Bonding Day 3

Since this is such a new process at this orphanage, we haven’t been able to explain to our little guy what is going on and that we want to be his mom & dad. We’re hoping to do this early this week, but for now we’ll refer to our little guy as D (the first letter of his given name). Today we met with D again on the doctor's floor, but this time we had the back three sitting rooms. When we heard him come inside, I quickly hid behind the table; poking my head out just a little bit so he could make me out. D immediately said hi to Cortney and started strutting around the room. After he caught a glimpse of me, he started giggling and running to get me. Today he skipped being shy and went straight to being D.


The little guy colored in his coloring books we brought last visit at first, then Cortney pulled out the Kinder Egg! For those who don’t know what those are, they are a thin chocolate shell with a plastic egg inside. Inside the plastic egg is a toy that you can put together. He had the chocolate handled in no time (loves chocolate – one of his favorite foods; I know, shocker!), then we put together what we thought to be a space ship. It didn’t quite take flight like it should have so we all quickly lost interest. After a bit more drawing, we brought out a toy fighter plane. D raced over and took it on a ‘test flight’. We played a while with that, racing it on the floor and flying it around the hallway. The plane has some buttons on top that are supposed to make take-off noises and gun sounds… but of course they only worked occasionally, and only if you hold the toy upside down – quality!! Needless to say we were all getting frustrated with this. I told him we’d take it home, try to fix it and bring it back tomorrow… no pressure here! :)

We did find one use of the kinder egg “space ship”; it made an excellent gun! D snatched up his ‘gun’ and started chasing us around. Cortney and I quickly grabbed some guns of our own (markers) and gave in to the chase. We played hide and seek within the three rooms and occasionally the doctor’s office. At first it was all fun, but I’m sure the doctor was starting to get annoyed so we innocently smiled and kept back to the rooms. We took lots of pictures and had our translator take a video clip of us playing. Hopefully we can get high-speed internet installed and start uploading these to share! D was intrigued with the camera and video camera; before long he had all the buttons figured out and was taking his own snapshots – so smart! He really enjoyed looking at the pictures/video afterwards.

With all the drawing and chocolate, his hands started getting real messy. We borrowed a towel and washed his hands in the washroom. As the doctor was telling us that he loves to brush his teeth and eat the toothpaste, D pointed to some soap and asked “toothpaste?” – What funny timing.

With all this fun and excitement, time flew by and it was time to go. He gave us real big hugs and told us he would like for us to visit again tomorrow – we will be there! Perhaps tomorrow, being a work day, we’ll be able to visit his house, meet some of his friends/caretakers, etc. We will see!

Dustin & Cortney