Mimicking Sounds

We got to the baby house a little early today and Anelya was awake, but still being changed. When she saw me she let out this happy sigh and a huge smile. All 3 caretakers laughed and started in on their "Mama is here!" business. I love that little routine. We made our way upstairs and had a fun bonding time. As you know, both families are pretty punchy right now and it's a great relief I think that we have each other because we have not a minute of downtime from our family members. It's so nice that they are are the same schedule of moods as we are! Everybody is happy, but ready for the next step to happen.

We had a great few minutes where we were giving the "forecast" for the day and Tammy said, "It's cloudy and gray outside with a chance of irritability". We all laughed. We'd like to thank the adoption Gods, once again, for the Clark/Gilpatricks.

Here they are! (by permission, of course)

Ok, so back to the star of the show. In the past 11 days, Anelya has stayed sitting, rolled over and back, rolled across the room, learned how to eat pureed food, shaken her head no AND today... she started talking by mimicking our sounds. I swear this child is brilliant.

Here she was looking at the family pictures I brought, in between sucking on them. I do not think she is teething yet. She is not slobbering and when she sucks on my fingers I feel nothing, so we should be in for a delicious dose of teething fusses on the way home with Dad. Go Dad!

Yesterday she discovered the squeaky blocks and only wants the yellow one, thank you very much. We take it home at night and wash it since she is sick. The rattles are SO YESTERDAY, except when having a quiet moment to gaze out the window.

I didn't get to feed her today. Basically, whether or not I get to feed her depends on which caregivers are on shift. Today it was the "she is learning" shift. That was fine because when I took her into be fed and gave her to the caretaker, there was a doctor or nurse in there, sticking an ultraviolet light up their noses. It kind of looked like a lava lamp, without the fun bubbles. I am guessing that there s some kind of major upper respiratory issue in the baby house right now, because many of the staff are wearing masks and I saw this new scary up the nose fluorescent lamp and didn't want to see them do that to my baby. I cannot wait to get her to a doctor in the U.S. and do "the works" on her.

Pasha's family is "finally" gong back to Belorussia today, so we couldn't do anything at lunch because he had to happily bid them farewell. He was like "See ya"! It's apparently been a circus and he cannot wait for some rest at home. Mom and I pretty much fell right asleep for 3 hours. I think today is Friday. That means we left 2 weeks ago yesterday and today we are on bonding day #10 of 15. That rocks. 2/3 of the way until we can get a court date!

Tonight we will stop somewhere for dinner and then work on our pictures for court. For real this time. I would like to give at least half of our pages to the translator by Sunday, so there is work to be done! More tonight! Have a great morning everyone!