One Week Down!

Blogger is giving me some troule posting pics today. I'll post them tomorrow if I can!

Today was day # 7 of our required 14 day “bonding period” (I will let Matthew do the math – but if he needs some help, I’m sure that Nicole, Raven or Kayla {or even Daniel} will be able to help him out)! It was another hot day in the baby house. When we got there in the morning, they were having a rehearsal (in our visiting room) for a musical that the “older children” are participating in for “Women’s Day” (March 8th). I think this holiday is something similar to Mother’s Day in the USA. Maybe someone who has already been here can fill us in on the details. As they were leaving the room, I saw that they were closing the windows so that gave me an idea for the afternoon visit!

I did open the window for the afternoon visit but only a little enough to cool the room down to 85 degrees! We put a chair in front of it and rigged the curtains so they would not give us away! Usually there are not any caregivers in the room with us, except for the ones that bring in the meals for the other 2 children. They were in and out quickly so they didn’t notice.

We had 2 good visits with Daniel today. He still has a cough but it does seem to be getting a little better. His breathing also sounded much better. In the past few days, as we were holding him, you could feel his coughing almost coming from his toes. It was taking so much out of him. Patti and I were concerned that they may bring him to the hospital or at least not let us visit him until he was feeling better. We are not concerned about that anymore.

Daniel was able to spend much more time on his tummy and back today. He was playing with his toys and having a good time trying to figure out how things worked. He has a little radio thing that plays a dozen little songs and nursery rhymes; he really likes that. There is also a diner bell that is made from a very heavy metal material. He loves to play with that. He loves to listen to the ring and then turns it over and tries to remove the clangor! You can see the concentration in his eyes! He is determined.

Today was fairly uneventful (which is a nice change)! Yesterday, we almost got in an auto accident! Our driver was cursing down the street and some knucklehead pulls out of a hosing complex and doesn’t even see us. It was like it was in slow motion; we just knew we were going to get T-boned! At the last second, our driver makes an evasive maneuver that would make Bo and Luke Duke proud!! But that also put us into 2 lanes of on-coming traffic and when we do get back in our lane, we almost clipped an older woman crossing the street! Our driver (who just started this job and was the same one who couldn’t find out hotel a few days ago) had a frightened look on his face. I’m sure he thought he was going to get fired if we told the adoption coordinators. I looked at him and gave him a huge “Whew!! As I wiped my brow - “Spa – see-ba””!!!! (Thank you in Russian). He wasn’t sure if I was joking at first, but then he started laughing!

I also changed the first 2 diapers of my life yesterday! Patti was teasing me about changing diapers so I thought I would take the wind out of her sails and volunteer to do it. The first one wasn’t bad at all. I cleaned him up and had him changed in no time! Patti was so disappointed that it wasn’t Haz-Mat incident that she told me that it didn’t even count as changing a diaper! I didn’t think that was fair! If it wasn’t even going to count, why even have me do it?? The second one, on the other hand, made the first one smell like a dozen roses!! Now I know why she said the first one didn’t count!! But being a cop for almost 20 years, I had seen and smelled much, much worse (at least, that’s what I told her)!! Patti even gave me extra points for that one; it was THAT BAD!!!