The first three days of our adventure in Ukraine were just a whirlwind, but the 13 days after that dragged on endlessly. We were able to visit the little boy every day at the hospital, thankfully, but it took over a week to get the results of his bloodwork back, due to a snowstorm. As wonderful as it was to visit the little guy and play with him for an hour or so every day, the hospital smelled really, really awful and the conditions weren’t necessarily sterile in the room. The little guy’s roommates were a nine year-old boy and a 12 month old little girl named Katya. The older boy was very sweet and because he was the only one able to get in and out of bed, he doted on the little ones and played with them as they lay or stood in their cribs. He left within a few days of our arrival, though, and the little ones looked to us to be their prime source of entertainment.

The little guy knew only two words: “Priveyet”, which he greeted us with every day; and “Na”. I mentioned this in earlier posts, but “Na” is sort of like a slang term for “take this” (the caregivers would feed the kids, and say “Na” to them to get them to open up). But this little guy would say “Na” when he wanted something. And any time we brought him juice or cookies, he’d smack his lips and say, “Na…Na…Na”. We could shovel whatever it was into his mouth and the moment he swallowed it, he’d say “Na”. So we nicknamed him “Mr. Na” and I’ll use that as his name throughout here.

While Mr. Na sported a very mild case of chicken pox, Katya had them everywhere. The nurses slathered bluish-colored iodine all over her body, which made her look like she waged war against magic markers and lost. Once we let Mr. Na roam around outside of his crib, Katya would get very jealous and fussy; but the nurses told us not to take her out, so she developed this highly fascinating game where she would take her pacifier out of her mouth, drop it on the floor, and begin wailing until someone picked it up for her. Mr. Na would hobble around to get it and put it back in her mouth and then two minutes later, she’d do it again. This went on for quite awhile and the way in which they interacted with one another reminded me of an old married couple where the wife barks orders at her husband and he replies, “Yes, dear.”

When he wasn’t retrieving Katya’s pacifier, he was laughing and playing with some small stacking toys we brought and a ball which he loved. I would hold his tiny hands and try to walk with him or dance and he’d giggle and babble. For the most part, Mr. Na had a sunny disposition; but when something went awry and he became frustrated, he’d sit down and proceed to bang his head on the floor with thuds so violent I thought for sure he was going to give himself a concussion. His tantrums scared us at first, but when we prepared for our trip initially, we had read about how this type of behavior was typical for children living in orphanages. Usually when securely-attached babies have tantrums like that, the school of thought is to let them play it out without calling too much attention to it and saying, “let me know when you’re finished and we can talk about it”…but for the child who suffers from attachment issues (and ALL kids living in orphanages have attachment issues), the remedy is to wrap your arms around the child and try to quiet them down by rocking them and saying soothing words. Once we got past the initial shock of “Oh my god, what is this child doing?” Pa scooped him up and held him very tight and very close. It worked immediately.

The more we got to know Mr. Na, the more we’d come to realize that NONE of the boy’s names we had originally chosen suited him, and yet since we were giving him a new life, we felt we should give him a new name and make his given name his middle name. Pa and I spent hours (and believe me, we had many hours to spend) thinking of a name. Finally, one day, as we sat in our hotel’s “Business Center” (I use that term loosely because it was a small room with five battered 386 PCs sharing a 56k dial up), we came up with the same name at the same time. Oddly, this was a name neither of us had thought of before, but the name suited Mr. Na to a “T”.

The Business Center was one of the two places in which we spent the majority of our time. The second place was our hotel room, complete with two tiny twin beds, and we definitely had our moments of cabin fever. It was difficult getting around Donetsk since our driver was only hired to take us to and from the hospital and to run back and forth to the notary public…so sightseeing was pretty nonexistent. Besides, it was cold and icy all the time, and the sidewalks were never cleared. I just thank god I had the sense to bring rubber-soled, waterproof boots, since the one and only time I wore my fancy, high-heeled boots, I nearly broke my leg having fallen on the ice. Koko, on the other hand, wasn’t so lucky.

It wasn’t that Koko was wearing fancy, high-heeled shoes either. What happened was that we walked out of our hotel and down the few steps to the car. But Koko slid on a patch of ice on a step and she fell down hard on her tailbone. I knew she wanted to cry and scream because she was in so much pain after that (I later saw the bruise and had never before seen anything so horrible) but she hobbled over to Schumacher’s car and sat quietly in the passenger seat. I felt terrible. To add insult to injury, the hotel manager came out of the building and yelled at her for slipping. No “I’m so sorry” or “Here, let me help you!” It was “You need to be more careful!”

The amazing thing was that the women in Donetsk wore boots with the pointiest toes and the highest heels and I just marveled how they could master walking on the ice. In general, women in Ukraine are impeccably dressed—always; but even though I often felt like a plain Jane tourist with my jeans and Sporto “sensible” boots, I wasn’t going to break a bone in my body and spend any more time in that nasty hospital than I needed to.

We ate most of our meals in the hotel. The food was ok, but after a week, it got old quickly. Nearly every night, we ate a breaded chicken or pork cutlet, potatoes, and a mayonnaise-based salad. Every morning, we had eggs, toast, and Nescafe instant coffee. And for two latte-sipping junkies like Pa and me, we missed our double-talls. The lobby of the hotel had a small candy kiosk that sold bottled water and Milka chocolate. Milka became my favorite treat. Somehow, even after 16 days, I could never tire of it!

There were also two small “convenience” stores adjacent to the hotel, and we were able to buy cookies, juice, and diapers for Mr. Na, as well as Diet Coke and other portable snacks. But after the first week, we decided to venture out on our own during the day and that’s when we stumbled across this amazing, Target-esque supermarket in the basement of a large department store. We bought cereal and milk and things to eat that didn’t require heating or cooling, since we had a very small fridge in our room. We also bought toilet paper since the stuff at our hotel was the same size and texture as crepe paper. So, finding the supermarket was like winning the lottery.

The main reason behind why we hardly ventured off in search of different food choices was that Koko felt responsible for our safety. She was also on a pretty tight budget and felt that eating out at restaurants was too extravagant, even with our offer to treat her. So one night, Pa and I ventured out to a nearby pizza place we drove past every day. It turned out to be a nice little place and the pizza was pretty darn tasty. Even better, the check for two beers, a whole pizza and dessert cost only $11.00!

The next day, we told Koko where we went and we insisted on taking her out to eat on the night before our court date.  We wanted to thank her for all of her hard work–from getting the little guy’s passport, birth certificate, filing for the court date, and going back and forth to the notary for the ream of paperwork needed to present our “case” in front of a judge. To our delight, Koko accepted and we found a snazzy little place on the main, wide Boulevard we’d traveled countless times during our stay.

Over the best dinner of the trip, we toasted to finding our new son, Mr. Na.

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