Fall

Reading with Sam

Reading with Will and Eilidh and Auntie Val

going trick-or-treating with Natalie

Halloween with the MacKenzie cousins...

Halloween with the Nickel cousins

my first bubble bath - I loved it!

kissing 'Jakey'

2year old + 1 bucket at the cottage=hours of fun!

Great-grandma

Is he going to eat me?

Exercising with Will!
Wow. Time flies when you are having fun! It is hard for us to believe that it has been almost 3 months since we have updated our blog - so much for the monthly updates - sorry! Life at home with Ivanna continues to be a delightful adventure. In early September, Ivanna and I (Shona) flew to Ottawa with my parents to spend some time at 'the cottage' on Big Gull Lake. We had a wonderful time there with Auntie Joyce and 'Grandpa' Gord and other family that came to visit. The weather was lovely and we spent as much of our time outdoors as we could. It is amazing just how a child can entertain herself with very few toys when there is the great outdoors to play in! Ivanna was enchanted with Jake (Joyce and Gord's Dalmation) and once she had mastered the cottage door was very happy to serve as Jake's door opener. She gave him much love over the week there and continues to call any Dalmation 'Jakey'! I think he is still recovering from her attention/affection. We learned our little swimmer is not so fond of cold water and the concern of being so close to water with a 2 year old lessened after she'd been in the cold lake once or twice. From then on if you mentioned going in she would back away and say 'no wanna'! It was a relaxing week and wonderful to introduce her to extended family. Darren unfortunately couldn't come as he was working hard on his thesis - next time though. Since our return home, we have settled into our fall routines. Darren started working through the University in a research position and continued to work hard on his thesis and so has been quite busy. Ivanna started a music class for toddlers and mom's with her auntie Lecia, which she has grown to love (she's not much for sitting still and has quite a mind of her own, so a structured class was a little challenging at first - but now she seems to really enjoy it). We spend much of the rest of our week repeating the songs we learn in music class. 2 year olds sure do like repetition! We also are in a parent/tot gymnastics class, which is quite a lot of fun. Again quite structured which Ivanna does not always enjoy, but she sure does love to jump and swing and do summersaults! We do both of these classes with our neighbours (Jen and Rob) and their little girl Natalie - the girls have become quite the little buddies. Besides these classes, we spend time with friends playing or going to the library story time, as well as weekly having tea with the ladies from Darren's mom's side of the family (where Ivanna plays with some of her cousins). I've also been going the mom's program at our church which is a nice break as they provide childcare for the children. The weeks fly by. This fall we also participated in a Parent Language Program through the local hospital Speech/Language Pathology Department. We have learned many ways to help Ivanna's language to continue to develop and it does seem to be helping. She has a phenominal vocabulary, considering she's only heard english for 6 months, but has been somewhat slow in starting to put words together in phrases. This has really improved in the last several weeks and she talks constantly at home. She's still not exactly understandable to strangers - but we generally know what she is saying! "No wanna" continues to be a favorite phrase, but I suppose that is relatively normal for 2! Other excitement this fall was Ivanna's first Halloween in Canada - where she dressed up as a ladybug (or 'budeedee' as she calls them). It didn't take her long to figure out that people would give her candy as we went to the doors (she didn't master 'trick or treat', but did manage to learn 'treat'!)- we only did a few houses in our area where we know people and she certainly gave us funny looks as we passed other houses when she saw other children going up the walks! It was quite fun and after a drive to visit both sets of grandparents and meet up with all the cousins, she went to bed quite late and exhausted!

In the last week, Darren has submitted his thesis to his commitee and that is a tremendous relief. He will have more time to spend with us as a family once he has finished his defence, as he is working 80%. I have formally requested an extension of my leave from work and so will not be returning to my position until the fall of 2008. So life in our little family is settling down. It is a good life and we are daily grateful.

Summer Fun...

Having a snack with some of her cousins (Misha and Sabrina)

Playing with Will

Sunday evening supper at Nana and Grampa MacKenzie's (playing with Dad's coke can)

Just generally being a monkey!

Finding swings wherever we go (at family camp)

Camping at Pike lake

Playing and having fun in Nana and Papa (Nickel's) yard

Playing with Sam and a box...need we say more?

Having a blast at the zoo with Auntie Val, Uncle Jason, Eilidh and Will

Ivanna's 2nd birthday party at Pike Lake

Mooching dessert from Grampa (or Bampa as Ivanna says)

Swimming with her Nanas - she now LOVES water!

Reading with Eilidh

Sharing Papa's dessert... yes this is a theme of her life (mooching her grandparents' desserts)

Well, life is good and fun in the Nickel household. It is hard to believe the summer is almost over and we are planning fall activities. This has been an amazing summer and we are feeling very blessed and thankful. Ivanna continues to adjust well. Her language is coming along in leaps and bounds and she has become quite a little parrot - repeating most things we say (time to become more cautious with what we say!). She is very fond of all her family and loves to spend time with all her cousins. She now definately has a name for each of her cousins (some more acurate to the real thing than others - Tug=Sam, Wow=Will, etc...) It is such a joy to see her grow and develop. We are definitely learning A LOT and have our moments when we are amazed at just how classically 2 she can be; but she is generally a delightful child. This morning (after being lead back to her room to play/read quietly on her own at 6:45) she came back into our room around 7:20 and came quietly up to the bed, placed a stuffed dog beside me and then went around to Darren and put a stuffed bunny on his head. How sweet is that? She is a very dear child. She continues to love animals and we are trying to teach her not to torment Nana and Grandpa MacKenzie's dog (she tries hard to chase her and loves to help Nana take her for a walk). She loved the zoo when we went last week and I think we'll make good use of the yearly membership we bought (chickens are still a hit!) We spent a week at a family camp up north of Meadow Lake where she learned to tolerate the sand (at first we had to swim in deep water only). It was a fantastic time. We've also had lots of fun playing in our yard, going to parks with friends and cousins - basically being outside as much as possible. Yeah, we're having fun. Life is good.

Life at home...

