Snowy Day

We both slept through the night (finally) but we are still adjusting to an unfamiliar bed, especially since it is shorter than John is used to and he needs to sleep diagonally across the bed or crook his neck at an awkward angle. The alarm started going off at 7 AM. We awoke to the sound of spinning tires. John boiled eggs for breakfast to go along with the multivitamin juice, buttered bread and yogurt.

It snowed last night: looks like another eight inches. Kharkov is not really geared up for snow removal like Oshkosh and other Wisconsin cities. Most streets never get plowed, and very few walkways are shoveled. Just have to hope someone drove or walked where you want to go first. Sergei was delayed by the weather, but was able to pick us up in front of the Billa where we stopped to buy the diapers for Daniel as requested by the caretakers. The roads/alleys back to the orphanage are some that are never plowed, but Sergei made it through and once we arrived the men on site had done a nice job of shoveling all the walks. Sergei headed out to the boys’ hometown with someone from the orphanage for the document mentioned yesterday. It took all day so we walked the rest of the trips back and forth - just fifteen minutes each way.

When we arrived at Daniel’s room we only had to wait a few minutes. For further detail of his current abilities: he cannot sit alone but he does have good head control. He has very good use of his left hand, and some use of his right - it is not tightly fisted as I first expected from the photographs. He doesn't have strong trunk muscles and has no balance but he is able to bear weight on his legs. They had him in leg braces today and told us to try to make him walk. When he was feeling cooperative he actually moved his left leg forward by himself, otherwise we worked together to get him moving and hold him up.

He hears just fine and we are certain he has already said three new words for us - one for "where is it?", the Russian word for ’fish’ and another for bellybutton - which he loves to have tickled we learned today. They were bringing many children back and forth through the corridor today - we think some to go to an exercise room, but it also may have been “shot day”. Daniel would get sad and/or mad, reaching for and obviously wanting to go with the other children.

On our walk home from the morning visit we ate at a nice café’ at the end of our apartment building. Hard to beat soup on a snowy day. John did some laundry - but the economy washer didn’t need nearly as much soap as he added, so ran it through twice. I finished off my first attempt at a hat for Daniel (it says “Daniel”). Even before we knew how petite he is (size of a small two-year-old), it was clearly too big. I’ll make a smaller one now, maybe put hs name in Ukrainian. We were able to call the boys via Skype. It is always great to see them - technology is great (when it works).

Back at the orphanage we were directed to talk to the doctor, who checked with the director and told us we could see him in “group”. We asked where his group was, since they didn’t just give him to us at his room, and she took us down a couple of loong corridors and a flight of stairs to . . . Nick’s old room. She was very, very apologetic. She actually was remembering Nick and realized we knew where to find Daniel in his own (Dennis’ old) group room. John thinks the reason we were directed to talk to the doctor was to find out where Sergei and the orphanage representative who went with him were. She speaks pretty good English, but lacks confidence, and so we phoned Sergei and let her talk to him.

In any case, we had a good, long visit with Daniel back down in the very long “green” corridor, as John calls it because of the many plants. No children going back and forth, but nearly all of the adults seemed to know Daniel and have a kind word for him. Sometimes he seemed upset after these encounters, too, but overall it was a very encouraging visit. He is taking to John very well now - certainly enjoys being a Daniel airplane. We had him standing between my legs or against the couch for most of the time. He had fun with the magnetic fishing puzzle, but even more so with the plastic Ziploc bag that initially held my current knitting project, but was then filled with and emptied of the other puzzle pieces several times - all while standing against the couch.
We tickled his tummy some more, and he remembered his word to tell us that’s what he wanted. He was tugging at John’s winter coat, so we put it on him. More like we put him inside it - even with the arms all bunched up it was hard to get his hands out. We took some more measurements, too.

Back to the apartment where the gizmo that lets us in to the outer door didn’t initially work. A helpful man passing by indicated we needed to wait five minutes. We did one circuit of the building and all was well. We settled on cheese, nuts and multivitamin juice for supper (I had a granola bar, too). John checked in on work e-mail. We both looked over Yahoo messages and now at 8:30 he is dozing and I am finishing up the blog. Hope it is a restful night - for us and all who sleep later.