Happier times in Moscow today

Yea!!! It didn't rain today and we got to explore, go to the US Embassy, and buy baby food....felt like a full day without cabin fever. It would be wonderful if it stays dry tomorrow and we can head out again. But, if not, at least we got the mandatory Red Square pictures and got to drive around Moscow a bit and really get to see some of this city's beauty. Anna was a trooper today, enjoyed the stroller ride, had a minimal nap before carting her off to the embassy, and just continues to entertain herself around our tiny hotel room much better than we do. Her little personality continues to show itself more and more by the hour I think. She loves bathtime and is still sleeping great.

By tomorrow at 5pm we should everything in hand we need to leave, as well as being registered with the Russian consulate.

Monday Aug 30th

So we made it thru the weekend and its now Monday morning. Its not supposed to rain that much today so maybe we can get out some today. From the weather forecast today is going to be the ONLY day without rain until we leave. I'll try to get a few Red Square pictures at least.

We are staying at the Courtyard Marriott. My mom found the big toy store yesterday, but still no baby food. We have a driver picking us up at 1:00pm today so I'll make him take us somewhere after going to the US Embassy.

I wish I could say I was enjoying Moscow more, but no. I wasn't expecting the non-stop rain and colder weather after all the hot weather and fires. I felt much more comfortable at the Vlad Inn. Just 3 more days until we are back HOME. But Anna is doing well, eating pretty good and drinking a bit more, but that can still be a challege. She has a little personality....can laugh and smile, but also shake her head NO and throw little tantrams as well.......a normal 2 yr old!

Friday in Moscow

I seem to be having a hard time here in Moscow. The Marriott sent me to 2 different places to buy baby food and the first only carried formula and the second just had jars of baby apples. Our coordinator never called back to let us know how the US Embassy went with our paperwork. The Marriott's playroom is closed for repairs. And I guess its just a lot of adjustment and worry.

Bathtime success

So it took about 10 minutes of easing in to the bath....first playing with the water from the outside of the bath, watching it pour out of the stacking cups, getting very curious, then I moved her inside the tub and she screamed for maybe one minute or so, then got really curious about the water pouring out of the cups again, and finally started playing!!!

Drinking is still not going great. She will barely sip on a bottle, will take very small sips of apple juice from her sippy cup, and isn't doing great with a regular cup either. How in the world was she getting liquids at the baby home? Or was she not??

Eating went OK yesterday. She ate 2 yogurts, one jar of fruit baby food, and one jar of a mixed vegtable and rice baby food. Hope it gets better everyday.

She loved playing outside. She loves to RUN and be chased, loved the slide, loved playing in the sand and filling up buckets, but we need to get her to not THROW the sand....she liked that too.

I am worried about the small size of her head. I wish I had brought a tape measure to compare to what the latest measurements they gave me were. I don't think they were right.

First Visit pictures

July 2009

Gotcha Day.......Finally!!!

She is with us forever and we bid farewell to the baby home, with minimum fanfare. She screamed for just a few minutes when we got into the car, but settled down quickly and

we had a good ride back to the hotel. We've tried to feed her several things, but so far the only things shes eaten well was yogurt and apple juice. She refused a bottle. We'll need to keep trying at that one. The graduate baby formula I got with some texture to it she put in her mouth but wouldn't swallow it. Same thing at dinner in the restaurant....she snatched up some bits of bread but put it in her mouth and wouldn't swallow. I'm thinking we're going to be on infant baby food for awhile. Hope I have better luck with formula tomorrow.

The bath was fun.....NOT!!! She screamed like I was torturing her, would not sit down and never stopped screaming until she was out. She could have cared less about any bath toys. We'll see how long it takes her to get used to bathes. I'll try again tomorrow as I just don't feel like I got all the baby home smell off her.

Tonight I could tell she was tired and started sucking her thumb. She didn't want to lay and cuddle with me so I put her in her crib and I haven't heard much of a peep out of her since. I'm sure it feels safe in there to her, and its definitely what shes used to. I just feels so weird to me to put a child down in her crib and not have her fuss and cry about bedtime. That wasn't Dylan for sure. We'll see how well she sleeps thru the night.

Introducing Little Miss Anna Natalia Berg

Morning of Day 2 in Vlad

And we still don't have Anna Natalia. We arrived in Vlad at 8:30am and came straight to the hotel, not the baby home like I'd kinda hoped. Then they were supposedly going to the court around 2pm to get the court degree so we could go pick her up (not sure why not until 2pm) and then they would call us to let us know. We never heard anything. This morning we won't be able to pick her up first thing either as we will be going to the US Embassy to do paperwork at 8am and I know that takes awhile so now it won't be until much later this afternoon that we can head there and we will still need to have them stop at a market for us to get diapers and baby food. I'm disappointed. Now we will only have 2 nights with her here at the VMI before we fly the 8 hours to Moscow.

So, sorry to say, I've pushed back the posting time of the pictures another 5 hrs to make sure she is safely in our arms first. Now the post in scheduled for 10pm PST Monday night there.

Other than that, it feels great to be back here at the VMI, surrounded by other families with their adorable children. My mom is loving it and really enjoyed our walk down to the Sea of Japan yesterday. We slept pretty good. I actually fell asleep at 7pm and pretty much slept until 5:30am!! We weren't able to get upgraded to a suite here as the hotel is full, but like I said, we only have Anna for 2 nights and they brought us in a microwave so we'll manage fine.

Missed our connection

I knew we were cutting it close anyway, and combine that with about a 30 minute flight delay, a delay in immigration, and us having no clue how to navigate the airport, we missed our flight to Vlad. But, it should all work out fine. We are now on a flight that leaves today at 5pm, they set us up in a hotel, and upgraded us to business class......nice!! We will arrive in Vlad Monday morning and I'm thinking that they may take us straight to the baby home. That will be a bit hectic trying to put together the gifts and donations straight from the suitcases, but we'll manage. For now we are showered and have on clean clothes so I can't complain. We're waiting for the breakfast that is included in the hotel so perhaps we'll even be pleasantly fed pretty soon too. OK, we're very close but still an 8 hr flight away!!!

I'm off!!

Wish us luck making the connection in Moscow, or else we need to spend the night there and won't be in Vlad until Monday, otherwise it will be Sunday. We have A LOT of flight time ahead of us. Hmmm, almost feels like I just did this!

I had fun scheduling some pictures to be posted on Monday, when we will have our court decree. So you just have to wait a few more days to see our precious girl. Our 10 day wait is up Saturday, but since its a weekend we have to wait until Monday to get her and actually some office that does the court decrees is closed Monday so its not even totally official until Tues.

Hope I have everything and whatever else I need for Anna is easy to buy there. Wish us luck!!!

Won't be waiting much longer!!!

Our Russian Princess is about to be in our arms forever. I started packing last night and about filled up half my big suitcase with Anna's clothes.....think I may need to edit a bit! This time I'm also taking much more food for us. Getting sick this time really scared me, it was BAD. I'd rather live on granola bars and PB&J than go thru that again. I'm not sure how much room I'm going to have for toys/entertainment for Anna so the plane rides should be interesting. One will be about 8 1/2 hrs and the other over 12 hrs. I'm taking stickers, crayons, electronic books, a few bath toys, a baby doll.....any other suggestions? Looks like I won't be able to take much in the way of food for her and I know you can buy it all there, but I still need to bring sippy cups and a few bottles as I'm going to try to get her to take a bottle again. Other than that I will try and fit in a few baby food pouches for her, some Pedialyte packets, bath/hair soap, sunscreen, bibs. I'm also taking Dylan's old umbrella stroller. I was killing me not to buy a new one, as his is light blue and the pink and black stroller I got Anna is a bit too bulky for the trip. I mean, we have to have great pictures while we're there and the little blue will just totally clash with her outfits, LOL. But his is light weight, in good shape, and travels well. I couldn't quite justify the expense, but I almost did!

