Day 4 & 5 . Finally we played outside!

They say after awhile that your adoption trip can start feeling like the movie “Groundhog Day”. And that is the truth. However, let me make the point first that it is very worth it! Each day we have to be ready and out of the house for our driver to pick us up and take us to the orphanage. We only get one visitation a day for “two hours”, but it’s been more like an hour and a half tops before the nurses come in and take Jackson out from the playroom. We are assuming they are taking him to lunch. We’re going to try to push some boundaries and figure out what his actual schedule is throughout the day and try to figure out where he sleeps. There was a few funny highlights from yesterday. We have found that Jackson really enjoys ring around the rosy. He doesn’t completely get the whole falling down part, but he laughs when we fall with him and tries to get us to do it again multiple times by holding out his hands. Another really funny moment from yesterday was when we were singing “The itsy bitsy spider” to him. He enjoyed watching us sing it, but at one point with his eyes focused on us the entire time, I kid you not, he started moonwalking backwards towards our backpack on the other side of the room! We were laughing so hard, and then realized he was trying to be sneaky as he grabbed out our bubbles to play with again. 🙂 Last, the best moment of the day was when a couple of other children came in with another lady. She might have been adopting these children but we are not sure. Well, with all of the kids around Jackson got very excited and all wound up! At one point I watched with my own eyes as he ran over to the carpet, got down on the ground, and did a somersault! He’s going to be a Olympic winning gymnast, I just know it! Haha.

Today however was a very special treat! It’s fairly cold here in Ukraine with the temperatures barely reaching the 50ties. It’s also been rainy and cloudy the past few days. With that said, we are really getting tired of the play room. He’s too young to go to the room where there are tons of older toys apparently, and there’s only so much we can do now. However today, Jackson came in all bundled up with a winter jacket and hat! We were allowed to play outside! We had so much fun! For the first time we had no nurse supervision as well. We let Jackson take the lead and he walked us all around the outside of the orphanage. They have all kinds of swings, teeter totters, and other kinds of playground type of equipment. He was having so much fun! He’s very good walking up steps with a little bit of help and easily made his way around. He would also hold our hand when we tried to get him too. On several occasions during our outside playtime he ran into many of his little friends and jabbered back and forth with them. It was so cute! We eventually went inside as it was pretty cold out, and for some reason they did not put any gloves on his little hands. When we made our way back inside he was behaving very well. We fed him a banana which he gobbled it down quickly and then we brought out crayons and a coloring book that we brought. He enjoyed coloring and looking at the different colors. We tried to repeat the names of the colors to him and sometimes it sounded like he was trying to repeat them. He’s such a smart little man! We are so thankful for this day, as I believe it was one of our best play dates so far.

On a couple of more serious notes, we learned today that our court date has been scheduled for next Wednesday, the 27th! After that there is a 10 day wait period before we can take Jackson out of the orphanage and return to Kiev to get his passports and visas. Please continue to pray that everything continues smoothly and that we can get our little boy home to Ohio as soon as possible!

Finally, I won’t go into full details at this time, but possibly in a week or so. But I wanted you all to know how grateful to God we are to have Jackson in our family. God really has been to work here in Ukraine in more ways than you might imagine. We have made a very special connection with a family from North Carolina who is headed home as we type this from Kiev. We have never met  them face to face and only spoke with them until recently, but the Lord has used our two families in an incredible exercise of trust and faith. Praise the Lord for all of his miraculous ways! God truly has had his hand on this adoption from the beginning and has strengthened both of our families in different ways because of it. We serve an incredible Almighty God!

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