Not Quite Goodbye

Today was the tenth day with our boy, and we made the most of it. He definitely knows us now, and we actually got a video of him running up to us when we arrived. He smiled like crazy and gave us lots of hugs. Officially, this should have been our last day together, but since our flight doesn't leave until 5:30pm tomorrow, we get an extra morning with him. So I'll leave being sad until then. 

Because today is Sunday, there was a much smaller staff on duty. Only one caretaker was in charge of the whole group (about 15-20 kids) for awhile. The main playroom wasn't open, so we stayed in the group room for the first hour or so. The kids were watching a Russian cartoon, but once we were there, some of them were pretty focused on watching us play with our boy. It was so sad; they were looking longingly at us, and you could tell they wanted some attention too. When the caretaker stepped into the other room briefly, they'd all start toddling toward us like little zombie children! We tried to play with some of them and hold them, but our boy started getting a little possessive and pushing them away. It just makes you want to take them all home. We brought them little candy canes, and they loved getting all sticky while slurping on those.

After a bit, we went outside, and our boy had fun popping bubbles that landed on the ground, touching the snow, and getting pushed on the swing. We had a little bit of time in a smaller playroom before we had to go, and we built (and knocked over) towers of bricks and stacked rings. He also thought he was pretty funny when he ran into the adjoining room and peeked at us from the doorway. We wonder if he's ever been allowed to go in a room unsupervised before!

We've packed up our suitcases, including way too many toys and souvenirs for our boy. Tomorrow, there's some sort of show at the orphanage at 10am. We'll stick around until noon, but then it'll be time to say goodbye to our son. We'll be leaving him with a picture book of fun times we've had together, some clothes and a blanket, and hopefully lots of great memories until we can be together again.