Day 2 - Just a Material Girl

Today A was still fussy when they brought her in but she warmed up very quickly and allowed for us to play with her. She is a little engineer. She loves blocks, stacking cups and the stacking rings. We gave a toy to her yesterday that our good friends recomended. It just has one simple button in the middle to play songs and it lights up and has this great little handle. Pretty simple, but she will not set it down or let the music stop for very long. Because she was still so timid yesterday we decided to let her keep the toy, which is a bit of risk. In the orphanage when you do this you never know if she will have it the next day or if it will become a general population toy. We were happy to see when they brought her in that she was carrying her little music box. We were later told that the orphanage did not make sure the toy stayed with her, but rather she grabs it before going anywhere. Everytime a song ended she would quickly push the button to start another song. She also would start a new song everytime she finished stacking the rings.

Our translator was great telling us words of praise and encouragement to share with her. We also learned a couple before going in like angil moy (my angel). At one point she got a little fussy and came to me. She allowed me to hold her close and she actually start rocking me side to side. It is amazing how comforting rocking can be for a child. We just stayed like that for probably 5 minutes. It is clear that she is not sensitive to sounds or touch which is great. We also gave her a hippo cuddle blanket that Chris's grandma made for her. She was carrying it around by it's tiny little ear. So now she did not want to put down her music box or her blanket. This made stacking blocks very difficult. My sister-in-law, Becky, made this fantastic picture book to bring for her with all of the family's pictures. We went through it pointing out who everyone was in Russian. Every page she turned to made her so excited. She would point at the faces and make these great noises! She especially got excited over a picture of her baby cousin. After this she was trying to carry around the picture book, snuggle hippo and the music box. It was quite adorable. We worried that she would not want to leave any of the toys with us but she was great about putting the toys back in the bookbag without any fus and of course we left her with her music box (as if we had a choice!).

It was so hard leaving her today. She was so fantastic and fun. We are having such a blast. Thanks for the prayers. Aside from a little jet lag we are really having such a fantastic and smooth trip. It was about 7 degrees F today and snowing. One of our translators actually said it was warm!! She said that it will get much colder. Hopefully the airline will find our bagage with all of our warm clothes soon.