here's the scoop;I nowyouve been waiting

The meeting we have been waiting for was not supposed to happen until Monday. Even so, our helper has been calling them every day saying when is the meeting? Is it today? When can we schedule the meeting? So while she is calling and we are under the impression that nothing will happen until Monday they went ahead and met anyways. Without us. Without letting us know. And they decided that no they cant separate the girls because they have the same diagnosis. !!!! While they do have the same diagnosis, one functions on the level of an 18-24 month old(and is age 5 and half) and one functions on the level of an 8 year old(and IS 8 years old). Everyone is appalled as the people who KNOW these children put in their 2 cents to begin with that they SHOULD be separated. So I guess we move on now with local approval, go back to sda for the other official referrals and move forward and take it to the judge. At least things are moving. Finally. The local social worker and orphanage director as well as the children themselves may have to go to court to show the judge how very different they are and that the social worker and director both believe it is not in the best interest of the children to keep them together. This means we do not know who is coming home and who isn’t until after court. The judge is apparently a sensible man and hopefully the strong women we have been dealing with will have the right words to convince him that the girls should be separated. The people who had the meeting don’t even KNOW the girls! Haven’t seen them. Know nothing about them. Why they chose to separate the other sister and not these two I have no idea. So anyways today is Sunday, and apparently bath day so we had to bring the kids back to groupoo early so we have an extra hour to kill before our next visit with the kids. Tomorrow local approval will happen and is being pushed through. Then SDA hopefully Tuesday for the others. Andrey is very bright and has a terrible speech problem likely due to lack of teeth! But he is learning English faster than the others and he is 6.

Yesterday there were some visitors there to play with all the kids so we were kind of chopped liver most of the day. We just played with the other kids while our kids were enamored with these visitors. But Natasha kept running back to me to hug me and tell me Natasha looblu with a big smile. Diana we barely saw. She was very busy visiting with the visiting woman. I suppose its more fun to talk girl talk when you can speak the same language. Maybe a bit of mom shopping as well. But today she was herself. Sat in my lap several times in the swing for a cuddle and a tickle. She loves for us to chase her and catch her and give hugs and kisses. Vasy likes that game too. As you can imagine we tire of it LOOOONG before they do!!

The other kids were absolute monsters yesterday! Naughty! I was happy to leave!! But little Artiom who was such a naughty little buggar yesterday was very sweet today. Maybe he got the message I wouldn’t play with him if he wasn’t nice. Or maybe he just so badly wanted to be held he decided it was worth it to be nice for a few minutes.

I spent some time playing with Vika yesterday and while she functions on a pretty low level she does laugh and have fun. The other kids are terribly mean to her. Poor thing. She gets it from all sides. So I froze our Zaphira and wouldn’t let her play with us because she pushed Vika down. Another NICE boy was playing and had no problems including Vika so I only let him play with us then after awhile I let Zaphira play
And what do you think? She was nice. The kids just mostly run wild. One little girl cries ALL THE TIME over EVERY LITTLE THING! Just stands there and wails.

Tomorrow we are headed back to sunnyK for a few days(watch for us John and Charissa!!)

So anyways that’s the news from lake woebegone. Where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average.