Day 3, Part 2

Yesterday I asked this question in my emotion laden post - “Will he ever catch up developmentally? Or has the four years this orphanage has stolen from him changed his future forever?” When I was finally able to talk to my wonderful hubby last night he had a perfect answer to that question - "Honey, what will change his future forever is being part of a family! And that is what we are going to give him." See, I told you this guy was amazing!

I was able to visit with A.J. for about 2 hours this morning and an hour this afternoon. This morning they allowed me to visit him without my driver/interpreter or any of the orphanage staff in the room and it made a world of difference in his behavior and interaction. I think that with many people in the room he did not know who to go to and was not sure what the rules would be so he was exhibiting a lot of testing behavior (like throwing things, hitting himself, and banging toys on the windows). But when it was just the two of us I was able to set boundaries with him and he very quickly realized what he would and would not be allowed to do. By the end of the morning he was actually looking at me to check in and see if what he was planning to do was going to be acceptable or not. For example, he would raise a toy up to hit the window and then look over his sholder at me to see what I would do. All I had to do was say "Ne, ne" and shake my finger at him like the staff does and he would move on. That was very encouraging to me.

I was also amazed at how easily he learned new things without a lot of extra stimulation in the environment. In the few hours I was with him today he actually gained several new skills. On Monday he would bang blocks together or throw them but not stack them. Today after I sat him on my lap and showed him how to build a tower he did it repeatedly on his own and would bring the blocks to me to have me help him. He started to do some pretend play after I put the "bow bow" (dog) in the high chair and pretended to feed him, and he was reaching up to me to have me lift him.

Other highlights of the day:
 - Even though he may be four, he cannot play with play doh. I had a feeling it would be a failure, but I was amazed by how quickly he got it into his mouth! I thought the texture might be interesting to him but as my kids would say "Epic FAIL".

- The afternoon visit was cut short by a giant diaper blowout that required a bath. Since it was close to dinner time anyhow we let his Baba take him to the bath and headed out. We gave the Baba a ride home and she told us that as they were walking down the hall he was looking for me and saying "Ciao?" Awwww...

 - I gave the scrapbook we made to his Baba and she plans to show it to him everyday and tell him about his Mama and Dada. She saw the pictures of our cats and got very excited, telling us that his "groupa's" room has pictures of kittens and he LOVES them. He saw some pittiful kittens outside the window today and was saying "Maw maw", so I had a feeling he would like the cats. I am thrilled that his Baba is going to do this for him so he will have some idea of what is going to happen. She said that another child in his "groupa" was adopted, so he might have some idea of what becoming part of a family will mean. His Baba makes me laugh because she will chatter on at me in Bulgarian and I just nod my head and let her talk. I wonder if she realizes I can only understand about 10 words of Bulgarian? :-)

 - There were two Bulgarian couples there this morning starting the process to adopt children. 3 less orphans in this orphanage!

Only three visits left before we have to head back to Sofia to finish up paperwork before I leave for home on Saturday. It will be so hard to leave him when we are just starting to build a relationship, but I hope that having his Baba share the scrapbook will help him to remember me until we can come back to bring him home. We will take him to get his visa pictures done tomorrow, so that will be an adventure!




Peek a Boo!