The Yalta Port, with so much to see, has miraculously offered up adequate entertainment for a girl who gets more rambunctious every day. She runs. She giggles. She dances. She eats. She runs again. The other day we ran into a translator we had met in Kiev. He said, “Hey, I know you.” He was […]
The God Question
Liliana surprises us at every turn–delightfully so. She shrieks and laughs and runs and wants to play kissy-face (where she places her palms on our cheeks and pulls us in to kiss us on the lips repeatedly). She’s impressionable and mimics everything. The astonishing thing is that sometimes she waits a day to pull […]
Black Sea Baby
Today we take Liliana back to the apartment to dress her in some of her new clothes. Dan wants to take pictures in front of the Lenin statue before the weather turns sour again and the mountains disappear. She’s impressed by her clothes; she smoothes them out and adjusts them. She feels her suede flowered […]
First Restaurant
We decide to stop for cappuccinos on our daily walk along the Yalta Harbor & Port. We can’t eat an early hearty lunch, because Liliana is supposed to be eating her full meals at the orphanage until the judge’s “judgment day” (which is next Tuesday!), and we don’t want to spoil her appetite (or cause […]
She Calls Us Mama and Papa For the First Time
I catch the above photo in a kneejerk reaction as she’s running toward me. This is what she looks like when she’s running from Dan. He scoops her up and soars her in the air, and she shrieks with delight. Wow. Woooow. We say this to her over and over again, about things we see […]