Our Little Guy (Day 3 and 4)

These past two days have been so much fun and I think we are starting to build a routine with our little guy. We walk about fifteen minutes to the orphanage each day and visit hime from 10-12 (he eats lunch at 12) and from 4-6pm (dinner is at 6).  He is definitely doing a lot of different things to get our attention. His favorite one is running away and waiting for us to chase him. We love chasing him around the room, picking him up and loving all over him. This is really cute but I'm not so sure the workers like to see him darting out of the room we are in. Ok let me tell you about our room. When you walk into the room, there is a couch to the left, a bathroom door to your right, and two office doors to the back left (the doctor's and secretary's office). Then there is an entryway to another room to the far right. This room has only two doors, an exit to the outside and back in the main room. We are so thankful for a big area to play in but it is hard to keep a four year old contained with so many exits (especially for two hours with a language barrier--"Come back" doesn't mean anything to him!). There are three office doors, one bathroom door, an exit to the outside and an exit to the rest of the building. So we mainly stay in the back room to play and take turns sitting in the doorway to the main room.

The language barrier thing is a hard one to get over but we have tried and he lets us know really quick if he has no idea what we are saying. When we are about to leave, Ken will whip out a small notepad with phrases on it and tell him it is time for him to eat, we love him and will be back later in the day or if it is in the afternoon visit that we will be back the next day. Most of the time he says "no papa"  because he does not want us to leave or he will smile his cute little smile and start laughing because papa said it a different way than he was used to. Too cute! "Papa" here in Ukraine means daddy while "daday" means Uncle. All men are called "daday" and all women helpers in the orphange are called momma.

We have tried to get out something new and different to play with each time we come to visit him. We visit him twice a day for two hours each time and it has been four days in a row so far. To add on top of that, the ground outside is so muddy (from all the newly melted snow) that we can only walk around the orphanage instead of playing on the swings, slide or whatever because we are not supposed to get him dirty. We have tried playing in a  play shelter type area but he likes to run and try to get in the mud (like any boy would do). So we have to get creative with our time. We have so much fun though!! We have colored, played outside, read books, played with cars, legos and a Zsu-Zsu pet.

Yesterday when we came to get him all of the kids in his group said to me momma and our little guy said to them "My momma, My momma!" I love it! We brought him a ball we found at the store here in the city and he loved it! He and Ken played for a long time kicking, bouncing and rolling it all over the place. He was so cute with it. We also brought him a bananna for the first time. He loved it and couldn't eat that thing fast enough. He loves getting in papa's backpack and pulling out different things. He loves the Zsu-Zsu pet so he pulls it out pretty reguarly. We had to bring him to lunch a little early because his group was having a special guest come in to do some things in the afternoon. I was sad to leave him a little early but we were coming back later so it was ok. :) When we came back at four he was all dressed up in a longsleeve white shirt with some pretty new jeans, socks and sandals. We brought him some juice and cookies and of course I brought red juice! Ken and I were so careful not to get it on his bright white shirt. I held him in my lap while Ken helped hold the juice box out away from his shirt. It was a really funny looking! He is a pretty independent kiddo so us helping him was a little strange but I didn't care. I was not going to get red juice on that shirt!!

Today we started off our time with chocolate instant breakfast (which has lots of vitamins) and cheerios. He hated the instant breakfast stuff (who can blame him?) but loved the Cheerios!! He ate the whole bag. He loves to share food. He always shares with papa and today he tried to share with a little girl who was near our room but she didn't want any. Too cute! We brought him bubbles this morning and he loved them!! We showed him how to blow and he wanted to try after that. Well sort of. At first he stuck the whole bubble wand in his mouth like that is what you do with bubbles. Papa then showed him again how to blow and he caught on really quickly after that. It was too cute!! Whenever he got bubble soap on his hand, he would lick it off like icing. Blah! We tried to show him to just wipe it on his pants but he just wanted to lick it off. Oh well. This afternoon visit we introduced playdough. We taught him how to play with it and he caught on really well! He loves playdough.  At first he stuck it on the door and on his forehead but then he started making things out of it. He is a very smart kiddo for sure. We got out the legos to make different impressions on the playdough. He started building a house and it kept moving around on the floor so he decided to use the playdough as a foundation for his house. Too smart!! He made a bunch of different things from the playdough like a snow baba (a snow man: they call snowmen "snow grandmothers") a snake, a lego house foundation, and some rocks for his lego plow. We had so much fun today and cannot wait to come back tomorrow!!

Oh!! Please pray that the mayor would sign our paperwork tomorrow (Monday)!! Last week the mayors office approved and signed off for us to see our little guy at the orphanage. Now we need him to sign it so we can be approved to adopt him. Because of all the changes going on in Ukraine, the offices in our region that normally handle adoptions have been shut down and the inspectors who normally sign off on adoptions now have different roles. So the mayor is the only one who can sign off on our paperwork now. Thank you so much for praying!! :)

I will leave you with some pictures of his ear, hands and foot. I cannot wait until after our court date so we can show you all of him!! He is one cutie patootie!! :)