Goodbye....for now....

Last night Val and Olga met with us in our hotel lounge for us to sign a declaration that yes, we officially want to adopt the child we have met with this week.  We also had to write out a one page letter (Olga had the template and we just had to fill in our information) and sign it for Olga to take to a notary with the interpretor in order for it to be notarized.  Once that was complete, we called Liz (the other woman from our agency) and met her and her friend (because Liz is single, her friend traveled with her to give her moral support during court - her friend has adopted 2 children with her husband  so she understand the process very well) in our hotel lounge.  We talked with them for over an hour and 1/2 before making plans to meet them for dinner tonight. 

Val picked us up today at 10:00 and we went straight to the orphanage (Olga was busy today so she was not with us).  One of the main caretakers greeted us today and we gave her the blanket we brought for the baby to keep there.  She explained that we might not get it back because sometimes things get lost in the laundry.  They told us that with Andrew's blanket too but it's on his bed at home, so we are hopeful that we will get hers back too.  The caretaker also asked what name we have given the baby.  We told her and she promised that from now on that is what they are going to call her so she can get used to it.  The baby seemed really happy to see us today and we had yet another great visit.  She showed off her crawling and pulling herself up skills some more and thoroughly enjoyed playing with our toys again.  We noticed that every day she has taken great interest in Laurie's bracelet so John might be in trouble with now 2 jewelry loving ladies in his house :) 

We made another observation this week that could possibly be the timing of our visits, but we are hoping it's really her personality - - she's very calm!  She very much loves to be held and is content to sit on your lap and play.  This is something that we observed (from when we first met Andrew) was not the case with her big brother and still describes his personality today - "busy"!  We would be overjoyed if her personality offsets his some because the thought of 2 "Andrews" running around is definitely overwhelming - haha :)

Val offerred to take some pictures today of the 3 of us because he pointed out that we will need many pictures of us with her for when we return to go to court.  We thanked him and also assurred him that we have plenty of pictures to choose from :)   After about an hour, it was time to say goodbye.  We gave her hugs and kisses and promised we would be back to see her (hopefully) soon.

Once we left the orphanage, Val took us to "center market" to take a look around.  It is a huge area in the center of Perm that has many outside vendors selling everything from hats, to clothes, to underwear, to shoes and then also has an inside area with many fresh foods to buy.  We didn't spend much time in the outside area because it was raining.  He did, however, give us a tour of the inside area.  On the main (middle) level is the meat section.  Val explained that everything is fresh daily - they kill the animals at night so that everything in the morning is fresh meat and everything that is there gets sold that day.  The upstairs level had dairy products and the downstairs level had produce, again everything being very fresh.  He said that these markets are quite popular and the food is much healthier/better quality than what you would find in a supermarket. 

Val dropped us off at our hotel and let us know he would return at 4:50 am tomorrow to take us to the airport.  Our flight leaves Perm at 6:25am, we fly to Moscow, have a 4 hour lay-over there, fly 10+ hours to JFK, have a 2 1/2 hour lay-over there and return to Pittsburgh at 4:30pm - - whew!  that's one long day!  We are sad to leave our baby girl here but we are excited to get home to see Andrew.

We just got finished Skyping with Andrew and Laurie's parents before he had to go to school and it was a 25 minute conversation about the train they took him on yesterday.  He told us it was just like the Polar Express and they said he was in heaven!  He now has an engineer hat and a wooden train whistle (he is beyond obsessed with trains, so we can just imagine how thrilled he was by the experience).  Tonight Laurie's aunt and uncle are taking him to Fun Fore All and Laurie's parents are taking him to the airport tomorrow to welcome us home.  He is going to be quite disappointed to return to reality next week but we are so happy he had such a great week!

4th visit and some Perm history

First things first....the name has been decided!!!  That's all we have to say on that subject until she's home - haha!!

Val picked us up this morning at 8:30 and on our way to the orphanage we picked Olga up.  We arrived around 9:15 and once they brought her to us, we were able to spend over 2 hours together!  It was another great visit.  She definitely seems to be getting more comfortable with us and just wanted to be held most of the time.  She loves playing with the toys/books we brought with us from home (the same toys we brought with us for Andrew to play with) and also continues to love chewing on them as well - we know that will be ongoing for quite some time as she is just starting to get her teeth.  It was quite apparent that we were there during her morning nap time (not sure her caregiver was all too happy about that but she agreed to the long visit).  She often gave us huge yawns and even almost fell asleep a couple of times.  We were happy with all of the extra snuggle time :)  She did some more crawling for us and even took some more (heavily assisted) steps.  As much as we are looking foward to returning home (to our "baby" there) we are not looking forward to saying goodbye to our baby here for the next couple of months :(

Once we left the orphanage, Val & Olga took us to another restaurant for lunch.  They told us it is a commonly visited place by tourists to get some "authentic" food.  They specialize in what could best be compared to a type of calzone/stromboli but with odd fillings.  John ordered one with meat filling (when he asked what kind of meat it is, the response was "I don't know but its really good" - awesome!) with a garlic sauce and Laurie ordered one filled with a potato/sour cream mixture.  Although they sound strange and possibly not appetizing, we were both pleasantly surprised and enjoyed our meal.

