Tuesday

Tuesday

Last night’s dinner with Nina, Teodore, Misha and Tiko
Looking at pictures last night
Massage
Plans for today (cooking Musaka and Shopska)
Internet this morning – read emails, comments and uploaded a couple videos… more to come
Today’s visit with Jordan: nicknames, donation update, laughs, camera battery and room visit, and attachment/lunch
Home for nap – hooray!

This blog post will be a little less cohesive, because I am in a hurry again and I am groggy from a beautiful 2 hour nap. (I am still not sleeping long enough at night, though I sleep well when I am sleeping… if that makes sense)

Last night Nina, our hostess, made us dinner. Her husband and brother are away on a business trip together. Her father-in-law came over just before dinner and we were able to get on the internet and post yesterday’s blog with pictures before dinner. (Tonight, we will go to internet cafe) He speaks more English than Nina. We missed Skype with the girls last night and that was hard. We did get a GSM phone card for the GSM phone that Brian’s coworker lent us and talked briefly with my mom.

Nina made us a fried egg, freshly made cabbage salad, french fries (from the store like we buy from the freezer section), and slices of sausage. We had plum juice. None of the drinks here are cold, but are room temperature. Teo is five and is especially obnoxious and naughty. Little sister Misha is three and better behaved, and Teo is happy to tease her. No translation is needed to understand their sibling relationship. 🙂 Tiko, Nina’s father-in-law asked us why we were adopting from here and we tried to explain. We were glad to eat a more home-style dinner after eating so much food out.

Nina explained that she went to school for three years to become a massage therapist. She offered me a massage after dinner. TIko showed us many pictures of their family while Nina hung a curtain and after the kids and Tiko left, I got a very nice massage. Ahhhhh. We talked over dinner (rewinding a bit) and Nina will be teaching me to cook Musaka (accent on the last “A”) and Shopska salad this afternoon. (accent on the “O”) We will go to the grocery soon. I hope we are not too long in cooking, because I wish to skype before we go to bed. Perhaps when the Musaka is in the oven???

This morning, we asked Dmitry to pick us up early, which he did, and we were able to check our email, read comments on the blog and send a short email to our girls. We also managed to get a couple videos uploaded to our youtube. We will add more and post links on the blog soon. Please leave us comments on the blog- this blog is our family journal and we will enjoy looking back over it.

Today’s visit with Jordan showed us that Jordan is able to be much more social than we thought yesterday. We got many laughs… he loves to be tickled! He encouraged the game of tickling, “talked” with us much more and was very social for about half an hour. Then he was tired and prefered to be in his stroller and quieter. It was a very good visit. He allowed us to snuggle him for a little bit, but he doesn’t stand that for long. He sucked his fingers very little during the first half of the visit, but the more tired he was, the more he sucked on them. He was nearly nodding off before it was time for lunch. Lunch was chicken and potato soup.

Our camera battery died (oops!) so we did not visit his room to take pictures today (where he sleeps) and will do that tomorrow. We learned that his nicknames are Dancho and Donnie, which are both short names for Jordan. Sometimes he is called Jordani. Cute! Regarding attachment, yesterday I thought he had very little social development. Today showed that he is better than I thought. We saw two of his caretakers today (as well as his social worker) and he does not reach for them or prefer us either. So my first description would be that although he likes people, he is “unattached.” Learning about family will be something I am only too happy to teach him.

We asked about what would be best for your donation to the orphanage. It is $1000USD. They said their most pressing need is for more disposable diapers and for detergents. We talked about it, and they can get the best rate for these things by purchasing them through a supplier. We decided to donate the money directly to the orphanage (of which they will give us a detailed receipt of what it was for). They are going to try and have the supplies delivered by Friday so that we can take a picture of them for our sponsors. It is possible that it won’t be there in time (they will make the order today) but I hope that all the sponsors agree that getting more supplies is worth it even if we don’t get to see what is purchased. To be sure, there are MANY diapers and MUCH soap being used in a home of hundreds of babies and toddlers!!!

After our visit, we took a much needed nap. I will add pictures below and hopefully links to video too, depending on the internet connection. I think you will see a big difference in behavior from day 1 to day 2.

Brian, Me, Tiko, Nina and kids (Misha and Teodore)

Loving Papa:

Worn out!

Videos from day 1:
First meeting in director’s office. He was very nervous and reserved:

Outside… maybe he can crawl? He doesn’t seem to want to…

Day 2:
Laughing! He is ticklish….

Being social: