Gotcha Day & More

Seeing me off



Sorry for the silence! I have wanted to update more but before I left I was extremely busy – pulled another all-nighter getting ready. Then slept the first day in Russia. Even now it has taken two days to type everything below due to 3 little ones….Anyways, we picked up the boys on Feb 4th and I know that’s what you all want to hear about!

Picking up the boys

I didn’t sleep all that well the night before which made the day a bit harder. We were at the orphanage at 9:30am, handed over way too many clothes for them to dress the boys (seriously, like they needed three layers including a snowsuit and toque for the drive), and then waited as the fan-fare slowly gathered. Many of the workers came to see the boys off and take a few pictures. Then we were off – heading to the airport to fly to Moscow. Alexander puked near the end of the drive, other than that it was quite uneventful. We arrived at the airport with our driver, translator, two reps, Beth, myself, three boys, and about 200lbs of luggage. As you can imagine it took quite a while getting through the entrance security – especially when they had to keep looking in our luggage at stuff like camera’s and electric toothbrushes. Beth was fortunate enough to get a really good pat-down thanks to a USB stick she forgot she had in her pocket. Then fed the boys and received a bunch of ‘advice’ that I had no intention of following, like ‘don’t feed them any meat or cheese, don’t bother taking them to go pee since they are in a diaper, don’t brush there teeth until you are at home and they can see your other children do it’ – like seriously, I am going to make my four year old pee himself and not brush their teeth for a week!? No wonder Alexander’s teeth are so bad – they don’t brush them at all in the orphanage I believe. So through security came freedom! Plane ride was pretty sucky – boys didn’t understand why they had to stay in their seats and Eli peed on me. Everyone slept though for the ride to our apartment.

Carter checking out our 'wheels'

Ride to apartment

So life in our apartment is going pretty well. Alexander and Carter have for the most part figured out that I mean business when I say no. They play well together too most of the time – really seem pretty typical 2 & 4 year olds, but the language is still a barrier. And Eli is doing AMAZING! Happy, smiling, babbling, playing, sleeps through lots of noise, likes to be a real goof at mealtimes. Really, if there was only one it wouldn’t even be a challenge – but the three manage to keep Beth and I on our toes most the time. Nighttime isn’t going as well, but is going pretty much as I expected. Eli falls asleep easily laying beside one of us and then we move him to his playpen but then in the early hours of the morning he wakes up and insists on being held or to lay beside one of us. He is attaching well to me and I would be his first choice – however during the night I am more needed by the other two, especially Alexander. I need to first lay with them at bedtime until they fall asleep, although I think I have so far beaten them to it. I can then leave for a while, but it is guaranteed that Alexander will wake up in a couple hours scared if I am not there. So after two nights of me trying to sleep in my own bed near Eli’s playpen I have come to the conclusion that for now I need to just sleep with Alexander and Carter. They too are already showing attachment to me as well – they like Aunty, but in the middle of the night insist on mama.

Boys Playing

Going for groceries - helping Carter & Eli in ergo on my back

Oh so cute Eli

I think I will wrap up with that for now and tell more of our London and Moscow travels in a day or two.