John's Blog
Saturday, July 31, 2004
Learning to be a family
Well, this will be a shorter blog. Shelly will tell you all about the fortress we visited today, so read her blog for that.
We visited the children twice today, one hour in the morning and one hour in the early evening. During the morning, we met inside, because it had rained while we went to the market (which is a cool place) to buy fruit. We gave them all bananas, which they loved. (BTW, banana is something like "banan" in Ukrainian, so that will be easy for them to learn!) This meeting was pretty good, but I think I gave Aleksa a good scare toward the end. Liana was looking sort of longingly at Shelly with Aleksa sitting on her lap. So, I asked her if she wanted to sit on Mama's lap, and she nodded. I grabbed her and plopped her down near Mama, and picked up Aleksa, who didn't like that much. So, I tried to put her up on my shoulders, which made things worse. Oh well.
Our second visit was another good one. This time we were outside at a bench away from the other children (even though one or two will still find us anyway). We had fun playing with balloons for a while. Liana still does this weird thing where if I'm looking at her while she is playing with something, she might look up and pull the toy away from me, even if I wasn't holding out my hand. Not sure what's up with that, but we'll deal with it later if it doesn't go away on it's own. (I think it might have something to do with the fact that they don't really get to keep any of the stuff we've brought them, yet.)
At the end of the visit, we got good hugs. I was wondering if Aleksa would give me a hug at all, so I just knelt next to her while she gave Shelly a hug. Then, Shelly turned her to me, and she gave me a very nice hug, plus a kiss on the cheek! Woohoo! Liana gave us nice hugs, and then we hunted down Adam who had sort of taken off. (We think they are a little shy about showing affection in front of the other kids.) Anyway, I found him and gave him a good hug, then called him back to give Shelly a good one, too. On our way back to the car, we walked past Liana's play area and she was watching us. So, she got 2 hugs on the way out this time. It was nice.
I'm sure that a bunch of other stuff happened today, but my brain and heart are all caught up in the kids, so that's all I'm posting about! :O)
P.S. Just read some comments. Right now, we'll hold off on the children's history, except to say that they've been in the orphanage for 2 years. Also, I haven't been able to tell that Adam's arm has any noticeable problems. He's been busy tying balloons and messing around in a bunch of different ways, too.
We visited the children twice today, one hour in the morning and one hour in the early evening. During the morning, we met inside, because it had rained while we went to the market (which is a cool place) to buy fruit. We gave them all bananas, which they loved. (BTW, banana is something like "banan" in Ukrainian, so that will be easy for them to learn!) This meeting was pretty good, but I think I gave Aleksa a good scare toward the end. Liana was looking sort of longingly at Shelly with Aleksa sitting on her lap. So, I asked her if she wanted to sit on Mama's lap, and she nodded. I grabbed her and plopped her down near Mama, and picked up Aleksa, who didn't like that much. So, I tried to put her up on my shoulders, which made things worse. Oh well.
Our second visit was another good one. This time we were outside at a bench away from the other children (even though one or two will still find us anyway). We had fun playing with balloons for a while. Liana still does this weird thing where if I'm looking at her while she is playing with something, she might look up and pull the toy away from me, even if I wasn't holding out my hand. Not sure what's up with that, but we'll deal with it later if it doesn't go away on it's own. (I think it might have something to do with the fact that they don't really get to keep any of the stuff we've brought them, yet.)
At the end of the visit, we got good hugs. I was wondering if Aleksa would give me a hug at all, so I just knelt next to her while she gave Shelly a hug. Then, Shelly turned her to me, and she gave me a very nice hug, plus a kiss on the cheek! Woohoo! Liana gave us nice hugs, and then we hunted down Adam who had sort of taken off. (We think they are a little shy about showing affection in front of the other kids.) Anyway, I found him and gave him a good hug, then called him back to give Shelly a good one, too. On our way back to the car, we walked past Liana's play area and she was watching us. So, she got 2 hugs on the way out this time. It was nice.
I'm sure that a bunch of other stuff happened today, but my brain and heart are all caught up in the kids, so that's all I'm posting about! :O)
P.S. Just read some comments. Right now, we'll hold off on the children's history, except to say that they've been in the orphanage for 2 years. Also, I haven't been able to tell that Adam's arm has any noticeable problems. He's been busy tying balloons and messing around in a bunch of different ways, too.
