Day 6- December 23, 2011

Dear AJ,
We just got back to the apartment from the SDA office. We have the referral to come and visit you along with our translated dossier. In other words, we have our official permission from the Ukrainian government to come to you- in person. We will ask Luda, our team family liason, tonight when she checks in with us if there is any possible way to meet you yet this weekend. We know it most likely will not happen that way. We'll have to wait until Monday, but how great would that be if someone allowed us to come on Christmas Day. What a cherished gift on that very special holiday for us! We trust in the Lord and have all of our faith resting in Him, that He will choose the perfect and most meaningful time for us to finally meet. Whether that would be at 10pm tonight or not until 10am Monday morning, we know we are on our way.

Daddy and I didn't do very much today. Our tour with the Fitch family and Eugene was squashed due to horrendous downtown Kiev traffic. It's honestly like something I've never seen before. We'll have to take pictures- it's really quite amazing.

We did accomplish one very imporant thing since getting home. We knew how to read your name as stated in Russian on our referral paper. Here it is phonetically:

Ahn-tohn.  Ah- na- toh- lee- oh- vich. Kre- my- uh- chuk.

So, we know that your birth father's name is Anatoliy.  Ukrainian and Russian boys and girls are all given a patronymic name. This is your middle name. For boys, patronymic name is made up of your father's first name and then adding -ovich or -evich on the end.

Daddy and I have been practicing saying your name over and over and over again. We hope we are not actually teaching it to ourselves WRONG... we probably are and then you can laugh at us and our poor Russian all you want, just as long as you let us hold you while you do it.

Until tomorrow our Little One....and you still have no idea.
To the moon and back,
Mommy and Daddy