What happened to that sad little boy?

What happened to the sad little boy from Monday? He turned into the kid with all smiles and lots of laughter on Tuesday. In less than 24 hours, Rob and I had a different child. I went into his room on Tuesday morning to get him up, and he just smiled at me. I then led him into the kitchen while I made oatmeal for everyone. Yuli ate all of his oatmeal and part of Rob's. Our little guy was starving.

After breakfast and a little play time in the apartment, we decided to meet our friends at the mall in Sofia for a little shopping, some lunch, and a trip to the grocery in the mall. The mall is about a 20-25 minute walk from our apartment, but it felt a little longer as our little guy is not a speed walker and has very tiny legs. I was beginning to wish that I had brought an umbrella stroller for the trip.

When we finally arrived at the mall, everyone was hungry so we decided to head to the food court on one of the upper floors of the mall. We came up to an escalator, which I imagined that Yuli would be frightened of but he stepped right on. However, we weren't so lucky on the next level. He was scared so Rob held him the rest of the way up. Julia was very frightened of escalators when she was smaller so this was nothing new.

Speaking of Julia, she saw the McDonald's sign and immediately informed us of where she wanted to eat. We hardly ever go there while we are home, but it was something familiar and sometimes that is what you need when you are in a foreign country.  Actually, anything at that moment sounded good to me since I had Amy's instant organic mac n' cheese for dinner the night before so Rob ordered a cheeseburger and fries for me as well. I then discovered that Yuli likes french fries with ketchup. He ate half of my order and drank some orange juice.

We then looked around the mall for a bit. At first, Yuli was afraid to go in any of the stores, but that dissipated after a while as he followed Rob into an electronics store. Yes, we are thousands of miles from home, but Rob managed to find the Bulgarian version of Best Buy.

After the electronics store, we went to the bottom floor of the mall to the grocery store. I stocked up on produce and food for Yuli such as apple sauce. It can be challenging deciding what to give him to eat since his palate is not repaired. I also chose some yogurt mixed with fruit. While we were in the grocery store, Yuli had his first ride in a grocery cart. I think that he really enjoyed it. The only problem with buying so much yummy stuff at the grocery is that we had to lug it back with us to the apartment, and we were almost a half an hour away.

Once we got back to the apartment, we tried to get Yuli down for a nap. He laid down with Rob, but he never fell asleep. However, Daddy did! After Rob got up from his nap, we all played for a while in the family room. Yuli likes to bounce balloons around the apartment. He also likes to color. We just had to make sure that he colored only on the paper. The coutch got a new tint of blue once when we weren't looking so thank goodness for washable crayons.

We then met up with our friends again at Pizza Roma, and I realized that Yuli truly would eat anything that I gave him. He loved the Bulgarian feta on my Greek salad, and he even ate one of my black olives after I cut it into small pieces. Previous to this meal, I was having to feed him, but he decided after watching our friend's daughter use a spoon to show me and Rob that he did know how to feed himself afterall. I praised him for his efforts so hopefully he will begin to show me more of his self-care skills that the orphanage taught him.

We then headed down Vitosha Boulevard in search of a pastry shop for dessert. Apparently, we had gone in the wrong direction, but by this time the kids were getting tired so we decided to call it a night. We headed home, gave Yuli a bath (which he still does not like) and put him to bed. Rob, Julia and I then decided to stay up and watch a movie. I paid for that decision this morning when a little four year old came into my room about 8:00 a.m. to wake me up. And again, he was smiling.