After not visiting the orphanage on Sunday, we returned today eager to see "the little peanut" as we've branded her. As we walked in the door, she was sitting with her group and all of the children were working on some craft project that involved clay. At the sight of us, Kristina jumped up and ran to change into the yellow dress she now wears for our visits.

She grabbed an apple from a bowl before leaving her group's room and was starting on it as we walked down to the playroom. We walked through a hallway that has a fish tank and a cage with two parakeets in it, one blue and one green. We tried to see if Kristina would tell us the parakeet's names, but to our questions and motions towards the birds, she replied "SEEN-yee" (blue) and "zeel-YOH-nee" (green). She definitely knows her colors.

The play time went very well and thankfully there were no hints of Saturday's power struggle, even when the camera was in use. We spent some time determining that Kristina is ticklish, and then she turned the tables on us and tickled us too. This was followed by playing on the jungle gym, bouncing balls, throwing balls at each other and Kristina enjoying a few pieces of candy from Robin's purse.

The activities ended a little early because we had an appointment to see Yuri, the orphanage director and a woman who is the orphanage doctor. The purpose of this was to discuss the circumstances of Kristina's coming to the orphanage and learn of any medical details.

We said goodbye to Kristina and met up with Yuri in his office. Igor, our driver/translator, sat across from us. We first discussed Kristina's background. As we'd heard before, she was a 'foundling' on the streets of Petropavlovsk. Her mother had abandoned her, but left her birth certificate tucked in a pocket so that when she was picked up there would be some basic information about Kristina. She came to the orphanage about a year ago on 5-Sep-2005.

The orphanage doctor told us that Kristina is in good health. We got her height/weight (in centimeters and kilograms, time to find a conversion website) and the opinion that she is an active child and performs tasks and activities well. We thanked the doctor profusely, especially once we learned that she'd come in on her day off to give us this information.