We got to watch the video last night! It was actually a very interesting video, about 45 minutes long. It was made by the director of AFAA and her daughter on their last trip to Ethiopia, in January. It showed kids of all different ages, and it showed the party they had the night before the director left to come home (bringing some of the children with her for their new families).
The boy we are interested in is on the video just briefly, but we got to see him "live action"! He looks a lot younger on the tape than he does in the pictures we got (they aren't sure exactly how old he is -- they think he's somewhere between 12 and 18 months, but from the video it looks like he's right around a year or slightly younger). We were able to see that he responded to his name and that he loves to be held. When the video was taken he'd only been at the group home for about 2 weeks, so he was somewhat reserved and unsure. He was crying during most of the video.
I don't think I've mentioned yet that we changed the age range we were originally looking for. Frank felt in the end that an older child just wasn't right for Danika while she's so young. But he says we can adopt an older child when that child would be the youngest in the family ... so 5 to 8 years from now.
Anyway, he's beautiful. He definitely looks like the same child who's in the pictures we have, but he does look quite a bit different in motion. He's just that much more real now.
We're waiting for the medical report to come from the two doctors and the nurse who work with the group home, and once we have that we will take everything to the International Adoption Clinic and have them evaluate the information. Unless they discover something serious that we don't think we can handle, we will accept this referral.
The children look like they receive a lot of love and the women who live at the group home looked like they really love and enjoy the kids. But I could definitely see that in a group home or orphanage environment, the kids with the strongest personalities get the most!
Danna =]