She's the One!

So, after talking, and talking and talking some more, we've decided that this little girl is 'the one'. Yes, Baba has a new grandchild! You may be thinking well, duh, that was obvious last night but alas ... I told you that I wasn't a leap to some conclusion kind of person and the decision required a 'phone a friend' and a 50 / 50.

So ... first, I called my good friend, Jan. She is a very wise, very analytical person who was sure to give me good advice (btw, we were able to set up Skype on the computer that we're using at our apartment and at 2 cents a minute, you just can't beat it and the clarity of the call is amazing. No, I don't own stock in Skype but thought I would share this excellent tip with other PAPs). The facts as we know them ... this little girl was born two weeks premature. The fact that we know the gestation period is a bonus as for Sasha we just knew his birth weight and nothing else. At birth, they tested her for everything in the whole world and she tested negative. We have height, weight, head circumference and chest measurements from birth, twice a month through April. When you chart her height and weight, she is between 15-25% on a normal growth chart (as opposed to a premie growth chart or a growth chart that might be geared more to her ethnicity). When we chart her head circumference, she comes out in the 50th percentile. So ... growth charts look good. Dr. Davies charges $1000 to review a blind referral. Was it worth $1000 to have him tell us that this is the healthiest referral he's ever seen?

The second thing to look at is FAS which is diagnosed by looking at three things and you have to have all three in order to be diagnosed with FAS - a thin upper lip, lack of a philtrum (the ridge underneath your nose above the center of your mouth) and small eyes. This little girl absolutely has a pronouced philtrum. Her upper lip looks proportional to her mouth. She has very large eyes but this is probably one of the harder things to judge without help.

The only other thing we were a little concerned with is that she doesn't have any teeth yet. Nope, no teeth not even one ... just gums. In doing some additional research (don't you just love Wikipedia??), we found out that children get teeth at various times from birth to 16 months. We also spoke with the director of our adoption agency and her son didn't have teeth when he first came home. Katy, Jan's daughter, only had a few teeth at 17 months old. So this is where I used my 50/50. I called Dr. Pomeranets, our pediatrician, to get his advice (Dr. Pomeranets equals free medical advice as opposed to $1000). I quickly went over her growth charts which he thought sounded very good. Then I asked about the teeth. Now, for those of you unfamilar with Dr. Pomeranets, he is from Belarus. He has a variety of different medical degrees from the former Soviet Union as well as his medical license from the U.S. He's really a nice man and seems to find me entertaining. I have sent photo cards at Christmas, Valentine's Day, etc. and brought them Russian chocolates after our first adoption so the staff knows us very well. The fact that within minutes of me calling his office, telling them that I was calling from Russia and him answering the phone is a testament to what a nice man he is. He thought that my question regarding the lack of teeth at 14 months was a good one. He said that it could be due to malnutrition and that, even if she had no teeth, it wasn't something that was a show stopper (would this little girl have to wear dentures?? have to worry about polydent at age 2? ).

So with this final concern minimized and having used up two of my three life lines, we have decided to proceed. As the final test, I just spoke with my Dad (aka Gdaddy) to get his thoughts. No, I'll tell you that my father is probably one of the most analytical, practical people I've ever known. He's a mechanical engineer by education and he's a good sounding board when I want to verify that I've thought of everything. After listening to the medical information, using Wikipedia a couple of times, he too came up with the assessment that between our conversation with Dr. Pomeranets and the various tools that we have (growth charts, FAS diagnosis information, etc.) that we probably didn't need to enlist Dr. Davies for this referral.

Hope you enjoyed the couple additional photos of the little girl. No, we haven't completely decided on her name yet and know that the clock is ticking! We think that her middle name will be T.J. to honor our mothers - Toni (aka Baba) and Janet, who left us entirely too soon. We feel completely blessed to have had two awesome mothers and feel it would be our daughter's honor to have their names be a part of hers (we did something similar with our son's name who has John Thomas for his middle name ... isn't it interesting that both their names will have the same letters - T & J). Obviously, her last name is easy. We're wrestling with the first name. No, I'm not hip or should I say hippy enough to call her Moon. We're thinking about Amelia which means To Strive, To Excel or To Rival and is Latin. We would call her Mia. She just looks like a Mia doesn't she? Jan's suggestion was Emily which is another form of Amelia. Isn't that interesting that she looked at this little girl and thought of the same name that we did?

We're still undecided but will know later on today. We will also have some new photos to add to the blog a bit later. We head over to the orphanage at 11:30 a.m. and will spend 1 1/2 hours with the little girl. Vlad was translating the story that I created for her to have during the time we're gone. It's called A Sister for Sasha and tells the story of how Sasha had a beautiful home, parents and family that loved him, friends to play with but most of all, he wanted a little sister to love. It tells the story of how he found his little sister. It's really quite sweet and hopefully will be a lifelong story that they can share (and evidence that I can use when Sasha forgets how much he wanted a little sister later).

Well, enough for now and, you see, we didn't just 'know' that she was meant to be our daughter. As I predicted, Nathan was sold long before I was. For those of you who know us, that probably seems strange but it always takes me longer to arrive at this kind of decision. Once I'm there, I'm OTT but until then it just takes a while.