It is really hard to believe that we have been home for about as long as we were in Ukraine. Time has gone much quicker here. We have settled quite well into somewhat of a routine and are really enjoying our daughter. She has adapted incredibly well and at times we really have to remind ourselves that we've only had her for 7 weeks. She is such a wonderful little girl and has really just blossomed since we've had her with us. It's been incredible to watch. She is most definately well attached to us, but also is quite attached to both sets of grandparents and all her cousins, aunties and uncles. We have pictures on our fridge of the cousins that she looks at and points to (and often kisses) several times each day - it's pretty cute! She's got her own version of most of their names down (for example Will is 'wow' and Sam is 'tug' - we're not sure of the connection but it suits him!) She knows both her grandparents' houses and gets quite excited to get out of the car or stroller as soon as she sees them. She has settled in so well to our families that in many ways it is like she was always here.
We continue to learn alot about Ivanna and experience many firsts and watch her expand her little world. While at first, water was quite terrifying to her and she HATED her bath time (as in kicking and screaming hated), now she has turned into a little fish in her Nana and Grandpa MacKenzie's pool and loves her bath. The transformation started by watching her cousins (Eilidh and Will) having FUN in the bath and then progressed to having a bath with her cousin Sam (who loves the bath) to now she goes to the bath and holds up the plug and points to the taps and says 'please' with a very cute expression on her face. The pool has also helped. While at first she was a little tentative (at least I think I remember her actually being tentative the first time or two - she's so different now!) and clung to me (Shona) and her daddy, she eventually discovered that splashing is FUN and then that water is fun. After a couple of visits she was jumping in (to my increased stress) from the edge without hanging on to me and was quite happy to go right under the water (with me to pull her up). Now we mostly put her in a life jacket (and she's progressed to jumping off the diving board)! In the life jacket she will kick and try to swim and will purposefully put her face in the water and will 'dive' under the rope dividing the shallow and deep ends lifting it over her as she goes under it. It's amazing -- and actually hard to remember just how tentative she was about water a few short weeks ago!
Ivanna also really loves to be outside and will play for hours (if we let her) on the play structure in the backyard or in the parks near our home. We have realised that she is really quite a physically-gifted child as she is quite strong for her age, is incredibly flexible and has no fear. She will try to climb anything (and is able to climb most play structures - even those made for much older children!). She definately keeps us running!
In the last month, we also went camping and she had a lot of fun. She and I (Shona) went with Tanis and her boys to a nearby camp-ground (Pike Lake) and stayed for most of a week, camping with other friends. It was so much fun. The pool there is ideal for kids (zero-entry) and also has a water slide (which, surprise surprise, she loved riding down with me). Our days were fantastic and lots of fun but our nights were a little rough as she and I both had bad colds, and she had croup the first night there (not fun to deal with on your own without medical assistance close by!). We both survived and learned that she reacts with cold medication, so we will NEVER EVER give it to her again (lets just say that 4 hours of a manic/hyper child in a small tailer from 11PM to 3am is not a good experience!). We have since learned that the nightime version is tolerable and she doesn't go wild with it. Ah. Life lessons learned the hard way.
We had her 2nd birthday party out at Pike Lake and that was a lot of fun and provided a lot of space for the kids to run around. She hadn't napped that day (other than 10 minutes in the car - which apparently she thought was enough) so by the end of the party as we put her in the vehicle and said goodbye to family she sleepily said (and signed) to me 'tired, night night'. So we fed her wieners and put her to bed. A good day.
Food has been another adventure. As we got NO information from the orphanage about her usual foods, we've been kind of winging it. We've discovered that most of the time she would gobble up oatmeal in the morning and thick, chunky soup/stew for lunch (yes she'd even eat all the vegetables). Those were my 'sure things'. Well, a week of camping with her cousins now has her eating hot dogs like CRAZY and fries and ketchup. That's a balanced diet right? She also will now eat cheese (especially cheese strings - what Sam has, Ivanna wants - how that has helped her to eat more things!) and yogurt cheese (Minigo) and she'll eat a few other options for fruit besides bananas, so at least she'll now eat something in all the food groups! I'm learning to be more relaxed and let her eat what she will and not to push what she won't (she is 2 after all - the more I push, the more she pushes back! DN: yeah, I'm learning that one too. I figured that since I am older, I ought to have a stronger will. oops. not so). It really is an adventure all round.
Anyway, that's all I have time for now. She will be waking up from her nap soon so off I must run. Know that we are all doing well and loving being home. We'll post more recent pictures soon and will try to continue to post at least monthly updates for all our loved ones who live far away and don't get to experience the adventure first hand!
Shona, Darren and Ivanna

time warp...

It is almost unbelievable that we have had Ivanna for 6 weeks and that we've been home for 5 1/2. Ivanna has settled in extremely well. She seems very attached to us -- and actually, pretty fond of us too. I (Darren) have been going in to work most days and must say that it is very heartwarming to see Ivanna's face light up as she says, "Dada!" when she sees me. Yeah, it is pretty great. She has picked up a decent amount of English already and, we think, understands even more than she lets on. Really, she seems to be exhibiting most of the normal behaviours of any 2-year-old girl -- which brings me to the next point: we are tired. Who knew that having a 2 year old could tire you out?
Ivanna has incredible energy. She seems overjoyed to be discovering the world and sprints from interest point to interest point. She is at times a bit hard to keep up with, but oh so much fun to watch. I'm coming to realize that all the energy we spent worrying about the future before we had Ivanna is now spent on her -- where is she? Is she safe? How did she get that? How did she do that?
We celebrated Ivanna's 2nd birthday on Saturday with family and friends at a local provincial park and had a great time. It will probably take a few years, but I hope she comes to see just how blessed we feel and how much many people love and celebrate her.

The way home (part 2) and ...

not sure how that is a comfortable sleep...

playing with Misha

on the swings in our backyard with Sam

So… Here we sit in Toronto. Ivanna slept from around 3:00am (NFLD time) to 7:20ish, which is good. We played, had breakfast, got cleaned up and dressed then went for a walk – to the airport as the other direction had no sidewalks. It took less than 10 minutes to walk there. We walked inside a bit (it was about 7 Celcius in St. John’s this morning – so inside walking was good after being acclimatized to over 30 for the last 3-4 weeks!) and had a coffee at Tim Hortons and introduced Ivanna to donuts (pretty big hit). We walked back and then did the last second packing up and grabbed the shuttle back to the airport. Our girl was pretty tired by the time our flight was loading and had a bit of a fit as I tried to settle her and hold her so that she might sleep. We eventually tried some soft chewy candies (actually – oops – I bought sour candies and so had to suck the sour sugar off then she would eat them) which kept her quiet for seconds to minutes at a time. She slowly got tired though and even though she still was fussing a bit by the time the plane was taxiing her little eyelids were drooping and as we took off she fell asleep. She slept for 1 ½ hours (until I decided to try laying her down as we had an extra seat again – unfortunately she stirred and woke and didn’t go back to sleep despite probably needing it. Alas. Mom and Dad were back on. She actually did quite well for the rest of the trip and played mostly on her own in her seat with some books for most of an hour and only got a bit fussy right at the end (she really doesn’t like losing her freedom for take-off and landing!) Darren did a good job of distracting her with a puppet. Once we got into the terminal (gate service for the stroller is the most brilliant idea ever – much easier than yesterday) we had a nice meal (we were all hungry) of burgers for Darren and me (it’s been a LONG time without burger for Darren) and chicken fingers for Ivanna. Now as I write Ivanna is ripping around and playing. She’s enjoying watching the goings-on the tarmac and trying to entice her Daddy into a game of chase (which she loves, but gets incredibly riled up – which after yesterday we are trying to avoid - so Darren is doing a good job of emanating calm – or is it just the fatigue?) We are both feeling very weary and will be very glad to get home tonight. It’s still hard to believe all that has happened in the last 6 ½ weeks. In some ways it seems just like yesterday we were here waiting to leave to go the other direction and had no clue of what would happen when we got there. Now there is this amazing little girl who calls us ‘mama’ and ‘dada’ who is traveling HOME with us. There are many moments when this all still feels like a dream.

