Daily Routine

Yesterday was a good day, we are so excited that by this time next week we might be home or heading home. The daily visits to see Sofia are getting harder every day, we love spending time with her and discovering new faces and sounds, but there is not much we can do with her. She naps for most of our first visit, which is great. She was so sleep deprived and sick a week ago, she needed extra nap time. Now she is doing so much better. The afternoon visit we always stay inside and let her play on the "floor" and we do lots of exercises and therapies we did with Joaquin.

Yesterday morning when we were bundling Sofia to take her out in the morning, They brought two other children out from her groupa and started dressing them to take them on a walk. We don't know the names of these two boys, we are not even sure if one of them is a girl ( the one on the right in the picture). They don't have Down syndrome, but they have some kind of brain injury.

The lady in the picture is one of Sofia's caretakers, she is really sweet and tries her hardest to speak to us in English. She tried to tell Jen the other day "Bless You". We really like her.

The boy on the left has gotten really fond of us, he gets so excited when he has a chance to interact with us. He doesn't speak much that we know but he makes noises and smiles a lot. This morning while they were getting him ready to go out, he looked at each of us and said: "Mama" ,"Papa"! The caretaker said something to him we didn't understand using those words and we assumed she was explaining that we were trying to be Sofia's mama and papa. It broke our hearts, the people here really like these children and they take good care of them, but to see this boy who wants a Mama and Papa of his own broke our hearts. It is so hard to turn around and look the other way. These two beautiful kids are not in the process of being adopted yet, as far as we know. We are trying to take as many pictures as we can so that somehow they can get noticed.

We brought a blanket out and sat on the grass today.

She lasted about 20 minutes and fell asleep.

Cute Sasha!

Sofia's cubbie.

She loves the feel of the floor.

COURT MOVED TO MAY 6TH!

We just got a call from Marina that our interpol clearance arrived and that our judge was kind enough to move our court date to May 6th at 10AM!

We are so thrilled, shocked, excited...and nervous...it's so hard to get your hopes up here but we are going to trust that this is really happening and celebrate!

Cheers! Hector and I are toasting each other with a glass of red wine as I write this!

Focus

Hector's corner...

Yesterday morning on our walk to the orphanage we heard some commotion in the road ahead and out of this field comes running like a bat out of hell this jack rabbit being chased by a pack of dogs, it zoomed by us so fast it was so cool to watch, it happened so fast this is the best picture I could manage.

"We will only be as successful as we believe. There is a racing axiom that says the car goes where your eyes go. Focus on the challenges and obstacles and you are bound to crash. Focus on where you want to go and you will succeed."

This morning I was reading my work email and I found this note from Mark, the CEO of my company. It is so obvious but sometimes we forget to focus on the target. It is funny that engraved in the brain of Diego and Mateo is the phrase, "keep your eyes on the ball" when they are playing baseball or tennis. I've said that to them a million times and they laugh at me now when i do. But when they do it, they hit the ball perfectly and I say "you see?".

Here are some pictures of yesterday's visit. We are running out of ideas on how to take new pictures of Sofia, but we wanted to share anyway.

Jen is doing therapy with Sofia every day on our second visit. I wouldn't be surprised is she is sitting up and crawling by the time we leave. She got up on her hands and knees today. God forbid we put her on the floor, the staff will freak out if we do, but we tried it today while I closely watched to make sure none of the staff could see us. We were almost caught once but Jen managed to scoop her off the floor just in time. The excitement is good for us!

The Orphanage

We want to try and capture everything about the orphanage so that we can always remember it and try and document it all for Sofia. We're certain she'll want to know all about it someday. Maybe when she is grown and can truly appreciate it, we can come back with her and visit Ukraine and the orphanage.

Here are some pictures we've taken of the grounds and inside the building where Sofia is. Everyday on our first visit of the day we walk around and see all the other kids out as well taking walks or playing in the playgrounds, it is very cute to see.

In our afternoon visit with Sofia today it was very hard to be present, Jen and I felt numb with the news about our court date and the thought of having to be away from the boys for another 2 weeks was too much to take, we needed desperately to see that they are doing OK so we tried for the first time to video skype and we were able to talk to them and see their faces, it was so cute and it was all we needed to recharge. We are trying to hold it together and support each other the best we can, and together with all your prayers and notes of support we will get through this. Please keep praying for a miracle so that our Interpol clearance comes and we have something to work with.