Our first visit of the second trip (sorry about that title)

I was really apprehensive about seeing Anya. How was this really going to play out? Doing all the task involved was rewarding once they were finished, but now, now I would be dealing with another little soul with a will of her own! Paperwork is somewhat easy to wield, a child, well…

For the week or so prior to leaving, I would see my boys together laughing, or one of them at work or walking down a hall, and I would look at pictures of Mandy and just take a mental photograph. I wanted to memorize life as it was, as it has been. What if this all goes awry, I wanted those stable photographs of my family as it was. For years earlier, I had the thought that we may adopt and desperately wanted a family portrait of “us” before someone else invaded us. It was an expensive proposition and other things needed to be taken care of, so it never happened. Then, two years ago, we got the perfect photo of us at Thanksgiving, laughing away as a group. Love it and it hangs on the wall.

Now here has been my internal dilemma, part of me doesn’t want to “give up” the stage of life I have reached and to be thinking about someone else all the time (even though I find this boring…) and the other part knows that once someone in need is in my care, I will rise up to the occasion, wanting to eliminate the part of me that thought otherwise. But it is still a scary place to be. That is where the “my family as it is now” stuff comes from. I know it will seem like a stupid thought in a few weeks and “how could I even consider Anya not a part of the family?” But I am not fully there yet. In fact, the orphanage workers left us alone with her for over an hour and I (being very exhausted from emotional torment and jet lag) kept looking down the hall wondering if someone would be coming to get her soon, because I was tired. Yikes! How can you be adopting and sit there wishing someone would take her away so you could rest?!? Well, I don’t know the answer to that question, but I’ll tell you one thing, you can. Plus, she is still “theirs” and not “mine” yet.

In fact, when we all left to walk her back to her building, all the adults were halfway down the hall before I looked back and asked where Anya was. She was all bundled in her pretty purple winter jacket and striped beanie cap, sitting at the table. No one bothered to tell her to come with us! And a few minutes later as we went out in front of the building, the two workers stopped to change plans and I noticed Anya headed to cross an old village street, with a car coming on it. I ran up in front of her to block her and they all started call her name and telling her to stop. Maybe it will help me to feel that care for her as I am realizing that she really doesn’t have that individual attention every child is meant to have.

Back to the timeline. We got into a dilapidated old van to head to Elatma, a two and a half hour drive in a Russian BMW. We weren’t able to go in that care due to all the duffle bags of gifts we had for the orphans. Well, guess how long it takes to travel in a bumpy, jumpy, swervy van? About four hours. We spent around eight hours traveling in that contraption. On the way back, I was car sick from it too. Ah, what you do for a child.

Matt began taking pictures from the van window and of course they are awesome and we chatted and sat thinking all the way there. Okay, why do people always ask me where things are? On the way there, Vika said I would have to tell them where to turn to get to the orphanage, once in town. But before that, I told the drivers that they needed to make a left at the Dixie market to get to her town. How and why does this happen? I say I will not help people any more and that I am just not going to know the answers anyway, but I usually do. I have a very weird brain.

Once parked at the orphanage we got out and greeted Ekaterina, our once mortal enemy. She chattered away in Russian and every so often you’d hear a “Moe-nee-ka” punctuating the sentences. We brought in the duffle bags, let them know the contents as they have to catalog them and were sent to a room where we could play with Anya. We were just getting settled when I looked down the hall and saw a small child coming. Was that her? She looked so small. But indeed, that little girl bouncing down the hall in her puffy, shiny purple jacket and striped beanie was Anya! She came in and I grabbed the camera from Matt to film her reaction to him. She got her coat off and thrust her hand out in a hand shake to him with a huge smile on her face. Her caregiver was so delighted and I said in Russian, “My name is Monica, what is your name?” I am now drawing a blank as to her name, but she decided that since I spoke Russian, she’d tell me everything. All I picked up was that she recognized us (from the DVD?) and I heard the word fireman. So I just kept saying, “Dah, dah”. 

 At first seeing us...

 She took this of us!

This girl is an athlete. She is so comfortable with a ball in her hands and good at it too. She almost gasped when she hit the ball behind two rows of chairs and my Davey stepped right on them to get over them.

Monica: Uh Dave, I don’t think they step on the chairs here.

Dave: Really?

Monica: Yes Dave. It’s an orphanage and there are about a hundred children who are basically mentally ill. Would you let them step on the chairs?

Dave: I guess not.

Later.

Dave: Maybe I should wipe off my foot prints.

Also, she kicked the ball way over to the other side of the room and decided to hide herself from Dave behind a 3’x3’ pillar as he went to retrieve it. Another time, she looked at me, made the “shh” sign with her finger in front of her lips and took Matt’s lace up card to hide it under the table. We’ve got a true jokester on our hands!!

It was interesting to see her drawings of animals. I’d say she in at about 5 or 6 motor skill wise based on her drawings. Generally, as a basic rule, the first artwork children draw of people is around age two and is a head with sticks coming out of it for the legs and arms. Next they graduate to a head a round body and sticks coming out of that. After that stage, there is a head, a body and the legs and arms are thick, not sticks, they have matter to them. She is at that stage of drawing. Very cool to see.

 Dave doing I don't know what.

All this time we were alone as they workers were apparently preparing a contract for Dave to sign since we donated items. I got concerned because as Dave was signing the papers at the table, Anya looked over to see what he was doing. I asked Vika to explain to her what was going on just in case she thought they were adoption papers and that she might be whisked away right then or something like that.

It was time to leave. I was tired and okay with that. We told her “tomorrow” in Russian and she was taken back to her home, walking with a bounce in her step and with two Ziploc bags of toys and a half deflated beach ball in her hand. Too cute.

On the way home, we were told we would be going later the next day and Matt was scheduled for a concert there for the children at 3pm! When we first got to the room with Anya, Matt took out his violin to play for her and there was a music teacher down the hall with some boys in his class. The teacher insisted that Matt play for them the next day!