Day 58

Woke up again to a sweet boy with morning breath and bunches of kisses, who eagerly awaits us to invite him to climb into bed with us and snuggle under the warm covers until all his energy makes it impossible to stay still for one.moment.longer.!!


Breakfast is a whirlwind of coffee and juice, yogurt, bananas and fabulous poppyseed stuffed sweet rolls (a homemade gift from Babushka).  Our studio apartment is a happy chaos of Teletubbies, Memory cards, yesterday's newspaper, lukewarm showers, and haphazard straightening up (Z-man LOVES to sweep!). 


We took a morning adventure out to the Metro and to the Rochen factory store (HOLLA!), and also found a cheap extra suitcase from a street vendor that we can fill and check on our way home (because the 4 plastic Billa bags will NOT cut it for the plane ride!). 


We had time for a quick nap before meeting up with our new friends, the Driedgers.  Dave and Tara are from Canada (eh?) and have been here just as long as we have.  The Canadian process takes longer than ours, and so we will probably take second place to them for Longest Uninterrupted Ukrainian Adoption Process.  We'll have to give up our tiaras and sashes, but, you know, it is what it is. 

They have their 2 boys and now 1 more boy with them, so we all went to a playgound tucked away next to a church.  It was awesome watching all the boys play together (check out their blog for pics of the playground!).  Highlights:
*We discovered that Zeke will stay in one spot, completely occupied for 20+ minutes, if he is in a sandbox.
*Max, the Driedger's newest addition, taught Zeke how to do a hieney dance- probably the cutest thing I saw all day.
*Z-man following the older boys on the slide, participating in play with them as a total equal.  Love :)

We headed to Ny3ata Xata for dinner- which was interesting with 4 kids, and a stroller at prime dinner time, but we made it.  We also discovered that Zeke likes buckwheat.  Who knew?

THEN we sampled the McCafe desserts (cheesecake anyone??) with a to-go order and a really really long walk up a steep hill to their apartment (who needs a gym when you have a stroller with a 40 pound 4 year old??) and had some good down time just relaxing, chatting, and sharing photos. 


We made it back to the apartment in record time (downhill!) and had a few minutes to Skype with Ian and Gaga and Papa before bedtime.  Can't wait to talk to them in real life...in TWO DAYS, BABY!  Zeke's totally wiped out, and fell asleep almost upon impact with his pillow. 


Tomorrow is Z's medical appointment, and our second Embassy appointment.  Please pray with us that everything goes smoothly, and we end up with a visa at the end of the day (NOT the credit card!) and we are cleared to fly out of here Tuesday morning.






Leaving you with some random  photos:

Catching up on the current events:

 Our Kiev apartment is up this hill on the left:

 Max and Z were fast buddies.

It's not Hershey, PA...but it still smells like chocolate!

 Zeke (and Bryan) made the transition to the stroller today.  He was doing really good with all the walking for the first day, but we've noticed that he's been getting worn out.  Bryan's been carrying him on his shoulders a LOT, and Zeke's been sitting down on the sidewalk in the middle of all the pedestrians and refusing to move...so it made everyone happier when we broke out the stroller and gave the both of them a break.

 It's kind of cold outside right now...not ideal for drying laundry.  I just thought this was a funny picture of our apartment.  This is real life, people.  If I had turned around, you'd see that I was standing in the kitchen taking this photo.

 Chase totally sleeps like this, too!  Bratikas! (Brothers!)

 View of Independence Square from the bottom of our hill.