Olga

Gabe's dear friend and the only mother figure he's ever known, Olga, came to see us a couple days before we left Moscow.  Olga has been visiting Gabe since he was just a baby in the orphanage.  She instantly fell in love with him, his dark brown eyes staring wide-eyed up at her from his pram as she volunteered to take him for a walk on the orphanage grounds.  She stole away with him in the trees and took him from his stroller for probably the first time ever and watched delightedly as he oohed and ahhhed over the grass and nature around him.  She's been coming back nearly every week since then.  Four and a half years.  In a perfect world, in a perfect Russia, Olga would be Gabe's mother.  She wasn't able to adopt him, so she set out on a mission to find him a family who would love him the same way she did.  Mission accomplished....

She brought some homemade chicken noodle soup for Gabe because he had been sick.  He just loved how she fed it to him.

I love how he's looking at her in this one.  He loves her too, just as much as she loves him.

Olga brought gifts for Gabe and for me and Brian and Vika.  He just loved these hand puppets.

Showing him how the noise maker works.  I love each of our expressions.

Like any child, the packaging is always more fun than the toys...

So much love.

Gabe's Russian mom and American mom.

Gabe helping Olga get her coat on.  Saying goodbye was very emotional for me.  

How do you say thank you to a woman who helped you complete your family?  How do you thank someone for making the ultimate sacrifice-finding him a foreign family for his own sake, knowing she wouldn't get to visit him weekly anymore?  There are no words adequate enough.  I love you so much, dear Olga.

Olga took some photos with her camera. 

We will always remember you, dear "Vola", and I promise Gabe will always know who his dear  Russian mother is.