First “Play Date” With Friends

Today, Saturday, April 16th, on the way to the orphanage our driver, Edward, stopped to pick up Carey Schwenzer and Aimee Medlin at an apartment very close to the apartment where we are staying.  Carey and her family are adopting two children, Julia & Aaron, from the same orphanage as us.  This is Carey’s second trip here.  Aimee has come along to help Carey bring the children home.  Their “Gotcha Day” should come by Thursday, April 21^st and then they will travel home on April 27^th.  We are VERY excited to be here together because they are our good friends from our church in Virginia!

When we arrived at the orphanage it was STILL raining so we walked quickly to the children’s building. 

We walked upstairs and down the hallway to get our children.  Carey’s little Julia is in the groupa across the hall from our little ones.  By the way, they had moved Dusty back into Sonya’s groupa as of the Monday before we arrived to make things easier for us.  Carey walked into Julia’s room and peeked over her crib.  Carey wondered how Julia would react after not being together during the 10 day waiting period.  No worries - Julia SMILED at her Momma!  

Carey and Julia

I knocked on the door of Sonya & Dusty’s groupa.  A nanny came out of a side room telling me something in Russian to which I just looked puzzled.  Then she rubbed her hands on her clothes – to let me know they were going to dress the children.  We waited and out came Sonya and Dusty.  They both looked like they were feeling better – ESPECIALLY Dusty.  His outfit was too cute.

There is a little boy named Danil who is on Reece’s Rainbow and he was very excited to meet everyone.  His grandparents come to visit him on the weekends.  It was very nice to see their compassion for their grandchild.  They are hoping that he will be adopted soon.  He is a cutie!  Hoping to help find him his forever family.  Click here to read more about him!

Danil

Danil and his Grandparents

Aaron is in another building and after a while he came up the stairs with his nanny.  He was VERY excited to see his Momma!  After Aaron arrived our “play date” roster was complete.

Aaron

Just as the doctor had told us, Dusty was not interested in playing with anyone. We are going to remedy that for sure!  He did hold Daddy’s hand and was fine sitting on our laps.  He even smiled as I tickled his ear.  

Sonya, however, was a social butterfly.  She enjoyed sitting on many laps and “walking” around with different people.

Aimee with Sonya

Carey with Sonya

Sonya & Danil's Grandfather

Daddy was even able to steal a kiss.  We are looking forward to the day she and Dusty will give US a kiss!

The good byes are always hard at the orphanage, but for Aaron it was especially hard today.  He was speaking in Russian and thankfully Edward was able to translate for us.  Aaron was crying saying he wanted to go HOME to America today!  Poor little guy had all of us crying.  They tried to reassure him that we would be back tomorrow and he would go home SOON.