June 6th….the story continues
We are now safely home, but I will jump back to where we left off in Toronto. We managed to pass the rest of the time waiting for our flight and all were pretty exhausted by the time our boarding time came around – and passed without the plane boarding as it hadn’t arrived yet. We managed to keep Ivanna somewhat distracted from losing it (she was really tired and ready to sleep – airports are way too stimulating for toddlers!) When the plane finally arrived and we got on, she actually was pretty calm and fell asleep as the plane was taxiing. Unfortunately, it then proceeded to sit on the runway, in a line-up of planes and then the pilot came on to say that all takeoffs were being stopped as there was an electrical storm and the priority for air-traffic control was to get the planes in the air landed. We worried a bit as our connection in Winnipeg was only 40 minutes and we were approaching ½ hour delayed at this point. The positive to all this was Ivanna was sleeping (thankfully – neither of us had much for reserves to deal with a screaming kid). Eventually, we did take off, but it was an hour late. I couldn’t believe we’d come so close to only be stuck in Winnipeg for the night. Darren was quite calm about it and I just cried. I was feeling pretty desperate to just be home. Ivanna slept for pretty much the whole trip, but was quite restless and cried intermittently in her sleep – I think she was just desperate to have a comfortable space to move around (she does kind of thrash in her sleep) but was limited to the lumpiness of our laps). As we got closer to Winnipeg the pilot came on to say that we would be arriving 45 minutes late and said nothing about connecting flights, so I asked the stewardess to ask about whether we would make our connection to Saskatoon. She wasn’t sure and wasn’t able to get any answers from the flight deck as they were busy. All we could do was pray that somehow we would make it. As we landed and taxied in the pilot came on to say that the Saskatoon flight was being held for us as there were several people connecting and asked that people who weren’t on that connecting flight to remain seated and accommodate the rest of us getting off. Slava Bogu. We quickly got our stuff organized and stood up as soon as we could (along with most of the plane – so much for accommodating other passengers, people are funny). In any case we got out, grabbed the stroller and headed into the building. The Saskatoon flight had not even started to board yet – it had been delayed (what I prayed for as we left Toronto). I just sat down on a vacant seat with Ivanna and cried. The faucet was very leaky after that last and FINAL scare about not making it home that night. A few minutes later, an attendant asked if we were on the Saskatoon flight and came over to get our boarding passes and told us we could head into the plane. Ivanna had woken up on the landing from Toronto but was so tired still that she was very subdued. We settled into our seats and she quietly looked at a book and then fell asleep again as we took off. About halfway through that final and short flight, I realized my bladder would not make it to the end. We managed to shift Ivanna into Darren’s arms and I snuck out and then on my return did the reverse for Darren. Thankfully she’s mostly quite a sound sleeper. She slept right through landing into Saskatoon and just woke up with the seatbelt sign going off. She was a little trooper as we gathered our things and headed off the plane and was pretty happy to see her stroller but reached up for my hand as I walked beside her. We headed into the building and as we came out of the security area saw a sea of much-loved and missed faces in front of us. The cousins all had balloons and there was a great big sign welcoming us home. It was incredible. We were quickly surrounded by family and friends and the cousins swooped in to meet Ivanna. She did remarkably well considering she was surrounded by strangers and was exhausted. She was pretty quiet and rather stunned-looking but tolerated the adoring attention of the kids really well. They tied balloons on her stroller and gave her some to hold to (at which point she finally let go of my hand). She continued to do well, checking to see where we were when one or the other of us moved away briefly. After a lot of well wishes and hugs and a small smile or two from Ivanna as some people interacted with her, we (her parents who were not sitting down and were ready to drop) headed home in our car with Jonathan as our Chauffeur – he had picked up all our luggage and brought the car around. Ivanna didn’t fuss with the car seat – she just picked at and looked at the restraints with disdain and played with her balloons on the way home and began saying ‘paka, paka, paka’. Pretty sweet. We arrived home to a huge chalk arrow leading into our driveway and wonderful pictures and ‘welcome home’ filling the driveway. I took Ivanna directly up to her room and she went to sleep without a problem. We were completely overwhelmed by all the gifts and cards and pictures of us with Ivanna that filled our home and yard. That night Ivanna slept well until 6:30 the next morning. Darren did the same. I was awake from 2am until about 5:30 (forgotten how to sleep). Our first couple of days at home have been pretty amazing. Ivanna is adjusting well. She had quite a ball yesterday morning investigating her room and toys and the rest of the house. We’ve shut a few doors to limit just how much of the house she knows about right now – so as not to overwhelm her too much. I continue to sleep poorly and haven’t yet been able to nap despite being completely exhausted. Hopefully that will change soon. Things still seem to have a bit of a dream-like quality. Perhaps that will change with rest. We continue to be amazed at just how well Ivanna is doing. We are slowly getting to know better who this little girl is. We are discovering her likes and dislikes with regards to food (that can be quite funny – she has a pretty good whole body shudder when she doesn’t like something). We are guessing most of her food has been pretty bland so far in her life as anything with a lot of texture or flavour promptly gets the body shudder and spit out onto her tray. I am finding it both delightful and frustrating at different times. It would have been nice to have gotten more information from the orphanage about what foods she ate, but it is interesting to try different things with her – so far no major upsets to her tummy. This (like the whole process of adopting from Eastern Europe) is quite an adventure – probably not for the faint of heart. We are enjoying being home and are very thankful for our daughter and our family and friends who have supported us. We are blessed.

the way home (part1)

What we are learning today…
The bright side of traveling with a toddler is that you are seldom bored. The dark side: new-found freedoms are not given up without formidable protests.
We tried to stay up late last night to begin shifting our internal clocks around a bit. Well, we stayed up a bit later, and Ivanna woke up a bit earlier. Yay. We cleaned ourselves up a bit and then headed out for a walk over to Shevshenko Park, where we played for a while. Despite one noisy vote against leaving, we headed down Shevshenko boulevard (for those of you on GoogleEarth) to our grocery store to pick up a few edible/drinkable souvenirs. After that, our last shawarmas by the master. Ivanna was pretty tired by the time we were on our way home (asleep, actually), so Shona moved her to the bed for a shortish nap. We woke her up before 2 so that she’d be ready to go when Lesya and her husband picked us up. Finally the time came and we said good-bye to our apartment. Jonathan told us that Kyiv would become home for us eventually, and I think some elements stood in for a while with some pseudo-hominess for a while. We will likely recall a lot of things and feel a bit sentimental fairly soon.
Everything went well checking in and getting to our gate, except that the security gate seemed to take forever to open. But eventually, it did and we boarded our plane. Well, once on board, the captain told us that the flight controllers would not let us take off for another 30 or 40 minutes. It was not welcome news. (for those of you who did not know, we had 35 minutes between landing in Munich and taking off on our next flight – you do the math). We said a little prayer. I was kind of thinking that as long as we head West, we are going in the right direction and would trust that we would make our connection in Toronto tomorrow. Well, a while later the captain said that we had been bumped up a bit (but probably still not enough for us to make our connection). A while later still, the engines fired up and we were off. Long story somewhat shortened: we made our connection and, since the flight ended up having a bit of space, Ivanna had her own seat (except for taking off and landing – see above comment). It was wonderful! Needless to say, the plumbing fixtures on Shona are a bit loose today – for VERY good reason. We are now in London, waiting to find out the gate we’ll use for our flight to NFLD. Ivanna is overdone, but overjoyed to be able to run around a bit (on a harness/leash held by Shona – thanks Michelle E.). We are really hoping she winds down enough to sleep a bit between here and St. John’s. We love her, but at this point, Shona and I could both use a break at the same time.
Oh, one other thing, it is a very interesting experience being able to just read everything by looking at it, instantly.

Later…after running about madly, Ivanna had a bit of a meltdown. It’s very understandable. She was overtired and in a hyper-stimulating environment (Heathrow is not what one might call serene). We managed to calm her a bit by taking her to a baby change room to get a break from the noise and sights and people, and so that she could cool off (she got pretty warm). She fired up a bit again on the way to our gate, but fell asleep and slept the whole flight to St. John’s. Once again, there was a spare seat for her to lie down on. It was good. Shona managed a few winks (between kicks from Ivanna – man, does she ever thrash at points in her sleep) and I got about 30 minutes or so. We are now in the bathroom of our hotel room in St. John’s. Shona got Ivanna to sleep once in the hotel room with quiet and darkness, and we are hoping to keep her that way for a while (and hoping to join her soon).

pics...

leaving Boyarka...



first meal at the apartment

not sure if I like that...