Lets see, I want to clear out the pictures on both my cameras again after saving the last trip, charge everything up again, and probably hit the store one more to stock up on some items for the house. Steve running the household for 12 days should be interesting. I'm thinking lining up a housekeeper to come in the day before we arrive home is probably a great idea. I warned Dylan's teacher already. I'm not even going to be able to say good-bye to Dylan after school tomorrow as we'll be headed to LAX so I'm going to fit in having lunch with him at school. I'm trying not to think about how long I'm going to be away from him.

I just love this canvas ebay find I finally hung on the wall today. Its all starting to feel real!!!

Heading home

So for a second time now we are leaving Russia without our little girl. Of course you know ahead of time that this is the process but it just doesn't seem right. I held up pretty good today as we left the baby home. She was hungry and we left her eating lunch with her group. I know we wouldn't have been allowed to have custody of her during the 10-day wait and I just feel so helpless at the baby home. I just want to bathe her and feed her and I can't....its frustrating. Plus Steve and I got so so sick and have hardly eaten anything for a few days so we really can't wait to get home and eat some food we are used to. I'm usually not a very picky eater, and the food all tasted pretty good to.....but something absolutely did not agree with us. I'm so glad we made it thru court before we felt the full affects!!!

The last two days seem quite confusing to me. Yesterday we thought we were getting to take Anna to get her passport pictures, but all they had us do was take some pictures with our camera. Then supposedly they were just going to upload them on their flashdrive and photoshop them for the passport. We got a few shots that seemed centered right, of course in none of them was she smiling at all nor was she wearing the cutest outfit and her hair was in like 6 pigtails....but she was outside so we wouldn't change her or anything. We got back to the hotel, still feeling sick and stayed in our rooms all evening. Now no one called us to give us the plan for the next day, or upload the passport pictures. This morning we get a call at 8am telling us to be ready by 8:30am. Neither of us were showered, and we hadn't packed our bags. So we run around hurrying to be ready and the translator showed up and had no idea our flight was today. She called our agency and they thought we left tomorrow. Now, I had reminded our agency a few days ago that we left Friday and not Saturday and they had our itinerary, but somehow they got it confused. Anyway, I hoped it all worked out OK. We still got in about a 1 1/2 hour visit and got to the airport a few hours before our flight left. I know we still owed our agency money for the week but they'll just have to get that next trip. And now I guess I just email the pictures we took for the passports and hope they can work out!! I'm just trying to have a go-with-the-flow attitude, but at the same time you need to make sure the things that need to get done actually get done.

I also feel bad that we didn't get to say good-bye to anyone at the VMI. There are a lot of great families there right now. One family is also with our agency and will have the exact same schedule as us when I return to Vlad and in Moscow so we can go together to get all the paperwork done. We already got to share in the comical medical exam together.


Lets see, our other visits have went well, however I can see signs in her of baby home living. It looks like she picks at the skin on her fingers and seemed to like to find little things to pick at. I'm guessing peeling her fingers was something to distract her in her playpen or crib. She is terrified of running water. I tried to rinse off her hands and she got scared. Thats about the only time I heard her fuss. She knew when it was lunch time and seemed starving when they set her down to eat. She was given a piece of bread, a small cup of water, and a bowl of mush looking stuff that she had to eat with a very large serving size spoon. It was so sad to watch. She was pretty quiet around us. I heard her talk a little bit when she was with her caregivers, but hardly at all with us. She said something when pointing to the baby on the clothing tag and also when she saw a cat, but its almost like she knows we don't understand her so she doesn't talk. I tried saying a few things in Russian but she didn't respond. She would definitely turn around and look whenever she heard Russian being spoken.

**OK, we're home now. I tried posting this post earlier in Korea but I lost the connection. It felt sooooo good to hug Dylan and find out about his first week of first grade. It feels wonderful to be home, but someone is missing!!

Petition granted!!!!

We are the proud parents of Anna Natalia!!! It went fine, we weren't asked anything tricky (except I guess the birth dates of our children which Steve got WRONG....nice). Mainly, they wanted to know why it took soooo long to return to court. ME TOO!!!! My stomach is not doing too great right now so nervousness over court was kinda replaced with nervousness about my upset stomach. I would have liked to really go out and celebrate, but instead we had a nice dinner at the VMI with all the families here. Tomorrow we will get to take Anna to get her passport pictures taken so we actually get to break her out of the baby home.....too bad we still need to bring her back. I hope I feel better in the morning. I thought I have been really good and eating safe, but we think it was the pizza last night.

