Day Three with Jackson!

Today Scott and I woke up to sirens going off in the city this morning and lots of rain!  We never did figure out why there were sirens, but we looked out the window and people were scurrying around like always.  No one seemed alarmed, so we went on with business as usual.

Today at the orphanage there was a different nurse in the room with us when we played with Jackson.  There’s always someone in the room and sometimes it feels intimidating, like they are watching and judging us. This nurse was a lot more interactive with Jackson.  She sat in a chair and waved her finger at him a couple of times.

The new nurse also showed us where they hid more toys in the room.  She got some blocks out and we were very excited to see Jackson use his motor skills to build stacks of blocks.  He got them up to five blocks high and then would hit them down.  Usually orphans are developmentally delayed, so to see him building towers was an awesome thing!

We also solved the cracker-throwing problem.  I realized yesterday that Jackson is not used to having adults come down to his level and to hand him pieces of food.  So today we brought a tupperware container of crackers and pushed one of his little chairs up to a bigger chair to make a table.  I set the crackers on the lid of the tupperware container to make a plate and he gobbled them right up.  Didn’t throw any of them!  I did get in trouble with the nurse though because I was breaking the crackers into pieces and she wanted him to bite them with his teeth.  Oops!

We also experimented with drinking from a cup today.  I packed a sippy cup that has two handles on the lid.  The nurse indicated that we should only give him a little bit of water.  The kids are on a strict potty schedule, so the nurses don’t like to give them something that will get them off schedule.  I poured the water into the cup and gave it to him with the lid off.  He drank it perfectly and didn’t spill a drop.  Such a big boy!

Other activities that we did were to read the Sesame Street book again, play with the car, blew bubbles, and hit a balloon back and forth.  We found out that he loves “ring around the rosy” but doesn’t get the whole falling down part at the end.  We’ve been trying to identify ourselves as Mama and Papa, so we stood on different ends of the rug and he ran back and forth between the two of us and we would point and say Mama or Papa.  At the end of our visit the nurse told Jackson to pick up the toys, and he did it!

The orphanage director came in again and observed our activity with Jackson.  She is a heavy set woman with short curly black hair and glasses.  And she wears bright pink lipstick.  She’s almost like a Grandma, or Great Aunt figure to the children.  She just shook her head and smiled, so hopefully we are doing okay. 🙂 The other family that we ride to the orphanage with said that this is one of the nicest orphanages that they’ve seen in their Ukraine adoption journey.

Here’s a couple of videos from today.  Today he was wearing the blue Painter Bear shirt again.

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