Friday ... finally!

We have had quite an exciting final full day in Kyiv. I did not sleep well – Ivanna was a little restless last night and I feel like I woke up everytime she turned over (which was frequent). I certainly woke up each time she bonked her little head on either our bed frame or the wardrobe on the other side. It’s not like she’s cramped – there’s at least 3 feet of space for her! She would cry out briefly each time she bonked and then would settle right back to sleep – not so for her mama. Anyway, I woke up for good by 6, made myself stay in bed until 6:30 and then got up to write in my journal – it’s been a week (a busy one!). Darren got up at 7:30 and Ivanna finally woke up close to 8. Apparently her crazy running around and playing yesterday afternoon took a little out of her! We had a nice leisurely morning and slowly got all three of us ready to go by 11. Vadim picked us up and we headed to get Irina. We then got photos for Ivanna’s Visa and headed to the Canadian Embassy. When the woman who does Visas came down she said that she couldn’t process Ivanna’s Visa today because she hadn’t yet received the second Letter of No Objection. Our hearts dropped and I’m sure mine stopped for a few seconds. We KNOW that our social worker sent it by courier weeks ago, but telling the lady this made no difference. She said if we could get it sent (fax would do for today) before 5PM she could process the visa – otherwise, we couldn’t leave because they are closed on Saturdays. I have to say we were both feeling rather panicked at that point. Irina was quite calm about it and said we would call Rodica. We left the forms (in case we could get everything sent in time) and left. Irina was immediately on the phone with Lesya who then called Rodica (from our agency in Ontario) and when we got home we also called Michelle (our social worker from DCRE -at home, we are very thankful she had given us her home number and that as it happens she’d had a strong coffee that night and wasn’t sleeping when I called!) who headed in to work for us a 3:30AM Saskatoon time to fax the letter (Thank you SO much Michelle!!). In the end, I think the Embassy got faxed the letter both from Rodica (who had a copy) and from Michelle. Better more than not enough – that’s for sure. It has been quite an emotional few hours. I have to admit – I’m a bit of a basket case. We did receive all the copies of the documents today from Irina and it was very neat (if also rather emotional) to read through all the documents – especially the court judgment and her new birth certificate – both naming us as parents. Wow.
After signing more documents at the notary’s office, we drove home and said good-bye and thank-you to Irina and Vadim. It’s hard to believe we leave tomorrow. We are so grateful. We had a nice supper of leftovers (and a nice chat with Tanis – it was almost like she had supper with us) and are now at Mario’s for dessert with the Andrews. And, as a very good ending to a strenuous day, the wi-fi is up. Yay!

thursday

Wow. It’s been an amazing 24 hours. We have a daughter who is currently ripping around the apartment playing with everything from our tea towel to theraband to her teddy bear. Pretty much everything she finds becomes a toy. It’s so incredible to watch her delight in everything. She has come so much out of her quiet shell in the last day, it’s amazing. Last night we went for a walk and ended up in the at a play park in one half of the botanical gardens. She of course had the required swing time and just watched all the kids and people. We have discovered she absolutely loves animals (we knew of course she likes creepy chickens) but every animal she saw any (pigeons, other birds, a cat, many dogs) she would point and vocalize something (woof for the dogs) and have this look of absolute delight and awe. She managed to get her first pony ride (I am a sucker). She saw a little pony in the park that a fellow was taking kids for rides. He obviously saw a customer because he indicated she could have a ride. I said ‘no, she’s too little’. He then indicated she could just pet the pony, which led to him indicating that she should just sit on the pony, which as soon as I sat her on there, he started the pony going and had me hold her leg (she held onto the little handle on the saddle). We walked a short loop, which she loved and he earned a few dollars. We then headed to Mario’s to meet the Andrews for dessert. We were a little early so we walked around the block first so Ivanna wouldn’t have to sit for too long. By the end of the block she was rocking side to side and singing a little song – it was great. She did really well in the restaurant, playing for about an hour with some papers and sharing a little of my dessert. She was pretty content and not concerned at all with the strangers – they even got to see a couple of smiles. We are thrilled as hopefully if things continue to go well, we won’t have to hermit too much in the next weeks. She went to bed well, with only about 5 seconds of crying before she settled in to snuggle with me and then was asleep in about 10 minutes. She slept through the night except for briefly waking up when she rolled off the cushion she was sleeping on. I just put her back on the cushion and she went right to sleep again until 7:00am. Fantastic! I slept better than I expected considering there was this little alien on the floor beside me! We had a great morning and managed to get ready and out the door around 9 (Ivanna was ready, having brought us her shoes and hat around 8!). We walked to pick up the Andrews and then walked down to Kreschatik to meet another Canadian couple. We had a great time visiting and getting to know everyone. It is nice for the two couples to meet as they are both now waiting for second appointments at the SDA – they can be good supports and company for each other – especially while they are both in Kyiv. Darren and Ivanna and I headed back to the apartment after a little shopping in Independence Square. We had a little lunch (which Ivanna devoured) and then she and I attempted to lay down for a nap. I’ll give you the short version and say that things didn’t go as smoothly as yesterday. After an hour of various attempts on and off and much crying (mostly on Ivanna’s part) we (she and I) decided enough was enough and gave up on the nap. She’s been going strong ever since (it’s now 5:45) so she either didn’t need the nap and/or she’s (hopefully) going to crash well tonight. Darren just got back after a long and tiring afternoon of waiting and driving – getting her passport and legalizing documents. Tomorrow we get her visa and then we leave Saturday. CRAZY!! We are heading to Mario’s for supper with the Andrews and hopefully the wi-fi will work tonight.

Wednesday

What a day! After a lesiurely morning at the apartment, Slava and Vadim picked us up and we headed off to do a bit more process stuff. We made two brief stops and headed out to Boyarka. Upon arrival, we spoke briefly to the Italian couple we’ve gotten to know a bit at the orphanage (we think they are set to go home this week as well). We then headed upstairs and waited briefly before Ivanna was brought to us. Apparently, she had not had any lunch (as kids often get car sick leaving their orphanages). Tatianna told us that she had been sitting at the table propping her head in hands, obviously none too pleased at not getting to eat with the rest of her group. She was a bit more tentative today. She seemed to sense that something was up. Things were not as normal. She was content to snuggle with Shona for a bit. Then Shona undressed Ivanna, and while she dressed her in her new clothes, I folded up her old ones. It felt like a pretty meaningful set of actions – marking so many changes. Slava and Tatianna asked us to sign a couple of documents and then we said a quick good-bye (and slightly teary thank-you – how do you express the depth of gratitude to a person who was an integral caregiver for your daughter?) to Tatianna, who said “Ivanna is super.” We know it. We stopped to give hugs and kisses to the Italian couple and then jumped into the car and drove away. And that was it. (Sho - For us it felt way to quick and we didn’t get all we wanted as far as information and moments there – it wasn’t what I had envisioned, but sitting here now and thinking about it – I realize that it was probably better for her not to have it drawn out.) Ivanna was very alert and pretty stiff, but not visibly upset. She watched everything pretty intently – including Vadim, when he stopped to get some petrol (standing on Shona’s lap with her head out the window!). We had a very zig-zaggy (hmm. Jason, is that ‘good’?) ride back to the apartment, and Ivanna fell asleep and slept nicely for a few minutes – twitching and jerking once in a while. Shona asked me if we were sure she has none of our genetics (I twitch a lot when falling asleep). When we got back to our place, Slava told us about the plans for the next couple of days. Apparently I am going to do a bit of running around tomorrow afternoon (thankfully, Shona and Ivanna can stay at home). Then, on Friday we will go do the visa stuff at the Canadian embassy. Shona and Slava said their good-byes (since Shona won’t see her again) and we came upstairs. Ivanna woke up when the door closed, so we offered her some food. She seems to play a little game when you offer her something she is not sure about. She kind of cocks her head to one side and gives a little smile (I have the feeling she is training us here). At first, we thought it was her way of saying ‘no’. But after Shona and I both laughed several times when she did it, I offered her a taste of something else. She cocked her head at first, but when I moved the spoon closer, she tried it. Let the social learning games begin! Now, Shona and Ivanna are having a rest in the bedroom. We expect to get out to the playground a bit later, then come home for a meal prepared for us by Jonathan when he was here (we’ve been saving it in the freezer – thanks, bro). It’s hard to believe we are finally here. We feel very blessed, very thankful. Slava Bogu.
(Sho now) We keep having to go have a little peek at this amazing little girl who is our daughter and is sleeping on the bed with her arms flopped out to the side. She’s real!

