Days of Elijah Day 2

(Finished my borscht here and just had a very unique, but very yummy presentation of chicken kiev. :-))
Friday, December 3, 2010


Our driver picked us up at 9:30. We have two visiting times/day – 10-11:30am & 4-6pm. As we walked up the stairs to get him, he was coming down the steps with his nanny to go outside. He wasn’t happy that he had to go with us and not outside! Poor thing – we take him away from his meal yesterday, and then a chance to go outside today. He preferred his Papa to carry him this time. The other nanny shooed us into a playroom and said something about a doctor. We understood that we needed to wait. Meanwhile, Elijah still had his hat and snowsuit on. Eventually, we talked with the doctor a bit through her broken English. She wanted to be sure we knew that he had a heart problem and that he was on a special diet. The Director had told us that the day before too. They have put all of the kids with Ds on gluten-free diets, whether they have shown any signs of gluten intolerance or not. They said it helps them grow better. Fair enough. I guess we’ll have to be careful if/when we introduce foods with gluten into his diet. Oh, the doc also wanted to know if we had any other children with Ds at home.

So, we finally we got a chance to take him outside. We were told to bring him back in after about 30 minutes and that we could push him around in a stroller. Unfortunately, we chose a stroller that didn’t cooperate very well.  But we managed. (They could really use some wire ties here to hold the strollers together better. But from the looks of the wiring in the hallways at the apts, wire ties don’t exist in this country!) We weren’t sure if we could take him out of the stroller or not, so we kept him in. I didn’t want to get in trouble the first day! When we came back in, we went and played in the play room where we first waited. We showed him the photo album of our kids and house, telling him the names of his sisters and brother at home. I’m not sure if the orphanage has wireless internet or not, but maybe we can Skype sometime from the orphanage – after court.

Elijah kept walking over to the doors to go back to his grouppa room. I think he was hungry. He was happy when we brought him back, although he does enjoy our time together I believe.

Not time to go outside yet, Sweetie

Waiting for the doctor in the playroom

Tickle from Mama



His grouppa number on his pants. Soon, my dear son, your clothes won't have any numbers on them...



Bonding with Papa - this little toy vibrates when you pull the string. He loves it!

After we had lunch at the apt (ham and cheese sandwiches), Pat ventured out to figure out the bus route to the orphanage. He took #99 and it took him very close to the orphanage no problem. YAY! I’m so thankful for my Man. Not sure how I would be doing this without him! The Lord has blessed him with a great sense of direction. That combined with all the international travel he’s done has helped him learn how to get around. Me? Not so much. :-)

For our afternoon visit, we still had our driver since we had paid him in the morning for the afternoon visit. He had gone to Elijah’s home town to pick up a paper from the social worker there stating Elijah has no siblings that are orphans that he needs to be separated from. We will need that paper for court. Thankfully, his home town is only about 30 miles away, so once the 10-day waiting period is up, we will need to get his original birth certificate. Since it is pretty close, it won’t be an all-day affair. Please pray with me that we can get everything done that first day that we need to so we can apply for his passport right away.

Ok, back to the afternoon visit. The driver was supposed to be there at 3:30. Marina called at 3:45 saying he was stuck in a traffic jam AND that both of Elijah’s birth parents were at the orphanage to meet us. She said they spoke English well enough to communicate with us, so we will meet them. YIKES! I was really nervous. Just ask Pat. :-) I even put lip gloss on. Ha! I hardly ever do that! I wanted to make a good impression I guess so they wouldn’t change their minds or something. I don’t know…I was glad I didn’t have much time to think about it though. So many emotions! I did run back to the apt to get some Kleenex while we were waiting for the driver though. So glad I did.

When we got out of the car, Elijah’s father met us right away and I recognized him from the photos we saw the day before. See, when we were with the orphanage director, he showed us photos of Elijah’s parents. That was probably the most emotional thing that day. I just cannot imagine the depths of the grief of his mother having to give him up. Thankfully, Marina was able to explain to him why I was crying.

Ok, sorry, back to the meeting. We met his dad and then we went inside where the director introduced us to his mother. She is beautiful, and as I said yesterday, I think Elijah favors her. Definitely has her lips.  I tried to tell her when I could talk through the tears how incredibly sorry I was for her loss. She explained (as best as she could through her tears) how in this country they could just not keep him. She has to work and children born with Ds here cannot go to school – can’t go anywhere but stay home. UGH! It just makes me so angry. Not angry at anyone in particular, just so sad that things are the way they are here that it rips families apart like this. I am SO thankful that they gave him life though. I didn’t tell her that though, but I hope to at some point. They gave us all of their contact info and we gave them our email address. I will be sure to honor their request to send photos. They hope to get internet w/in the month or so. They asked what we will call him, so we wrote that down too for them. I was able to show them pictures we had taken that morning of him as well. I do count it a true blessing to be able to meet them. At some point we will explain to Elijah about his parents and show him photos. We want to honor his heritage in whatever ways we can.

(Oh bummer. I just realized I didn't upload from the camera the pictures from meeting his parents yet. Sorry! I'll post as soon as I can. I'll leave you with some videos instead.)