Vita and Ilya picked us up at 9am this morning and we went straight to last doctor we had to see. We got our sheet signed with no problem. We went back to another doctor’s office and picked up the results of a test. Last signature on the sheet! Vita then took our completed medicals (8 different doctors in 6 different state run hospital type buildings) to the main doctor in town. He then signed off on the whole sheet – Medicals done!!We did all that in record time and made it to the orphanage right around 10am. This time we stopped and picked up Sweet Girl from her groupa on the way in. Vita can walk in and get her, but it doesn’t seem like we are allowed to so we wait in the hall. She came bounding out to us very excited and with hugs. She practically ran up the stairs to the room we hang out in. She went straight for the bag of toys and picked out the new item, a beading set. Stubborn miss didn’t want me to tie a knot in the end of the string. Soon enough she agreed to a knot 🙂 She strung an entire string all by herself from one end to the very other. She was very good at this! Better than we expected!

Wearing the necklace Mama made for her.

In the middle of all this Vita presented us with the paper for the orphanage to keep that stated that after meeting her, we still desired to adopt her. Vita asked if we were sure. YES!

Soon you’ll be all ours sweet girl!

She kept asking to go outside, but Vita has to come with us and she was doing paperwork so we distracted sweet girl with another new toy. A glider. I’m a big happy meal girl and I’ve been saving all my happy meal toys for months now. When Sweet Girl points and says “Airplane” at them I knew this one would be a winner. Let me clarify. She says something that sounds like gibberish. Vita promises it’s airplane.

As soon as we got outside, Mama spotted a bug. Sweet Girl has been all about squashing the ants so I was curious what she’d do to a big beetle thing. She smashed it with her foot and it was still moving so she smashed it again. Then she told us “I broke it!”. He might have a house full of girls, but I have someone else to call for spiders now!

The orphanage has some stray cats that hang around. I guess the kids and the cats aren’t friends. Sweet Girl says that she wants to catch them and then when they run away she says “Shoo cat, get away!”

She had no interest in actually flying the glider so we went back on laps and bubbles. We are usually outside when the other kids are and Sweet Girl wants them to see her with us, but she doesn’t like to stop at them or let us talk to them. So we walk around the orphanage, over and over, in circles and blow bubbles the whole way. Papa is her bubble blowing buddy.

We had to go back in so she could get lunch and snack. Another family picture! I can’t wait until she comes home and we can get one with all 5 of us.

While on our break, we took some of the paperwork Vita did to the internet cafe to print. Then we took it to the notary. Very interesting. While at the notary we met a babushka who has 2 children. One lives in Boulder, CO so she moved there 2 years ago to help with her children – triplet boys! The other lives in this town so she was back to visit. Very neat to find someone else who sort of spoke english.

After this, we took a trip to the other side of town and saw a local “landmark” – the Globus store. It’s larger than walmart, but is the same concept. Everything you could need all in one place.

They had like 50-60 check out lanes. I’m standing in about the middle here.

Back to the orphanage and Sweet Girl got a snack. Now that she saw us open her juice box, we’re not allowed to do it anymore. Now she has to do it on her own. And don’t you dare touch or help or get to close.

Sweet Girl got brave after snack and picked up the camera. It took her a minute to figure out how to not cover the lens, but after that she took about 100 pictures. Lots of Papa. She’d giggle the cutest giggle every time he made faces and she saw him in the digital screen.

No pictures of this cause she had the camera.
Back outside. More laps. More bubbles. These pictures start to look the same since we kept her clean yesterday and she’s in the same outfit, but notice her bow. It changes every am and pm. Slay me 🙂

Already dreading tomorrow. Only two more visits with this sweet face. I am dreading the minute when she says “When are you coming back?”, and instead of saying in a few hours or in the morning we will have to say several weeks. We are going as fast as we can to bring you home sweet baby girl!