Thursday...

We've had a wonderful and very different past 24 hours. We picked Ivanna up yesterday around 1pm. Everything went well. We made it back to the apartment, gave her some food and then she napped for a couple of hours. In the evening, we had a Jonathan-prepared lavash lasagne (frozen since he was here - thanks bro) and then met the Andrews for dessert at Mario's. Unfortunately, the wi-fi was not working (which is why there was no post yesterday and why today's will be short). Nonetheless, we had a nice time out. Ivanna then slept from 9-something until around 7 this morning with only a brief bout of semi-consciousness when she rolled off the mattress (it's on the floor - no worries). Shona managed to call another Canadian couple (who had contacted her a few days ago) and we met them and the Andrews for coffee this morning on Kreschatyk. It was really enjoyable. They are all kind of in the same boat, waiting for second appointments.
After picking up some socks in Independence Square (for soccer), we walked back to the apartment. After a bit of lunch, Shona tried to put Ivanna down for a nap. No such luck. Unfortunately for her, I had to leave at 1:30 to go do a bit of paperwork. When I returned at 5:15, she was a little stir-crazy, and Ivanna was a bit manic. Apparently, after an hour of trying, Shona figured it was not worth it and then spent the rest of the afternoon dealing with a very energetic 23-month old. I tried to spell her off a bit before supper by entertaining Ivanna while Shona typed. Around 6, we headed over to Mario's again to meet the Andrews clan. Again, no luck with wi-fi, but a good supper. Ivanna totally crashed a few minutes after we arrived and spent the whole time sleeping on the bench. Just before leaving she woke up. Shona said she'd take her home to give her some food while I came here (the gamers' dungeon) to post and email. So, there you have the very short and broad-stroked version of our last day and a bit. We are saving our posts and will try to get them onto the blog when we have access again. The bottom line is that we are feeling ver blessed, and very grateful.

it's a girl!

Happy little family (daughter still not thrilled about the camera!)

let me out of here!!!

KVAS break!

Granite curbs being put it...what do you think dad (nickel) maybe for your front yard?

How can sitting in a car for the better part of a day leave one so exhausted? We are tired but elated. We are truly celebrating because Ivanna is officially our daughter. Now, we feel like we can exhale. Today, we were picked up at 8:20 and headed off to the court to pick up the official papers from the judge. We waited for a while there then proceeded out to Boyarka to get Ivanna’s birth certificate changed. That took a while (about an hour) then we got the birth certificate copied (line-up and wait there) and then finally ended up at the orphanage where Slava needed to pick up some documents. We got to play with Ivanna for about 45 minutes (she had just had her lunch) then had to take her back to her group (for the LAST time! :) We carried on and we got some other documents from another office in Boyarka. Then we headed into Veshneve (a town between Boyarka and Kyiv) to get some other documents. We made a brief wrong stop (wrong building) then found the correct one and had to wait a while because it was their lunch break. At 2:00pm we went up and signed for the document (I have no idea what it was – though needed for her passport application). We briefly stopped to copy some of the documents for that office and dropped them back off. As Slava was copying the documents, Vadim got out for a cup of KVAS – our guide book describes it as a gingery beer-like soft drink (made from fermented bread). He loves it (everytime we pass a seller on the street he says ‘Kvas-country champagne’ or ‘country beer’ rather lovingly:) He let me have a taste of his and as I was thirsty and it was pretty darn good, Darren and I shared a cup. Slava came out and had one too. A nice little break in the middle of document gathering and errand running! Anyway, we dropped off the copies at the last office we were at then headed into the city. Traffic was crazy. We eventually got to the passport office and when Slava came out she said it would be ready Thursday morning. Yay! We then had some more crazy traffic just getting back to our part of the city (dropping Slava at a metro station on the way). So tomorrow we will get picked up at 8:40 and go get some documents legalized and then head back out to Boyarka to pick up our girl. It’s surreal to actually be at this place. It is slowly feeling more and more real that we actually ARE her parents and that we get to take her home to Canada with us in 4 day. Crazy! We are thrilled everything went well today and that we got to see Ivanna in the middle (we weren’t expecting to). We now plan to head out for something to eat as it is 4:15 and we haven’t had anything since breakfast (except kvas - for once I didn’t have stuff in my bag for snacks – bad timing)! Hopefully, the wi-fi at Mario’s is working.

monday

Our last Monday here began with me (shona) actually sleeping quite soundly until the alarm went off at 7:30 and I eventually dragged my carcass out of bed at 8. Having the apartment cooler has resulted in much better sleep! (thank-you Lesya) We got up and ready to go and headed off to the train station for our LAST trip by train out to Boyarka. Well, as usual, I headed to the Kasa (where you buy tickets) with pretty close to exact change (they usually like that) only to have trouble communicating with the lady this morning – she didn’t seem to get where I wanted to go and then she said I needed more money. I figured she just didn’t understand where I wanted to go so I repeated ‘Boyarka’ ‘Dva’ (two) but she still said I needed more money. Then Darren came up and said that he didn’t see our train on the list this morning. I took my money back and we went to look outside to see if we could see our usual train – no luck. So, life lesson #1 today – apparently our usual train doesn’t run sometimes (although it has run every other holiday). So we decided to walk to the circus (another 5-10 minutes or so) to try to catch a ‘Marshutka’ (little bus). We’d seen the buses in Boyarka with signs for the circus so knew there should be some (and Jonathan had mentioned I think that they left from there too). Anyway, we eventually found one with a ‘Boyarka’ sign and tried to ask when the bus was leaving. We thought the guy said ‘chas’ (in an hour), so I clarified and pointed to my watch and I thought he said 10:10. Darren and I walked a little ways away to discuss what to do. After a while, as we stood there Darren noticed the bus start up so we moved toward it and managed to get on just in time. We laughed a little but were thankful to be on our way. Now we figure they were probably saying ‘soon’ or ‘in a minute’ when they said ‘chas’ and were probably telling us when the bus would arrive in Boyarka (because we did indeed arrive just before 10:10). Anyway, have we mentioned how nice it would be to know the language better? Life lesson # 2 – we don’t know how to communicate very well (but we really knew that already!). So we got out to Boyarka with no trouble once we were on the bus and the driver wasn’t as crazy as we had been told bus drivers are. We had a great time with Ivanna going for walks, swinging, and looking yet again at the chickens. A German lady (who I think we’ve seen once or twice before) and her son were feeding the chickens with scraps of bread which Ivanna found fascinating. She wanted to get right in there and despite me trying very hard to keep her hands away from the fence, at one point I was watching the other little boy and she got her little fingers through the chain link and one of the chickens immediately gave her a peck to see if she was food. No broken skin or anything, but she cried out briefly and was a little more hesitant about getting close to them after that (but still wanted to watch!). The only other hiccup in the visit so far was at one point she headed from the swing into a little ‘house’. Darren had noticed a bunch of flies around and was just saying ‘there are a lot of flies around – I wonder why?’ when we realized that Ivanna had stepped in what we thought initially was mushed up apple – no such luck. It was poop. That would explain the flies. I grabbed her and whipped off her shoe and tried to wipe off the little bit of poop off her sock then held her while Darren dealt with the much worse of sandal. As I held her I realized her other shoe also got a small dose so dealt with that one as best I could while holding a squirmy kid who wanted to get down and play – shoe or no shoe. Eventually Darren got the first shoe as clean as he could (not a good day to forget wipes!). As her shoe still stank, we decided shortly thereafter that we should head in. We took off both her socks and shoes and took her back to her group. We tried to explain what had happened – hopefully our ‘foo’ (stinky) and acting out stepping in something gross got it across! The nurse took her stuff anyway. Life lesson #3 – where there are many flies there is often poop (or other gross stuff you don’t want your kid getting into). Ivanna headed into the mess of kids that surrounded us and we squatted down for our goodbyes. We were surrounded by all the kids in the group and Ivanna was none too impressed that the were so close to us getting kisses and ‘pakas’ so she headed into her daddy’s arms for some attention. So many kids who want and need love.

