Yea, it works

Using the new phone number we were able to get ahold of Snezhana again after 3wks of trying (thank you so much Julie).  The new number is MTC but I think it is a monthly instead of a pre-paid plan, I SMS'd her a MTC card number to see if it works -- I guess we'll have to find out later.  We actually ended up calling her twice since some little fingers found the power button to the UPS in the middle of our conversation.  We caught her washing her clothes... second time that has happened.

I let Dennis be alone in the room to talk to Snezhana for the first call... he was all smiles when I looked in on him.    He talked more than normal... I think he's been taught to be quiet when adults are in the room.  S told us thank you for the photos and letter on behalf of her grandma.  She gave us her grandma's phone number and asked us to call her some time.  We told her we would when we could have a translator on the phone.  So we need to work on that but that was good.

At the beginning of the second call Dennis started crying.  S didn't say anything to cause it.  I think just 3wks without talking to and missing his sister suddenly overwhelmed him.  He wouldn't talk so Melissa and I did.  We let her know he was crying cause he was missing her but asked her to remind him she was coming for summer.  It didn't console him but I did find it good that he wanted to be with me rather than pulling away.

This week we sent out letters and photos Dennis' Ukraine gma and the orphanage director.  Kind of hoping that if someone is filtering out Snezhana's packages at the orphanage maybe a letter might help... but the letter only mentioned hoping that this makes it to her cause Snezhana's packages don't seem to be making it to her.  We also sent packages to Snezhana and Anna.  This time we used USPS Priority for everything which was $10 more expensive per letter but only $1 more for the packages to the girls.  If things go well with gma we might consider using gma as a mechanism to get packages to Snezhana but that is getting a little ahead of ourselves.