Saying goodbye

Today was most likely our last day seeing our daughter for the next month. While we fully realize that these visits are essentially for the parents good and most children that are very young will not remember the visit, it does give us some inclination of things to bring next trip (she appreciates balls, things that shake, things you hit and paper that tears) and photo memories for one day down the road. Bryan did pull all the right strings today to see if he could get me to cry...he, of course, won by asking if I thought we were going to say yes to the referral. I mean seriously. I'm holding this tiny little girl who in her 2 years of life has had 2 surgeries and bears the scars of both, has lost her family, been refused by so many and he seriously is going to ask me that? ME? This is the woman he's witnessed spend an hour at midnight catching a half dead kitten that we thought was paralyzed under a dumpster and tame it and nurse it back to health. He's witnessed an entire marriage conference giggle when the speaker pronounced my score on a personality test to be about one point from being Mother Theresa. Um, yeah, not a funny joke, although he got a good laugh out of knowing exactly how to play me and watching me tear up when I went off. Pain. We spent a few more loooooooooong hours with her today. There is just only so much you can do with a toddler you can't communicate with and construction going on in the orphanage grounds and no playground. She took advantage of people who would hold her and napped. It's amazing how heavy twenty pounds can be...but pretty cute too. Her soothing method is to shove both thumbs in her mouth and cover her face with her tiny little hands. Stealing her thumbs makes her maaad. The second visit we got smart and asked for a ball to bring out. She developed a game with Bryan (who she was a little afraid of as there are very few men they see in the orphanage) where she threw the ball and would pretend to fall down til he came to rescue her. The first rime she truly fell and apparently thought it was pretty fun to get rescued. After that she was giggling before he even got her most times. Her brothers are going to spoil her rotten. We've gotten to talk to the boys by Skype a couple times now which as been great. We put Skype on our phones before we left so we had a little easier and cheaper way to communicate. It's worked out really well. Bryan just got back from a run so we're going to head down for dinner and then maybe take a walk after some more pastries (shhhhhh! We have orders to only eat at the hotel restaurant as the coordinator does not know what else is safe in this town.) We figure pastries are a pretty safe cheat - that was our "thing" in Europe. We would look for bakeries and go after local bake goods as our treat. Yesterday we bought huge slices of something that looked like a slice of something covered with chocolate ( turned out to be slice of spongecake as crust with a slice of homemade marshmallow dipped in chocolate) and a ball of chocolate (basically a wad of brownie dough in taste and texture...). Part of the fun is having NO idea what you're getting. You just point and pay! Well, Bryan is finishing sky ping with the boys, so I guess update 3 is over. Tomorrow we file our paperwork and have our initial interview with the judge. We might fit in some souvenir shopping before we head back to Moscow. Oh...on that note we found out today that we needed to name her TODAY. We were not expecting that, so after some discussion we decided that the boys would get to choose her name. Before we left they all thought her name should be Esther Anastasia because Esther was the story of an orphan who became queen. So....her name is officially Esther Anastasia Lass. We plan on nicknaming her Essie.