WE FOUND OUR BOY!!

We found our boy!!!!! We had planned to come home with two boys under 5, but God had something else planned for our family, and this boy is a perfect fit in every way. He has dark hair, light eyes, and the same skin tone as the girls. He is bright, energetic, and has a happy disposition. When he walked into the room to greet us, he came up to us, shook our hands and said, “Hello, my name is D” (in Russian of course).
Several adoptive parents have told us that you will know instantly when you meet your child, and that is how we both felt. We still took some time to meet with the orphanage personnel, and the doctor, and we spent some time playing with him on the playground at the orphanage, but we knew from the instant we saw him.
He does not have any health issues that concern us, although he does have a very small umbilical hernia that they chose not to fix because it is so small. He also has a lazy eye which seems to be very common among orphans. I think this is due to a lack of visual stimulation when they are babies. He will likely need glasses, and possibly some corrective surgery, because he may be considered too old to completely correct the problem with eye patching. He was able to identify the objects in a picture book, and he was able to name each of us on the small display screen on our camera, so he seems to see fairly well.
When we went back to the apartment after our visit, we realized that we had all noticed that he was walking funny. Matt had already come to terms with the idea that he was not going to have an athlete for a son. Knowing that we were concerned, Vanya immediately called a pediatrician, and they discussed the possible causes of this, and whether or not it could be related to the lazy eye. When we returned the next day, we focused in on his walk. We first noticed that his sandals were buckled way too loosely. Then, we noticed a problem with his right sandal. We were tickled to find out that the cause of his funny walk was only a broken sandal. The next day he showed up in a new pair of sandals and has walked fine since.
He is very conversational, and seems to have an appropriate vocabulary for his age. Vanya has been quite surprised at some of the things that he has said. After we decided to adopt him, he told Vanya that his new parents spoke English, and he would speak English after he goes on the samulot (plane). If only it were that easy! When we were leaving the orphanage yesterday, Vanya overheard him talking to the guard at the door. He said, “I used to not have a family, but now I do”. Are you crying now? I’m sure he can’t begin to imagine what that really means, since he has little concept of what a family is, and he has no idea how much his life is about to change. He has spent his entire life in an orphanage, which is actually somewhat comforting to us, because from what we have seen of the orphanage, he is loved and well cared for, and we don’t have to wonder if he had some kind of tragic home life.
The social pedagog (the lady whose job it is to teach them social skills) told us that he likes Legos and soccer, so we decided to bring him Legos on the second day. He immediately opened the booklet that comes with the Legos, and started building one of the examples in the book. Today, we brought him a puzzle, and he completed it easily. The girls are crazy about him, and they are a huge help when it comes to entertaining him for 4 hours a day (visiting hours are from 10 am -12 noon and 4-6 pm each day) on a rather uninteresting playground. When we brought him the puzzle today, he said, “I want my sisters to do it with me”. We are settling in to a new schedule of two daily visits, and I’m sure that the rest of our time will be filled with meals, grocery shopping , laundry, and other daily necessities.
Vanya spent Friday, and part of Saturday running around like crazy to get paperwork completed, and tomorrow he will be leaving at 5:30 am to travel to D’s hometown to complete more paperwork. A taxi will pick us up to take us to the orphanage for our visits. This will be our first visit without a translator, but I’m sure we’ll be just fine.