Last Sunday

Saturday was a very relaxing day. We slept in and headed out for a bit of shopping then came back to the apartment for a rest and cool-off time. We did not make it out to the ‘Kyiv Days’ festivities, but (and for this we are extremely thankful) the air conditioner was installed last evening. We had a great time basking in its cool breezy cool breeze (that’s for you Jason). It also meant a better sleep for both of us.
This morning, we called the Andrews (who arrived last night) and then headed over to their apartment to pick them up. We spent the first half of the day walking around the neighbourhood from grocery store to grocery store to grocery store. All the while, we greatly enjoyed conversing in English. It was just so easy. After picking up a few groceries and introducing them to shawarma, we headed back to their place to cool off and chat a bit more. Their place is very nice. I believe they are the first to occupy it since it was renovated. We’re so glad they got a place in our neighbourhood, and that they want to hang out a bit. As much as Shona and I love each other and genuinely enjoy being with each other, I think we’re ready to see and talk with more people. The Andrews seem very nice and are very easy to be with. Eventually, we figured they were probably ready for a bit of rest, so not wanting to have them sick of us within the first five hours (are we sounding a bit needy?), we took our leave.
We came back to our apartment briefly and then Shona headed out to pick up a few more things (she really is a gift-giver). I had a little rest (again enjoying the cool) and then went out in search a couple things myself. I was partly successful (I’m not always able to make the purchase). I’m now waiting for Shona to return and hoping it is soon, because the sky looks like we’ll be getting some rain soon.
Sho – well I’m back and very pleased. I found the things I was looking for (just a couple more souvenirs) and on my way back from the artisans area (which has the street blocked off and there were about 5X the people – both sellers and buyers as when Jonathan was here because of ‘Kyiv Days’ this weekend) I heard singing as I passed Shevchenko park (that has the statue of ‘Jesus’ according to Misha) so I stopped for a look. The park was full of people and a group dressed up in traditional costumes were singing on a stage. I bought some water and sat down for a wonderful 45 minutes of Ukrainian culture (singing and dancing – mostly younger people but I still really enjoyed it). I’m thrilled I happened by at that time (it doesn’t feel right to leave Ukraine without having seen some dancing – even though I can see it at home!). I made it home getting sprinkled by rain and now it is pouring out (good timing!).
We are going to introduce the Andrews to Mario’s for supper soon.
Paka!

court +10

It’s Thursday night and we’ve just returned from a walk to the grocery store after Mario’s. As I was looking at yogurt, I turned to ask Darren what kind he wanted only to find Libby had taken over her introverted son’s body and he was chatting with an older man and a younger woman (telling them where to find milk in boxes - they were looking at bags, which if you don’t have a pitcher – is not so convenient). We ended up having a nice conversation – in English :) with them and it made my evening. We’ve just finished our dessert of ice cream (an almost daily occurrence), chocolate (our daily dose) and cookies. Yum!
So now it’s Friday and things have not quite gone as we thought. We received a phone call from Slava last night to tell us that she would call us around 11AM and pick us up shortly after to go fill out the form for Ivanna’s passport and that we could then go out to the orphanage in the afternoon. Well today, I woke up early (I’m not sleeping great with the heat) and got up at 6:30ish. Darren and I did yoga (temperature in apartment 29.9) and then cleaned the place up a bit – I washed dishes and Darren vacuumed (temperature rose to 30.4). We then showered and got ready for the day. Slava called close to 11:30 to tell us that she was delayed and would give us a call in an hour. So we sat around and waited. We watched some TV and rested a bit. Then she called to tell us that she had taken some of our papers to the Notary but they were busy and so the papers wouldn’t be ready until 2:15. So, we had a little lie-down and set the alarm for a real nap (only today, I suck at napping so after 30 minutes of not sleeping I gave up). It’s a bit frustrating because now we won’t get out to the orphanage today (and could have gone in the morning). It’s not anyone’s fault, just the way it worked out. It happens. I’m missing our girl. We will now probably try to go out tomorrow after all as 3 days seems like way too much time away (though we’ll try taking the later train – hopefully it will be less busy). The best laid plans…oh well. We are getting some stuff done today that we didn’t expect to so maybe that will make next week a little less crazy with running around (and maybe we’ll have more days to just hang out with Ivanna).
So, now it’s 6:49 and we’ve just returned home. The visit to the notary only took about 35 minutes so it was about 2:35 when Slava and Vadim dropped us off. We decided we had enough time to make the train to Boyarka after all, so we quickly grabbed the kid stuff (juice, snacks and wipes) and walked quickly to the train station (a challenge on a day like today – I can only go so fast in this heat). We got there in plenty of time (I thought the train left at 3:15 but it actually left at 3:30). We got seats and rather quickly realized that the train was going to be busy. So much for taking tomorrow off to avoid the crowds! Anyway, other than a close encounter with some woman’s rather large bosom (somewhat better than the sweaty guy’s gut, but not much) for Darren (at one point, I was a bit concerned about losing an eye, or being smothered), it was fine. I had my frozen bottle of water again – what a difference that makes while waiting in the heat! Once we were moving, the air movement helps a lot. Anyway, we had a great but short visit with Ivanna. We went outside and had the playground to ourselves until her group joined us about ½ hour later. It was nice to sit with them in the shade. Ivanna seemed to enjoy sitting on my lap, playing with her group all around. Everyone was pretty mellow. All too soon, we had to leave. It was particularly hard for me today. Ivanna gave Darren a great big hug when I told her ‘paka papa’ and then I gave her a great big hug and kiss and told the caregivers we had to go. Ivanna looked quite sad and confused that we were leaving and just stood staring at us while the other kids blew kisses and waved at our ‘pakas’. Hard. But when we looked back after walking across the playground, she seemed reasonably interested in playing again.
We stopped at the store for some ‘celebrate the weekend and day 10 Napoleon’ and are cooling off briefly before we head off for supper (stripped down with the fan on = good!).

court +9

eating - cheeks full!



yay!!!!!!!!

