If you hadn’t noticed, I didn’t blog yesterday. Things are improving with the children, but things seem to be much less “new” and getting closer to the everyday problems that people have with their children. While this totally pleases us, it makes it hard for me to write things that others would find interesting. I suppose that’s some defect in my personality, because certain people have told me many times that there are plenty of interesting things I could tell them. So, we’ll just see where this blog entry goes!

Adam is definitely well on his way to being an American Boy. He can understand a good chunk of what we say now, though part of that is still in Russian. Starting with Adam, then Liana, and Aleksa, we got ALL of them to say today, “Banana please, Papa.” It was very encouraging, to hear it from Liana, who had been extra shy about it. (We also get Adam and Liana to ask for the balloons in English, too.) When Aleksa asked for her banana, it was the cutest English sentence I have ever heard. It was rather jumbled, but she definitely said the words that we asked her to say! Oh, and Adam has learned the word “spin”, since he loves to have Papa spin in circles while holding him. (Papa gets slightly nauseated after the good spins!) I think he’s well on his way to learning the word, “dizzy”, too…

Liana was basically good today. She still loves to be held most of the time, so we do that. It is much easier to deal with an occasional bad action, which ends with a simple “no” or “nyet”. Oh! Not that the scratch itself was interesting, but we saw that something had made red marks on Liana’s cheeks. We tried to ask her what happened, but when Adam came and we asked him, he made a gesture of someone grabbing her cheek and pulling with fingernails. OUCH! So, we asked who did it, and Liana jokingly said that Adam did it. We all had a good short laugh about that one. It was a great bonding moment (though I think Aleksa was off chatting with the taxi driver).

Aleksa and I are definitely getting along better. She ran to me and wanted me to pick her up when we first arrived this afternoon. That was way cool. When we went to get their passport photos this morning, things just happened that I was holding her when we got into the car, so I put her on my lap. Adam was in the middle and wanted to hold her, which was just fine until the car started moving. Apparently, Aleksa is NOT comfortable with cars, yet. (I’m wondering what will happen in the plane…) Anyway, as soon as the car started moving, she grabbed at me, trying to hang on to something. So, I pulled her onto my lap, and wrapped both arms snugly around her stomach. While she wasn’t comfortable, yet, she clearly relaxed a bit. I held her the same way on the way back, and that time she was ok enough that she looked out the window to see what was going on as we drove by things. It’s a really good feeling to know that Papa can make a little child feel secure like that.

This afternoon, just before Shelly needed to put the band-aids on Adam’s feet, he and Liana were swinging on the gate that we drive through to get into the orphanage every day. One of those times, his new shoes, grabbed the ground and got trapped under the gate as it swung back. This broke one of the very thin blisters on the back of his feet (developed by his new shoes), and made a mark on the front of his foot, where the sandal lash goes around his ankle. I ran over to help, and tried to see how he was doing. He started to hop on one foot to the bench, so I picked him up and carried him over there. Then, Mama did her thing with wet wipes, kisses, and band-aids. After that, he seemed to want to put the sandal back on, which I thought wouldn’t be the best idea. It was also time for us to go, so he started hopping over to where Mama was already walking to the drop-off place. So, I grabbed him again. Then, Liana wanted up too, so I carried them to their drop off spot. We said pleasant good-byes, and headed back to our rooms.

Oh, we also called Vica this evening after we got back. (Apparently she had tried to call us last night, while we were in the computer room. I had left my phone in our room. Oops!) She said that we will find out tomorrow morning whether she can pick up our papers tomorrow night. We’re praying that she can. If certain things hadn’t worked out like they did today, the earliest we could have expected the papers was on Tuesday! AAH! Our children are getting used to us now, but the sooner we take them out of the orphanage the better. I think the passport photos today were a good sign for Adam and Liana that we really are going to take them home, rather than visit a little for a while and then leave them. But, they still wonder that in the back of their minds, I’m sure.

We also had the wierdest thing going on in our brains today. For some reason, we seriously could not figure out if it was Wednesday or Thursday. Apparently, it's Thursday. ... I think. ;o) That means it's Liana's birthday tomorrow. Hopefully we can rig up some ice cream for the three of them to enjoy.