Alex on Day 5: CP therapy and balloon therapy

 We had a very good visit with Alex today. We arrived a little late, so when we finally walked into the exercise room, there he was, hanging in an exercise seat all by himself (with his nanny, Yana). His face absolutely lit up when he saw us—I’m sure anticipating more fun. We had asked Yana to show us how to stretch Alex’s tight muscles as part of his CP therapy, and she demonstrated that right away. We videotaped most of it, in order to get feedback from our friends who have experience doing therapy with CP kids.

After that, we headed outside—“on the street,” as they say in Russian, and ignored Alex’s pleas to “go there, go there”—meaning the swing, which he would do the entire time if we let him. Instead we went to the covered picnic bench and showed him the balloons, which of course he thought were hilarious. We blew them up and let them fly all over the place, and then tied one off into a sort of ball that we played catch with.

He got tired of that after a while and started whining to “go there” again, so we s-l-o-w-l-y made our way around the building to the swings. Along the way, we showed Yana our family book that we made for Alex. She has been very kind and helpful, and today she brought along an English-Russian dictionary, and tried out some English words on us—family, children, a few others. She had clearly been practicing. Everyone here wants to try out their English; the way to make a Ukrainian smile is to compliment his or her English!

Between her smattering of English words and our smattering of Russian words, we were able to communicate a few things. Like, we found out that the phlegmy respiratory sounds he makes is not due to an illness, but what she called “tempermental”—meaning, I think, that it’s associated with his CP, and probably ongoing. We also saw him feed himself by hand (bread, banana), and were told that he feeds himself with utensils when he is at a table.

While we were swinging Alex, we got a call from Luda saying that our application to adopt Alex had been submitted to the DAP, and their initial review of it (informally) didn’t turn up any problems. They are off for a three-day weekend, so if there are any problems, we will find out sometime after Monday. We hope to hear word of their approval of the application by Friday, which would allow us to go to court the following week; once we pass court, it’s just a matter of getting a passport and dealing with the U.S. Embassy, which we hear good reports about. We continue to pray for a short process…particularly that the court decides to waive the ten-day waiting period. Adding another two weeks onto this trip would be difficult, to say the least, and we would probably opt to come home and one of us come back later to pick up Alex—also a difficult process.