Tuesday October 18, 2011

      We had dinner at the hotel last night. I tried red caviar on my Russian Pasta (Much cheaper to eat that out of my tackle box) Christy had beef Stroganoff. Now we can say we have tried the local food! We had a great night’s sleep, I almost feel normal again J We did our normal breakfast buffet and I was surprised that my hard boiled egg wasn’t so hard boiled, yuk!

     Our driver(Yuri) and translator(Irene) picked us up around 10:30 and we went to the Russian equivalent of a Wal-Mart to buy diapers. (This is recommended as a thank you to the baby home) We then continued on our hour long commute through New York style traffic to the baby home.(picture below)

     12:00 PM We finally arrive at the home and they bring us to a different play room. The walls are painted a cheerful green and there are toys all over the place. There are also bed sized mats on the floor so you are able to play with the babies there.(picture below)

      Once again the caretaker comes to the room carrying this sweet little gift from God swaddled in a blanket. She is wearing a little blue and pink dress and I was able to beat Christy to the door this time to get her! She was much more accepting of me today and she immediately began to play with my goatee.(I guess it is staying on through this adoption) She is much more active today, playing with toys, rocking, crawling and making baby sounds. We had to get passport pictures of her and her busy movements made that very difficult. She may give Trox a run for his money once we get her home! We were both able to get several smiles out of her and Christy was able to get some giggles by tickling her neck. J She seems to thrive on the attention; I’m sure that the caretakers are not able to spend near as much time with her though they do seem to really care for the children.

     Around 2PM the American trained Russian Doctor came to do a full physical. Little “A” didn’t seem to mind being poked and prodded. The doctor did note some minor and very correctable things that we would need to work with when we get her home. All in all she received a clean bill of health, in fact her crawling is above average for institutionalized children. We thank God for this and for keeping her in as good of health.

     3PM – It is amazing how fast 3 hours goes by with this sweet little girl. We did not want to give her back to the caretaker but it is past nap time! We were then taken to the director’s office where she asked how we felt about little “A”. We were given the paper where we formally accept this little blessing and we gladly signed it!

     4PM – Back in Moscow, we were taken to a Kodak print shop where the photo artist there printed the passport photos. It was amazing watching him remove all of the background and fill in the photo to meet Russia’s criteria.

     6PM – Like every evening, we came back to the hotel to work. I am so grateful to my father in law (Tommy) who is handling my phone and giving me updates via email. I am then able to return calls by Skype(thanks to Heather for setting up skype for us). He has drastically reduced the amount of issues that I normally deal with. (I hope that he is still speaking to me when I get back home!)  

     9PM - We decided that we would venture outside of the motel to an Italian restaurant to celebrate. Thankfully the waiter spoke English & the food was amazing. Beer and Wine are cheaper than water and soft drinks here, so why not!