Gotcha....Blog Hop

This is my favorite picture of Brady and me. It was taken in the orphanage on December 11, 2006 - what we consider to be our Gotcha Day. Our court date was that morning - after almost 13 months of waiting, praying and completing enough paperwork to last a lifetime; we were (finally) granted permission by the Russian courts to be Brady's parents!! After the very intimidating and stressful hearing, we went back to our hotel to email our friends and family with the exciting news and highly anticipated pictures....then we had lunch and we were off to the orphanage to see Brady for the first time as his official parents! We were taken up to see him in the room that he shared with 20 other babies. It was play time so the majority of his roomies were divided amongst 4 large play pens and it took us a minute to find him. Brendan spotted him first so he crouched down in front of the play pen...Brady saw him, smiled and crawled right over to him. It was the first time we saw him crawl. It was almost as if he knew it was official. His demeanor was completely different than every other visit we had had with him on both trips...he was much more outgoing and playful all of a sudden. The picture above was taken that afternoon - you can almost see the relief on my face! We weren't able to take him back to the hotel until the next day - still more paperwork to be done....the picture below was taken right outside the orphanage the following night as we were leaving for the last time.
Brady had his first dinner in a restaurant that night.....





And then it was time for bed - he seemed so grateful to not have to sleep in a room full of babies! It always amazes me that he didn't seem at all upset that we were removing him from the only home he had ever known. Since we've had Zachary, I now realize that 10-month-olds are definitely old enough to know who Mommy and Daddy are (or whoever cares for them daily) and they are definitely mature enough to form bonds with the people they see every day but Brady never looked back once he was with us. Such an amazing little guy. We're truly blessed.