Nathan's back!

Sorry for failing to get a blog posted last night! Hopefully you’ll understand that there was a lot of catching up to do upon seeing Nathan again. In the end, we both arrived at the apartment in Tirana within 15 minutes of each other as his flight was a couple of hours late and his luggage didn’t make it so he had to fill out all the necessary forms for its delivery (hopefully it will arrive later today). The trip from Vlora was made in good time until we reached Tirana, of course (the traffic here is terrible and gets worse every year), so in the end it was about 3 and a half hours in the car.

In spite of pulling an all-nighter the evening before leaving the States (which included a Wal-Mart run at 4:30AM followed by breakfast at McDonalds when it opened at 5:30), Nathan managed to stay awake until about 9PM last night. Since that’s my normal bedtime now (hiking a couple of miles one-way to the orphanage a couple times a day will do that to you), I soon followed. Today (Saturday) should be a low-key day for us. Mom and Dad have meetings in the village of Vlashaj from 8:30-2 so Nathan and I are going to stay home, wait for the luggage to arrive, and hopefully get things ready for our last overnight trip to Vlora – yay!!!!! We return to Vlora on Sunday. Tuesday morning we’ll be hosting a little fest (party) for Ellie’s departure from the orphanage so we have to organize the donations for the orphanage and count and label gifts for the caregivers and other staff.

Speaking of Ellie, we had a good morning with her Friday morning. She didn’t appear to be sick or under the weather. We had all her little friends out and on the floor playing. Mom, Hannah, and I all had our hands full as at least three of them at a time always wanted to be held! We’re gonna miss her little roommates, esp. the trio of Matilda, Olsi, and Gergi (George-ie) who are such sweethearts. They hardly stop grinning when they’re in arms. We had a new one, Hava, in the room with us the last couple of days during playtime who appears to be transitioning from the nursery next door. We think she may be getting Ellie’s bed when Ellie leaves. That was a thought we hadn’t really considered before! Not a day goes by when we don’t wonder what their futures hold and pray for them. We also tell them we’d find families for them in a heartbeat if we could take them with us! All it takes is for their birth mothers to visit them just one time in a year to prevent them from being eligible for adoption.

This morning the US Embassy official from Tirana was able to meet with the orphanage director to review Ellie’s file. He told us not to worry, that all of her paperwork seems to be in order for their requirements.

Before I close, I’ll give a little progress report on Ellie: Initially we knew from the reports that Ellie was behind in speech and motor skills. Occasionally we will hear her babble, but that still continues to be the exception, not the rule. She’s hardly had face-to-face contact with adults to know how to form sounds with her mouth and now that she has interaction with us, it’s taken time for her to have confidence to continue prolonged face-to-face interaction. In the last couple of days she’s shown more curiosity and interest, sometimes touching my face and mouth when I talk to her. In terms of her motor skills, since putting shoes on her, she’s been standing more every day in the walker, particularly if she drops a toy on the floor and she wants to see where it has gone. She also jumps up to a standing position, then down again when excited. Again, we don’t think she’s had the motivation to learn how to stand or walk when the majority of her time has been spent in a crib (though the others her age and younger in the room do stand and walk if there is something to hold on to). Her personality is also very gentle and quiet, so she has probably been satisfied to entertain herself with toys she can hold in her hands. She loves to manipulate her fingers constantly and as she’s double jointed, she can do some pretty amazing contortions with those fingers and entertains herself fairly well with them! On Thursday and Friday we caught her clapping her hands together to do patty-cake. Boy, were we excited! It’s something that she has enjoyed when we would clap her hands for her (it took several tries just to get her to uncurl her fingers at first) and we’ve gotten some great video of it, but it’s nothing she ever did on her own before. Meeting new people continues to be a source of anxiety for her and I haven’t been able to discern a noticeable preference on her part for any of the caregivers. We anticipate it to be a challenge to introduce her to a new way of eating (she drinks all her meals from an adult-sized plastic mug). Again, she’s probably never seen an adult eat to understand the concept of chewing! And bath time looks like it could be traumatic as diaper changes (without the convenience of baby wipes) involve sticking her bare bum under the faucet of running water for cleaning (and does she howl every time)! We trust that once we can take her out of the orphanage, we will begin to see some changes and look forward to sharing that progress with you.

3 days to go!