[September review] First visit with Bogomila

These will be mostly photos, and who knows how quickly they'll come, but hopefully they'll be a good introduction to our girls for those of you who are praying us through these last weeks apart, and then our new lifetime together!

This is our first photo of our oldest daughter! It's nothing fantastic as a photo, but it will always be special to me because it is *our* first photo with her. She adored Gloria from the very start.

And Gloria, amazingly, who at this time would not let *anyone* else hold her except me, sat happily on Bogomila's lap for a notable period of time! Bogomila just soaked it up. Those two... ;) One of my favorite parts about our Skype calls with Bogomila is seeing these two react to each other - Gloria sees Bogomila and squeals with delight (it could be that it's the only time we let her see moving digital media, but I prefer to think she sees someone she remembers and recognizes!) and Bogomila's response to Gloria's excitement is just as good to watch. I am so looking forward to when the two of them will get to see each other again!

This was our "family" shot from the end of the first day. Not knowing if we'd have a good opportunity to get photos to leave with Bogomila while we were staying in Lukovit, we wanted to be sure we had a good one when we went to Pleven, because we knew we could get pictures printed in Pleven, having done it before when we were with Krassimir.

It was at this first visit that we talked with Bogomila about names. We did not know at this point if we'd have the opportunity to communicate with her in between trip one and trip two, so we wanted to get some critical things out on the table. Matt and I had talked about a number of options, all of which depended on her opinion of the matter! We were open to her keeping her birth name as either a first name or a middle name. We were open to her middle name as well, (which Americanizes very easily), but wanted to give her at least one of her names besides her last name. She can be very decisive at times - she knew she wanted to keep Bogomila. And we like it, too. Name meanings are important to us, and Bogomila means "sweet to God" (roughly).

After learning on this first visit that Bogomila she was and Bogomila she would be, we gave her three options for a middle name, and told her to think about them over the weekend for when we saw her again on Monday.

Once again, her decisiveness came out. As soon as we asked her on our next visit, she told us, "Brianna - strong," in confident, clear English. ;) It's still one of the few English things she says to us! We love that she is so pleased with her new name from us. So that's our girl - Bogomila Brianna.