The Meeting

"The Meeting" finally happened today.  After years of paperwork and prayers and hours in airplanes and automobiles, we finally met Nikita today.  As expected, Nikita shed a few tears at being walked outside to meet his new MaMa and PaPa who don't even speak Russian!  He proved to be very resilient and after some coaxing with graham crackers started to open up and was soon eager to give us a Russian lesson.  He methodically walked around the playground pointing at painted animals on the pavement, saying their names and what sounds they make.  We introduced him to the 'mishka' (teddy bear) that Maddie and Dylan made for him, and showed him lots of pictures of his mishka at our house, with us, the kids, the dog, and in his bed.  He liked looking at the pictures, but was hesitant to hold onto the bear itself.  That hesitancy did not hold true for the Matchbox car that we left with him.  We played with him quite a bit longer than we anticipated and he seemed to like playing with us.  I (Brent) think that he will be glad to see us back in the morning.

Getting to "The Meeting" proved to be quite a bit more complicated than we anticipated.  We spent about 5 hours in the car round trip between going to the education minister's office (to get our official referral and permission to meet Nikita) and the orphanage which is located in a suburban area just outside Moscow.  I didn't think Ann-Marie was going to make it (car sickness) when we got stuck on a small stretch of road for an hour (at one point it took us 20 minutes to go just 500 meters).  The traffic here is unbelievable.  Our interpreter said that her husband has a 3 hour commute every day...each way!  While we are excited to see Nikita in the morning, we are not excited about the commute!

After the meeting we told them that we wanted to proceed with the adoption and had them work up the documents to file with the court.  We officially registered his name as Peter Nikita Bowen, and we plan to call him "Nik" for short.  We want to post some pictures, but are having technical issues, so you'll just have to wait!