask one of the care takers to bring her down. Our hearts were pounding, we were about to meet our little Dasha for the first time. The care taker knocked on the door and in her arms was the sweetest little baby we have ever seen. At first she looked at us with really wide eyes and a look like "who are these funny people" but after 30 seconds, she was full of smiles for us and didn't fuss one bit once we held her. We were able to hold and play with her for about 20 minutes. Dasha kept grabbing my Tiffany ( knock -off of course) necklace and tugging on it and trying to put it in her mouth. So looks like we have a Tiffany fan on our hands!!! Actually, she is really teething ( she has 4 teeth now) and needed something to soothe herself. I took out the little teething toy you gave me Sue and she loved it !! I can't wait for her and Jodie to meet each other!
Today we only got about 20 minutes with her and the doctor told us that we are now scheduled to come see her eveyday from 10-12 am. Darya is still a little small, about 15 lbs so they said they are going to increase her food intake more over the next few weeks to beef her up a bit. No doubt that she will put on some weight once she is at home with mommy and daddy. She also had a little bit of cough and they said that a cold had spread around the baby house alot of the kiddies had colds and were taking cough medicine for it.
So here are a few pics from today and after tomorrow, there will be tons more to come!!! So far all is good here. The town we are in is quite poor and there is alot of unemployment. The main industry here was manufacturing supplies for the Soviet army and once Kazakhstan became an independent country in 1991 when the USSR split up, most of the manufacturers had no more buisness and people lost their jobs. Now the industry here is manufacting agriculture supplies and bicycles. This town has a much more Russian influence then Almaty has. Almaty was much more advanced and more of a thriving metropolis then Petropavlovsk.
On another note, Kim went down to the hotel restaurant this morning and a young man visiting here from Russia was pounding back whiskey shots at 7 am. He was quite drunk and came and sat down next to her. He was ( from what little I understood) trying to either tell me he was an actor in a Jean Renaud film playing a sniper or that he was infact a sniper.!!! Right now we are back at the hotel and going to go have lunch, we are 10 hours ahead then Ottawa time. I have to say, this hotel makes the best darn cabbage rolls I have ever tried, the food is good here!!! Well buy for today...hope everyone is doing well at home. It's hard for us to call anyone as it is 10 hours ahead here, so we will mostly be in touch via e-mail now that we have an internet connection in our hotel! Paka Paka!!!! (Bye-bye in Russian)