Today is the day!!!

We were picked up by our entourage this morning bright and early, to pile into the van and drive about an hour to the town where our little girl lives. I feel like I'm cramming for a test in the back seat as I skim down the list of phrases that I had Rita translate for me (well, she re-translated it for me, after we realized how bad of a job Google translate did. For "have you been on an airplane before?" it translated it into "have you ever been strapped onto the nose of an airplane (like suicide)?" Yikes. Can you imagine how scary it would have been if we would have asked our little girl that!)  So we only use Google translate for one word phrases now.

I want to remember how to say hi, and 'you are very pretty'. It's "Szia" (See-ya) and "Nagyon czisnos vagy" (Na-jone cis-noshe vaij). Also 'yes' and 'no' will come in handy, "igen" and "nem". We get to visit her for only about an hour, or hour and a half today.

First we have to go to the government agency to meet the social worker, and so she can ask us some questions about how we are feeling about this whole thing, and allowed us to ask some questions. Then we bring her with us in the van, and we are off to the smaller town.

We pull up into the neighborhood (similar to the one pictured) and we park outside of the gate, and the foster mother we recognize from the video greets us at the gate with yet another social worker. There are now 8 adults walking into the house, all for one little girl. It's amazing how much time, paperwork, money, effort and coordination has gone into making this one moment happen.

We walk into a cute little house with a large flower garden out front, and follow the foster mother into the other room where she brings our little girl to us, saying something in Magyar (Hungarian) while holding her hand. She comes out to see these 8 adults all looking at her, and looks a little shy and stays close to the foster mother. How overwhelming that must have been for her! We all sit together so they can explain that we are a family. At this point I believe she thinks we are just visiting her, and they haven't told her for sure that we are going to be her new mom and dad...although I did here the word mom, "anya" and dad "apa" a couple of times, so I think they are preparing her.

She finally led us (a little reluctantly) into her room because they were all asking her about Hello Kitty - which I think is one of her favorite toys. We sat with her on the floor of her room taking pictures and playing with toys, with Dad working his 'twinkle' magic (where he gets this little sneaky smile on his face and his eyes actually twinkle and you can't help but giggle and feel comfortable around him) for about an hour. The others left us alone as soon as they saw us start to interact with her, because they wanted her to bond with us, and not them. We couldn't speak a word of Magyar except yes and no, but somehow Dad had her laughing and giggling and smiling within about 2 minutes. And our little guy stepped right in and started playing with her...and what do you know? They both love playing with legos! It was a little bit magical, actually.

Here's the disclosure, and letdown for the day: We will not be able to post any pictures of her until the paperwork is finalized in July! Rules prohibit public posting of the children until it's 'official'. Sorry :(

Our little mini-comedian takes after his dad and is always making her laugh. One thing she thought was hilarious too was when Dad would try to build something with blocks, I would take it off and say "nem" (no)....over and over. She was so sweet and just listened to everyone talking, played with us, and laughed with us. The foster mother brought us all punch in fancy glasses on a tray, then a while later brought in a little coffee tray with miniature espresso sized cups of coffee. She brought us a stack of pictures from our little girl's past birthdays all the way since she was 2. I hope we get to take a few of those with us! I hear that she will be bringing about a week's worth of clothing with her, and any toys that she wants to take...so next Monday when we get to take her into our custody we'll bring a suitcase with us.

Then when we were in the middle of having a great time, they come in and say 'that's all for today, time to go'. We want to leave on a high note, so that she'll look forward to seeing us again tomorrow. Tomorrow we get to actually take her for about half a day to go get ice cream or something....and she smiled really big when they told her that. The social workers both told us that they were very surprised at how she opened up to us, and they have never seen her like that, so giggly and talkative...and they could tell that she really liked us, and that we would be able to do great things for her development. First visit - success!

We said "Szia!" and waved, and she gave each of us a hug and we started to walk out. But she scampers alongside us and puts her shoes on as fast as she can and comes right out after us, like she wanted to go with us or something. She followed us all the way out to the van and wanted to look inside. They tell her we will see her tomorrow and she waved and smiled to all of us. The hard part was driving away...