What you've all been waiting for...

This is the day we brought him the sweet cheese and juice. Do you see how he's holding the cup? That's typical of orphanage children. He's making sure no one steals his juice. Look at that expression...he's not really sure about us at this point.

This is Maxim behind the wheel at 3 years old. Isn't he a little ham? This is our first venture outside.

Here he is with the Ooff (his way of barking). It's been through a lot, but he loves it.

We were visiting with him earlier today. He likes to dig through our plastic bag to see what goodies we've brought him. We've figured out he doesn't really like the sweet cheese. But he LOVES juice. Out of all the things we bring with us, his favorite is an unopened plastic travel sized tissue packet. Dave gave him an opened tissue packet, but he placed it in the bag and dug out the unopened packet. Interesting. He also loves to draw and color, so we're going to go to the store today and see if we can find a few things for him to play with.

Igor is gone. He's running around getting all our paperwork in order. Woohoo! He's going to leave us in a few days, and I'm sad about that. He was good company and very informative. But we're within walking distance of everything we need, so there's no need to get a taxi, and the flat is safe. This area seems to be very tolerant of foreigners adopting, so we're confident things will go smoothly. My mom will be coming sometime in the next month to help me take Maxim home (I'm going to keep calling him that until we get home so there's no confusion), and I'm really looking forward to that. Sometimes you just want your mommy, even at 31.