Meeting the Kids

We have now had 2 "bonding sessions" with our kids! Alina turned 8 on Sunday, and her brother Konstantin turned 4 on Mother's Day. Alina loves the Tiara Blythe picked out for her. As you can see she is very affectionate with her little brother, so we don't think she'll mind having 2 of them. Konstantin loves to read (just like Asher). He only put his matchbox car down long enough to grab our Russian phrase book and start naming objects for us. Alina figured out how to work our digital camera in about 5 minutes and really loved watching video clips of herself. She thought this was the funniest thing she'd ever seen.

At our first meeting yesterday our blow bubbles were a huge hit. Konstantin gave us a big belly laugh every time he popped a bubble. Alina seems to be very good at sharing as she let several of the other children use her bottle of bubbles for awhile.

We were both very impressed with the quality of the orphanage. We watched a beautiful song and dance pageant this morning of which we would show pictures except that we were prohibited from photographing any children but our own. The care givers seem genuinely affectionate and the kids quite happy. We did learn the children are fed in set daily weight rations. While this does not seem to be a problem for Konstantin, Alina has just come through a growth spurt and will need some American sized meals (easy enough).

This afternoon we bought the kids some new clothes and toys to bring tomorrow. Alina has her heart set on a Barbie Doll, which Seth is against in principle (Blythe obviously won that one). Tomorrow we get 2 hours together, so we'll bring some games as well. We are both finding our Russian to be woefully inadequate (surprisingly, a vocabulary of 4 words does not a conversation make) but we're getting by. We have the help of an interpreter now, and some leads on helpful CD's for adoptive parents. The chemistry is there though, and that's the important thing.