Trip 1 - Day 9 - Breakthrough?

Today (Tuesday) ended up being a great day!  However, it didn't start great.  Warrior is usually the first person to wake up in the apartment.  He somehow wakes up Rachel (our lightest sleeper) on the other side of the apartment by playing or singing loudly.  At about 9 AM, I usually walk four blocks to the Coffee Inn to get my daily coffee "with milk (piens)".  When Rachel and I were getting ready to leave the apartment, Warrior did something inappropriate, something we wouldn't let any of our kids do, or do ourselves.  I immediately had to stop and take him into another room to (attempt to) explain that the action was wrong.  As a result, he was upset with me.  I ended up taking him the four blocks to the coffee shop so he could blow off some steam.  After this episode, it was a great day.

As part of this adoption process in L@tvia, we are required to have "social worker" visits.  Each family's number of visits varies.  We will have two.  The first of the two was today at 1 PM.  We were told by our lawyer to have pastries and tea ready for our visitors.  So, Warrior, Rebekah and I purchased a few pastries on the steam-blowing coffee run.  Promptly at 1 o'clock, two ladies from the court, our translator and a worker from Warrior's orphanage arrived and stayed about an hour.  They were aware of the issues we'd had with him over the weekend, so naturally they were curious how things were going.

After greeting them, and they greeted Warrior, the adults sat in the kitchen while the kids played in the other room.  We talked via the translator and described how the week had gone since getting Warrior last Wednesday.  We were truthful about the difficulties initially and the progress over the last couple of days.  They asked to speak to Warrior, so three of them got up and took Warrior in the room and closed the door.  They spoke with him for twenty minutes.  They later told us that they really talked to him about his behavior and right/wrong.  After the talked with him, the adults all convened in the kitchen again.  We agreed to have Warrior talk with his orphanage worker every other day or so.  Other than that, I really can't tell you how things went.  I guess they went well.  Behind the serious faces, I really think these ladies want to see these children fit into a family and get adopted.  At the end of the hour, they said goodbye and they were out the door.  The refused our offer of tea and pastries.  Oh well, more for us!


After the social worker visit, we got our shoes on and bundled up (60 deg F in July).  Kristie had planned to stay at the apartment and rest, and I was going to take the kids out to the park by myself.  However, Warrior had different plans.  He handed Kristie her shoes as if to say, "aren't you going to come with us?".  Needless to say, we all seven ended up going to the park!  We walked over to a new park with a huge trampoline area.  For 1 Lat, 1 kid gets to jump for 10 minutes.  Since there weren't any other kids waiting to jump, the nice lady let all 5 kids jump for about 20 minutes!  Money well spent...

Back to the apartment for an American porkchop dinner!  After that, I gave the boys a bath (vanna) at the same time.  Warrior wanted his brother to take a bath with him.  Kristie said, "have fun".  Kristie took the girls to a movie about six blocks away at the cinema with the other American families here.

Every night, Warrior is used to rocking himself to sleep.  We attribute this to his time in the baby house and in the orphanage where no mother or father soothed him, even as an infant.  Because of the rocking, it makes Seth uncomfortable to listen to and watch.  As I sit here and type, Warrior is singing the alphabet song as he falls asleep.  For only having him a few days now, it's amazing to me that he knows most of the letters in the alphabet thanks to Kristie working with him on this occasionally.  Not bad for a 6 year old with a toddler's mentality.  I will take this as a positive step in the right direction.

Trampoline Park

Trampoline Park

Nativity of Christ Cathedral.  No cameras allowed.  

 The Nativity of Christ Cathedral (Latvian: Kristus Piedzimšanas pareizticīgo katedrāle), Riga, Latvia was built to a design by Nikolai Chagin in a Neo-Byzantine style between 1876 and 1883, during the period when the country was part of the Russian Empire. It is the largest Orthodox cathedral in the Baltic provinces built with the blessing of the Russian Tsar Alexander II on the initiative of local governor-general Pyotr Bagration and bishop Veniamin Karelin. The Nativity of Christ Cathedral is renowned for its icons, some of which were painted by Vasili Vereshchagin. During the First World War German troops occupied Riga and turned its largest Russian Orthodox cathedral into a Lutheran church. In independent Latvia the Nativity of Christ Cathedral once again became an Orthodox cathedral in 1921. Archbishop Jānis Pommers, a native Latvian, played a key part in the defense of the cathedral. In the early 1960s Soviet authorities closed down the cathedral and converted its building into a planetarium. The cathedral has been restored since Latvia regained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.  (Wikipedia)

Pork chops from REMI!

3D Movie in English!