After another hot morning and hot train ride, we are back in our hot apartment. Shona is in a bit of a trance on the couch. I just had a very cold shower, so my temperature is temporarily below boiling. It feels good.
We didn’t sleep particularly well last night, but I slept better than Shona. She woke up before 6 and then got up around 6:30. I got up around 7. Tanis called, and Shona had a good chat with her. It’s good to hear from home. We left around 8:30 (as usual) and got good seats on the train. Today, Shona brought a frozen bottle of water that we took turns rubbing on our bodies while sitting on the train – particularly for the 35 minutes before the train starts moving. Actually, we mostly just held it or put it against our necks, heads, tummies, or backs – and it really wasn’t too sexy at all. I imagine it looked a little weird, us handing this bottle back and forth, but likely everyone else thought it brilliant as they figured it out. It did help. Shona is a resourceful little girl guide.
Once again, Ivanna’s group was outside when we arrived, so we quickly found her and she came over for hugs and kisses. We spent some time swinging with a girl from another group. For quite a while, we appeared to be quite the hit, with 4 or 6 other kids bringing us toys, balls, grass, and/or garbage to play with. These beautiful children love attention. I pray they are given good homes. As we were pushing Ivanna and another girl on the swing, I wished we could take more children home with us. After some time, we went over to the chickens and then up to the front of the building. Ivanna was quite interested in looking through the fence at cars and people going by. I went through the gate to film her a bit and she realized there is a way out and wanted to find it (and tried to climb the fence to get out!). I was glad to see that she is interested in exploring the world outside. Boy, is she in for a shock! She is going to see more world in the next 2 weeks than she ever could have imagined.
Shona here now. We have some wonderful news. No we don’t get to pick up Ivanna early. Lesya was over at our apartment yesterday to pick up our rent for the apartment. I’m not sure if it was the fact that she was here and realized just how hot it is (it hit 29.4 this morning) or that I had made a comment that we are really enjoying ourselves but just finding the heat hard to deal with. Anyway, about 2 hours later we got a phone call from her to tell us the owners were going to put in air conditioning and would we mind being out of the apartment for a few hours on Saturday (she had told us when she was here that they had talked about putting air in before but thought the weather this year wouldn’t be too hot so had decided to wait – I guess she persuaded them to do it now!). So I think we will make ourselves scarce for a while Saturday! We are pretty excited at the prospect of having a bit of a sanctuary from the heat (and won’t have to resort to camping out at the Andrews apartment that will have air). Hopefully we’ll sleep better with the temperature a little cooler. Oh ya. I almost forgot our other news from Lesya. She told us that Monday is yet another holiday here, so…yes that means it will be one more day until we can pick Ivanna up. We will do a fair amount of running around on Tuesday and Wednesday, so we may not pick her up until Wednesday. A bit disappointing but it probably is better for her to carry on with her usual routine than to drive all over the place and spend the days sitting in a car. We’re doing okay with this news and are really looking forward to getting the official papers that say we are her parents – even if we can’t quite pick her up yet. We will be thrilled whatever day it ends up being that we can bring her home to the apartment with us. Knowing it is so close makes it easier to take.
Later… a short nap, then the air conditioning unit was delivered. Oh we are plenty excited about that - just imagine how excited we'll be when it is installed!

Thursday Shower

There will be a come and go shower on Thursday, May 24th from6:30-8:30. Everyone welcome. The shower is at Shona and Darren's. Bring your gift unwrapped and labelled with who it is from.You will be able to put it in Ivanna's room ready for her to use. Look forward to seeing you there. If you have any questions please contactTanis 244-1723 or Val 956-3981

court +8

look. chickens.


washing up.

Yay! We made it to and are halfway through day 3 this week. Hump day. It feels good to have finished one more day of traveling out to Boyarka by train. Today is the hottest day yet – it was predicted to get to 35C (Lesya just told us it hit 36C today). Yesterday on the train with the breeze from the windows and our location in the train (quite shaded), I actually felt quite cool and had to snuggle in to Darren a bit (that hasn’t happened a lot lately!). However today, even though we were in the same location and the windows were mostly all open – there was no coolness to be found in the breeze. Not a good sign for the rest of the day when it’s 9:30 AM (unless you are Brendan!). We got to the orphanage to find that all four groups that are usually outside at that time were already there – and most of the kids were only in underwear and hats (another testament to how hot it was!). We headed over to Ivanna’s group and she came straight over for a hug – I love that! We spent our time swinging (big surprise), going for a walk in the stroller (trying to find shade!), watching the chickens (a lovely, very shady spot – we encouraged her to stay, even though the birds are creepy), having snack and drink (one minor and brief choking incident as Ivanna gulped down some juice too quickly – it helped to clear her nose though – snot everywhere!) and then also spent a little time around her group. Her caregiver (the same one who let us stick around yesterday) asked (I think) if we wanted to stay around the group and I indicated that that was great. It’s fun to watch her with her caregivers and little friends. She took advantage of her freedom and soon wandered into other areas and headed up to the top of a slide that was in full sun. Darren at this point had headed inside with Tatiana to get some documents for Slava, so it was up to mama to follow her up (Daddy’s been the slide guy so far!). It was blistering up there and when Ivanna made a move to go down the slide I checked the temperature and promptly picked her up and took her back down the stairs (even too hot for my bottom with pants on!). She wasn’t too thrilled but was distracted by the snacks and juice I offered her (in the shade – beautiful shade). All too quickly the groups were all heading in and we followed a few minutes later (Ivanna wasn’t too pleased at first - she loves to be out). We got to stick around again to watch the post play-time wash-up and potty time. The same caregiver had fun with the kids sprinkling them with water and they all just giggled and had a blast – she’s really great with the kids. I managed to get a quick picture of her with Ivanna (our batteries are dying on our camera) – unfortunately, I’m not the steadiest and so it’s a little out of focus. Next time I’ll give the camera to Darren! On the train home (it was late again – more what we are used to), a young man was asleep across the bench we were standing beside. A couple of babushkas across from him tried to wake him up by poking him – no luck. They tried again every few minutes – it was pretty funny to watch them - they were obviously unimpressed with his behaviour and weren’t exactly gentle in their attempts to wake him! Eventually one of his legs fell off the seat and he woke up briefly – they made it quite clear to him that he should sit up (and wipe off the seat his shoes had dirtied) so that we could sit down (which he did). He promptly fell right back to sleep with his head lolling backward. The train is certainly never boring if you like to people watch! Being as hot as it has been and continues to be, the scents of the train were somewhat stronger and more ‘ripe’ today. Darren was creeped out by a guy who stood next to him with his shirt undone and fully open, allowing his ample belly to hang out, pressing against his shoulder. He considered getting up to let the man sit down but thankfully reconsidered that option when he realized this fellow would then be sitting next to ME (thank you!!!). He sacrificially remained a gallant barrier between me and the guy, and eventually, the man found another place to rest his belly (a seat away from us). On our way home we stopped at the ‘dungeon’ internet place to briefly check our email. It only costs 1hryvna ($0.20)for 15 minutes – I spent most of the time standing next to the air conditioner which was blowing out beautifully cold air! It might just be worth paying to be able to hang out down there – whether we want to use the internet or not….or maybe we could take this opportunity to get hooked on computer games and spend our hot afternoons down there (who really needs to sight-see anymore?)! We were much cooler when we left there and headed home (but still both had cold showers and again I’m sitting in my bathing suit). The apartment has hit 28.4C (but I think first thing this morning it was 28.9C) – it seems to be climbing a little more (overall) each day. Hopefully this heat wave will break soon and bring some more reasonable temperatures our way (if only we could find a happy medium between Saskatoon temperatures and here)! We’re hanging out here, waiting for Lesya (she has to pick up some $ for the apartment) then we plan to ‘cook’ tonight (that will likely consist of opening some jars of sauce and getting some bread – too hot to actually turn on the stove!) then head to Mario’s for dessert. This has so far been a good week. We are feeling very grateful that we’ve had such good visits with Ivanna, that the trains have been quite bearable this week (despite the heat) and that we have made it to Wednesday. We are finding the commute and visits tiring and we are soooo ready to have our daughter with us.


