Sunday, December 9, 2007

An incredible evening with Nicolae

First of all, I love my new hat. Carmen, Nicolae's foster mom, gave it to me as a gift on Mos Nicolae Day. My hat is exactly like Nicolae's. I made sure I brought it with me tonight. Click...definitely a Kodak moment!

I had the most wonderful evening with Nicolae tonight. When I first arrived, I got to spend about 30 minutes alone with him. It was so nice to have some one on one time. He is very patient with me and it is so adorable how he runs through all of his English words. He is so cute too when he teaches me Romanian. He even quizzes me later on. I love it. We played "Old Maid", which we call "Bunica". Bunica means grandmother in Romanian. He is such a smart little boy. He is finally learning how to put and hold the cards in his hand by himself too.

We also played Uno, and considering it was me trying to explain the rules of this game to him by myself...he did very well.
After we got done playing cards, we ate together. I never, ever pass up a meal in Romania. Tonight Carmen made chicken and rice. Yum.
For desert we ate some of the Christmas sugar cookies I made. It was my first time for making them. My sister Teri would be proud. I even took a picture for evidence. The bread is Cozonac. It is a traditional Romanian holiday sweet bread.

We played Uno one more time with Marius, which was nice. He re-explained the rules to Nicolae. Explaining the wild cards, reverse and skip cards was very tricky by myself. However, I was actually surprised how much Nicolae had figured out from when I "taught" him. Especially with my "less than perfect" Romanian.

Then it was Nicolae's bath time. I actually got to be there for this. Yay.
Bubble bath and all. Carmen treated me as if I had never given a bath before, but that is ok. I loved every minute of it. Of course I took pictures!

Nicole was so sweet and so well behaved tonight. My heart was smiling the whole evening. What a precious little boy. I am going to see him again on Wednesday in the afternoon.

Another cute moment...when I was leaving, he blew me a kiss. I caught it and stuck it in my pocket. The smile on his face was so precious. Then he said "Good night Mama Debbie. I love you". It was a wonderful walk home, red hat and all.

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