The Surgeon Says.....

This picture is of St. Andrew's church in Kyiv. It is the church that is right next to the SDA (Department of Adoptions). The steps are probably less than 50' from the door to the SDA office.

This is a picture of Stacey standing outside of the door to the Adoption Center. That brown door is the entrance. Up a flight of stairs and in a small office to the right is where we had our appointment to select our referral.

This is the view from where Stacey is standing in the previous picture. It is St. Andrew Street. Notice the coblestone pavement. There are souveniour vendors on the other side of the street. This is where we bought lots of our souveniours. We were even able to buy some without the help of our translator. Don't be too impressed though, most of the vendors spoke enough English to patronize you. You know, "The price is 80 grivena, but for you, 70 grivena." That kind of stuff.

We went to the plastic surgeon's on Thursday and his initial comment was that we need to fix his palette first. This is what we thought too. Primarily for speech development purposes. The tentative surgery date is not until July 23. We were hoping for something a little sooner but it might be for the best. This will give him time to get comfortable with us and perhaps understand enough of what we are saying that we can communicate some of what is going to happen to him. Another reason that the surgery is not for a couple of months is that we are going to have his "boy surgery" at the same time. This is more for social reasons than for religious reasons. The surgery will last only a couple of hours and he will have to stay in the hospital for one night. He will have to be on a soft diet for 10 days. He will also have to wear something over his hands to help keep him from sucking on his thumbs. We know that we need to start working on keeping him from sucking his thumb but it has been his source of comfort for so long, that we kind of feel bad for taking it away. We will work on getting him to stop sucking his thumbs because we know it is in his best interests for the long run.

He seems to be sleeping well (or at least Stacey and I don't hear him) and he is definitely eating well. As my dad would say, Stacey is going to have to start taking in wash to earn some extra money for us to feed this child. He was 90th percentile in height and only 50th percentile in weight for his age. There is no way he will only be 50th percentile in weight at his next check up.

I am fully expecting another emotional night tomorrow night at Katie's Angels' Wings performance. She does sign language to Christian music with other girls and boys. They perform at lots of different places and it almost always gets to me. To see these children praising God in their own way, it is really special. To see how Katie concentrates and really tries to do her best on every move is really moving. It is one of the ways that she gives Him glory. Not to mention that it makes her mom and dad very proud of her. I will try to post some pictures of the performance (or at least after the performance) soon.

One of Stacey's friends has a CD of the photographs that she took last Saturday of our homecoming. Once I get that, I will post some of those.