After lunch, they took us to a historical museum.  We spent about an hour and 1/2 looking at various pieces of Perm's history while learning more about the city and Russia itself.  Val joked that a very early version of a telephone was the "iPhone 1" - yes, they have iPhones in Russia and he has one :)

After leaving the museum, Val and Olga told us that they would return later today to meet with us and have us sign necessary paperwork to be notarized stating yes, we officially want to adopt the child we have met this week.

When we returned to our hotel, Val said we might run into the other woman from our agency, Elizabeth, as he would now be taking her to see her little girl.  We did in fact meet her and she was very friendly.  She said that she would love to sit down and talk to us later so we exchanged room numbers to possibly get in touch later. 

3rd visit and a little bit of Perm

We were quite tired at the end of our day yesterday so we took advantage of the ability to go to bed at 9:30pm.  That is until we were awakened by our phone ringing at 10:20.  It was our driver, Val, saying he was in the lobby and needed someone to come downstairs to talk to him.  We instantly thought something bad happened (why else would he show up at almost 10:30pm at our hotel and not be able to tell us over the phone).  John went downstairs to talk to him while Laurie paced up in the room imagining the posibilities.  When John returned he said that both Val and Olga were down there to tell us that our appointment was going to be in the morning on Wednesday instead of the afternoon.  They felt horrible at having to change our schedule again and wanted to see our reaction in person.  Thinking of all the possible reasons they could have been there, a schedule change was a huge sigh of relief! 

So, Val and Olga returned to pick us up at 9:20am today.  We went straight to the orphanage to see "Baby Girl".  She was brought to us and (finally) had on a different outfit, although it was definitely not a stylish one - haha! 

We had almost an hour and 1/2 to play with her today and it went very well.  She seems to be getting more and more used to us and laughed a lot today.  She crawled between the two of us and even pulled herself up to be standing several times!  Laurie felt in her mouth and she has her first tooth!  It's one of the bottom front teeth - the orphanage needs to update their records :)  For all of those reading who are anticipating another body part, we thought we would indulge you with a foot this time :)

Once we left the orphanage, Val told us they were taking us to the military museum, a souvenir shop and to a Ukrainian restaurant for lunch.  The military museum was outside and quite fascinating.  We were able to see various weapons and machines that were used in the past - a very scary thing to imagine them actually in use.  Val told us to climb on one of the tanks and he would take our picture.  As we were climbing up, Laurie said "Yeah, until the police come and arrest us" to which Val replied "POLICE, POLICE - hahahaha!!" 

After the museum, we were able to do a little Perm souvenir shopping.  Laurie was more than a little weary about the lunch that followed at the Ukrainian restaurant, but she was up for the challenge of finding something on the menu she would actually eat.  The restaurant had a very nice atmosphere and an extremely large menu.  John decided on a cup of Borsch and meat filled raviolis while Laurie decided on chicken filled raviolis.  They use the term ravioli but it is not the ravioli we know in the United States.  They could be compared to large gnocchi with your choice of filling and instead of a tomato based sauce that we tradionally put on a pasta dish, they put sour cream on everything.  As an appetizer, we had rolls and what Val informed us was liver spread - John tried it but (surprise surprise) Laurie passed on the spread.  Our food turned out to be quite good and very filling.  We had great conversation with Val and Olga as well.  We learned some about Perm and the judge we will probably have for court (our next trip) while they asked us questions regarding Andrew and our families.

Val told us at lunch that whenever we are ready to make our official decision (yes or no to "Baby Girl"), to let them know and they will need a day to complete paperwork.  We vaguely remember needing to visit a notary on our last day of our first trip in Andrew's process, so we assume that will need to take place this time too.  There wasn't any hesitation with our decision, but one hold-up remains with the completion of paperwork - - her name.  We thought before we arrived that as soon as we met her it would be clear but we are still struggling between our 2 favorites.  We will make a final decision by the end of today  :)

Visit #2

Almost immediately after we published our entry yesterday, our hotel phone rang.  It was our driver, Val, calling to explain that our visit tomorrow had to be moved to the morning.  He said that instead of 3:30pm, they would be picking us up at 10:20am.  Apparently the judge had called Olga (regarding the other client who is here this week) stating that their court appointment had been changed to the afternoon, which meant our visit had to take place in the morning so they were free in the afternoon.  Due to the baby's nap (yes she reportedly naps - yippee!!) and feeding schedule, we couldn't really arrive there for a visit until late morning.

