Four Feet More

One of the benefits on our birth family search was that we got a couple of baby photos of the kids. The quality isn't the best, and the images are kind of fuzzy, but it's more than we had before, and we are very happy to have them.

These images are a bit small because the resolution was so low. However, we were able to print them out as wallet size photos, which we can put into the kids' lifebooks.

Here's Vika at around 10 months of age (I'm totally guessing here. I'm not terribly good at judging babies' ages). She's sitting in front of the same rug that was hung on the wall behind her Russian Mama during the interview (which gives kind of a nice sense of continuity). At the top of this photo, which was framed on the Tatiana's shelf, was a cut out picture of an unknown man (I edited it out here). I'm hoping his identity will be revealed when we get the video translation.



Here is a photo of the two kids sitting on their Russian Mama's lap. Eamon must be just a few months old in this photo, and Vika is probably around 20 months old. This isn't too long before they were placed in the orphanage.

The Russian Mama did ask that we send her regular updates and photos of the kids, and she promised to send us some photos as well.

An interesting side effect of the birth family search is that our family became a bit more extended. Even though we do not know them personally, and may never meet them in real life, I feel as if our kids' Russian family is part of our family too. I also feel a bit as if I am sharing Mother's Day this year with Tatiana. In previous years, she was a faceless person whom we did not know a lot about. Now that she is "real," my empathy for her and her loss of Vika and Eamon is even greater. I'll be keeping her in my thoughts this Mother's Day and hoping that the pictures and information we sent will give her as much comfort as the pictures and information she sent gave us.