Her Birthday Present

Since we were afraid (based our on agency's comments) to post much to our blog while we were over there, we'll post some "flashbacks" of our visit for those of you who were not getting our email updates. This is Anastasia's bed. She would hide her most precious possessions under her pillow or under the batting that served as her mattress. We got to be with Anastasia on her birthday. We bought her a fuzzy blue purse and a watch. When we would visit her at the orphanage, if any of the big kids would come around she would hand Kim her purse, or other treasures, to guard. But when we weren't around to protect her stuff - this is where she would hide them. You can see her purse under her pillow. She carried that purse everywhere and would put all kinds of goodies in it - rocks, wrappers from things we got at Fridays (our favorite place to eat together) . . . When we gave her the watch, she immediately looked at our watches then reset her watch to the proper time (her watch was 4 minutes slow - like we've said before - she is very precise!!) We spent the whole weekend with her on her birthday. That was a breakthrough time as far as bonding.

The Monday after her birthday, we couldn't visit as we were had lots of paperwork to do. When we arrived at the orphanage on Tuesday, Anastasia was hanging on the fence to the orphanage - all by herself - holding her fuzzy blue purse and wearing her new watch. When we pulled up, she slipped through the fence (it's not very effective barrier for skinny little girls) and immediately started jumping up and down! Here is a picture of the gate that she climbed through. This green fence surrounds the orphanage property. The building on the right is the guard house - we'd have to go through that to get into the orphanage. But usually there was no guard there, and the big kids would come and go through there - and rarely be questioned. So that's it for today.