Meeting Dima!

Dima and Tristan played very well together

What a face! And huge brown eyes, to match his brothers...

So you can see that we have finally met the child we have been waiting and hoping for all this time. He is as healthy as they promised he would be -- full of vim and vigor even! He kept up with Tristan, racing around the room, never stopping once to walk if he could run. He was not at all shy, but actually ran up to Ted and jumped on his lap, and hugged his neck -- this was precious to see! He wasn't quite as interested in me as he was in Ted and Tristan (after all, I'm not a boy, I don't run around and crash cars or wrestle on the floor) but he didn't resist me either -- at least until I got in the way of his active play! His eager smile and delightful laugh kept all of us entertained, and Tristan was so happy to finally have another little person to get down and play with. Now we will just have to learn how to referee two rough boys playing together, and keep them from hurting each other in their play! Not that I think Dima (or Tris, for that matter) will be too delicate -- he wiped out a few times in his haste to get to the next thing but just popped back up as if nothing had happened!

At this point, we have officially registered the petition to adopt Dima, and will wait for the court date. We are hoping for many opportunities to visit him while we wait for all these official papers to process; unfortunately the orhpanadge is far enough away from where we are staying that it costs quite a lot to get out there and this may limit the number of times we can visit. However, based on Dima's total lack of reticence, we don't have lots of barriers of shyness to overcome so I think each visit will go a long way. And we were very pleased with the orphanadge itself; the staff were friendly and caring -- both of us and the children.

Well, we are off for our daily outing to the park, to run some of the energy out of Tristan. I'll include some pictures of this beautiful area next time, and hopefully some more of Dima too. Thank you again for your prayers, support, and communication while we are here!

Kristin