God's Butterfly Kisses

June 16, 2009
We arrived at the baby house around 9:30 am (10:30pm central time) yesterday. The baby house is only about 1 mile away from where we are staying. We were taken into this room with Kulyash, Aimara and the director of the baby house. We sat there for about 20 minutes while the director asked Thomas and I questions. He speaks no english so this is all being translated through Aimara. They told us that they were going to bring in two girls for us to see and play with. Then we had to pick one of the two girls. First walks in this lady holding a baby (10 months old). They told me to get up and hold the baby. I was not really understanding exactly what was happening as we were expecting a 2 year old girl, not a baby. Then all of the sudden this 3 1/2 year old girl runs in the room and leaps into Thomas' arms. They then brought us all into a playroom where we spent about 30 minutes playing with the girls. The older girl had some obvious issues. She was very lovable, but definately something was wrong. Her teeth were yellow and extremely unhealty. They also "butch" the girls hair when they turn one. We are assuming for cleanliness reasons. Her moter and social skills were not even close where they should have been. Then we looked at the baby, she was beautiful and seemed to be healthy. So many things were going through our minds. Thomas and I had replayed the age of our daughter over and over. Did we want to go back to the baby stage again? We also knew that Joann was right behind us to view the same girls. Time was not on our side, we had to make a decision. I was thinking that God must have brought us here to bring home a baby, not a 2 year old girl. So we told Kulyash that we would take the baby, whom we named Layla Kamilla.

We then went to lunch at an International Eastern restaurant, The food in Kaz has been tough for us! We are basically eating all carbs, which we try to avoid at home. It was that or starve.

After lunch, we went back to the baby house where we spent another 1 1/2 hours with Layla, playing and getting to know eachother.

We then got dropped off at our flat. We were hungry so we again ventured out by foot with no luck. Came back to flat and had a Ramen Noodle like dinner along with a Snicker's bar. Yes, they have Snicker's there!

We then had to upload pictures and information to our International Doctor back in Birmingham, AL. It was an exciting and emotional day! We were exhausted and went to bed.