Days 7 & 8

On Wednesday, we took a tour of Gladney's foster care houses, had a coffee ceremony and then had lunch with the other families in our travel group. I had read a lot of parents' trepidations about the coffee ceremony and about their children being whisked away by caretakers and brought back an hour or so later. I'll admit, after having to be with my son 24/7 for the last five days, I was worried about caretakers giving his angelic looking face anything that he wanted. Why? Because I had to live with him. I knew that part of the coffee ceremony was changing the kids into cultural clothes. Trying to avoid a melt down (mine or Alazar's) at all costs, I tried to avoid the dressing of our kids and had bought outfits for them both at a store when we were out shopping the day before.

I dressed them both before we walked over to the care center.

Ruta in her new dress:

Alazar hamming it up:

Halfway through our tour and my son still securely in my arms, I was sure that I had foiled the caregivers and that we would sneak through the coffee ceremony unspoiled, we were found out. Ruta and Alazar's special caregiver came and found them and changed their clothes! ARGHHH!!!! They never left our sight and they weren't gone for more than 2 minutes a piece, and despite all my fears, they were not spoiled beyond recovery.

They returned in the most amazing cultural outfits ever:

On Thursday night, we had a cultural dinner with Gladney staff and the rest of our travel group. Gladney suggests that if your adopted child is not at least 4 years old to not travel with your child in public. After being in-country, I couldn't agree more. Ruta was the only child in our travel group who was old enough to attend the event and Travis invited us to bring her.

So after much debate, we got a sitter for Alazar and headed out to dinner. Ruta was ecstatic to be going somewhere without her brother and I wondered as we drove in the car to the restaurant when was the last time, if ever, my daughter had ever been without the responsibility of her little brother.

You can see what an amazing time we had just by looking at her face. I'm not sure if it was the dinner, the singing, the dancing, being without Alazar, or having her first Mirinda, but my baby girl was given back her childhood that night and for the first time in five days, it felt like we could exhale together without incident.