Tidbits from our last day in BG

We get to go home tomorrow.

So tonight I get to finish up my last chocolate covered caramel from a box a friend gave us for the trip - it's been my routine every night to sit down with my bottle of water, a chocolate (or two on longer posts) and skim through Dondi's facebook photos to remind myself of the day!

In eight hours we'll wake up and spend our last hour getting ready for our 5am local time cab to whisk us away to the airport.

I doubt I'll sleep much. ;) I had a doozie of a dream/nightmare last night about getting through the Sofia airport, plus our experience last time (did you know that Bulgaria practices daylight saving just like we do in the US? Matt and I do...) makes me doubt that I'll be sleeping deeply tonight.

We did some good walking and sight seeing today, once again enjoying the adventure of pushing something with wheels over the sometimes rugged terrain. It was chilly, and I finally felt it was worth it to have brought along a winter coat for Krassi. I had a hat, too, for which he had an extreme distaste, but we compromised - no hat, but I wouldn't let him push up his sleeves which is something he is pretty determined to do with any piece of clothing he wears. (Mom - Dondi thinks some long sock-like mittens with a string to keep them up may be the thing for days when bare skin is not an option in MN!)

Poor Krassi's tummy was upset after eating in a plaza a ways from the hotel (although the system has been moving, he's still pretty constipated, and sometimes eating triggers that for him as things settle in) and poor guy hit 3-4 times on the quick walk back to the hotel when he was so uncomfortable that he cried real tears. :( Stretching out on the big bed helped, but he wasn't too happy.

This afternoon we found out what the excema-like spot on his non-dominant arm is from when we saw him start chewing on his arm while [not] playing with toys on the bed. But I still have to say that even with that, what we've seen of him this week is that typical "institutional" self-soothing behaviors are not a significant part of his routine. Still, he's already slightly tolerant of sitting close to mommy - more than he was at the beginning of the week, though I wouldn't say he likes it or is in any way comforted by it. But with practice he'll get there. ;)

It was so good to get Toni's phone call this afternoon saying that she had the visa and was on her way over. This is the last piece necessary to make it successfully home. She met up with us at the hotel restaurant, and brought tears to both my eyes and Dondi's at the way she could bring smiles to my boy's face. He is so hungry for the Bulgarian language after a week of being stuck with three strangers who don't know how to talk right! He's like our Reuben in that way - a very high level of comprehension of spoken language in comparison to his ability to express himself in that language. (Reuben has a vocabulary of roughly 20 words or recognizable approximations at the age of four years and three months.)

Toni has such a sweet heart for these children, and it brings her such joy to see them going home with a family - a chance to live and love and be loved. And Krassi certainly responded to her sweet-talking. Tonight we didn't get our regular smiley happy time with him - I think he used it all up on Toni! But it's only fair - she's done a lot of work to get him to where he is today - and we've got the rest of our lives to earn the right to be the recipients of the smiles and delight that we know are inside our son.

Tomorrow's going to be a long day. It will be 24 hours after we wake up in the morning before I finally get to see my husband (this is kind of pathetic, but in the 13 years that we've been married, this is the longest that Matt and I have been apart. I've been apart from my kids for a week at a time (Reu and Rin only once when Matt and I were here in BG in the spring), but NEVER that long away from Matt. I'm ready to be with him again!!) and Krassi gets to go HOME. He gets to go home! Krassi has a home! With a mommy and a daddy and two brothers and two sisters (so far - who knows who's waiting inside!) and three cats.