Life With A Two Year Old

I am SO far behind! I've had a lot of people asking if we were still in Moscow and telling me I needed to update the blog. Things like that are now easier said than done! I guess I should start where I left off in Moscow......


Our coordinator came to our room on Tuesday and had us some paperwork which she took to the Embassy for us to get our appointment, so we had yet another day to fend for ourselves. We decided after nap time Tuesday to venture out on our own and do some sightseeing. We took the metro into Red Square which wasn't too bad, but I wouldn't recommend it. The stroller definitely helped with all the walking we had to do. We had decided before we left that we wanted to eat at the Hard Rock Cafe' and buy some souvenirs while we were out and we did finally get that accomplished. We almost gave up on finding Hard Rock until we finally found a nice lady who spoke some English who walked with us a good little ways to show us where to go. Here is Konner eating at Hard Rock.

We decided to take a taxi back to the hotel instead of torturing ourselves with the metro again and it was so much easier! It wasn't cheap, but at that point we didn't care, little man had been out as long as he could stand it and still be an "angel".

Wednesday we went to the Embassy to have our "interview". It was the easiest part of our whole trip. There were about a dozen other families there and being able to understand everyone in the room with you was wonderful. You really don't have an appointment time at the Embassy, all the families are told to be there at the same time. You pay your fee, go to a room with all the other families, wait to be called to the window and then they go over all the information about the child and make sure their new name is spelled correctly. The interview part takes about 5 minutes and then you sit back down and wait about 30 minutes and they call everyone back up to pick up their envelope for Customs in the US.

I had vaguely mentioned to my blogger friend Tina that bath time was scary, so I should explain that to everyone. When these kids are in the orphanage they clean them with a rag and a pan of water, so they are never actually "submerged" in water. We found out how traumatizing this apparently is when we got to Moscow the first night. I ran some bath water and stripped little man down and it was kind of like putting a cat into water. There was A LOT of screaming and A LOT of crying. I washed him and got him out of there as quickly as a possibly could because I could see he was definitely terrified and we were afraid people in the hotel were going to think we were trying to kill him or something. The second and third bath we had the same problems, but he had stopped screaming as loud. I had tried to get him to splash the water some which he almost liked and he was a little interested in his "parts". Wednesday night, much to our surprise, he suddenly decided maybe it was OK and a few minutes into the bath he was splashing water ALL OVER the bathroom and squealing in delight, he even stuck his face in the water a couple of times! Since we have been home you can't hardly get the child out of the bathtub! If you take off his clothes in the bathroom he's kicking his leg up over the side of the tub trying to get in and cries when he has to get out, even though he is shriveled up like a prune and is sitting in cold water!



We had a decent flight home. Konner threw up on Alan when we got on the plane to go to Munich, but other than that it was OK. He was so tired and felt so bad that he slept a good part of the flight back to Charlotte. When we got to Customs we were detained for about 30 minutes waiting on them to go through our envelope with our paperwork. It wasn't that bad, we were just ready to get out of there and our family was waiting. Alan's parents, brother, and Mary and Molly were waiting for us at the airport and we were so happy to see them and Konner just loved it! When we got home we were surprised by all my family waiting in the dark in our living room! Our nieces and nephews had made a Welcome Home banner for us and everyone had fixed us dinner, made us some sweet tea (we really missed this while we were gone), got us some milk, juice, and cinnamon buns for breakfast Friday morning. They really thought of everything and I can't tell you how wonderful it was not to have to worry about that stuff as soon as we got home!

Well, that gets you caught up to us getting home. We are currently trying to adjust to life with a two year old who seems to think that he is the boss most of the time! I will try to get another post done tomorrow (hopefully) to tell you what's been going on since we've been home and try to get some more pictures posted.

I did figure out today that my friends Tina and Kellie who are both currently in Tomsk were at the same baby home together today (the same one Konner was at). Tina's currently waiting out her 10 days and Kellie is meeting her little girl for the first time!

Day 3 in Moscow

Well, we never made it out to go sightseeing since it's been snowing or icing everyday since we got here. We've all got cabin fever. We went to the end of the block last night and ate at McDonald's which was ok. Tonight we went to TGI Friday's and for the first time in over a week, I AM FULL!!!! It was very good, just like home! Konner is very good when we go out to eat, we are just amazed.
The medical doctor came to our room this afternoon for Konner's exam. He was very nice and said that Konner was in excellent shape. He's cutting some teeth and drooling something awful which makes him cough, but other than that he said he's fine.
Tomorrow our coordinator for Moscow will pick us up and take us to the US Embassy so we can get an appointment for Wednesday for our interview. Leo had told us that she would take us to some of the sights in Moscow if we wanted her to, so we will ask her in the morning. This may be the only opportunity we have for all of us to get out of here together.

