So many strikes I lost count

20 February- Friday
We woke up in the middle of the night to a wet bed. R has been sleeping between us with Elijah. For the first couple of nights she slept by me and kept me awake nearly all night with her moving. Last night she slept by Keith and kept him awake. Well, we think we figured out why. We cleaned her up and the bed as much as we could and put one of Elijah’s diapers on her. Then neither one of us could sleep so we updated our finance log. After a few minutes Ryah got up and needed to go to the bathroom. I think we have been fencing her in and not letting her go to the bathroom. After she went she slept very unfitfully. We’ll have to buy her some pull-ups and let her sleep on the outside.
Keith travelled to the passport office to get the girls’ passports. He took A with him. While he was leaving the cleaning ladies came and wanted to clean. No, we couldn’t be here. Great, now I have to take a sick child (and 3 others) to the park to play while they clean the hotel room. Thinking back on it I should have just insisted that we should stay or had them not clean it. Two strikes in one day. We played for a while in the snow until R started crying. She needed to go to the bathroom, NOW. We headed back to the apartment but she couldn’t wait. Kristina, before I could stop them, took her to a grassy area, next to one of the biggest roads in Khmelinsky and pulled down her pants so she could go. Well, she’s four, so that didn’t happen to well either…. But at least she felt better. We got home and had to have the cleaning ladies open the door because Keith had the key. Luckily, we don’t escape anyone’s notice and they knew us and let us in.
Keith got back with the passports but hadn’t made it to the reenick, like he had planned. He had to go back to the orphanage to get the older girls’ passports to surrender them before they would give him the new ones. He was also able to get more pictures from Oksana, so that was a good thing.
We hadn’t known when he would get back so we were just finishing up lunch. He and A ate and about that time Elijah fell and hit his head on the cabinet. Nice sized knot immediately appeared, stuck out nearly an inch. Oh no, his pupils are different sizes!!! Wait, his pupils are different sizes normally. Whew. We kept him awake anyway, just in case. Snow in a baggie helped the swelling go down a little bit. After the panic died down a little bit Keith left to go to the reenick to pick up the rest of the native dress parts that were promised. But he got on the wrong bus and had to ride it to the end to figure out where he was. The driver wasn’t happy with him, and told him so, but then took him to a place where he could catch the right bus. He came home after that because he needed to wind down and didn’t make it to the store to buy pull-ups as planned.
By this time it was time for the missionaries to come and visit us. Elder York and Elder Bringhurst (sp?). They were so sweet! Even though A1 and A2 wouldn’t come out to sit with us for a long while and K tried her best to pull them out and at times it was nothing short of chaos. But they very patiently taught them a very short lesson. They found out that the girls (at least A2 and K) know the Lord’s Prayer by heart. But they don’t know (or believe, apparently) that they are children of God. We have a long way to go. They were able to tell us that the girls speak a good mixture of Russian and Ukrainian (we suspected this).
They also made sure that our facilitator was treating us right and offered to help so he didn’t take advantage of us. They offered to help change our train tickets on Sunday so that we could go to church, but we politely declined. We have someone on the other end meeting us. They are taking good care of us!! Did I say HOW much of a comfort it is to have the missionaries nearby?!?!
Now it was time to eat supper. Keith took K with him to get pizza (she could tell them to warm it up) and salad at the local small grocery store. It will be nice to get a place in Kyiv that has a place to cook. Hopefully, we won’t be there very long, though.
Bedtime went much faster unless you count getting everyone in the bath. Even Elijah wanted in on the fun (there is a hand-held shower--- entirely too much power to give a child, in my never-to-be-humble opinion). After everyone was clean and smelling good, the three older ones crashed and were asleep by 8:00. I guess we wore them out. The younger two would have been too but Keith was trying to get some work in and the light kept them awake for another 20 minutes (luckily, it was only that long, I was close to asking him to stop).
We are working on buying airplane tickets for Wednesday the 25th. Wish us luck on that.