Simferopol Day 3

This morning we woke up before our alarm with anticipation of seeing Vitaliy again.  We were picked up at 0850 and taken to Lozove.  We pulled up to the front and saw kids walking from one building to another and found out that they were finishing breakfast.  We didn’t see Vitaliy, so we took some time to take pictures of the outside of the orphanage.

  Natalya arrived and we went in search of Vitaliy.  About that time he came rushing out of the building looking in a hurry and concerned.  Kim asked him what was wrong and he told Natalya that he was instructed to change his clothes.  He had on the same clothes as yesterday but he looked fine to us.  We told him it was okay and he ran off at full speed to change and get back.   
After he was back, we went up to the activity room where they spend time on Saturday mornings doing crafts and drawing.  We brought out a pack of dominoes and the boys knew how to play a version of the game.  Brandon was dealt into the first game at Vitaliy’s insistence, and then the second game Kim was allowed to play.

 

 He really wanted to play with the I-Touch but we kept telling him no, with a smile. 
Then we got out a dinosaur coloring/activity book and crayons.  He was very excited about this!  There were stickers in the book and he spent some time trying to match the stickers with the pictures in the book.  The crayons we brought had a crayon sharpener on the back, all the boys were impressed with that.  He did some connect the dot pictures and colored. 

We brought some scratch and sniff book-marks with strawberries, cookies, and chocolate.  This was a big hit and he let some kids sniff but then quickly hid them back into the book.  They had a movie playing in the room we were in, and Vitaliy started to get distracted by it.  It was an action packed movie that we wouldn’t have let him watch had he been living with us.

 

Kim needed to use the bathroom and so she asked Vitaliy to show her were it was.  It was very small, no toilet lids, a waste basket in between the toilets, and no paper.  How different our bathroom will look compared to this. 

We had a few minutes to have Natalya help us talk to one another.  The only question Vitaliy asked us is if he would be going to school with his sisters?  We told him that he would be home with Kim and she would be his momma and teacher, but that we would enroll him in sports with boys his own age to play with.  He seemed satisfied with that.  We told him lots of things, like that he will have his own room and it will be decorated with soccer things.  At this, he smiled and laughed.  We told him about the shower and bathtub that is close to his room, and he told us he likes to go swimming.  We told him it is too cold now but we will take him in the summer time.  We told him that we will make a cake and have a party for his birthday, and he raised his eyebrows and did a small smile.  We asked him what other fruits he liked and he told us bananas, pineapples, oranges, and pomegranates.   So, on our way home we went to the store and bought more fruit to take to him tomorrow. J

He was excited to see us, he looked at our eyes and smiled much more today than yesterday.  We were allowed to stay at the orphanage for 2 hours and have been told this is a pretty standard amount of time we can stay per day.  When we left, Kim gave him a hug and a kiss on his cheek, he scrunched his face but he allowed it.