KHARKIV ORPHANAGE

We have just arrived back in Kiev without choosing a child from the orphanage. We left Kharkov this morning at 5:30 am. Our flight was at 7:40am and left on time. It looks like we will be here for about a week.

Now back to our stay in Kharkov. We arrived very late Thursday night at our apartment, near midnight. We had a meeting at 9:15am at the local department and then off to the orphanage. The orphanage was hard to find amongst tenant row apartment like buildings with winding streets. We finally found the Dyetskaye Dom (Baby House). It was very clean and stood out in comparison to the surrounding buildings. The women wore white coats and none spoke English. We sat in the director’s office and she greeted us and asked about our family. Olga seemed to be giving her some details about us and our book that we had back at the Department in Kiev. She then went over the medical information in much more detail and told of some diagnoses we had not heard at the first meeting. Then she said “the boy is here”. He was led in by the hand and he just about ran into Greg’s arms. He was a cute boy with beautiful Red/brown hair and was quite tall. We played in the room for maybe 10 minutes. We got out some toys and started to interact. They then took us to another playroom. I led him down a flight of stairs and he was walking step over step but was on his toes. We did a number of gross motor and fine motor tasks, tried as much verbal and social interaction as we could. There was an Italian couple with a small boy doing the same thing. The boys interacted a little but not much. Our charge was quite active and very distractible. I held him and that seemed to make him calm for a while. We asked questions about language and he doesn’t use any understandable words. We sat him to do some coloring and he made one mark on the page and then bit the tip off the orange crayon. We were sweating from the 30 minute event. It felt like there were a few positive spots, but it was obvious he had problems we would not be able to correct. Just as Jill taught me in my pre-travel session, he could not be focused for more than a few seconds and he was everywhere. Watching Jan’s speech therapy work has given me insight as well as to the lack of available time that this child has for learning. We were in agreement that his brain was not going to be very moldable in the future and birth hypoxia and microencephelopathy was too pronounced. We did not need the Doctor to travel to tell us that. We did come out of there with confidence that we made the right choice. We know the whole process and if the right child is in front of us we will know it. We will certainly bring the Doctor to see any child that we are considering.

We are now in a waiting time for Olga to push for our next opportunity for another meeting at the Department to choose another child. We will look around Kiev more and spend time with each other. We have made contact with the Nun that Susan and Fabio met and connected us with. Maybe we can spend time with her after the weekend.

I have to say it felt very good to hold that little boy. He needs that very much.

Miss and love you all.