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!!