The Best Chanukah Gift...

So this morning, at around 10:40am in Astana, (9:40pm on Tuesday night back in Phoenix) Rylie was officially named Rylie Naina Tennen and we were officially named as her parents. We had the formal court proceeding, and now we just sit and wait for 15 days with our fingers crossed. This is the appeal period. So even though legally, we are now Rylie's Mommy and Daddy, we won't officially receive custody of her for 15 days. Needless to say, the court ruling- on the first day of Chanukah, is the best gift we could have ever asked for.

We were able to see Rylie this afternoon after lunch. Her caregiver told us she was crying and looking at the door at 10am after her breakfast, which is when we normally arrive. Needless to say, we got a big squeal when we showed up at 2!

It has been a pretty hectic past few days, not only with the whole "locked in" situation, but also preparing for court and packing Adam up to go home. He is on his way to Almaty as I write, so hopefully he will be home safe and sound in just a short 36 hours.

I am exhausted, so this will be a short entry, but here are a few pictures from the past few days. Oh, and as you can see- since Monday and Wednesday we had afternoon visits, Rylie has already been changed by the time we get there. So we don't change her again.

Rylie is definitely liking the sippy cup, which is a good thing. We've also realized that she likes the baby sweet fruit tea much more than the baby chamomile tea. Both yesterday and today, she almost drank the entire thing. She prefers to hold it herself, but sometimes she has trouble tilting it far enough back on her own.

On Tuesday, Rylie refused to let go of these two blocks for the first 50 minutes of the visit. It made playing with anything else virtually impossible, but she refused to part with the blocks. We found Rylie has started discovering a few new positions lately. This was one of her favorites- she basically balances on her head and then can see in between her legs. She seemed to like it in that position, but we weren't really quite sure how she seems to end up in it, why she likes it, or just how stable she is in the position.

Rylie also went back to the mirror today. She loved the mirror for a while when we first got here. She liked hitting the baby in the mirror and dancing with the baby in the mirror. She liked looking at things in the mirror and then turning to find the real object. But for the past few weeks, she has not been really interested in the mirror. Today, she crawled back over to the mirror and began full on kissing the baby in the mirror. It was pretty funny.

Towards the end of the visit, Rylie just felt like resting on Sara's shoulder (which is always allowed) and wathcing the rest of the activity in the room. This is her pathetic look!

And one last family picture until PHX Sky Harbor Airport (hopefully soon!)

Spakone Notche (Good Night) from Astana----