Little Girls and Their Dresses

"D" fixes her dress, then admires Mommy's necklace again

Yesterday we met our daughter... in walked a very timid little girl. We heard tiny foot steps coming down the hallway, holding the hand of the orphanage director's hand. She had been woken up special just for this trip - and dressed up in the cutest dress just for us. But the second she saw everyone in the room, the poor little girl started to tear up.

Once our in-country coordinator calmed her down, she handed her off to me... she gripped onto me reluctantly at first, but after awhile, she did not want me to let her down. Our wonderful interpreter repeated everything back to "D" and told her everything was going to be ok and eventually she let us show her some toys.

But what helped calm "D" relax and play was her mommy's shiny necklace. It was long and had lots of rings on it... and matched her pretty black and white dress perfectly. So mommy took it off and placed it around her neck, a lovely fit!


We played babydoll... a gift from her mommy and daddy. She knew exactly what to do! She fed the baby, rocked the baby, and even had the baby go "pee-pee-pee" on the potty. She has a very good imagination and has a long attention span (Yay!). We also enjoyed books, one about a Mickey and Minnie Mouse, and one about the Care Bears, though I think she preferred the Mickey mouse book. It was adorable hearing her soft spoken voice say "mushka", Russian for mouse. We also colored, she scribbled, but we enjoyed watching her choose bigger or smaller.

We put together a book for "D" to keep of pictures of her "Forever Family". We made sure to go through it with her so she would know we are her Mama, Papa (in Russian) and Hayden (I believe at one point she tried saying his name "Hay") is her brother - and of course that she has 2 kitties! She repeated back "Mama" and "Papa" (and we oohed and ahhed) and then made kitty sounds at the end.


Later on, we sat on the couch after she took a break for snack (and took Mommy's necklace with *hehehe*), we listened intently to "D"'s medical history and her background. Once snack was over, she came back in and we had more time to play. First, we listened to a little concert she put on with her mini-xylophone.  Colored some more with her sitting on mommy's lap. Then we sat on the floor and played ball and we got some smiles out of her. She mostly played ball with our interpreter and Daddy while Mommy snapped pictures this time. But we couldn't help but notice that she would fix her dress almost every time after she threw or rolled the ball. And if she wasn't fixing her dress, she was admiring her mommy's necklace.  Before we knew it play time was over, one of the orphanage workers walked her away, but not before she turned around to wave bye to us, too cute!

Today we are back for a longer visit. More pictures and more videos. We can't wait to share them with you soon!

Missing you all!
Melissa (and Michael)

Posted by Mel at 11:43 PM