A Quick Sunday Night

Before we left for this afternoon's visit, we got a phone call with some good news and some bad news.  The good news far outweighed the bad, so we were still elated when we hung up the phone.  Since I'm a get-the-bad-news-outta-the-way type of gal, the only bad was that our driver was going to need to leave the orphanage about 40 minutes earlier than usual so we'd cut our visit short.
The good news has the potential to be great news!  Turns out, there is a big criminal case in court on Thursday, which is when we expected to be going in front of the judge.  So, if Serge can push the SDA hard enough, we may be able to have court on Wednesday at 10am!!  If he cannot convince them, it looks like Friday will be our day.  Not sure how the weekend would then play into our paper chase with obtaining the birth certificate and the other errands we need to run once we are back in Kiev.  We are hoping and praying with all of our might that we are able to go in on Wednesday!  What an answer to prayer that would be.  I am not minding it here in this country, but I am dying to get back to squeezing on our 3-year old at home.
When we got to the orphanage, we were greeted by a fuzzy surprise on the steps inside.

It was only 7 degrees here today (okay, okay, 44 if we are going by home measurements) so I think some of the animals are trying harder to sneak inside.
Daddy once again got the happy run!  This is not a great video, but I take shaky videos when I am preoccupied and it was dark, so here is the beginning of her run.  (Note the nanny that can barely keep up)

I am frequently amazed by her joy, but one thing that kept surprising me today was how much she is learning. She seems like her attention span is getting longer.
It's the third visit in a row that she's been signing help and she's even done it a couple of times without our prompting it first.

Signing 'help'!  Smart girl, Julia!!
Someone definitely has Signing Time and Sight Words dvd's on her Christmas list!  

She is so patient and will watch us very closely when we get her attention or when we are doing something new.  The bangle bracelets have been awesome for this.  Just for space reasons and not knowing what kind of play level she'd be at, I packed some cheap thin bangle bracelets and some pipe cleaners since they were both flat and quiet enough to be used on a plane.  They have been wonderful, inventive toys!

First, we have making them into a jingle toy--

She'll watch so intently.  Now she will taken them off one by one and put them back the same way.  She'll try to re-twist the pipe cleaner and hold it back together.  She hasn't quite gotten it to stay tight enough to hold so that is the point that she'll have Robert or me help her.

Next, dad taught her to line them all up on the bench--

After that, mom found a small leaf and made it jump from hoop to hoop, and sure enough a little bit later, her tiny hands were doing this--

It is so exciting how much she can pick up in such a short amount of time with her each day.  And the short amount of time was brought to a quick halt tonight with the early end time.  Unfortunately, that visit went by super fast.  We know that she felt it too because there were more tears from her again as we said goodbye.  It is so hard to not be able to explain to her that we will back in the morning.  Just one sleep and she'll see us again.  It makes me track the time by hours instead of days that we will be mom and dad and we'll never be on someone else's restricted time line again.  Soon when we say goodbye, it won't be to us.  It will be to the orphanage.