No, I dont want your boogy!

Julia and I agree that this is now the title of our trip. Last night Bryce was "picking his nose" and offered the rewards to Cindy. She kindly turned him down with the following words...

"No I do not want your boogy, but thank you"You know that having a two year old boy is not like a girl. Julia and I were laughing so hard when she responsed this way.

Classic. We have a son who has been in an orphanage for his entire life and it has lacked a lot of love and nurturing. He is fascinated by EVERYTHING. The list would be far to long to re-write today but every step is a new step in this journey.

- He touches everything that we walk past and his little fingers go into everything. Even his tongue gets to touch a few things as well. Every car he can touch when we walk him, every little hole we walked past, every groove in the woodwork etc.

- Bryce has already learned a lot of English in one week. He talks 50% in English and 50% in Russian. My guess is that two weeks in America and the Russian will be gone.

- He watches and mimicks EVERYTHING Julia does. It is one of the special parts of parenting as you watch your kids interact.

- Active is an understatement. I know that part of it is the 9 year lesson with Julia compared to the boy stage but the goodnews is that we have been very consistent with working with him and we are seeing good improvement.

- When we sing (especially Jesus love me or the I love you Barney song, he watches so intently)

Today is Friday here in Moscow and yestarday we started our day at 3:45am. We left the Hotel Krasnoyarsk and made the 45 minute trip to the airport. We checked in and waited the 90 minutes or our flight to take off and Bryce quickly fell asleep. He slept for the first 1.5 hours of the 5 hour flight back to Moscow and that was very nice. We was then busy for the reamiander of the flight but not nearly as bad as I might have thought it could be. One of the highlights of the trip for me was the last 90 minutes of the flight and Cindy and I look over and Julia and 2 teenage Russian girls are working at talking to each other using pictures, the dictionary that Julia wrote out and sign language. These girls are a part of the russia winter olympic porgram and they were coming back to Moscow from training. There is Julia enjoying the culture at 35,000 feet talking to these two girls. It brought me to tears.

We arrived in Moscow and made our way right away to the Medical Clinic here for Bryce. Another $120 and Bryce had his first visit with the doctor as our parents. He then went to have blood drwn and did not cry one little bit. He is tough and he had to grow that way in the orphanage to survive. We are working to eliminate that and he runs to each of us calling out our name (Papa, Momma of Julia) and gives us the biggest hug/kiss.

We then came to the hotel in Moscow and tryed to keep him awake until the last possible time we could to get him on the Moscow time. Krasnoyarsk is 4 hours ahead of Moscow.

We are slept from about 8:00pm to 5:00am. We had breakfats this AM and Bryce ate 3 hard bollied eggs and cereal. The food has not been terrible but it is a challenge each meal. He will eventually eat. He drinks a lot.

We have been told that with recent issues here in Russia with adoption that we will not be able to leave early. We are bummeed but it is what God has for us.

Some of you have asked about our flight home and wanting to come to the airport...

We arrive back to the US next Thursday (yeah, only 6 days) at 5:20pm into Newark Liberty International Airport. We are flying Lufthansa Airlines and we are coming from FRankfurt. Let me know if you need and specific details and we can give them to you.

Billy for the Family

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