We Made It To Moscow

We finally got to our hotel about 2:00 p.m. Moscow time, which is 8 hours ahead of home time. Konner did very good on the flight other than being a big wiggle worm. He finally went to sleep about 3 hours into the flight & only got to nap for an hour. He doesn't normally get up until 7:00 in the morning and they had him up and ready to go out the door when we got there at 6:00. He's been awake ever since his nap, so I'm expecting him to knock out any time. He's currently wide open in our room, terrorizing everything!
We spoke to our coordinator for Moscow earlier and it looks like the doctor will be here to do the medical stuff in the room first thing Tuesday morning & we won't go to the Embassy till Wednesday. That means everything will stay on the current schedule and we won't be home any earlier than originally planned.
Tomorrow we may venture out and see if we can do a little shopping for souveniers and not get lost!
I can't get the spell check to work on Blogger & it's also not letting me post any pictures, sorry you'll just have to wait till we get home!

Last Day In Tomsk!

Yes, you read that correctly! I wasn't sure if I would have time to update the blog tonight since we are having a little party type thing at the orphanage tonight with cake and tea and then I will have to come back and pack up. We picked up Konner's passport this morning and we received an email from our agency saying that there shouldn't be any problems at the Embassy because they would have to have given all the agencies notice if they wouldn't accept the old passports anymore.
There may even be a possibility that we get to come home one day early depending on how quickly we get things done in Moscow the first of the week. We'll keep you updated on that as we learn more.
Nap time is almost coming to an end, so the next time you hear from us will be from Moscow on Saturday!

Alone Time

We went and picked up Konner this morning at 10:30 and kept him till 6:00 this evening. We had a GREAT time with him! They gave us his schedule which we followed as well as we could. We fed him some lunch when we got to the room which consisted of mashed potatoes, crackers, part of a banana, and some apple juice. It took him a few minutes to figure out the sippy cup, since they give them drinks in tea cups at the orphanage which normally ends up all over them! After that he took a nap and it went very well. It only took us about 30 minutes to get him to sleep. He was trying his hardest to get mommy to play instead of sleep and kept poking me and smiling and laughing at me. It was kind of hard not to laugh at him! He slept for about an hour and a half and woke up with the biggest smile on his face! We introduced him to cartoons and baseball (Alan did this of course!) and he was very intrigued by the TV. He even watched Hannah Montana and we recorded some of this for his big sisters to watch. I'm sure Mary & Molly will know what they are saying even though it's in a different language!
He was less than thrilled, as were we, when we had to change him back into the orphanage clothes and put his snowsuit back on. He knows he's going somewhere when the snowsuit comes out.
We will get him again tomorrow for the day, so tomorrow night will be our last night away from him.

I should also mention that when we took his hat off today they had cut (shaved) his hair. I told Alan when we got here that I was going to tell them not to cut his hair again and of course, I forgot. Guess we'll buy some cute little hats to wear till it grows back out.

Trip 3 Day 3

Good news today. Leo convinced the director at the passport agency to go ahead and process Konner's passport the old way. He was apparently pretty persistent and they knew he wasn't going to go away until they said ok. He informed them of the fact that we had already made three trips here and this law had changed during the middle of our process, and the baby home is now taking care of our child and would have to continue doing so until we get the passport, so it is also an added burden to them. They agreed and told him this would be the last time this was done and all passports in the future would be processed according to the new law. The new passport have to be issued out of Moscow, so all future adoptions will be a four trip process since you can't apply for the passport until you have all the documents from the office of Vital Statistics. We did have to sign a letter saying that we wouldn't hold them responsible if the Embassy in Moscow doesn't accept this old style passport. If all goes as planned we should be able to pick up his passport as scheduled on Friday, if they have it finished, if not we would have to wait until Tuesday since Monday is a holiday. Worst case scenario is that we have to stay a few extra days and get home later than originally planned.



We are going to go pick Konner up from the orphanage in the morning and bring him back to our hotel for the day! We are looking forward to some one on one time with him since there is always someone walking through the playroom when we are visiting with him, and he seems to think when one of the caregivers comes in that he is supposed to go with them.

It's Official!

He's FINALLY ours! Today we went to the courthouse and picked up our paperwork with the court decision. Then we went to the office of Vital Statistics and got Konner's new birth certificate. After that we came back to the hotel for a nap while Leo went to see about getting the paperwork for the passport. And the bad news.......Apparently things changed recently and with the new way they process passports it now takes 3 weeks to get the passport. Leo is going to try to meet with the director of that agency in the morning and see if he can get them to process it the old way so we will be able to get it this week. Please be praying that he can get this accomplished because if he can't that will mean we will have to come back home again and wait this out.

On a brighter note.....we got to go visit Konner today and he was all smiles as usual! He seemed to be tired and didn't want to play much with "the car", instead he was loving on his mommy which you know was just fine with me!!