There's No Place Like Home, There's .......

I have to wholeheartedly agree with Dorothy on this one! Home seems so much better after you've been away for a while. The longer you're away, the more you miss it!

Karina is doing well. Actually much better than I anticipated. She has adjusted to our time here extremely well. We are eight hours behind Ukraine time. She absolutely loves her two big brothers. She keeps the one with the fur on his face, laughing all the time. I tell him, don't laugh, it just encourages her. He still laughs anyway. She also wears both brothers out! lol

Karina and her two brothers all have March birthdays. We missed all of them. Karina was in Ukraine on hers while we were waiting on the birth certificate and we were in Ukraine with Karina on both boys' birthdays. We did bring them something special from Ukraine. Karina bought and decorated a card for each of them and also bought a silly little man on a key chain. I think he's some type of well known character in Ukraine.

We traveled for almost 24 hours to get home. Karina slept on the last two plane rides, which were only about an hour and a half. A minute amount of time compared to the ten hour plane ride from Kiev to JFK. She didn't sleep on that one at all. She also slept an hour at the airport. Her body was on Ukraine time still. My husband's and my body didn't know what time to be on. We arrived home around 10:30pm Tuesday night. Karina was very sleepy until she saw the people waiting for us at the airport. The airport was almost empty since it was so late. She was handed flowers and balloons. The balloons are still floating a little. I had to get some sleep around 1am that night since I hadn't had any and I think Karina and Dad finally got to sleep around 2am. Well, she didn't sleep long because she was up at 7am and has only slept until 7 or 8 each morning since, until this morning when we needed to get up for church!

She looked so forward to riding a bicycle when we arrived home. She wanted to do everything in the first day! lol She did get to ride her bicycle, meet some new friends, swing and watch a movie or two on that first day. She is getting better about her little pouty fits, they are shorter, but she is still very impatient and wants everything right away. I'm sure time will cure that. Her brothers have also taught her to play some of our board games, games on the computer and they taught her how to play the X-Box yesterday. She'll have to learn that she can't dominate it, though. There is give and take in a family. The boys have been very patient with her and have allowed me to rest a little in the afternoons and get over my jetlag. I am planning on this week being back to normal, at least as much as possible. She also demands a lot of my attention, but so do all the clothes and dishes, not to mention fixing meals.

We had a time yesterday shopping for shoes for church. We did only go to resale shops at first, so the selection is limited. She thinks that shoes only fit if they are exactly as long as your foot. We had such a time when we bought her some tennis shoes (I'm sorry, that's what I've always called them) She wanted to squeeze her foot into the ones she liked. We kept telling her they were too small which ended up in a little fit because she didn't get those that day. We went back the next day and they had some in a bigger size. We tried to show her how you need a little room at the end of your toes. It seemed like we got our point across, but yesterday you would have thought we never told her that. I did have some shoes where I had guessed her size and she said they fit. Well, after she wore them a few minutes, she told me they hurt her feet. I bought her some flip-flops. She wore those, then decided that they hurt her toes, so now she won't wear her brand new shoes.

At the resale shop, she picked out all the 'oo-la-la' shoes. That's what she says when she likes something. Every pair she picked had high heels and were beyond a doubt for women, not little girls. It has been hard convincing her to dress like a little girl, not a fashion model like you see on the streets of Ukraine. I finally ended up just going and picking out her shoes for church by myself. If she didn't know what was available, then no fits and she would just have to wear what she had. Later, when I can reason with her, I will take her and let her pick out her own shoes. She does like the ones I picked out. I wasn't going to totally ignore her likes. The shoes are just like what all the other little girls wear.

The church dress is another story. A friend of mine gave me some beautiful hand me down dresses in great shape. The one I wanted her to wear was a typical little girl dress. She said people would laugh at her. We had a hard time convincing her that they wouldn't. Until she actually want to church and saw that they didn't. Some of the girls dress a little more casual, but many do wear nice dresses.

This is what I think happened to make her think like that. When she visited here in our area over a year ago, she took back some similar style dresses to the orphanage. The one she is wearing in our video, the blue and white checked dress, where she is reading out of a Bible Story book to the preacher of the church and the director whose ministry brought the children over was her favorite one. That is what I consider a typical little girl dress. You know, a church dress. Anyway, apparently she was laughed at when she wore those dresses at the orphanage. We really never saw the kids dressed up there except when the boys wore suits for special performances. They wore mostly dirty play clothes and some only wore those plastic slides. I think I've seen them called soccer shoes. It is sad that she had that negative experience.

She had been pretty willing to wear the clothes I have for her except she thinks her shorts are too long. She's just going to have to get used to having a mother tell her what she can't wear:)