Sasha waved goodbye

Sorry I haven't written! Been super busy!!! So here's part of an update. More news to write, but for now I'll just post about the rest of Sasha's visit, and I'll write a new blog post (hopefully I'll have time tomorrow) about other stuff.

We took Sasha to JFK yesterday. She didn't seem very sad, which was good for us - not too emotional. She with her friends from her orphanage and she waved bye after a long hug and kiss, and a lip playfully stuck out.

She has an older sister my age, so I think she viewed us basically like friends, or almost like siblings. She called us by our names, which helped us not get overly attached to someone who we cannot afford to adopt. She is a very sweet girl and was usually very easy for us to get along with. There were only a couple times where she gave us any mild trouble, and then it was just playfully giving us trouble about being quiet or going to sleep. There was one time where there was a misunderstanding and she got her feelings hurt, stomped off and started crying. We had to call the translator to get help. That was the only real challenge we had the whole time. She's an adorable kid and we'll miss her. We don't know if she'll be back in the summer or not. She said something that gave us the impression that she may be being adopted in Russia by someone. I don't know for sure though.

We took her to the dentist as required by the program. She had 4 cavities on her big teeth and several on the baby teeth that are left. AHH! She said she'd never been to the dentist. No kidding! The dentist said that she didn't have a lot of plaque, so the cavities are probably from her diet. Although she ate candy and ice cream as much as we would let her, like it is a rare treat in Russia. I don't know what they eat that has enough sugar to do that kind of damage to her teeth. But you could visibly see some tooth decay on one of her bottom teeth when she laughed. We tried to explain it to her, that she needs to take better care of her teeth, brushing them more often after eating. She didn't seem to take us very seriously. So there again was the only real issue we had - treating us like buddies and not really ever wanting to be serious. Every time we were serious, she'd playfully say "nooooooo" like "oh that's silly."

But anyway, we had a great time with her, and it was wonderful to have a kid in the house. It made things a lot easier the last 5 weeks. And I know she had a good time.

More later. Hopefully the pictures work this time. I tried to post them before and it kept failing.

Love,
Molly