Day 1: Left Bangkok on Wednesday morning and arrived into Kathmandu mid-afternoon. Flying in on a clear day is simply amazing. Seeing the Himalayas bursting thru the clouds at 30,000 feet is unreal. After a couple hours to get unpack, we went directly to the orphanage to see Shanti and Sandeep. Our lawyer, Manoj, and the orphanage director, Sapana, were thinking that we would take them immediately if things went well. Unfortunately, things didn’t go well at all. Shanti and Sandeep wanted absolutely nothing to do with us and we left the orphanage Wednesday knowing that the next few weeks would be very trying.
Day 2: We spent the whole day at the orphanage reconnecting with the kids.
Again, didn’t go so well. We left after 8 hours with Sandeep not allowing Alisha to hold him and Shanti not allowing either of us to hold her. It was a very difficult day and unfortunately, Alisha is feeling the effects the worst as the children are having a very difficult time adjusting to her. We left that day knowing that the next day we would be taking the kids out of the orphanage.
Day 3: The day of reckoning! We did some shopping to prepare for their arrival at “base camp” – our room at the Everest Hotel. We bought some diapers and underwear as they are in the midst of potty training (boy can Sandeep produce some insane amounts of foul smelling doodie!), some snacks and a few more toys. Our stay at the orphanage this time was a lot shorter. We went and before the kids could realize what was happening we snatched them up and brought them back to the hotel. This went a lot better than expected! They both slept thru the night, in fact, we had to wake Shanti up this morning.
Day 4: Slowly but surely Alisha is winning the children over. I am now refusing to feed them as we really need them to get over the unreal fear they have of Alisha. Today after their first bath, they had Corn Flakes and milk for breakfast and momos and apples for lunch. They can hold and drink from a cup perfectly so there is not much need for sippy cups. They both seem very intelligent and are using their words well. In fact, they are already picking up on some English words as well. Hopefully over the next few days we’ll overcome the attachment issue and things will really begin to improve for us. Tomorrow is our first embassy appointment for Shanti so the official process will start moving forward. Hopefully all that will go smoothly.