Change in plans

Alternative title: "I Am A Big, Fat Liar"

Wednesday was the great paperwork chase. And that it was. We started out at 7:30am and we literally went either 0 km/hour or 200 km/hour (yes, that would be 124 mph) all day. And I do mean LITERALLY.

We survived. :) :)

The most interesting event of the day was being told at 7:30 in the morning that there was a chance we might be able to get the girls' passports in one day. Um, what?? As the day went on, it went from being a small chance to 30% to "if we're lucky" to 80% to "here are your passports; we're picking up the girls and going back to Kyiv tonight. Go pack."

Yeah, it hit us probably about like it just hit you. So as I'm typing this--from KYIV--we are completely done with our adoption process except for picking up the girls' visas, which will happen tomorrow morning at 9am. We have already changed our flights and will be leaving on Saturday morning at 5:30am on Lufthansa. We'll be home Saturday night. Can you believe it? Neither can we, and we're living it. ;)

Our time with the girls has been good. Danielle is already very attached. She's been waiting for a mama and papa for a long time and she gets concerned anytime one of us goes somewhere without everybody (into another building, out of the apartment, etc.). Emily is behaving pretty much as I expected. She was the pet of her groupa, and anytime she cried they gave her a cookie or a toy or whatever she wanted to get her to stop. Let's just say she's not receiving the same treatment now. ;) We had a long episode this afternoon that lasted for a couple of hours and was not pretty. Lots of self-stimulation behaviors--hand-flapping, hitting herself in the head--and just general disdain for doing what I wanted her to do (which was put her slippers on). Funny thing though, I asked her if she wanted to put her slippers on or go to sleep (neither of which she answered) and she continued with her behavior. As soon as I started to get her sleeping pallet out, she reached out and took hold of one of her slippers and put it on. ;)

Emily was pretty much an angel the rest of the evening and had lots of hugs and kisses for me before bedtime. She was not happy about having a bath but I bathed the girls together and she had decided it was okay by the end. Danielle is pretty self-sufficient in the bathtub--she does better than our boys do! They both had a hard time falling asleep tonight which is not a surprise. They are so over-stimulated just from all of the changes of the past few days. It took our boys a few months to really settle into a good sleep pattern, and I'm sure the girls will have a similar adjustment to make.

We are thrilled to be coming home so early; I had really anticipated that if we needed to change our flights it would be to extend our trip. We've got internet in our apartment in Kyiv now so I should be able to blog over the next couple of days. Sorry for the lack of pictures--we haven't had time to take any!