Comin' Home--well, almost...

Well, it's here--Dema's last day at the children's home and his first day as a member of our family!

When I arrived, the kids were all getting ready for their 5 minute trek to school--I got to say one more "good bye" to the gang!  

Dema was fresh out of bed ready to go!  I handed him his bag of new clothes, new boots and a new coat, he got dressed and wanted to leave immediately! 

 Dema was so excited to leave that he didn't even want to say good bye to the boys in his group...but finally after some coaxing he ran through the group waving and yelling ba-ka, ba-ka (bye-bye).  When he got to Dan, he stopped to give him a hug, shake his hand and said ba-ka Dan.

He left his group and headed for the girls room doing the same thing then grabbed my hand and said ok papa.  


We were out the door headed for the apartment!  


When we arrived, Dema said num-num (feed me).  Fortunately I had made a few trips to the grocery store to prepare.  Between 9:00 and 4:00 Dema ate 8 bananas, 2 packs of ramen noodles, a large jar of pickles, 1/2 pound of peanuts, 1 frozen pizza (cooked of course), and several sugar wafer cookies!   
At 4:00 we met Mick and Janel to go out for their celebration dinner--1 more child with a home, several thousand to go!  When we got back to the apartment, Dema took care of eating anything that might be left--the cupboards were bare!


We spent the day playing with is new Leap Frog, watching Star Wars with Russian voice overs, and learning English--we started pretty simple working on letters, body parts, stuff in your house, and reviewing the family album we had given him.

We are on our 8 hour train ride back to Kiev, and when we boarded, we found ourselves in a first class cabin--Svetta thought it best if we had some privacy.  

Dema is enjoying his complimentary cup of green tea, playing Star Wars beginner reading game and enjoying the ride!

When we pulled out of Krivoy Rog, Dema let out a huge laugh and said bye bye Krivoy Rog then stuck out his tongue...there was no bitter sweet departure here--he's ready to go!

We will spend the next two days in Kiev taking care of required embassy work, trying to fix the airplane ticket mistake, and doing some sight seeing.  Cindy and I feel that is important for him to have some memories and a history of where he came from, so the pictures of the Capital will be nice.  Right now he doesn't seem to share those feelings!  While at dinner,  I had Svetta ask him if he wanted to have his hotel in America, Ukraine, or both.  He glared at her and said AMERICA!  Yep, we're bringing our American boy home!