Alexy is home!!

He made it! Here are pictures of us waiting for the children to come down the escalator.

Here is the empty escalator.

This is us at the bottom of the escalator. Each balloon represents an orphan. There are three orphanages, hence the three different colors.

Here they come.....finally! Their plane landed at 10:45 and this is about 11:15pm!

Our orphanage came down first. I wasn't sure which one he was but my mom picked him out immediately. There are no pictures of the actual first encounter because I had to snake around to get him and my camera girls couldn't follow and there was just a mess of people trying to hug these children and give them balloons and the poor kids looked so baffled.

I was glad I'm brought some translated sentences and I'd made names tags saying who we were. Then we took a few more photo's.

At this point I just want to pick him up and let him know it's going to be okay, that we aren't scary. Can you just imagine how frightened he is?

We finally got him to smile.

And then we waited for what seemed forever for our group shot. These are just the children from his orphanage with their host families




We finally got to go to the car. When I showed him our van I heard him speak for the first time. His first word was, "Honda". What's with boys and cars? Austin told him "You know Honda but I'm going to teach you about Zonda." (Some way expensive car that Austin fantasizes about!)
We got home and I got out more of my translated sentences and showed him where he will sleep and his new clothes and then had him take a bath. I am not sure he's every been in a bathtub? Maybe they only shower in Ukraine? I had to rinse out the tub after he finished. Yes, he was that dirty. 
He let me dry his hair with the hair dryer and he seemed to like that okay.  Then he started exploring. He's very curious. Since he's in Ry's room the only option for playing was Polly Pockets. (All the other toys are downstairs.) He didn't care that Polly Pockets are girl toys so here they are playing and it's only one in the morning!

Isn't he cute? He has a little cold sore on him mouth and he's awfully skinny but he's taller than Rylee and she's tall for eight. All his size 10's seemed to fit just fine. I had bought night lights for his room, the hall and the bathroom so he could see around in the night. Once I got him into bed, I could hear him wiggling around and went and checked on him. Ella (our dog) had crawled in bed with him and he was petting her. I think she made him feel comfortable. At one point he did get up and go to the bathroom. I don't know if I slept at all last night - I kept listening for him - just like you do when you bring home a new baby.

This morning he got up and ate a good breakfast. He even had a second helping of scrambled eggs. Then we thought we'd do laundry (he only came with the clothes he had on, a pair of socks and some slippers) but he didn't want his pants washed until I showed him I had other pants for him to wear. And thank goodness, everything fit!
He seems to be trying to absorb everything and take it all in just as fast as he can. He cleaned up his dishes after breakfast. (Impressive!) Then my children turned on the TV. I pulled him away to talk to him via the computer translator program. I asked if he was full, (da-yes) if he slept okay, (da) what his favorite color was (white) and then I asked if he was scared to come?  Da, he said. I asked if he was okay now and he said, da. Then we got out the domino's, that lasted for about 5 minutes, then he went down to play and Austin got him playing a video game where you shoot German soldiers. Great. 
Rylee wanted to make sugar cookies and brought him up but I was in the middle of posting this blog and Alexy with the universal thumb wiggle for video games asked if he could go back down and play? I said yes and sent Rylee to take a bath as we didn't get her bathed last night. Then Alexy came up from the basement and said "Wendy" or more like "Veny" and he's grinning from ear to ear and what does he have? The Nerf dart gun! I show him how to cock it and yelled for Austin who happily went and grabbed another and Devree joined in too and now everyone is running through the house having Nerf dart gun wars. He has slowly collected all the Nerf darts and now Austin and Devree are defenseless. And he's shouting in Ukrainian and just having a great time. Oh, he's going to fit in just fine!

Now, that's a real smile!