Last night after our dinner and brief walk, we were able to Skype with Andrew and Laurie's parents for over 30 mintues (he is doing just fine so far and they are all keeping each other busy) and then John's parents for about the same amount of time.  We both had a restless night of sleep (probably due to our long afternoon naps yesterday) so we weren't ready for the alarm to go off this morning but we got up with the excitement of going to the orphanage again. 

We arrived at the orphanage a little after 11:00 and were taken to the same room as yesterday.  They brought her in soon after we arrived (in the same clothes she had on yesterday).  She seemed excited to see us again, or maybe it was just the toys she knew we had that she could try to chew on :)  When we went through this process with Andrew, we brought a book with us that was padded and he loved to chew on.  It was later ripped from the binding from him enthusiasically looking through it but we still have it on his book shelf at home as a souvenir of our time with him in Russia because you can see his teeth marks around the edges.  Well, we brought the same book on this trip (a new one of course) for her to play with.  As soon as Laurie took it out of the bag, it instantly went into the baby's mouth and we had to chuckle at the similarity between she and Andrew.  We got out a ball we brought with us and once she figured out it couldn't very easily go into her mouth, she sort of threw it back and forth with John.  Again, her biggest interest was having something to put into her mouth and being held.  About 30 minutes into our visit, Val came in and said it was time to go.  The baby had to eat lunch soon and they needed to get back for the other client to go to court.

We were able to find out the missing weight measurement.  She went from 16.2 lbs at 6 months to 18.5 pounds at 9 months.  She is just 2 pounds less than what Andrew was when we brought him home (at 16 months)!  Although, she isn't really moving yet so once she starts crawling that will probably affect her growth some. 

When Val and Olga dropped us off today, they apologized for our short visit and promised us a much longer one tomorrow and also the chance to see some of the sights their city has to offer.  We passed a military museum on our way to the hotel today and Val said that he would take us there for a visit this week.  They plan to pick us up at 3:30 tomorrow afternoon. 

We just finished Skyping with our little guy at home.  Today is his first day of Preschool for this school year.  Laurie is a little sad knowing that she isn't the one taking him there and getting his first day of school picture, but we know that he is very excited to show Grammy and BupBup his school.  He looked very handsome and although he was tired at the beginning of the call, he seemed ready to go when we finished :) 

We met our daughter!

After a restful but not quite long enough night of sleep, we woke up bright and early this morning for our appointments.  We had our appointment with the Ministry of Education office first at 8:30.  Since we've already been through this process, we really weren't nervous for this as we knew what to expect.  Val drove us to the appointment and then he stayed in the car while we followed Olga into the building.  This made us a little wary because she speaks no English.  Once we were inside, we met Lena who served as our interpreter for the day.  She was very friendly and helpful.  She told us that she has been interpreting adoption information for families for over 13 years.  The meeting went well. We saw a picture of her when she was a newborn and  Olga was given a form to be completed at the end of the week with either a "yes" we choose to offically adopt this child or "no" we don't.

From there we left to go to the baby home but stopped at the notary on the way for Olga and Lena to take care of something for another client having court tomorrow.  Once we arrived at the baby home we had to stay in the car for a little bit while Olga when in to talk with the director/head doctor.  She came out to tell us that we would need to wait a little longer because the director was still in another meeting but she shouldn't be much longer.  During this wait we were able to speak with Lena who asked us a lot of questions about Pittsburgh and gave us some information about Perm.   Once the director was ready to meet with us, we had a very informative meeting.  She shared with us a lot of information regarding the baby and we were able to ask all of the questions we had.  We left the meeting feeling very informed (not how our meeting with the director of Andrew's orphanage went) and they promised to make us a copy of her daily schedule including what/how much she eats for tomorrow's visit.

 

After we met with the director, we actually had to drive to a separate building to visit the baby.  This orphanage is quite large and is made up of 3 buildings.  Once inside, we were led to a "visitation area" with 2 rooms that are used for prospective parents to visit with the children.  While we waited for them to bring her to us, we saw another family leaving the other room.  We learned that their child (a boy) had just turned 1 and he looked quite healthy (chubby in another word) which was comforting to see. 

