Spending Time with Our Son

Yesterday we spent the afternoon with our good friend Oksana. She is an amazing young woman who lives here in Odessa. We met her through Frontier Horizon and she has provided translation services for us for several months. We would email a letter to Alex via Oksana, she would translate, take a picture(s) of Alex , get a letter from him, translate it and email it to us. We would complete this process 2 to 3 times a week. What we didn't know when we first started working with her is that she was a High School Student! She is mature, personable, dependable, posses a keen sense of understanding regarding what a prospective adoptive parent and child might need from each, truly cares for the children and speaks English and Russian fluently. Not only that but she's a really nice person and has become, I am happy to say, a good friend. Randy, Alex and I went with Oksana to MickeyD's on Deribovskya Street and met a Scholership Student and 2 other girls from Alex's Internat. Oksana helped us find a car service with an English speaking driver we could hire so now we are truly mobile! Kudos to Oksana for helping us find Egar!

Today, Babushka Lela took Alex's class to the skating rink. We went and watched them all skate. Alex had not ever skated before but you wouldn't know that by watching him. He seemed a natural and sped around the rink with a giant grin on his face. The other children all enjoyed the outing as well. I think they will all sleep really well tonight!

We had a chance to get a more in depth tour of the Internat. It is a very large building with several "wings" which was built in the 1940's. The halls are long and dark and seem to go forever. The sleeping rooms are upstairs with all of the boys rooms on one side of the hall and the girls on the other. Each class has their own male or female room. Each room is divided into two sides. Each side consists of 5 beds. The sleeping rooms are only for sleeping with the rest of the time spent downstairs in the classroom, gymnasium, playroom or dining hall. Seeing Alex's area brought back the yearning of my heart I would feel every day at 2PM when I would see in my minds eye Alex readying himself for sleep and I would yearn to be there to read him a book and tuck him in bed, even while knowing I was thousands of miles away and 7 hours behind. Now that we are in the same time zone, I still yearn for the day when I can be the last face he sees at night and the first face he sees each morning.

Our love, appreciation, respect and admiration for Alex grows deeper and stronger each day. I can't wait to be his mom and for Randy to be his dad, for us to be a family and for him to be safe and secure and cared for every hour of every day forever more.

Love, Cynthia