September 22, 2002

We got up around 7am, and Galena served us another wonderful breakfast. We left for the orphanage around 9:30am. We asked Inna to call Larissa (our coordinator in Kiev) and ask her to start the paperwork for adopting Dimitriy. We had decided the previous evening on the name "Evan Dimitriy Liming", so that was how the paperwork would be written up. Having made this request, we expected that sometime later in the week, Evan would become our son!

We had about two hours to visit with Evan/Dima. We started using his new name (along with the old nickname), so that he might start getting used to it. We brought some stacking cups, which were a hit both with Evan and with the other little boy being visited at that time by another family. (Click here for a brief video clip of Evan with his nesting cups.)  We'd also brought some water in a sippy cup, which Evan did not seem interested in. (He was used to using a normal cup, and we think he may have remembered the apple juice we brought him the day before.) Of course, we also brought along some of the cookies from the day before. As we expected, around 10:30 he began to get tired and a little temperamental. We took turns standing up and holding him, bouncing and swaying, until he eventually fell asleep on Lee's shoulder. We walked him downstairs to return to his group, and left him in the care of his nurses.

After leaving the orphanage, we went to a new Internet cafe, where they had much better equipment than we'd seen anywhere yet in Ukraine. Lee had copied some photos onto a CD-ROM the previous evening, and we were able to send them to our family and friends in the U.S.. We were thrilled to finally be able to share some photos of our cute little boy with our family. We read the messages that had been sent to us in response to our previous email reports, and sent a few responses. We also sent a longer message to the mailing list and five photos that we'd taken the previous day.

After the Internet cafe, we visited a small grocery store and bought four bags of cookies for the rest of the children in Evan's group at the orphanage. (It's tradition for adopting parents to help supply the remaining children with things they'll enjoy or need.) Inna and Victor then took us to a street exhibition of local art that we'd seen while driving through town earlier. Local artists and collectors had brought their items for sale and were displaying them on card tables all along the walkways in a small park area. We browsed the exhibition, bought a few items as gifts (and one for Evan's nursery), then visited an ATM and successfully withdrew cash from our account at our credit union. (Isn't electronic funds transfer wonderful?!)

We continued into town and visited a "baby mart" (baby store) where they had food, toys, and some basic equipment for taking care of babies (dishes, bottles, bottle sterilizers, etc.). We bought some vitamin-enriched cookies and a baby-sized regular cup so that Evan would have something familiar to drink out of. We also bough diapers for Evan for the trip home and diapers for the rest of the children in his group.

By the time we got back to Galena and Aleksander's, we were exhausted. Galena fed us another huge luncheon. (Inna had informed us earlier that breakfast and lunch are the two big meals of the day in Ukraine.) Kristin then took a nap while Lee worked a bit on this website.

We returned to the orphanage at 4pm, picked Evan up from his group (after passing out cookies to all of the children there), and took him to the usual room upstairs. Two other sets of parents (both of whom we'd seen earlier) were visiting their prospective children already, and the kids enjoyed spending some time with their soon-to-be parents and some time visiting with each other and playing with each other's toys.

Evan seemed to still be tired from our visit in the morning. He was demanding and grumpy, chirping like an exotic bird in a high-pitched voice and rocking forward and back violently against us when anything didn't go the way he'd planned it. The visits in the morning really seemed to to be messing up his nap schedule. We decided to spend a little less time in future morning visits so that he could get to sleep at a normal time. With plenty of walking and bouncing, swinging, playing with nesting cups, and even some soap bubbles, we managed to keep him in good spirits most of the time. Some cookies and apple juice helped a lot, also. By 6pm, Evan was exhausted but still refusing to go to sleep without a proper bed. (Who can blame him?) We took him back to the group, and returned to the apartment.

After a somewhat lighter dinner, we spent the evening resting and washing stuff up (bib, toys) for the next day.