Aaron, Soup and Answers

What's a good post without seeing this smiling face first.... He's showing off his Transformer!

     I’m just plain hungry for real food. I hate to complain. We have the kindest woman in this country who has lovingly given up her bedroom for us to stay with her for weeks on end. She has been wonderful beyond words. She loves cooking for us. Loves it with a passion. Our original agreement was that she would provide a bedroom for us and we would take care of our own meals. She changed the contract over a week ago as she has now adopted us into her family. Each day, when we return from our morning visit, she is happily stirring food in the pot. She is exceedingly proud of her cooking skills and I will honestly say that it beats mine by a mile. But before we can ever partake of anything of substance, we have to have a bowl of soup. A bowl that is filled to the brim unless you can stop her soon enough. I like soup but soup on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday for weeks on end is beyond what my poor stomach can handle. Most of the time the soup is Borscht but sometimes it is made of other ingredients. It is good, but to make it she uses water from the faucet. Need I say more? She doesn’t heat her soup past boiling. It is running through me and I am at a point where the very thought of another bowl of soup makes me want to hide under the bed. She is cooking us other food but that bowl of soup that is required eating fills us up to the point where we can’t enjoy the noodles or chicken or whatever else she has lovingly prepared. It is not kosher to skip the soup part of the meal so we are stuck. I am now counting down the days when I will not have to eat my daily bowl of soup anymore!!


     Now that I got that out of my system.... Here's Aaron's newest trick - HOPPING DOWN A STEP.  He has just discovered that he can do this and so now we hop off everything.  All three of us.  What fun!  We are bouncing Tiggers!

SUCH CONCENTRATION - He was following the lines and for a child who has never had pen in hand, he did amazingly well. 

Here are answers to some of the questions we’re getting:

Aaron’s name:

 We have officially named our little guy Aaron Vanya Nalle. Andrea Roberts of Reece’s Rainbow named him “Aaron” when she listed him on her site, and we liked the name from the start. It’s an Old Testament Hebrew name, just like those of our other two boys, Ben and Elijah.


His middle name, “Vanya,” is what everyone calls him here. Vanya is the familiar form of his given name “Ivan,” so it’s kind of a pet name. We considered making his official middle name Ivan, and we also considered John, the Anglicized version of Ivan. Julia had a grandfather named John, and both of our other boys have middle names that honor grandparents. In the end, we thought that keeping the name he knows best might ease his transition a little. He now has an English name, Aaron, and a native name, Vanya. When we talk to him we use a mixture of Aaron, Vanya and the even more familiar forms of Vanya which are Van and Vanyuscka. He is now responding to whatever name we use.

 BUSTING OUT:


    When do we get to take this little guy past those gate??  (Note his backward britches?  No, I did not dress him!)

     

The court decree becomes official on Monday, September 20. Until then, it’s the 2-a-days (twice a day visits as allowed by the internat). When the court decree takes effect, we travel to Aaron’s birthplace to pick up his corrected birth certificate. Only then do we receive custody from the internat. Until then, he’s their responsibility. So no, we do not get any new privileges with him from now until then-- no taking him outside the internat for walks, nothing like that.

After the birth certificate comes the passport, which can take from almost no time to as much as 10 days or so, depending on which form they use and whether or not we pay a fee to expedite. We don’t know the details on that yet. There are several other bureaucratic whatnots, but we will just follow our facilitator Luda around and sign where she says sign, pay when she says pay.

 Overall we looking at between 2-3 weeks left in this process.

 At this point we are both staying. If it becomes too long then one of us will return home. We are making this choice in the best interest of Aaron. The month between our first trip and our second was difficult for him and we feel strongly that he should not suffer through another separation. He is at a point with us where he is happy, talkative and peaceful. Though we are struggling with how long our boys are home alone without us (and they are definitely struggling), we feel it is in Aaron's best interest for us to stay here with him.