Visa

Daniel slept again!!! A whole lot of y’all out there must be praying about it, because I never expected it to go so well! He did wake up briefly when I went to bed and moved the pillow that was up against his face, but that was it. He does shift his position rather often and I think I was aware of every time, which is one reason I’m glad John and I agreed prior to any children we wouldn’t we “co-sleeping”. I would never get enough true rest. Right now we need to so that Daniel won’t fall out of bed, and because we do want to be immediately available to reassure him during this tremendous transition, but we are planning to change this at home (quickly). The braces for sleeping they gave us do keep his ankles flexed at 90 degrees and keep his knees straight, but they did not give us the molded plastic John photographed (on party day) that would keep his feet wide apart and therefore the hips in the sockets. Since his leg slipped halfway out in the middle of the night, I took them off toward morning so he could sleep/turn more easily. Daniel woke up first, but didn’t insist we get up, so we all dozed in bed until 7:05.

We ate instant oatmeal and yogurt for breakfast. John and I also had peanut butter on bread. We had water therapy number three before Vitaly, Lyra and Ivanka (forgive the spellings tonight, please!) arrived for brunch. We ate at the Chocolate Café (never did take my picture of the sign). For some reason Daniel became very sad there and just cuddled against my shoulder for a long time. After a while I thought maybe he needed some help to get out of the funk, so I lifted him up in the air twenty times (we counted) and he finally consented to eat the bananas in his blini (he wouldn’t touch the blini dough, though).


Oleksandr called and joined us because he needs copies of some documents to make translations. We all went back to the apartment and I actually managed to serve “tea”. I had to pull my herbal teas out of the suitcase I thought was completely packed to put in Oleksandr’s car, but we had enough cookies and crackers around to fill a medium-sized plate. My tea selection has greatly diminished but seemed to be adequate. Daniel contently sat propped in the corner of the kitchen couch looking over the Bible study book we were giving to Vitaly for his English-speaking Bible class and chowing down the small square wafer cookies. Ivanka took a particular shine to the Gerber Graduate fruit twists, which was great since after eating one Daniel wanted nothing to do with them.

The men had a bit of a doctrinal debate before it was time for us to go to the Embassy for our appointment at 2:00. This time we emptied our pockets in advance (they are extremely restrictive in what is allowed inside), but I did venture to bring two cookies in a bag, Daniel’s empty drinking cup, and John’s smaller comb (can’t find the purple one anywhere). They let me keep them all. Hurray! They told us yesterday the appointment would take about thirty minutes, so an hour and ten minutes later we emerged, passport in hand. The extra time did give us a chance to hear the adventures of the only other parent (from Kentucky) and his 11-year-old newly adopted daughter. As I recall, he and his wife now have five children which include an adopted son and now two adopted daughters from Ukraine. Daniel had fallen asleep on our way to the Embassy, but I needed every item in my ‘arsenal’ before we were done.

On the drive back ‘home’ we called Nick and Dennis on the cell phone. Had a nice visit with Nick and then Dennis - who really only wanted to talk to Daniel - and talk and talk and talk and talk. Daniel really listened to, with the phone right next to his ear. He protested every time I moved the phone away, and Dennis began to cry hard when I said it was time to say good-bye. I tried to calm and reassure him that we would be home tomorrow (and he could talk to Daniel in person as much as he wanted), but Christine wasn’t having much more success on her side, either. John and I both just long to sit and hold each of them for hours and hours and hours when we get home. It has been a very long time to be away.

We had a snack at the apartment at 4 PM and let him crawl around on the floor (with extra layers of clothes) while we packed and waited for the bath to refill. He has enjoyed the freedom to move around the apartment at will immensely, and has closed the kitchen and bedroom doors repeatedly. Not sure why that is such a fascination. We have to make sure someone is always on the same side with him, because he can’t reopen the door and stays right next to it while he calls for attention to help (and we would bang him on the head opening from the other side). ‘Water therapy’ session four was another huge success. I don’t think he ever would have come out by his on volition, so there was much weeping and wailing when it was over and I was redressing him.

We talked to some family on Skype, and Daniel spotted John’s “Magic Mouse” (for the computer) and immediately claimed it as a phone. Since today’s conversation with Dennis was his first time with a phone I was impressed. He actually seemed to pay attention to the conversation over the computer with it pressed to his ear.
After his hair dried we head over to the Metrograd underground mall in search of luggage tags. We didn’t bring enough somehow. None of the stores with luggage had tags sold separately, although at the first place we check one lady spoke enough English to understand what we wanted, and with some consideration she and the other clerk were able to come up with the Russian words to aid our further search. In the end we bought a bright notepad, packing tape and a package of rubber bands, paying about $4 for the four tags we improvised (could have made many more).
After that it was supper in the food court. Daniel tried one bite of several things, but that was about it. It was even common Ukrainian food, but not to his taste or temperature I guess.
We saved room for some marvelous ice cream (gelatto, I think), which cost as much as the rest of our meal. Daniel wanted to try that, too, but the first bite of two flavors brought a very unpleasant look to his face and we think it was too cold. John started letting him eat his waffle dish, and that was better accepted. Eventually he took his tiny shovel and wiped it through melted ice cream and licked that.
When we got back home I gave him a couple of pieces of the dense brown bread he loves to get at least something in to him. Daniel may sleep well, but Nick and Dennis definitely gave us no challenges for eating.
I had him sit on the toilet before bedtime. We haven’t been able to follow the rigorous toileting schedule from the orphanage (10 - 15 minutes before and after five meals daily - we can’t even get the five meals in!), but today he did poop and later pee on the toilet! We were both very, very excited for him (and he got a tiny piece of Mom’s chocolate each time).
He had been pretty sleepy riding in the stroller at the mall, but once he was in bed he really didn’t think he wanted to sleep. John told him ‘good night’ and I laid down with him. He cried hard for five minutes or so, then less and then went to sleep. I wonder if something about bedtime triggers more memories, more sense of loss, than the other times of the day.
Once he is out, he is out completely. He fell asleep on top of me, but I was able to lay him on the bed and leave the room even while I could easily hear John talking to Anya on the phone. We had a nice chat and I got to work on the blog. I was startled to find we had only taken four photos yesterday - all for his doctor appointment. We made up for it today.
Since we will be getting up in three and a half hours for the plane, I will quickly post and make corrections some other time. (Therefore photos will just be in bunches for now). We will be traveling for about 24 hours tomorrow, weird when we leave here at 5:30 AM and arrived in the Quad Cities at 6 PM.