Sunday Morning Rain is Falling

It is Sunday afternoon here in Ukraine. It is probably 34-35 degrees and raining. The wind is blowing VERY hard. In fact, it blew one of the windows out in the stairwell outside of our apartment.

Our meetings with our Little Guy are going great! He is very sweet, but extremely shy. Of course bringing out some food always gets things off to a great start. So far we know he loves bananas, juice, and raisins… and of course ‘confetti’ (candy). We gave him apple slices today and offered him some peanut butter to dip them in. Ukraine doesn’t really have peanut butter so we’re pretty sure he’s never tried it, but he seemed to really like it.

Little Guy plays very well. He loves to play cars, throw the ball (a UT football of course!), and build with Legos. He is very pleasant and has a beautiful smile. He likes to pose for photos and then see them on the camera.

We introduced him to the Magna Doodle today and he liked it. I don’t think he’s had much chance to be creative and draw whatever he wants, as he waits for one of us to give him some direction before he’ll draw on the Magna Doodle or on paper. But we’ll work on that. We have a coloring book and crayons and want to see what he’ll do when there is a picture on the page and he doesn’t have to start from scratch.

We also took bananas and juice to his groupa this morning. He was so sweet – he passed out all the bananas before sitting down and eating his. All the children are beautiful and we wish we could bring them all back home with us. There are 14 in his groupa.

We finally had some authentic Ukrainian food last night! We took our translator and her husband to dinner as a thank you, and so we could try some of the food. We had Borscht, and it was great (see the picture). We also had some very good chicken.

The other picture is of Jenn on the elevator going to our apartment. It’s tiny and a bit scary! Oh, and guess what we woke up to this morning? NO POWER – ugh! I’m beginning to think we are a jinx or something. But just before we left it came back on. Unfortunately, when the power went out we also lost hot water, and we’re still waiting on it to come back.

Thanks to all of you for continuing to check in, and for your comments and emails. Sorry that we cannot respond to each one personally, but please know that we do appreciate it. We are very limited on our internet time as we have to go to an internet café that is a long walk from the apartment.