Happy Birthday Brother- Sisters bonding day #2

Last night there was some flooding in Port-au-Prince. Made for a little bit of a slow start for our journey to the creche but overall today was a great day!

Today is R's 3rd birthday.  Many of you know this but this is the reason we took this trip now.  We had planned on making the trip so the girls could meet him, bond with him and see Haiti and the creche before we bring him home... but it just seemed fitting and made sense to come and not miss another birthday.  Praying, and God willing, he will be home before his next birthday!

Our original plan was to get a birthday cake.  But last night Ethan and I reevaluated that plan. It is so hot here and yesterday's drive was not the shortest so we were afraid a cake would melt and be nothing but a sticky mess.  That, in addition, it didn't seem fair to bring a cake for just a few kids and we didn't have the energy to get cake for all the kiddos.  Yesterday we saw Twinkies in the grocery store, we opted for those.  The kids, except R, loved them.  R broke his in half, took one bite, licked the filling once and then was done.  It was kinda funny actually... he has liked every food we have put in front of him (except a lemon bar) since we met this kid... and of course his birthday dessert he wanted nothing to do with.  Oh well, it was really more for our girls.  They loved wrapping him a present, we brought birthday hats and blowers and sang happy birthday. The girls really enjoyed having a mini party/celebration for him.

The rest of the day was pretty much more of the same.  However, Ethan and I really stepped back and let the girls take the reins today.  It is really important to us that the girls have good quality time with him and leave feeling bonded and connected to him.  Times they can cherish in their minds and memory tank of him until we can finally bring him home!  The girls truly love their brother and are having a great time.  It is not an easy trip and we have warned them for months about how hard this trip was going to be.  Exhausting, emotional, etc... they have really been amazing.  They have had a couple meltdowns from being hot and tired but never during our time at the creche, I think they realize just how little time we have with brother while we are here (approximately 22-23 hours total) and they seem to cherish that time.  They have a couple fights over who gets to play with him, hold him, feed him, etc... They both just want to be there doing everything! It melts my heart really just how sweet and loving they are! Evaleena has cried both days we have been leaving him at the creche because she just doesn't want to say "goodbye".  I am a little nervous for how she is going to handle leaving him on our last day.

We still cannot post photos of his face but here are some photos we can share.

Main question people have:

Many people who are not fully aware of our process in this adoption have been asking if we get to bring R home this trip.  The short and simple answer is no.  You can look at our timeline page but basically we still have a MINIMUM of 6 months probably more like 9 months and that is ONLY IF we got our exit letter (authorization to adopt letter) in the next few days which I don't feel in my gut will happen.  The true and honest answer is that until we have our Authorization to Adopt letter and our Adoption Decree we really cannot say when we will be able to bring him home. 

Many people have asked why we got to bring the girls to visit because we had said before that we cannot visit again until we get our exit letter.  This was the case... however, this was an agency policy and not a Haitian policy.  We have pretty much been begging since December to come visit for his birthday and we have always been told "no".  On April 25th we received an email stating our agency had reviewed the policy and lifted that "travel ban". Within 2 hours of the email being sent we had submitted our travel dates to be approved to come visit for his birthday.  At this point we can visit as often as we want.  However, reality is, due to costs we will probably only be able to come once more as a family (when we come to pick him up) and MAYBE I will travel one other time by myself to visit if the process continues to be slow as it has been for us to this point.  Right now we can only pray that we get our exit letter and adoption decree ASAP!!!  Once we have those 2 parts of the process completed, we really will free like homecoming is on the horizon.