Today was the first day we went to visit the kids without the help of our facilitator/interpreter. We introduced the game "Old Maid" to them today, and they were very excited as soon as they saw a deck of cards. They soon were calling the old maid the babushka. It made me wonder if they had played a similar game before.
As their 2:30 mealtime approached, we started cleaning up and getting ready to leave. The oldest girl told us they wouldn't be eating until 5:30pm. Since they always did at this time, Stan went to the administrative office to make sure about their mealtime. The lady in the office assured him that they needed to go eat. It dawned on us that they would rather skip that than have us leave.
As far as paperwork goes, our facilitator now has all the kids' medical certificates and the social worker is working on a packet that will be turned into the Kiev office by Friday if all goes well. Once the SDA processes that paperwork, we'll be able to have our court date. The earliest possible day for court is Feb 10, but we'll try to get a date as soon as the court's docket will allow. Following the court date there will be a 10 day waiting period before the ruling of the court goes into effect. At that point we'll be able to take the girls out of the orphanage. That's still not the end of the paperwork trail, but one step at a time, right?
The youngest is full of smiles and mischief and reminds me of a little Kris. She goes into giggling fits that are so contagious it nearly leaves me helpless. A couple times when we were in the process of saying goodbye for the day, she would calmly slip my purse over her shoulder and start to walk out the door like she was taking it with her, with an unstoppable grin. The other girls would of course exclaim over this and tell her to give it back.
The middle girl is quieter but stays at my side or on my lap most of the time we're visiting. She's the most focused on English right now and recites all the words she knows and tries to copy what I say. She's constantly soliciting hugs and kisses. She's the one that's been running fevers over the weekend so I've been taking lots of vitamins and drinking lots of fluids hoping I won't be the next one sick.
The oldest girl has been warming up to us over the past days. She's always the first one to try to keep the youngest girl in line and she's careful to clean up after herself and her sisters. I think Stan's already already mentioned on the blog that she's interested in sports and drew a picture of herself playing soccer.
Fortunately there are plenty of places that sell toys and games here, as small a village as it is. We've supplemented what we brought with things like a sketch pad, stickers, bubbles, hair accessories, balloons, puzzles, and those light-up koosh balls. There are lots of pink girly kits too - play make up and dress up stuff as well. Everything's pretty cheesy but it does the job. I asked the Italian lady who adopted a girl from this orphanage where she bought her daughter's new clothes. She said she got them in the bigger city nearby.
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