April 6 – Day 6 of 10

Things are going well here. B loves to give us hugs and kisses and flash his toothy smile at us all the time. This sure helps make the days go by just a tad bit quicker. To answer the questions left of the last post, B turned two on March 6th. He is quite healthy. He may have some growth delays, but we anticipate him making up the deficit quite quickly. He no longer cries when we leave the hotel room or go outside. Things here are familiar to him now. I anticipate the first time we get in a vehicle to head downtown we will have tears again. We also had a huge breakthrough in bath time last night. After about one full minute of screaming he decided to play with the bath toys Justin had handed him. He played for almost 10 minutes. When the water drained out, he wanted us to put in more. Hopefully he will remember how much fun he had when we set him in the tub again tonight.

As of today, B will be the only child here in the hotel. I think we got very lucky. The meeting I mentioned last Thursday regarding the baby home directors seems to have had an impact on some things. There is a couple here who had court last Wednesday. They were able to bring their son here for Saturday and Sunday and had to take him back to the Baby Home for the rest of the 10 day wait. We have never heard of this happening before. Then there is a couple who had court on Friday, the day after us. Their daughter is in Ussuryisk. They were also unable to bring her here during the wait. They called and asked why we were able to bring B here and they were not allowed to bring their daughter, but unfortunately for them they were not able to change their minds. Other than that I think there are two families here on their first trip.

B loves animals especially dogs. Of course in Russia there is no shortage of stray dogs running around. Here is B and daddy talking to the cebaka through the fence.

B also discovered he likes the playground equipment behind the hotel!