Day 4 Recap

Not much going on for day 4.  We started the day with a quick breakfast and then headed off to see Harper for our normal morning time with her.  This time we went right with her to the play room inside so that we could have her undivided attention on play and building a bond.  There are about 20 other kids in her group that are always together "playing".  They don't so much play as they just sit around and screw around in the dirt while the nannies/caregivers watch them do nothing.  The little kids seem so bored and so under stimulated that it just breaks our hearts.
So we rolled over to the play room and just started goofing around with her in anyway possible to just start building trust with her and building a bond.  She really loves to give hugs to us so we just started with that.  She just ran back and forth between us and gave hugs over and over again for about 10 min.  Then she started to walk over to a storage area for dolls and pulled out this horrible doll that we have in the pictures.  Last time around the nasty doll that we confronted was this eerie looking doll that had steel blue cold eyes and looked possesed.  This time around it was just a horribly beat up doll that had a mullett hair cut and was about to lose one of her legs to old age.  But she loved it so we just watched her play with it and tried every once in a while to enter into her world the best we could.  Alot of the morning session just was us watching her play and trying to understand what he likes and dislikes might be so that we could learn to join her in her play.
We wrapped up the morning session with a change of a diaper of course as they diaper situation is a bit crazy again.  It is not the same as last year where we saw used diapers hanging in the room to dry to be used again, but she stunk of pee and we just thought we wanted to start in on getting her cleaned up a bit before we left.  She left back to the group, looked back and waved goodbye and we walked home to the hotel.

The afternoon session was a scorcher.  It has been still pretty hot here, in the upper 80s and it was humid as all get out.  The orphanage is in a bit of a low area and so there is no wind that gets in and it is stagnant.  We did the best we could to continue to bond with her and play different games with her.  We played with a ball back and forth, we played with some cars, we played some singing games and she was pretty well engaged with us the whole time.  She was sweating, I was sweating and Dena was really sweating.  We were having a good time but we got cut short when the caretakers came in and took her away.  They seemed to be having dinner a bit earlier than normal and so we had to leave a little bit earlier than we had expected.

We bought her a doll as well that day to see if we could get her used to a new doll and see how she reacted to something new.  But in typical little kid style, she took the doll out, looked at it, played with it for 10 sec and then spent the next hour infatuated with the bag the store gave us to carry the doll in.  Amazing.... What we have learned from her in watching her though is that she is alot like Ragen in her play.  She is a bit independent, never really just sits and takes it in, can play with one thing for seemingly forever and gets upset if you interupt her play.  Similar qualities to Ragen and it will be interesting to see how they interact when they first meet.  I predict some fireworks, but shortly thereafter I think all will be well.

Day five recap tomorrow.  We are waiting for this weekend to end so we can get back to paperwork.  They have so many holidays here and so we just are hoping that we can finish up some paperwork on Monday and get in front of the court on Monday as well for setting of a date with the judge to get full custody.  We are praying hard that this will happen by end of next week, Thursday or Friday.  But we just don't know yet what will happen.  Prayers are welcome on this as we don't want to be away from Ragen and Lucy any longer than we have to.