Moritz Adoption

In Moscow!!

Tuesday, June 6^th

Hello from Moscow! The city where traffic is never ending, crappy hotels cost $200 a night, and it never gets dark. This is one hopping place. I am not sure if I like it or not. I just can’t wait to read signs and hear directions in English and be able to brush my teeth with tap water again. That stuff gets old after awhile. I am really homesick. We both are.

We survived our 8 hour flight just fine. It was WAY better than we had imagined. We got to the airport about 2 hours before our flight departed. We didn’t have to pay extra for the weight of our luggage this time (but Nastia knew the luggage lady so maybe she helped us out). Once Nastia got us through to the security area, we said good bye to her. That was kind of sad. She whispered in my ear that I’m a great mama. I was really touched by that. Watching her say goodbye to Regina was hard. She really adores that girl. Regina seemed somewhat nervous but super excited about being at the airport. She gave Nastia a hug and Nastia quickly departed. I know she hates the goodbyes.

Our Canadian friend, Melanie, was on the same flight as us. So that was kind of fun. We enjoyed waiting for the plane together. Her adopted son, Jack, is 2 ½ years old. Her husband went home a few weeks ago with their older son who is 6. Our flight was supposed to leave at 6 pm, but didn’t leave until 7 pm. I don’t know what the delay was. We couldn’t understand any of the intercom messages of course. Dan asked someone and they kept an eye on us to make sure we knew when to board the bus to head to the plane. During this time, Lilia managed to pee all over Dan so we had to get out outfit number 2. I only brought one extra for each child so I was a bit worried about that. But we didn’t need any more extras.

We flew Aeroflot. You have to board on the tarmac in the middle of nowhere so they drive you to it on a bus. We had 4 carry on bags, a stroller, and 2 kids. So you can imagine how hard it was to maneuver all that. The Russians are really thoughtful on buses though. They let us go first because we had children and they gave up their seats for us. One lady even carried the stroller for us on the bus. But the buses just get so packed that it’s easy to feel like you’re going to be stampeded. Regina was yelling out words excitedly during this time (we think she was saying “airplane!”). We told Nastia to tell her she was going on a big mashina car with wings. I think she liked that idea. We boarded the plane via massive stairs outside and it felt so good to feel wind again. It was so stifling hot in the airport that I was pouring sweat. Plus we had to entertain our kids for 3 hours in that place. They did pretty well though...playing pushing games with the stroller and each other in it, running through the gate area with Dan, playing with Jack and Melanie, and having snacks. Oh, and trying to use one of those hole-in-the-ground toilets again. Yuck.

The plane was rather large. It had 3 sections of 3 seats each. So our grouping of 4 seats was broken up. We just kept our 3 seats together and didn’t even use the 4th one. Lilia just sat in our laps the whole time. She’s too small to have her own seat and she wouldn’t go for it anyway. We tried. Dan and I took turns with her. The girls both slept for about 3 hours towards the end of the flight. They were not having restful sleep though. Regina would wake up crying every 10 minutes just because she couldn’t get comfortable. Lilia has trouble getting to sleep even in a quiet environment and this was anything but quiet. The plane has lots of babies and children on it. Pretty much constant crying of some kind going on. Lilia had several crying outbursts but we were able to get her quieted down within 10 minutes usually. We are giving her a pacifier for traveling. She likes it and it makes our life easier right now. We had dinner and lunch on the plane. They girls really enjoyed the dinner meal but they were sleeping for the lunch one. I thought Regina was going to pass out with pure joy when they came around with drinks and she got a juice! She read the safety card for a couple hours. No kidding. She only wanted one toy the whole time. She had a cow about the seatbelt when we first got on. She wanted nothing to do with it. We told the flight attendant to explain it to her which we think she did. No one speaks English well on those flights so who knows if the lady understood us. Regina cried fairly loud for 10 minutes about the seatbelt. I wasn’t letting up on that though. She didn’t like me. (I bet the kids will love car seats…not!) These Russian planes have no amenities. No movies, very limited drink service (it’s get your own in the back), no hot washcloths, nothing like the American flights for 8+ hours. Plus the plane sounds like it’s going to fall apart when it takes off and lands. Everything in the overhead compartments jiggles and shakes terribly and the kitchen cupboards opened up and exploded both times. We just had to laugh about it.

