Happy last day of September!

Day 21 – September 30 – Happy last day of September! (It is also the Ukrainian parliament elections.) We may have only one Sunday left before we leave to come back to America. Isn’t that really crazy? We have just finished our third full week here in the good ol’ Ukraine. It really has felt like a short time.

Today it was supposed to be rainy…and there hasn’t been a cloud in the sky all day. It’s good to know that the weather men get it wrong in other places other than the US. Our 34^th and 35^th visits were really good. Monty had bought some chalk yesterday, just to give us something new, and we all loved it. I hope we don’t get into trouble because we have pretty much marked up all around the place. The chalk breaks pretty easily and we made Caleb and her use the smaller pieces before getting new ones causing a little melt down. Other than that, all was good with Veeka and our visits. It was about the same sort of visits as it had been the last week or so, walnuts, bubbles, and the playground. It is more and more difficult to take her back without much of a fight. She is ready to come with us and we are ready for her to as well. Hopefully in the next day or two, we can celebrate her Gotcha Day.

Veeka is learning so much. She holds the ball and counts, 1, 2, 3 and then throws it. She gives kisses (although some might be slobbery and you might want to anti-bacterial your face afterwards) and when we first got here, she didn’t know how to do that – she still gave the baby open mouth kisses. She knows when asked, how old she is, where most of her body parts are, and who her Mama, Papa, and “Calem” is. (She really likes “Calem” and thinks he is really cool.)

During our break between visits, we spent some time with Sylvia (the mama from Spain). She is by herself right now and she invited us to go to downtown with her for our break. She was planning to stay the whole break downtown, but we could only stay for a few hours. It was really nice to visit with her and get to know her better. We talked adoption, church, kids, families, jobs, etc. We played at a park, ate at a buffet style restaurant, and then Caleb played on some motorized cars. The restaurant was pretty good – we could definitely go back there. Don’t be fooled by the sound of buffet style restaurant…it was no Golden Corral...it had about 5 vegetable type items, 10 main dish items, and a few desserts, but all in all, it was really good. We probably stayed downtown with her about 2 Ѕ hours and really enjoyed ourselves. (And I know she enjoyed the company.) We will miss getting to see her and her family when we leave in a few days.