We Found Our Son!!

August 2, 2005: Day 1 with Andrew our son!



Today we found our son in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine! He is a precious 18 month old little boy as of yesterday, August 1, 2005. He is approximately 18 pounds in weight and 68 centimeters long. He was born premature at 7 months gestation, however, is developing more and more, day by day. His name is Andrew or as they call him in the orphanage Andruska.



We traveled by train overnight to visit the orphanage today and didn’t get much sleep due to the movement and noise of the train. It was an interesting train with 4 cots to a room. Robert, Alla and I all stayed in the same room and finally turned the lights off around 1am. The train arrived in Dnipropetrovsk around 7:00am. Since it was too early to meet with the city inspector and then the orphanage inspector we had some breakfast at McDonalds. I was looking forward to a McGriddle breakfast sandwich, however, come to our surprise they didn’t have breakfast food, only cheeseburgers, French fries and Mcnugguts. So we had McNuggets with orange juice for breakfast. Once we met with the inspector of the city and then the inspector of the orphanage we traveled to the orphanage to meet the orphanage director and then meet Andrew. Since Ukraine is switching ministries of who will oversee the orphanages the orphanage director was in an all day meeting with some city officials until 4:00pm. We waited for 4 hours along with 3 other couples waiting to meet with the orphanage director for the first time. Once she got back from her meeting, we were all hoping and praying she would let us see the children for a bit before they closed at 5:00pm. Well, Praise God, she saw all of us waiting couples and brought in the children we were waiting to visit with.



When they brought Andrew into the room to see us he was shy, hesitant and not sure of who these two new people were to him. They let me hold him and he just looked at me and didn’t know what to make of what was going on. I tried to get him to smile but he was very serious. I was bouncing him in my arms as I was standing and started softly singing “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine”, however, I was starting to get choked up with just singing the first few lyrics. As I was holding him, Alla and the orphanage director was quickly giving us Andrew’s medical history. Andrew is perfectly healthy little boy. Since it was the end of the day and the other couples were waiting to meet with the orphanage director we had to say goodbye for today to Andrew. The caretakers took Andrew back to his groupa and changed him into his summer wardrobe for outdoors….his undies. We saw him again before we left outside and got to hold him and get a quick couple of family photos with Mama and Papa Millilo. Robert and I are so excited about our new son Andrew.