We had a bit of trouble trying to feed 2 kids and ourselves on the plane. Of course as soon as all of our food arrived Regina urgently said the Russian word for poop. So we had to go. She did this 3 more times. Her tummy must have felt upset from the flight because she only actually went one time. She also just liked getting up and walking around. So did Lilia. That was okay for a bit but it was very narrow aisle and I felt like I was always bumping people when I walked by. Dan and I found ourselves talking while our kids slept. We just couldn’t get comfy and plus they slept so restlessly anyway. We both probably got about 30-45 minutes of sleep at some point.

The flight actually seemed to go relatively quickly and we were so excited that we had made it almost halfway home w/o major problems. Hooray!! I was really worried about this part of adoption…the journey home with the kiddos. We arrived in Moscow at 8 pm Monday night (it felt like 3 am to us on Khabarovsk time). We had to wait almost an hour to get off the plane, board a bus, wait for our luggage, and get our luggage out to the car with the driver. I was so hot and claustrophobic with the closeness of people. I can’t handle crowds like that. Plus we have 4 suitcases and all the other items I mentioned earlier so it’s very hard for us to get around with it w/o help. Our agency rep, Svetlana, met us at the airport with the driver. She’s very nice. Speaks wonderful English. She explained our schedule for today (Tuesday) in the car and looked over all the documents I brought for the American Embassy. She took the girls Russian passports—which are so cool, by the way—and then came up to our hotel room after we checked in to help us fill out the remaining paperwork which will be filed today. We really didn’t feel like doing paperwork at that hour. We all stunk and the girls both needed to go potty and get a new diaper. So I fixed up the girls and Dan did the paperwork. The girls were so excited to be roaming free again and were playing chase games with one another. It was so cute. I taught Regina to kiss me on the lips and she does it on command now. I enjoyed my new connection with Lilia since we spent some time snuggling on the plane. She was so darn cute running around the hotel in her sock feet.

Our hotel has much to be desired. Wow. Can’t believe we’re paying a couple hundred dollars a night to stay here. It is one of the cheapest rates around here, believe it or not. It has 2 rooms, one living room and one bedroom, and a small bathroom. It does have a full size fridge too. But no a/c and we thought we would die w/o it last night. It was so sticky hot. But we opened all the windows (no screens of course). Picture a badly decorated place from the 60’s. Lots of avocado green and floral carpet. The bathtub looks like it has gravel coming out of the sides. But we are close to Arbot street and Red Square so that’s good. Our hotel is called the Bell Grade (for those of you that might be familiar with it). Dan bought us some bottled water downstairs last night cuz we’re so thirsty and it cost $11 for 3 small bottles! They did put up a pack n’ play for Lilia and there is a fold out couch for Regina. We stayed up with the girls for awhile. Then we did a quick bath and laid them down around 11:15 pm. It was still fairly light out. Both girls fell asleep right away. We were exhausted and I think it took me 2 minutes to fall into a deep sleep. Dan woke up at 3 am and couldn’t go back to sleep. I was up about 4:30 am. The traffic noises are just too loud and it’s so light that it’s hard to sleep. But we feel pretty good. We’re just starving! We didn’t have anything to eat last night and decided not to go looking for anything at 10:30 pm. The girls haven’t eaten anything since our dinner meal yesterday which was a long time ago. We will go have a massive breakfast in the hotel restaurant which I’m sure will be expensive. My stomach has been growling for hours. The girls must be very hungry too.

This morning we have the girls’ medical appointments at 9 am. The driver will pick us up at the hotel. We have our American Embassy interview appointment at 2 pm this afternoon. Each of these appointments will take about 30-45 minutes. Then Svetlana will do all the paperwork for the girls to get into the U.S. We’re not sure what all that involves but it may be done by tonight or early tomorrow (if the girls don’t have Hepatitis). Then Wednesday would be our sightseeing day. If they do have Hepatitis we’ll have to do more doctor stuff that day too. Luckily we are close enough to walk to most everything. Even McDonalds is just down the street. We want to try it since many of our friends said it’s way better than the U.S. McDonalds.

Oh, and of course our hotel doesn’t have internet so we will only be able to do minimal posts. There is a hotel across the street that has internet access we can use. I will send Dan over there later today to post an update.