Our visit in the morning also went great. She walked us all over the playground. We just had to watch out for massively huge spiders!

So we are completely happy and so glad that our perserverance paid off. It just feels a little strange to be announced the parents of a little girl who we can't celebrate with right now, and to not be around all our family and friends who have supported us all along. Soon enough I guess......soon enough.

Visit #2 and Medical Exam

OK, yes....the medical exam was FINE. We actually just had fun with it and it was over very quickly. We went with another family so that made the experience even nicer. I hear we were lucky as Vlad seems to have stream-lined the process. The doctors were very nice and gave us the thumbs up. I had to snap some pictures. The rooms we were in were very grand, like a ballroom, and there was just a simple partition over in the corner.....not at all what I was expecting.

Visit #2 to the baby home was wonderful. I think she is very proud to have us there. I could hear her coming down the hall with the caregiver, talking away. The caregiver said she was telling her Paka Paka (bye bye) and came into see us with a big smile on her face. Again, the baby home had her dressed very cute with a pigtail and a bow in her hair. She goes to us both equally. Steve can hold her and she'll lay her head on his shoulder. They build block together and she still loves the stacking cups. She's a very determined little girl and I can tell she really loves figuring things out. Still, what got the most chattering was the gool ol' tag on a sleeper. It wasn't quite as hot and stuffy in the room today, but still not quite comfortable. We visited for a good 1 1/2 hours or so, then it was time for her lunch. When she left with the caregiver, she smiled big to us and waved us Paka Paka. In a few hours we will see her again, this time with the social worker who will represent us in court. Court is in 9 1/2 hours, not that I'm counting down or anything!!! I'm actually feeling better and a bit calmer. I feel prepared and I know Steve will do great. He's not nervous. Still, I'll be very glad when its over.

Mom, I thought you would like the beautful butterflies and flowers that are here :o)

FINALLY got to see her again after over a year!!!

She is still of course precious and amazing and it just felt beyond wonderful to have her in our arms again. She was a bit shy and quiet, but did warm up to us and we got some smiles and some talking eventually. Of all the toys I brought for her to play with, this time she was most interested in us and her favorite things were the tags on the clothes I brought to try on her. She was very cooperative as I tried on several different sized outfits and shoes. She's definitely grown (thank goodness after a year you would hope so!!) but she's still small and fitting into 9-12 month sizes, more on the 12 month side, and wearing size 3-4 shoes. Its definitely warmer and more humid here than I was thinking so I think I'm going to need to shop for some cooler summer clothing. The baby home was great and brought her out in a very cute outfit and even did her hair up in the cutest pigtails and bows. We got some good pictures, but it was quite hot and stuffy in the room and her poor little head and hair kept getting sweatier and sweatier the more we played and held her. I gave her a few yogurt melts but she didn't seem impressed. Its a good thing they melt in your mouth because I didn't see her chew one little bit. Eating may turn out to be a bit of a challege, but the caregivers say she is a good eater and likes everything, so we'll see. I just can't wait to feed her......lots and lots!!!

So, for the time being, much of our anxiety has melted away and we're just so excited to bring her home. I'm already dreading getting on a plane at the end of the week and leaving her here, but at least I know it will only be for a very short time. We now can think of her cute face and smile as we endure the circus of the 8-doctor medical tomorrow.

Monday Aug 9th - Day 3

We are still waiting to see our little miss again. We now have to wait until 2pm to head out. Another family with our agency is coming in today for their court trip so our time had to get pushed back. Things definitely seem to be picking up in Vlad. I know their are at least 4 other familes here with their children. We met 3 of them yesterday. Its great to see. I hope all regions start moving again like this.

