Today...

There are no words to explain what happened today.  We met our son.  God, in His infinite grace and wisdom, chose us as a family for the most precious little boy and after holding this perfect gift in our arms, we are humbled beyond words.

Today we are so grateful that we listened to the sweet voice of our Lord and stepped out in faith and obedience.  Today, we have absolutely fallen in love.  Today, the language was no barrier.  Today, Down Syndrome was the furthest concern from our mind.  Today, we met Ivan..."Vanya"

We think he is pretty adorable! 

 It seemed surreal to take this photo!

 What a handsome boy!

 I have 2 favorites of the afternoon and this is one of them...he was giving Derek a kiss!

 My other favorite...just no words!

 Blowing raspberries:)

 He is just so very sweet...

and quite a cuddlebug!

We are still processing a lot.  I will say that he is so sweet and we are just in love with him as if he has always been ours.  I have no doubt that he is going to be loved by so many.  He has just stolen our hearts.  We cannot wait for his sisters and brother to meet him!

We also got to ask lots of questions and got a lot of information today...still trying to absorb all of that and will maybe share more later.  We know that his heart will need to be checked when we bring him home. We also know that he seems fairly healthy.  He does not eat from a bottle.  His caregivers said he is very calm and loves to eat.  We were told he has received some therapy as well.  I cannot express how grateful we were to see him not extremely malnourished.  His birthday is Sep. 28...he will turn 2 and right now he is around 20 lbs...about the same size as Stella.  He cannot sit up yet and tomorrow we hope to be able to play more on the floor.  He loved playing with my hair and as you can see from the pics, he loved kissing his daddy:)

I will leave you with this video...I will tell you it is long but so very worth every second:)  There are some really sweet moments around the 5 and 7 minute marks.  We will leave our hotel at 9:30 in the morning to go and spend a couple of hours with him. 

Thank you for your prayers!!!  We can't even begin to tell you how God has heard them and answered!  Seriously you all...so many things that people were praying have been answered.  More on all of that later.  For now, we hope you enjoy "meeting" Ivan or "Vanya" as he has been called by his caregivers...