We hope (?plan) to be a little more adventurous tomorrow afternoon and try to get to the ‘Caves Monastery’ (maybe the underground caves will be cool!). Have a great day! Paka.

Gardening bee...many hands make pretty garden

What: Gardening bee at Shona and Darren's to help get their flowers planted before they come home.
When: Saturday, May 26 at 10:00am
Bring: Gardening gloves, tools (anything you would usually use to plant flowers)
Contact: Val or Lecia if you have any questions
Please join us if you can!

court +7

You will have to use your imaginations today or refer back to other posts to get your ‘Ivanna picture’ fix today. Unfortunately, we forgot the camera on the kitchen table when we left. We got a wonderful phone call this morning from Tanis and Jonathan and perhaps I (sho) got a little distracted in packing the bag. Anyway, we missed some great pictures today :(, so I’ll try to be very descriptive so you can picture the scenes in your minds. Ivanna spent probably an hour or so on the swings today (we’ve mentioned she likes swinging, right?). At first she headed for one of the wooden swings closer to the back of the yard. One of the little girls from her group came over as I was putting Ivanna on the swing and made it quite clear she wanted on too. The caregivers often put two kids on these swings so I moved Ivanna over and put the other girl beside her. It was pretty darn cute. To hold on, they each had a wooden upright on one side and put their little arms around each other’s shoulders. Ivanna looked pretty pleased to be swinging with a buddy. They both were smiling and giggling when I tickled them. At one point the other little girl gave Ivanna a huge, smooshy faced hug – it was great! After about 15 minutes (or more?) of swinging together, the caregivers made the other little girl get off and told her she needed to run around (I’m guessing here, by the gestures that went along with the instructions) then told Ivanna she could stay and swing. Ivanna continued to swing for quite a while (and the other little girl kept trying to come over to swing too, but was continually called back by the nurses). Eventually, we stopped swinging her to see if she wanted to stop and asked her (along with signing) if she wanted ‘more’. She immediately repeated the sign and nodded but then hopped off and headed toward the front of the yard. Darren thought maybe she thought ‘more’ was related to food (we’ve probably used it more there), because our bag and snacks were in the direction she was heading, but she walked right on by the bag and headed straight for the other swing-set! She did indeed want ‘more’ swinging. She swung until close to 20 past 11, when another little boy who is somewhat demanding about getting our attention (and also likes to be a little too aggressive for my tastes with Ivanna). He proceeded to sit on the other swing and then promptly kicked Ivanna’s swing. Past experience has taught us that reprimanding him (even in Russian) just escalates his behaviour, so I picked Ivanna up and we went to look at the chickens for a while. We had a lovely snuggle as one of the caretakers was painting the fence, so I didn’t want to let her near it (we’ve already noticed green paint on some of her clothes - oops!) As some of the other groups came in with the strollers, we took one and took Ivanna for a little walk (she had spent much of her time swing watching with what looked like envy as the Italian and French couples took their boys for walks in a stroller). We had a brief little snack and drink and then headed back to her group. When we got there, the caregiver indicated that we could stay for a bit and watch the group. Yay! After playing outside the routine is to have all the kids sit on little potties before their lunch. So we watched as they sat and took off their shoes (some with a little help) and the nurse then checked their potties one by one. If they had done their ‘job’ they were led to a little rack (one at a time) where all their towels are and then led to a little sink where the nurse washed their hands and faces and then had them stand against the wall to wait for the others. Several of the children would try to get up and move on to the next step, without having done their ‘pissine’. The nurse would pick up their potty and say ‘pusta’ (empty), and tell them to sit down and ‘pissine’. One little boy is quite a handful and let’s just say he seems to have trouble staying on task and sitting or standing still. The nurse was very patient with him and just told him repeatedly to sit which he would do briefly (she also seems to have eyes on the back of her head as she seemed to know when he was getting up even if she wasn’t looking his way). She got through the kids one by one. Ivanna seemed pretty pleased we were there and kept looking up and smiling at us. The nurse eventually got all the kids washed and even though a few of them didn’t ‘go’ she led them all into the hall and then had all the kids say ‘paka’ to us (our cue to go). We thanked her profusely (how I wish I could let her know how much it means to us to get to see some of their routine) then headed back down the stairs. It was a great morning. Back at the train station, we managed to get some water and then Darren noticed the train was almost at the station so we sprinted up the stairs, over the overpass, back down and made it onto the train in time. It was the earlier train so we are back at our apartment a little earlier than we have been. It is still scorching here. Depending on what news we believe, this week is supposed to continue to have highs of over 30 all week - BBC is predicting as high as 35-36C. :( Darren has had his cold shower and now it’s my turn.
Later...we had a nap - I'm getting better at turning my brain off, then did some yoga (what does the temperature have to be for it to be considered 'hot yoga'?), and now are out for our usual supper at Mario's - yes, we are kind of predictable!
paka!

court +6

Happy Victoria Day! We hope you are all relaxing and enjoying yourselves today. It is another scorcher here today, although there is a slight breeze so that helps to make it bearable. Our apartment is now at 27.5C and I am sitting here in my 2-piece bathing suit (somehow it seems more decent than sitting in my bra and underwear!), after having a cool shower on returning home. Ivanna seemed to be very pleased to see us this morning – maybe she misses us when we don’t come? She stayed almost completely away from her group today (other than a brief interaction at the beginning with one of the kids – herding him back to the group when he had gotten a little ahead of them as they came out). We had our usual watching the chickens time and then spent A LOT of time on the swings today. At one point as Darren was pushing her, she started to sing a little song. We couldn’t pick out really any words (that we understood) but she probably sang off and on (more on than off) for the next 15 minutes as she swung (d: I got a bit of video, but could not upload it). We get the feeling she was pretty content. :) She also spent some time pushing (or rather helping to push) a couple of kids in a double stroller – she really loves to ride and to push the stroller. She also had some fun going down one of the big slides with Darren (several times). It was a good morning. I also had a nice little chat with an Italian woman (I had heard her speaking French with the French couple so took advantage of us having a similar language to talk with her) – it was really nice to TALK with someone. Yes, I like to talk with Darren but I honestly feel like I need to talk with other people too. I’ve had ‘Libby’ moments on the street or at Mario’s when I’ve heard people speaking English – I just want to go over and introduce myself and chat with them and make them be my friend (so far I’ve restrained myself)! I’m kind of desperate to be able to converse easily again and to have our family and friends around. After missing the first train because I was getting some water (it was actually on time today – not something we’ve come to expect) we caught the next one 15 minutes later – and it was relatively roomy today, we got seats right away. We stopped at the grocery store to pick up a few things on our way home, but both felt too hot for shawarma today – kind of sad. :( It is now time for a nap.