Day 12--November 6, 2008

Day 12—November 6, 2008

Today, I received my first kiss from Aidar J It makes everything all worth while, doesn’t it? I kissed him on the cheek, and then he kissed me on my cheek. Ohhhhhhhhh. He is still becoming the devious little guy who has shown signs of his sense of humor over the last few days. He acted as though he were going to climb over the top of the slide, and when John said “no” to him—three times—Aidar said in his mocking little voice “No! No! No!” and laughed. Agggghhhh! And when we were looking at his photo album this afternoon, he turned to me so many times that I can’t count them, and squealed and clapped. I laughed so hard each time—until John pointed out that Aidar was mocking me because I say “Yea!” and clap virtually every time he moves.

We discovered that he is afraid of bugs and worms. We found ladybugs outside, and he took about two steps back when John and I put them in our hands. Same holds true with the worms. We found one this a.m., and then three more this afternoon. He did count and show on his fingers, though, that we had a total of four worms for the day.

We have to say again that he is dearly loved at the orphanage. Wherever we are—outside, in the playroom, or in the hallway—someone who works there speaks to him and smiles. They all mention “Papa” and “Mama”, so we assume they’re saying good things about us.

Aidar picked a bunch of leaves from the trees for me today. The trees are almost bare, but the leaves still have some color. I put them aside, and tonight took them to our amazing photo guy who laminated them for me. Aidar did look for the leaves this afternoon, and was disappointed when he didn’t see them in the “toy bag”.

He is fascinated by cars. Each time one comes to the orphanage, he stares, points, and says “machine-ah”. It’s hard to get his attention back until the car leaves. He is getting bored with the routine that we go through each day. We’re not allowed to leave the back of the orphanage, and you can only play on the slide so many times when you’re outside almost four hours a day. He is still shy of the monkey bars, but they are pretty high up, so I’ll give him that. We occasionally go inside to the playroom a few minutes early and look at the video that we took for the day. It will be difficult doing the same thing for another week. We have books, markers and coloring books for him, but we think that he is more interested in physical activities than quiet time activities. We also bought some generic Legos for him (the real thing was more than $50 for a medium size set), so we’ll try that soon.

We met someone else today, Marianne, who is adopting through the same agency. She is incredibly nice, and even brought a small bag of goodies for Aidar (stickers, bubbles, a ball, balloons). She is adopting a 3 ½ year old little girl who is absolutely adorable. This is her second adoption; she has a four year old little boy who is a real cutie. Marianne is staying about a block and a half away from us, and has a much nicer place. She actually has an elevator, which makes us that much more envious.