Visit with Victor, finally

(Laura )
We finally got a chance to get back to see our middle son. Wow, that still sounds wierd, "our middle son". It is a very long drive from where we are and this is only the 3rd time we have seen him. He is still a little bit apprehensive about who we are, so it is a little more difficult to get him to come and do things with us. He is very attached to his routine and his group and then we show up out of the blue and disrupt that. I think it throws him off a little but he is a happy little guy and has the most awesome smile. He looks very much like Yuri and sounds like Vanya so it isn't hard to tell they are brothers. He is a good little soccer player (yea!) and is very scrappy. If we can get him to not use his hands I think he will do great on a team some day. He does get tired easily but I think that has a lot to do with nutrition and such.
Since he doesn't understand us, he simply ignores us when we talk to him until we say something he gets. Like "da" or "nyet" or "veecha" and then he will look at us and then go on to the next thing he wants to do. I can tell it will take a longer time for him to warm up to us so hopefully we will get to spend some more time with him during our waiting time after court. We may go and stay out that way for a few days so we can go at the same time each day for a few days to show him we aren't just passing through. It might have to be just me and my mom if it is after court but I know with as actvive as he is, Rob will have him wrapped around his little finger in no time after some backyard fun. Since we spent the majority of the time chasing him around we didn't get any new pictures :( He wasn't interested in trying on any clothes and only sat long enough for me to get one shoe on to see if it fit. At least we will know he will have a pair of shoes to come home in. The other stuff we'll just have to play by ear. He still wants us to kiss him before we leave and he even blew us kisses today after being prompted by his caretaker. All together it was a pretty good visit and we look forward to spending some more time with him.

As far as court goes, no news yet. We should be hearing something on Monday though. Hopefully that something is that we will be heard the following day or at least that week. We appreciate all your prayers and words of encouragement. They are quite helpful. As a matter of fact, we both went back and reread some of the comments of previous posts and enjoyed them as much the second time as we did the first. Keep 'em coming.

We are going to meet another American couple this evening who are adopting from the same orphanage as Vanya so that will be great. Woohoo, I see conversation my future! With poeple over 5ft tall who speak English! Yippee. Whoever prayed for that, thank you thank you thank you. We also met another person at the internet cage who comes here each year to do work at 3 orphanages and provides new beds or windows or whatever. He is a commercial Real Estate person in Florida and just comes here on his own to do this. Neat guy adn perhaps a good contact for our H4O group since he knows who to contact for construction materials and even knows the major of the city we are in! We asked if he knew the cheif judge but unfortunately that was big "nyet". Too bad. Well we are looking forward to some entertainment this evening and hopefully some good laughs too. Igor was able to set it up since he knows their translator.

It was a true experience trying to order a birthday cake for Yuri at the local supermarket. We are being allowed to have a birthday party for him on Monday when he turns 7. We have now found out that they do not make cakes over the 1/4 sheet size but they will make a fruit torte as big as you want. No box of course you have to supply them with whatever you wish for htem to put it on. We managed to find 2 lunch trays that will suffice. It's a little pricey but we know these kids probably wouldn't get anything like this so it's worth a few extra bucks. Since we went without Igor the transaction was very humorous. I still think the bakery lady thinks we are crazy and just can't imagine why we need that big a piece of torte. We showed her a birthday candle with a 7 on it but she still didn't get it. We are hoping when we go pick up the lunch trays that they will actually have something on it that we can feed the kids and put a candle in! We'll make sure we have the camera for that one.

Rob's leg is getting better with teh cream and the ace bandage so it will jsut be a matter of time for healing. It is fortunate that it doesn't hurt him and we have found that whatever the cream and powder that they gave him are, they seem to work OK and none of his toes have fallen off or anything. THanks be to God!

Bye for now, we're off to have some entertaining ENGLISH conversation!