They brought the baby to us (around 11:30am) and we had a great visit.  She didn't cry when she was brought to us but seemed a bit skeptical at first.  The doctor we have spoken with at home (who watched her video) said we want her to be that way as it is a good sign if a child of her age isn't overly welcoming of strangers.  After a few minutes she warmed up and let us hold her.  She seemed to take quickly to John (we might have a daddy's girl on our hands like our mama's boy at home).  We placed her belly down on a blanket on the floor with a toy across the blanket.  She lifted herself up and 1/2 crawled, 1/2 scooted herself to get the toy.  She can sit up by herself and when we tried to stand her up she put weight on her feet but needed held onto or she would fall over (all good developmental signs according to our doctor).  We brought some stacking blocks with us and after showing her how they work, she picked up the blocks and tried to stack them herself.  They eventually went into her mouth, as did almost everything else she could get her hands on.  She currently has no teeth, so we took that as a sign that she is possibly working on her first tooth or she was ready for lunch...or most likely both :)  Oh, she is starting to get some hair now but of course that's just a teaser because we aren't sharing the color :)

We were only able to visit with her for about 30 minutes due to us arriving so close to lunch time.  They are pretty strict about keeping the children on schedule.  Her caretaker said that due to her meal/nap schedule, it would probably be best for us to visit her in late afternoon every day.  Once we returned to our hotel (around 1:00pm), we reviewed our notes from meeting with the director and realized that we wrote down her 9 month weight incorrectly (they use grams and we didn't notice our mistake at the meeting).  She weighed a little over 16lbs at 6 months and according to our notes, she is only 9 lbs now - definitely not right!  She is a pretty solid, health looking little girl :)  We will have to get the correct weight tomorrow.

We took advantage of having a free afternoon (without a 3 year old to keep us busy) and took a nap!  Tomorrow Val and Olga aren't picking us up until 3:30 due to their busy day (taking another client to court), so we will be able to sleep a little later than we did today.  We are now off to the mall that is only 200 yards from our hotel to check out the grocery store (to buy some water) and the food court to get some dinner before Skyping with our "baby" at home. 

On Russian soil again...

Well, after a VERY long 2 days of travel, we made it successfully to Perm.  Saturday began at 3:15am when we awoke from our very comfortable bed (after about 3-4 hours of sleep).  We went to the Pittsburgh airport where we then traveled the quite easy 1 hour (6:00-7:10) flight to New York’s JFK airport.  Once at JFK, we got our bearings and found the food court in the international terminal.  We had 1 choice at 7:45 in the morning for breakfast so McDonalds it was.  We were then in touch with Laurie’s parents who reported that Andrew slept until after 8:00 (of course he would sleep in on a Saturday morning for them). 

We ended up hanging out in the food court for the majority of our 7 hour New York layover (“playing” on the computer and/or phones) so that we could eat lunch there as well before our long flight to Moscow.  We timed things so that once we went through security again (because we had to exit the airport to enter a different terminal) and charged our electronics for a few minutes,  it was time to get in line to board our long flight (left at 2:30pm).

We spoke to Andrew before our flight took off .  He was, however, quite pre-occuppied with all of the "new" toys at Grammy and BupBup's to play with and the thoughts of going to the playground and Chuck 'E' Cheese later so we didn't get much more than a "love you".  He did take the time to record a video saying "Hi Baby Sister, I love you!" for us to show her during the week :)

For the next 9 hours we were aboard an Aeroflot (Russian airline) airplane.  Our plane was quite large and was equipped with individual TV sceens with a large choice of movies and games.   Laurie watched 3 movies during the flight but John managed to "break" his TV trying to play poker so he listened to music.  Neither one of us are big plane sleepers, but we were able to each get about 2 hours of sleep during the course of the flight.  We landed in Moscow at 7:30am (11:30pm home time) and by the time we went through customs, collected our checked bags and rechecked them for our domestic flight to Perm, we had used up 1 1/2 hours of our 8 hour lay-over at that airport.  We went through security and found our way to our own row of 4 seats by a window.  The seats were quite possibly the most uncomfortable seats in the world but we were so tired that we both fell asleep slouched over using both our neck pillows and carryon bookbags as pillows.  We are pretty sure that our necks and backs will never be the same but we were able to get 3 more hours of sleep and use up more of the time until our next flight.  After grabbing a quick bite to eat at an Irish Pub in the aiport we headed to our gate for our last flight of the weekend. 

After a fairly short (2 hour) flight to Perm, we arrived at 8:00pm (10:00am home time).  The Perm airport is like nothing we have ever seen - to say it's the size of a Giant Eagle would possibly be a stretch.  It looks like one of the first airports in the world that was never expanded or had any updates done.  We were greeted there by our agency's Perm coordintor, Olga, and our Perm driver, Val.  We were suprised to learn that Olga speaks no English so Val had to interpret everything to us (he on the other hand, speaks English very well).  On the drive to our hotel, they told us that they would be back to pick us up at 8:30am for our appointment at the Ministry of Education (where we will get our official referral) and then it's off to the orphanage!  Val told us that we will visit the orphanage once a day and that the time will vary from day to day based on their (Val & Olga's) schedule.

Well, we are off to get some sleep since we have an early and exciting morning ahead of us!