My Second Day with Maximilian and Philip

Hello, everybody, I was scared how a big buffet breakfast with Philip would turn out to be--and yet it was a total success!!! No broken dishes, no messes, and no running around. Needless to say, some table manners will have to be corrected, but there is time for that. I must thank Mandy, the other mom who is here with her new son, for taking care of both Maximilian and Philip while I went to get all my "cover up" items, besides more diapers and a couple of things. I also found a wireless store, entered, and they were kind enough to call Verizon in U.S. for me so that I could explain to them that the global capability of my unit had not been enabled. She was really brave to take care of her new son plus two more, plus her son who is traveling with her. It took me really long, and also gor disoriented on my way back. Mandy had taken them down to the restaurant, and had had a brilliant idea--one that I wondered how I had failed to come up with before. Instead of selecting any table, she had gone for one against the wall, and had made Philip go on the inside. And it did work that time--but by dinner time Philip had easily found the way out. He would keep on passing over the back to the seat to the empty table that came next--and from there would run away in his desperate attempts to ride the elevator. It is not that he wants to get away and disappear. It is not that he doesn't want to be with me. It is simply that the elevator fascinates him! Exactly the very same thing happened with the door of the room. The first night I had been proud of my brilliant idea of asking at the front desk for help in order to pass a sofa from the back of the room to the front so as to place it right in front of the door. Given that the space is limited, in order to use the door the sofa needs to be moved sideways completely--and it's heavy. In order to lift it on top of the beds the male hotel employee had needed to accept my help because he was not able to pick it up by himself. Well, towards the end of the morning Philip had become totally proficient in sofa moving. Although I'm talking about dragging it on the floor to the side, I had deemed he wouldn't be able to do it--but I was totally mistaken. I had thought that a few things that needed to be out of reach would be safe on the top shelf of the armoir, higher than the bar with the hangers. Well, those things might be relatively safe--but in order to reach the ones on the other side of the armoir, at the same height but above other shelves, Philip would try to climb on the lower shelves. Given that the armoir is not ion-built, he could have made it tip over and crash him. Yet there is something very good to say not only about his comprehension but also about his reasonableness. At my request, one of the cleaning ladies explained to him that a box with some small things inside that I had placed on the top shelf above the bar with the hangers did not have any little toys for any little boys in Bulgaria, but just a few little ornamental souvenirs for some big people in the United States. After such explanation Philip stop driving me crazy asking for such box. Maximilian is very determined to do without the language barrier. In order to learn since the very frist day he has been repeating what I say to him. His pronunciation is perfect. He already knows, and correctly uses, at least two words and two full sentences. The words are 'bed' and 'wheelchair,' so as to indicate where he wants to be. The two full sentences are, "I love you so much," and "I'm ticklish." Obviously, I don't have the least idea about how he learned this second sentence. LOL. Oooops!!! My nose seems to be growing---like Pinocchio's did every time he told a lie. The way in which the two of them interact with each other is clear testimony of how very good both of them are. Whenever Philip really wants something, such as this i-Pad or the T.V. remote, Maximilian spontaneously hands it in to him so as to calm him down. But then, a moment after, having had a chance to really calm down, Philip would get some remorse and equally spontaneously would return the item in question to his brother. All of you must forgive me for being unable to post pix yet. I took one that is truly worth one thousand words--and even more. I had asked them to hug their new stuffed friends for a picture: a monkey for Maximilian and a smalll Winnie the Pooh for Philip--but they did even better than that" with one hand they hugged their stuffed animals--and with the other they hugged each other as well!!! After having had an excellent day, giving smiles to everyone, and after having tickled me and gotten tickled a moment before, at one point at bedtime Maximilian's expression unexpectedly started to change. For the very first time he took my hand away from his face. He did it very gently, very softly, though--as if he didn't really want to do it but felt he had to. Yet, as I told him that I loved him, he replied by saying exactly those very same words to me. A moment later, though, his sudden saddened look turned into sobbing. I decided to call Toni on the little cell phone that she gives to each one oif her clients and ask her to talk to Maximilian and then let me know what the problem was. As I suspected, Maximilian told Toni that he missed the children at the orphanage, and the caretakers too. Far from deeming that a negative episode, it was a truly positive one. A child who is capable to miss a lot is also capable of loving a lot. And I have no doubts at all about how very much he loves me. There was a very strong connection between Maximilian and me from the very moment I saw him back in August 2910 when I was on my first trip for Stephen, having taken in my carry-on luggage my commitment letters for Philip and for him. Unanimously we all had fallen in love with two two little boys instantly--from the very first day we had seen them in the pictures that came with their written profiles. Even at that very moment when his soul seemed to be torn apart, after talking to Toni he responded to my reassurance of love by repeating with a broken voice the very same thing: aubicheme-te. I do apologize for my very poor phonetic spelling. He would also repeat one more time, "I love you." I pulled his blanket higher and encouraged him to fall asleep.