Stahlke Adoption

Giving, continued

This morning, we delivered a "sumka" (bag) of baby clothes to Mikola's orphanage. Back in 2005, before we knew the ages of our children, many friends and acquaintances donated clothing to us. Since Mikola, our youngest child, is well past the age of wearing baby outfits, we brought this clothing to Ukraine. After we gave the bag to an orphanage administrator, she looked through all the items, recorded the number of each type, and gave estimated values to each category. We told her that a receipt wasn't necessary, but she told us that the orphanage requires such documentation. The administrator thanked us, and I want to pass along her gratitude to all of you who donated clothing to us.

Our five children also purchased gifts for Mikola, which they will present to him in the U.S. In addition, they sent one of their own possessions for him, which we gave a few days ago:
Paul--a piggy bank shaped like a soccer ball
Adam--a sports card of a famous football player
Rachel--a stuffed animal (purple dog)
Sarah--a book about dogs
David--a DVD of the movie _Snow Dogs_

We found the sports theme pretty understandable, but tried to figure out why three of the gifts related to dogs. When our five children arrived in the U.S., several of them were afraid of our two dogs. Whenever Alabama and Dakota would walk by, the kids would stand very still and press themselves against the wall. Paul often asked us why the dogs lived inside the house--wasn't it dirty to live with dogs? And when I didn't have time to sweep the floor, the dog hair in the house would confirm his suspicions! But then he visited enough American homes to learn that many U.S. dogs live indoors, and that Jonathan and I aren't so unusual after all. I think that the dog-themed gifts for Mikola are the way that Rachel, Sarah, and David are getting him acquainted with this aspect of American culture.

We did manage to photograph Mikola with each of his siblings' gifts. (I tried to turn the pictures right-side up, but most of the instructions on my computer are in Ukrainian, and therefore it was impossible to achieve that level of sophistication in my layout.) Here are the photos, in order from youngest to oldest.

posted by Stahlkes @ 6:30 AM