Preparing for Goodbye

We're making a really focused effort to take lots of pictures during the last few days, in hopes that it will somehow make up for the time we'll lose with them in March. We had our normal morning visit in their playroom waiting room...the last time we'll visit them in that room. 

After the morning visit, we went to a dress factory to pick up the traditional Kazakh outfits we ordered for the kids, and for our friends' little girls who were also adopted from Kazakhstan. The dresses are beautiful!!! We'll have to post some pictures of the children in them after they arrive home.

We brought Nicholas and Nadia's snow suits to try on them during the afternoon visit. We'll leave a big bag of clothes, shoes, diapers, snow suits, hats, etc. for them when we leave next week, and want to be sure everything fits. Nadia looked precious in her little red suit and she wanted it off as soon as we got it on her. Then we dressed Nicholas in his coat, hat and mittens and he liked them so much he didn't want to take them off. We tried several times and he made it very clear that he didn't wish to part with them! He ended up wearing all of it during the entire visit in the very sunny, very warm family room. We tried to conceal our giggles as we watched him trying to look at books and eat cookies with his fuzzy mittens on. Toward the end of the visit we noticed sweat coming from his forehead...he finally took off the hat for a minute to reveal a completely soaked, sweaty head. But he still wouldn't let go of the hat, and promptly put it back on. Perhaps he went to bed tonight in his winter wear. I'm sure we'll show him the video of this in a year and he'll be laughing too. We started thinking maybe he thinks we're taking him home now, and then felt really bad that we ever tried them on him. Poor little guy. I can't wait to show him all his clothes at home and help him understand that nobody will take his clothes or food anymore. 

We kissed them goodbye as usual, and had dinner at our favorite German restaurant just down the street from our apartment. 

Tomorrow between visits, we're going souvenir shopping and running a few final errands before court on Monday. Pacah-Pacah!