The good, the bad and the Oi.

OK, so, there is good news and bad news about the paperwork for the kids. Diana called me today and said she found out from Dmitry that he went to the MOE and they are being friendly and cooperative with him. Bad news is the letter that the MSA sent was ONLY in Estonian and English. Not Russian. ?!?!?!?!?! Diana is really irritated, to say the least!!!! Don't know why they did that. The MOE asked for a Russian translation to be just emailed over to them so they have it. Sounds like perhaps there won't be a problem getting the release once they have the Russian version. Don't know for sure, but that sounds like how it's going.

Dmitry is also back and forth to Moscow so much in the near future that he can do whatever needs to be done himself. The only thing we're concerned about, as far as timing goes, is hopefully getting this done before the MOE goes on their holiday in January.

Today was still good with Sasha. This morning Jason went to a friend's school (Julia) to be presented as Julia's "special friend". She read a report about him and why he is her friend and why he's special. LOL So this morning Sasha was up and dressed before I was, so I dragged myself out of bed and got us some cereal. She took a shower herself, made her bed, and everything else again. After we ate breakfast, she watched tv for a little while so I could take out the dogs and do some work. Then she got bored and started walking around the house, so I got out this colored sculpting clay and Paint-by-Number things for us to play with. She loved that. We did that for a couple hours. Then she started running around, tickling me, giggling, and massive amounts of energy. I wore out at about the time she asked me if we could prepare in advance our lunch so when Jason got home at about noon, it would be ready. She even walked outside and came back in, pretending to be Jason noticing a lunch already made, so I would understand what she was wanting to do. She helped me cook lunch, and then Jason took over playing with her after lunch so I could do some other stuff. Then we went back to Julia's school to watch Julia perform in a play about the different regions of the US. TWICE Julia said the forbidden word (adoption) in front of Sasha. I think my face almost melted off I was so embarrassed, worried that Sasha understood the word and misunderstood what Julia was saying. But Sasha didn't appear to notice.

This evening at the dinner-time prayer she said "AMEN!" at the end, all proud of herself for remembering what to say at the end of prayers, from hearing us say it a few times now.

Her English is fantastic for so soon. She reads signs while we're driving down the road. It's pretty funny. We quiz her by saying words in Russian and she'll say them in English, or vice-versa, so we know she understands what the words mean. We had to explain not to say this one word whisker she has, which sounds exactly like "sh**". She didn't know that it sounded like a bad word in English. When we told her, she covered her mouth and went, with a high pitched voice, "Oi!"

Anyway, it's a lot of fun. Last night our friend Marissa (Julia's older sister) was really enjoying listening to Sasha talk in Russian, explaining Russian words for some of what we were saying (like "how are you" and different animals and colors). Marissa said, "This is so cool! Can we get one?" hahaha

Nothing else to report. Sasha is really good therapy for us during this difficult time. We really miss the kids. We'll talk to them on the phone again on Saturday hopefully. Also we're due to receive a letter in the mail from them any day, along with one from Anna their former caretaker. I'll let ya know!

Love,
Molly