Trip 2 Visit With Artem

I have no words to describe today except AWESOME!! We had the best visit today with Artem and fell more in love with that little man than ever! Traffic was very light and it only took us one hour to get to the baby home. It was just about lunch time and you could smell the care givers cooking and it smelled wonderful! The director was out of the home today and tomorrow and we had hoped to give her the Desitin, clothes and Robeez but we are going to wait until trip 3 to give her everything. Our driver/translator Pasha is storing everything at his house for us since he will be with us again on trip 3.

Anyway, it was just before lunch and naptime and I was a little worried about the mood Artem would be in. It’s been 10 weeks since we’ve seen him and I wondered how he would react to us. He came into the music room all by himself because he is walking now and when he saw us he sort of stopped in his tracks. The caregiver nudged him to come in and I went to get him and he started to cry. He turned to his caregiver to be picked up. I picked him up and the water works started. He’s quite dramatic when he cries, but this time I didn’t let it hurt my feelings, I took it for the wonderful sign of how attached he is to his caregivers.

He finally settled down and Pasha told us the caregiver would bring his lunch back and we could feed him. She said our little 16 month old Artem is now feeding himself and drinking out of a regular cup. We were thrilled to be able to feed him and hoped this would help us bond with him. The caregiver came back in with a tray of food holding a large bowl of chicken/potato porridge, bread, napkins, bib and no lie, a china tea cup with tea inside. Randy asked her, “Is he supposed to eat all of that?” She said yes and put a little table in front of Artem and pulled his little chair up close and got him ready for lunch. She put the bib on him and stretched it over to the table and put his bowl of porridge on it to hold the bib down. She handed him a spoon, which is the large tablespoon not a baby spoon, and he proceeded to dip it into his porridge and feed himself. It was a little messy but he did it, one dip after another, he fed himself lunch. Randy and I sat next to him and fussed over him and oohed and awed over what a big boy he was. I eventually took the spoon and fed him and then Randy took over and played the airplane game while he fed Artem which got Artem to laughing. He fed himself his bread and broke it into little pieces all on his own. After he ate half the bowl of porridge he shook his head “no” and brushed his hands over his bowl. Here came the fun part…letting him drink out of a china cup. I handed him the cup and he hooked his little fingers through the handle and held onto the other side and half drank, half poured all his tea into his mouth. Thank goodness for the bib because we had a little lake of tea collecting in it. Randy sopped it all up with napkins while Artem was oblivious to the ruckus and continued to suck every last drop of tea out of the cup. I finally took the cup from him and he had a ring around his face from pushing the tea glass so hard to himself. Randy, Pasha, and I just laughed and laughed. I made the “all done” sign to Artem and started to pick up all the crumbs from his table and put them in his bowl, almost like he was cleaning up after himself. Randy and I were amazed at how trained this little guy is. Thank goodness we brought wet wipes with us because little man had porridge in the rolls of his neck and clean up took some effort. When I started to wipe him up he lifted his head and puckered his lips out like he was ready for me to clean him up. Again, we were just in awe of how much he knew to do on his own.

After lunch we saw Artem come alive! We had so much fun and tickled him and bit his tummy and he made barking noises at us when we growled and bit his tummy. He laughed and giggled the whole time. We got the stacking cups out that we brought on trip 1 and he played so intently with them. He remembered how to pull them apart and put them together. (I've included a picture below to see what stacking cups I'm talking about ) He watched Randy put a ball inside of two cups and he took it from Randy, opened it up, took the ball out and put the ball inside the two stacking cups he had, closed them up and made his own ball out of his cups. Randy, Pasha and I just shook our heads. Everything Randy did, Artem copied it. He stacked cups on his own and balanced the ball on the top. We couldn’t believe how developed his motor skills were. Pasha has been working with adoptive families for 15 years and he just kept saying, “He’s not an orphanage baby, he’s not an orphanage baby.” His caregiver came back in and Pasha told her we couldn’t believe how strong his motor skills were and she said Artem loves to be using his hands and figure out stuff with his hands. I told her, “just like papa”. Randy loves to tinker in the garage and his caregiver said that Randy will have a buddy now to work with him.

On trip one Artem really didn’t want anything to do with Randy and on trip two I think I’m going to have to refer to it as the “Artem and Randy Show” as Artem didn’t really pay me that much attention…it was ALL about papa!! Artem cooed and babbled at Randy, he swapped toys with Randy, laughed at loud at Randy when he did funny stuff and tried to copy everything Randy did. We called it monkey see, monkey do. I just sat back quietly filming and taking pictures. I felt so good to see the boys interact because I know how many years Randy has waited for this and trip one didn’t go so well for Randy. Trip two has more than made up for it and on the way home I cried tears of happiness for Randy that his son wanted to do so much with him and was definitely daddy’s little buddy. We are so blessed!

We just finished dinner with Carrie and Michael at where else…TGI Fridays! But at least tonight we tried a new location. Randy and I are going to get our speeches written for court tomorrow and then try to get some sleep. After court tomorrow we are hoping to have one more visit with Artem before we leave for home on Tuesday morning. We’ll post again tomorrow night and let you know how court went.

Paka!