Here Comes the Judge! (or not)

No nightmares (that I can remember) and we both slept through last night without any lengthy awakenings.

We forgot to boil eggs last night so it was cheese and yogurt (and a granola bar for me) for breakfast. John had his French-press coffee, I had my herbal tea. Sergei went straight to the courthouse today to try to get our court date scheduled, so we had a nice walk to the orphanage. We waited about 20 minutes for Daniel this morning and they checked with the doctor before they got him ready for us.

We hung out in the long green corridor. His leg braces were locked completely straight so we didn’t make any serious attempts at having him walk today. John and Daniel sat side-by-side on the couch taking turns looking at the cardboard box and booklet that had been inside the plastic blocks container. They would each look over their thing for a moment or two and then trade. Sometimes John initiated the trade and sometimes it was Daniel. It was really the cutest thing and if we get a chance (and figure out how) we will post the video to the web. See Video

It was another day of being sad when other children passed by (and they were oh-so-cute in their little gym outfits!). Imagine keeping a big bunch of three-year-olds shut in for most of the winter. Even Nick’s most stern caregiver let them go running along the corridor on the way back to their group/room. One little girl took a minor tumble. The lady encouragingly told her to “Stand up”, then “good job”. Daniel’s hardest time was when the little boy who had hydrotherapy right after him on Wednesday went by with the therapist already done. He seems well aware of his schedule, and definitely who does what with him. It took a long time to settle him down after that (note: tossing him a little way in the air and catching him turns out to be a good mood-changer). We were disappointed for him too, thinking he was missing therapy to be with us, but then at 11:40 the caregiver who handed him off to us this morning came by to take him to his water session. All three of us were happy again!

We stopped at the Billa for cheese, yogurt and eggs. We also bought some dark chocolate filled with espresso cream, oranges, Italian-sounding pasta sauce and John’s daily 0.5 L bottle of Coke.

Then it was off to the Metro. We started with our soup today. I also had mixed vegetables (corn, green beans, carrots and broccoli). John had a breaded meat cutlet of some sort. It was good. Next we visited the French bakery for the cappuccino and chocolate crescent. The red-headed girl smiled from the start today. It is a busy, tiny shop over lunch. You can’t even imagine what they accomplish in an 8x12’ space. Back at the apartment John caught a short nap and the shower head broke off the flexible tube in the bathroom. We checked in with Sergei. He had been waiting all morning at the court house. The head judge, who assigns all of the cases, had been called away and many people were waiting for him to return - but Sergei was first in line. We mentioned the shower head problem. We had trouble connecting to the Internet but were very relieved when we were able to make our daily call to Nick and Dennis. They were pretty excited about Pokemon rings they had received at a restaurant yesterday (European Tea House, I think Christine e-mailed). Sorry - they told me the names of the Pokemon characters twice but I still don’t remember! Dennis was also feeling privileged that Katie was allowing him to play with her dolls in her room - all but the big one. He seemed fine with that. Nick kept it short because he wanted to get back to vision therapy (which finishes up each day with a viewing of “Magic School Bus” through red-green glasses).

For our afternoon visit with Daniel John said I pulled out all the stops. We brought a larger fleece blanket to place on the floor, and the quilt I made for Daniel to put on top of that, as well as the Melissa & Doug (popular brand name) wooden train to play with. We went to the landing where we were first allowed to play with Nick and Dennis and all got down on the ground. Daniel was somewhat interested in the train. He played more with the large (reusable) shopping bag I had used to carry it and blankets. Typical . . . He did some magnetic fishing - and did it well - tonight. He did some army-crawling, especially to reach things he couldn’t play with: Papa’s shoes, Mama’s knitting and papers. Typical . . . He also played with the bubbles. Did we mention that he consistently uses a word for “belly button” (‘bom’), and another for “armpit” (‘arm’) to let us know where we should tickle him? He gets the cutest look on his face getting ready to tell us he wants to be tickled, and where. He frequently does this when we are in the middle of something he’d rather not do - at least not the way we want him to do it. He also clearly says “tap, tap”, as we have said many times when we try to get the extra soap off the bubble wand (we had fun with that tonight). At least once every time we get the bubbles out Daniel has to check and see if the wrong end of the wand will fit into te bottle yet, or maybe he just likes the way Mama laughs and says he's silly.

Sergei spent his whole day at the courthouse. Finally he was able to see the head judge who determined he did not have time to take the case himself and assigned us another judge (standard procedure). It is a woman this time (obviously not the same judge we had last time, and that is just fine by us). Sergei went to her office but by then she had gone home for the weekend and the secretary said to come back Monday. So, on Monday we should find out our court date. We are still hoping for some day next week. Sergei said if the judge wants to, she can schedule it for next week. We’ll wait on God. Sergei came back to the orphanage for a document the director needed to do over for Kyiv. She had it ready for him (!). The Inspector apparently has been hearing nice things about us from her, and that she likes us. That is an encouragement. Sergei also called the apartment agency, who said if we would be present in the apartment from noon - 4:00 tomorrow they will come by and fix the shower head. Should take about 30 minutes. We agreed to stay put. I’m pretty excited/hopeful it will be fixed the very next day.

At the end of our visit we had fun doing push-ups and reverse Daniel-ups. Back at his room we handed him to the caregiver who had favored Dennis and had been his favorite, too. Earlier in the week we had discovered her name is Tanya, not Katya as I had been misremembering for two years. I commented, via Sergei, that Daniel resembles Dennis. She said she had seen our photographs and agreed. She also asked about Dennis’ personality. When we tried to leave the building, our usual doorway was locked. It turns out Tanya was done for the day, and we walked out together another way.

We scrubbed out the skillet in the apartment tonight and finally had our anticipated grilled ham and cheese sandwiches (and the remaining bag of potato chips - these had mushrooms in the picture, quite tasty) and multivitamin juice, of course. The chocolates with espresso inside are delicious.