Random Info

Working on giving a kiss without slipping you the tongue....the very BIG tongue!

Yep...I have on three shirts, a sweater, a hoodie and a jacket....with two pair of stockings and some velvet purple pants...don't hate!

"Mommmm...why do you keep taking my picture?"

Sorry that I haven't posted much....there just really isn't that much to post about. It is too cold (-15 degrees) to go anywhere, so we sit in the apartment and watch Lifetime (which is killing Sean slowly). We go visit Andrey just once a day because there is not much heat in the playroom and it is freezing in there so they put so many clothes on him that the poor little guy cannot even move. We have court tomorrow at 11 am. I am a little nervous because our facilitator is sick and will not be joining us. She is sending a person named Ira (who I have never heard of) to go to court with us. After court, we will visit with Andrey one last time and then we will get on the overnight train to the capital city and then we will go straight to the airport to start our journey home. I cannot wait to get out of here. It is unbelievably cold here, more so than normal. I read today that about 75 people had died already from hypothermia. It is mostly homeless people and the elderly. So very sad. They haven't figured out a way to help the homeless here and they are indifferent to them, at best.

Andrey did not feel very good today. No laughs. No snuggles. No kisses. He just sat and stared. I don't know what happened or if he was just really tired, but something definitely was different. Please pray for him to stay strong and healthy for our journey home. I won't be back to pick him up for at least 14 days.

I have a friend that wrote a blog post today that took my breath away. I want to share it here with some of you all. Please visit her blog and read about the ones left behind......her blog is http://butbygraceitcouldbeme.blogspot.com.

Solitary Confinement

Before I share elements of the true stories that motivated the title of this post, I want to throw some food for thought out there for you.

We, as Americans, hate Adolf Hitler. Even his name brings forth anger for many. Any good contributions of art or science that he produced are far overshadowed by the atrocities he inflicted on the disabled, the poor, those of Jewish descent or other racial minorities. In his quest for a pure, perfect race, he extinguished the lives of those he deemed, by his standards, to be flawed and therefore useless. And America raged against the genocide- rightfully so, sending in troops to stop the maniacal reign of terror he inflicted on Europe.

Yet everyday, in Eastern Europe, in the shadows of the concrete buildings erected during a Soviet empire, this genocide continues to occur. If you walk the streets, you do not see the disabled, the cognitively impaired, the unique. You see a people striving for outer perfection- for beauty, for an elite quality of superiority in fashion and breeding. Those born with disabilities are shuttled away to institutions, living out their lives in restricted fashion, limited to the world the government deems appropriate. Deprived of the basic rights that we Americans value as essential to humanity- the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, the right to practice our faith, the right to an education, to be treated with respect and dignity.

It is a slower genocide than what Hitler inflicted. His was brutally quick- the victims were forcibly evacuated from their homes and businesses, herded onto trains like cattle, transported to a future of incarceration or incineration, or both. They were treated like animals- used for manual labor until their cost of upkeep superceded their value in work, then put down like lame horses or rabid dogs.

The children and adults with disabilities in EE face a similar future. A government body determines their value as humans in terms of their potential costs of upkeep compared to value of work production- if the scales weigh in the wrong balance, they are sent to remote mental institutions, where they face a slow torturous death from malnutrition, isolation, deprivation of medical care, and maltreatment.

It's still genocide.