Kids: Meet momma and poppa.

And just like that, our old lives are gone, replaced with two children and a whole lifetime of new types of issues, joys, concerns and moments.

We started the morning traveling the two hours to Cherepanov to pick up Yana. But first we needed to make sure we had gifts for the senior doctor (the magic $9 coffee), the social worker (coffee), the assistant doctor (box of chocolate), the caregivers (a bigger boc of chocolate), the social studies teacher (less expensive box of choclate), and the staff (a cake).

When we arrived, the senior doctor had us in her office and served up the cake and tea and we had a little tea party in her office, celebrating the adoption.

Then they brought in Yana, and Fran changed her out of her orphanage clothes -- which all the children share -- and into her spiffy super-sized clothes from the US. Yana seemed even more excited by the new clothes, and probbably knew something was up, because she started to bounce around the room.

It was then time to go, and the senior doctor walked us out, and we got into the taxi van. Yana didn't cry, just seemed to take it all in, staring at everything. She settled down in an instant, I think stunned and amazed at the sequence of events. She probbably had sledom been outside the baby home, much less in a car. In fact the last time she probably traveled in a car was a year ago when she was first admitted to the baby home, after being taken from her mother for neglect.

And so everything was new. She handled the two-hour drive back to Novosbirsk well, going through momma's baby bag to try and find something she wanted to play with, and after the excitement was too much, she fell asleep in my arm for about a half-hour.

We had to stop off on the way to get Ruslan to buy another cake for his staff, to go along with the coffee we had for the senior doctor and the chocolate we had for their caregivers and their social studies teacher (apparently these teachers have a lot to do with the adoption process ... either that, or our agency rep just wanted to get them some chocolate on our dime).

when we arrived, we brought Yana in to meet her brother. She wasn't impressed. Ruslan began crying the moment he saw us and all during the time that he was being changed into our clothes by the caregivers. I was only happy that the caregivers don't speak English, because otherwise they may have said "Boy, don't you have any idea how small this child is. These clothes are HUGE."

Ruslan's spirits seemed to pick up as soon as we left the baby home (why wouldn't it, right?). He was still sniffling when we got in the car, but soon he was looking out the window at all the cars and the people and probably blown away by it all. He was given up by his mother at birth in the hospital, so you can just imagine how he must have felt when he finally left the baby home grounds.

Shock, stunned, amazed, thrilled, concerned, anticipation ...

... actually that was the way his parent felt.

As we were driving back to the hotel with both these little bundles of joy in our arms, Fran and I looked at each other probably wondering "What have we gotten ourselves into?", not knowing if we were going to be able to figure this whole parenting thing out quick enough, and honestly not sure if it still felt real yet.

Surreal, yes.