We've Arrived and Have Visited with Klaudia!

We arrived in Gliwice, Poland! We got in yesterday and are now pretty much acclimated. We explored Gliwice this morning and just now got back from spending the afternoon visiting Klaudia! A few photos are attached.

Klaudia cried immediately upon seeing us, but that faded after 10-15 minutes. After that she was very tentative for an hour or two, and then began warming up to us. By the end of the afternoon, she cried when she went to the nun who took her away and she reached back for us! Our hearts melted.

She has changed a little bit since we saw her three months ago. The first thing Ryan noticed was a mouthful of teeth! She just generally looks a bit bigger and stronger. Also, her hair looks a little longer and a bit darker.

Klaudia is sitting up really well on her own, and standing comfortably. She wants to take a step or too...it is coming any day. Personality-wise, she is very tentative, in general. She is very scared by the orphanage dog's barking, and it takes awhile to get her attention focused on something to the point of her being ok with being engaged. It literally took an hour to get her to touch a toy. Once she was playing with some plastic shapes, she was picking all kinds of shapes up and chewing on each one and moving on to the next ones.

We learned a lot about her food and sleep schedule today. We have it all written down, along with a list of foods she is eating (milk, juices, baby foods, mashed potatoes, bananas, this fruit cream cheese baby food thing, yogurt, cereal softened in milk, anything soft, etc.), and the size diapers to get. We fed her a couple of spoonfuls of that fruit-cheesy baby food thing - one of the highlights of my day. :-)

It looks like we will be visiting her again tomorrow all day, and then picking her up on Wednesday morning to go to Krakow to an apartment. The plan is 2 weeks of court-ordered bonding period, and then court on August 11.