Day 28 – Visa

Friday, January 14, 2011

Andrei woke up very happy this morning. Singing and talking non-stop just like his big sister. I miss my little stinker. : ) We had oatmeal and bananas for breakfast. He ate the bananas but not the oatmeal, so I gave him some yogurt, and he liked that.

At 9:00 AM we went to the Embassy to get our visa. It took about 45 minutes, but there were no problems there. It is GOOD to be an American at the US embassy. No lines and paper work is done very quickly. God bless the USA! We can’t wait to be home!

Since we have a day off tomorrow, I asked Niko to help us find something to do that was fun for children. He recommended the circus. It has its own building, and he says that it is excellent. Unfortunately, it will not be open until Jan. 28th. If you are in Kiev at that time, try to check it out. Instead we are going to see a performance of the Gingerbread Man at the puppet theater. This was yet another story about God’s provisions for us. The tickets were sold out, but the cashier called a friend who had reserved tickets, and they decided not to go. Yahoo!! We got the tickets for tomorrow! I can’t wait to go! The building is gorgeous. It looks like something you would see in Disney World.

Then Niko drove us to TGIF where we met-up with a couple of families who were adopting, including the Texan family we have been with since Kherson. It was soooo good to have American food and speak English to the waiters.

I have been trying to remember all of Andrei’s first English words. His first word at the orphanage was “lights”. He loves to look at them, turn them off and on, and figure out which switch goes with which light. When we enter our apartment, he turns on all the lights, and he follows us around turning them on and off when we leave a room. The next word that he understood and used in context was “boy”. Today at the embassy there was another family who was adopting. He pointed at the boy and his mom and said “boy…mama” then pointed at himself and me and said it again. He repeats everything and is really starting to understand what we need him to do.

What I did not expect this early was for him to be listening to conversations and copy a word. I was speaking to our driver in Spanish, and said,“ Andrei es un picaro.” Andrei had been singing and talking in the car, so I was telling our driver stories of how smart he was and that he was a “little stinker”. Well, Andrei heard me say “picaro” meaning “little stinker” and started to repeat that word several time. : ) He had no idea what he was saying, but we started laughing, so that became his favorite word this afternoon.