*This picture was taken while we were waiting for our flight home from Ukraine (6 week's after we first met Nic)i. He was already smiling for us.*

We committed to adopt in July 2016 and on Thanksgiving day 2016 we received the phone call that we would be flying to Ukraine for an appointment with the Ukraine government in 5 days.

We arrived in Ukraine with zero sleep but running on adrenaline.

At this point the only thing that we knew about Nic was still, “Born 2016, Down syndrome” and our excitement to hold him, show him love and learn about our boy could not get any higher.

We had our interview at the department of adoption where we received our referral and also learned a few things about Nic that I had been so anxious to know.

We learned that he was 11 month old and his birthdate was January 22.

He had been left at the hospital at birth when his parents found out that he had Down syndrome.

We were then told that we would be allowed to meet Nic for the first time in his orphanage the next day.

We would be his very first visitors.

The emotions that we felt as we drove up to the orphanage are hard to put into words...

Overwhelming excitement that the moment we had dreamed of had finally arrived, but probably more comparable to the jumping out of an airplane, wide eyed, knot of fear, kind of excitement.

We had been told by others that babies in the orphanage spend a majority of the day in their cribs staring at the ceiling, sedation is used in some orphanages and that even in the “good orphanages” the trauma of neglect or lack of love and attention can have a devastating toll.

We had no idea what to expect but had already decided that whatever Nic was like, whatever health issues he might have, whatever trauma he might have experienced, he was our son.

We nervously talked with the orphanage director through our facilitator and then were led down a dark, eerily quiet hallway to the brightly painted visitation room where we took a seat on the couch next to oversized, stuffed monkeys and pink elephants.

My heart felt like it could have beat out of my chest while waiting to meet Nic.