An Awesome Reunion!

Note: apologies for posting the same information twice. We were having technical difficulties last night. Now on to the good stuff.

John and I were both up at 4:00 am, so we started packing the items we wanted to take to the baby home and got ready for the day. Breakfast doesn't start until 7:30, so we took a walk around the neighborhood and found another park. The parks are not well kept here and tend to be full have trash and bottles. It was a chilly morning.
We met Stacy and Doug for breakfast and Anna picked us up at 8:00 with our driver, Sergey.
It is a two hour drive to Cherepanovo. On the way we ran into a terrible traffic jam. Anna said she had never seen such a traffic jam in that area and there must be an accident, but as we crawled on for several miles we did not see any signs of a reck. We did however, come to a complete stop and saw that a line of police cars were blocking the road that went across a bridge. They were allowing the oncoming traffic to use both lanes across the bridge. After 15 minutes of sitting there they finally opened up the lane for us to go. We still don't know what that was all about.

We arrived at the baby home a half hour late. As we were walking up to the door the children were playing outside. I recognized some of them and realized that this was Galina's group and then I saw her. She had a little gray coat on with the hood up and her little face just shone out. Anna called to Galina and said your Mama and Papa are here. She stood there for a minute looking at us. I knelt down and called her over to me and she came running and threw herself into my arms! I told her I missed her so much in Russian. She gave me a big hug and then off she went to play. We went inside and waited in the big play room. A few minutes later Galina came in with a pretty dress on, a big yellow bow in her hair, and the puppy dog we gave her for her birthday under her arm. She looked adorable. She came right up to me and we hugged and I kissed her and told her how much I loved her. Her smile was so big.

Then Valentina came in the room walking at first, but when she saw us she started crying. I picked her up and tried to comfort her. Galina meanwhile was engaging John with the new toys that we brought to play with her. She had no reservations about John. He was her papa and she kept calling him that. She sat next to him, touched him and not once did she make out like she was afraid of him. That was all gone. Galina spent most of her time engaged with John as I worked hard to make a connection with Valentina. She cried off and on quite a bit. I would get her distracted with a toy, but it would not last for long. Finally I brought the food out. Valya and Galya loved the yogurt we brought. They both ate that quickly. Valya did not mind me feeding her one bit. Then the biscuits came out. I lost count how many Galina ate. We also brought bananas. Galina ate three! I think we should have set a limit on that one. The head doctor was shocked when I told her what they ate. She said next time "adine banana":one banana. Valya was much more relaxed with us once we fed her. I was able to comfort her and she started to make eye contact with me and look in my face, but then she would quickly turn away. Once I started swinging her around she started to giggle and laugh and then she kept eye contact with me. We will have to work to win that little one over, but it won't be too hard.
Galina is already won over. She is so ready to be ours. I believe the talking photo album that we left with her made a big difference. The staff said she looked at it often and would tell the kids that we were her mama and papa. She would ask often when we were coming back. We are thrilled about the way our reunion went.We feel like a family!