Two visits went by so quickly!

We enjoyed another wonderful time with Samuel this morning. It is so hard for me to believe that already our vists with him are over until we return to bring him home. This morning, Julia picked us up from our hotel again, and we went to the notary. We had to sign several documents saying that we do plan to adopt Samuel. This will begin the process with the courts. Then we returned to the hospital.

Yesterday when we were with him, there were 6-8 other people with us, observing. It was a little strange. But today, it was just us and Julia. SO much better! We got to play and have fun with him, and she took lots of pictures. (She called herself our paparazzi!) He loved to play with my necklace again, which I plan to wear often now to remember him. We tried to read him a few books, but he just wanted to chew on them--including the family photo album we brought. We also got to see him crawl and stand up with our help. At first, he was quite reserved, but by the end of the time, we were making him laugh and loved to see him smile. We got a lot of great pictures which we will treasure until we are able to come back. We got to pray with him in the room too, which was a blessing. After about 45 minutes, the nurse returned to get him. She said she could tell that he didn't want to leave us...I don't think he gets much personal attention in his room. He was obviously soaking it all in from us. It made it even harder to leave, knowing that he would pretty much be alone until we return to bring him home.

Julia told us that the judge here will be on vacation for the entire month of May, so that changes our timeline a little bit. If we get the rest of our documents completed as soon as we return, Julia is hoping to turn everything in before the end of April, and will try to get us a court date in early June. But, it will depend on the judge's schedule completely. Our visas will expire on June 15, so if we don't get the process completed by then, we'll just have to apply for new ones. We are hoping we'll be able to be with him on his birthday in early June, so we can celebrate together. God has a good plan for when to bring Sam home, so we'll be waiting on Him.

This afternoon, we are going to go out walking around town again, even though it's snowy and quite cold. Tonight we take the train back to Moscow, and will do some sightseeing there on Friday and Saturday. It will be nice to have something to take our minds off of how much we already miss our son!