Yesterday wasn't as sunny, but still beautiful. We walked down to the sea where many families were out enjoying themselves, playing volleyball, badminton, ping pong, enjoying picnics. No Jennifer, we didn't brave the BBQ....Steve thought it might be squirrel, LOL, but boy did it smell yummy. We did have dinner in the restaurant. My fettuccine carbonara was wonderful and Steve had the clubhouse sandwich.....good too. Every morning I've been enjoying my instant coffee and creamer in our room with granola bars. I'll have to make sure we try the ice cream by the market later, thanks.

So I will be anxious this afternoon waiting to head to the baby home. Hopefully we can chat again with the families, maybe play some heated games of Scrabble and Bananagrams in the White Rabbit, take another stroll, and head to the market for some more drinks and snacks.

We made it safely with no problems - Day 2

I am loving being back here at the Vlad Motor Inn. The weather is beautiful here. Its Sunday morning and we are just settling in and relaxing, after sleeping very well last night. We walked to the market yesterday and stocked up on some drinks and snacks and we'll probably just walk around the area today. There are people everywhere around here, enjoying the weather and the beach, walking around in bathing suits and bare feet. I'd like to try some of the wonderful BBQ I smell them cooking. I guess I'll try and just point and hope we have enough rubles. We haven't gotten to exchange any money yet, but I had about $60 worth left from last trip.

We have gotten to video Skype with the kids and they seem to be having a wonderful time without us. Technology is just so wonderful. It still amazes me that we can see the see them across the ocean.....and basically for free!! Love it.

Tomorrow morning we will set off for the baby home. Oh how I hope the reunion goes well. I don't see how it can't. I will try to just relax and enjoy it all and not worry too much about court. We're told our court time on Wednesday isn't until about 4pm, which I think is good and bad. I'm definitely not a morning person so I like the idea that we won't have to be rushing around early trying to get downtown, but then its so late in the day that there will be plenty of time to stress. Deep breathes.

Thanks again to my wonderful family and friends, helping with everything at home and getting Dylan to and from his first week of school. This wouldn't have been possible without you!!!

About done packing

I think I have all the essentials in our carry-ons....camera, court clothes, paperwork, xrays, lap-top, notes for court. I filled a diaper bag with clothes and shoes to try on our little miss, plus a few toys and snacks. Packed my dual-voltage flat iron (I'm very excited to have one this trip!!), all my chargers and power strip with converter plug, some food and snacks for us, and of course some big granny panties for the 8-doctor medical. I'm still trying to decide how much cash we need to bring on this trip. Did anyone else hand-carry xrays? Any problems taking those thru the xray machines at the airports??

I did find out that I messed up when booking our flights and somehow Expedia changed the seats I picked out for me and Steve and now we're not even seating together! I so hope they can change that for us. Thats a loooong flight and I need him to be my pillow!

I'll be running to the dentist tomorrow to get my tooth filled in the morning. I tried on Tues but couldn't keep my appt. as the county recorder took forever to authenticate our notary for the form we needed for court. I really want to get that broken tooth taken care of now. I did find the time to fit in a pedicare today. I'm not sure when I'll get to do that again.

Did I mention I'm excited and nervous? Nervous about the flight, nervous about the medical, nervous about court, even nervous about seeing our little miss after one long year! How will she have changed? Has this year been very hard on her? But of course I'm also so excited to see her. Of course I can't wait to try on all the cute clothes and see what fits. Then I know I will go on a major shopping spree during that week I'm home.

25 hours to lift off!!!

Last minute running around

Just found out I get to venture to downtown Los Angeles to get a last minute document for court apostilled. Fun. I'm also trying to sneak in a trip to the dentist to get a tooth filled as I had an old filling fall out last week. I certainly don't need some throbbing toothache while in Russia. We just got our Marriott room booked for trip 3. I've got my gifts together that we'll be giving to our agency this trip. I've decided to give our agency their gifts this trip, and the baby home their gifts next trip, just to divide up the stuff so we can pack less. I'm making notes to take with me to court and trying to go over things. I'll admit I'm very nervous about court. I got 2 new books for the trip, but I may still decide to re-read Twilight again. I need something good to pass the time while sitting in a Russian medical clinic.

So 3 days more until lift off.......and probably 8 more days until our little miss is in our arms again. Amazing.