About the Children

Well, of course, they are in a four-way tie for cutest, bestest kids in the world with their older brother and sister. But, besides that...

R is six years old and has a very sweet disposition. She tends to be shy and reserved, and hesitant around new experiences. Our translator said she has a mature way of speaking and is very polite and well mannered. During our Skype calls, she tends to hang back a bit - partly because of her shy nature and probably partly because S is not at all shy and likes to have the microphone!

R has a short frenulum linguae, which is just a fancy (Latin?) word for what most people call 'tied-tongue.' We can tell it affects her speech a little bit, but we are not sure if it will be treated with surgery (unlikely) or just some good speech therapy. She's never had speech therapy, so that might help her enough that we don't have to think about other options. 

R is a thinker. During our trip, we could see that she understood why we were there, and our translator confirmed that. After the first day with them, someone asked her a question about her mom and she said, "Do you mean my old mom or my new mom?" We all thought that was pretty profound for a six-year-old.

S is definitely more outgoing than R is. He's five years old (born a little less than 11 months after R), so I'm guessing they might be in the same grade when they eventually go to school. We don't think he really understood why we were visiting him, and hopefully his visits to the child psychologist will help him begin to understand the changes in store for him. He has been with his foster mother since he was 10 months old, so it's going to be quite an adjustment.

S likes his planes, trains, and automobiles. During out trip, we had to go to the local train station to see the train come in. We waited for about 40 minutes, playing with a ball and bubbles until the train finally came. There are some photos we have where S looks pretty worried that the train may not come! We're not sure what he'll do when he sees that there is a train literally right behind our house that goes by several times a day. (We didn't know it was there when we bought the house, but it doesn't take long to not notice it.) It may just be more excitement than he can handle.

S has a really cute laugh when he gets excited. I don't think I can describe it, you'll just have to hear it someday. 

S and R don't live in the same house right now - they are in neighboring foster homes, and they go to Kindergarten (what we would call preschool) together. So living together is going to be something new for both of them, and they don't always get along so well. It seems to be normal sibling behavior, but I think it will be good for them to have an older brother and sister around.

It's cool that even with the language barrier, we feel like we have a handle on their personalities and temperaments. And, we've learned how to say "no fighting" in Bulgarian!