I have been visiting Elliott this week and I apologize in advance for this sloppy post.
We walked into the director's office at Elliott's orphanage and I was prepared for a long meeting with her before they would take me to some other room where they would bring Elliott in...a few seconds later thought they surprised me by carrying in my little bundle of joy. They had told him I was his Mama and he immediately smiled and reached out for me. All week has been a dream for me. He is better in almost every possible way! He tells everyone I am his Mama and mostly all he wants is for me to hold him and cuddle with him.
I wasn't expecting him to talk - but he is! He's teaching me the language and picking up English words as he goes. His favorite word is "chin". I was teaching him the word "kiss" today so I would kiss his cheek and say "kiss" and do that over and over, by the end of the day I would say "kiss" and he would lean his cheek to me.
The orphanage also has a kindergarten attached to it, but the play areas are separated for the orphanage kids and the Kindergarten kids. This has been really hard for me to watch, and today it was so much harder. A couple of beautiful little girls with silky, shiny hair and matching clean clothes were watching me play and cuddle with Elliott. They began asking me questions which I couldn't understand so I got my translator to help me. They wanted to know if this was a day care or an orphanage. The translator kindly told them that it was a daycare (There are some kids who do attend a daycare inside the orphanage) then they said "but do the parents leave their kids there and never come back" I WANTED TO CRY! This is exactly what happens a lot of the time and this is exactly what happened 5 years ago with Elliott. I prayed that they saw how loved and special Elliott was to me, but it also was a painful reminder that in a few days I will have to say goodbye to him. This woman who has told him she was his Mama, a woman who the staff have been telling him about, is going to leave in a few days and on Saturday he will not have someone coming to visit him and cuddle him to his heart's content. No-one will bring him a banana or bread and juice and he will not be taken outside. Will he think I, too, have abandoned him? Will he believe I will come back for him? My heart aches at the thought of saying good bye, but in the mean time...here are some pics of me and my guy!
He can stand supported for short periods of time.
He is waving
All he really wants is to snuggle
So beautiful! It's fantastic that he's doing so well! And now the excruciating countdown until you can bring your boys home to their forever family...
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