Later on Tuesday……

We ate breakfast in the hotel restaurant. It was $15 for each adult and kids were free. It was such a good breakfast and worth the money. It was a huge buffet with all sorts of European breakfast things. We chowed down like there was no tomorrow. I’m sure they couldn’t believe what our kids ate and probably wished they would have charged for them! We joked that we felt like we had just gotten kicked off of Survivor and were eating our first meal away from the game. Their coffee was wonderful and they had fresh cream, fresh veggies, tons of salads, meats/cheeses, blintzes, granola, hard boiled eggs, sausages, etc… We found out Regina adores buttermilk. I thought I was giving her a taste of whole milk and tasted some myself. It was a surprise….pretty sour tasting. I can’t believe she loves it. Regina is becoming more picky as the days go on. I think she’s figured out that the food will be plentiful and she doesn’t have to eat everything. She mostly ate rice and yogurt for breakfast. I think fruit is too sweet for her tooth problem. Neither girl liked the fresh peaches I thought they’d gobble up. Regina has been in much pain with the upper right side of her mouth. She holds it and cries. We think a nerve may be pretty close to showing through. I hope our dentist is willing to do emergency surgery on her when we get back. She really needs it. Her breath is bad and she’s obviously hurting. I just look at where she points and kiss her cheek and try to tell her we’re going to fix it. I can only imagine how much her world will change when all those rotten teeth are out of there. The poor thing has no idea what a normal mouth feels like.

After breakfast our driver, Andre, picked us up. Svetlana called and asked us to bring the receipt showing we had redone our fingerprints. Luckily I had that along with us. Then we headed over to the medical exam building. There was no waiting. Our appointments took about 30 minutes. The 4 of us went into a small exam room with the doctor. What a wonderful man! I loved him. The exams were nothing like we expected. The doctor spoke English very well. He told us everything he was doing and spoke to the children in Russian. They were not frightened at all. Lilia went first. The girls had to take all their clothes off and lay on an exam table. He weighed both of them and measured their height. Lilia (age 2) is about 20 pounds and 30 inches. Regina (age 4) is about 32 pounds and 36 inches. He said both girls are healthy. Lilia is a bit underdeveloped for her age but he said most small children like that are behind because they’ve been in the crib for most of their life. He said with some TLC she will just take off with her weight and height. He said Regina looks likes a sumo wrestler. J But then he went on about how Dan will need a shotgun to keep the boys away from these beauties. He called Lilia a drama queen. She turned on her crocodile tears for him when he tried to look in her mouth. Regina has one spot on her neck that needs to be removed (some kind of growth that could spread to other areas of her body). It looks like a skin tag to me. And of course he commented on her teeth and said our dentist will be indebted to us. I loved his personality. What a nice man. He looked like “Welcome Back Kotter” with salt and pepper hair and white Birkenstocks. The girls loved him. He didn’t even draw blood and there was no screaming. He just signed all the paperwork and now our appointment at the Embassy is at 2 pm this afternoon. After that we’re done with everything here. Yes!! Our prayers for a smooth Moscow trip have been answered. God is good.

We plan to pick up some water and diapers at the grocery store across the street in a bit. Svetlana told us where everything is around here. She is very helpful and gave us all of her phone numbers in case we need to reach her. Dan will stop by the internet café after that to check on our email and let everyone know we’re here. We were going to call home but remembered that we’re in a different time zone now and everyone is sleeping. We got used to calculating U.S./Khabarovsk time but now we’re all off again.

One thing I forgot to mention before is that we’re seeing some institutionalized behavior in Lilia. She puts her hands over her ears when she is trying to sleep and rocks herself back and forth. This is very common as the children have to learn to comfort themselves in an orphanage setting. But it breaks your heart to watch when you know they’ve had to do that for years to get themselves to sleep. We noticed it was especially tough for her on the plane when she was trying to sleep and other babies were crying. The hands went right over her ears. And as soon as you lay her in a crib she does the rocking thing immediately. She is really quiet laying there but you almost wish she would cry for someone to cuddle her. She hasn’t learned that adults will come to her when she needs them. We want to teach her that. She is in constant motion when she’s trying to get to sleep. And I’m remembering what it’s like to chase a 2 year old. It’s been awhile! I actually like chasing her cute butt.

In other fabulous news….there is a chance we may be able to come home a day early!! We are so totally psyched about this possibility. If everything goes okay at the Embassy this afternoon then we are free to go after 7 pm tonight (or early tomorrow morning). It will cost us about $200 per ticket to change flights but with what we’re paying to stay at this hotel and the money Dan loses each day he doesn’t work (plus the cost of food here), we’d break even. So please pray for an early arrival for us! We just don’t care much about the sightseeing day tomorrow. We can see everything we want to today and tonight.

Later again on Tuesday…..

We just got back from the American Embassy. WE ARE OFFICIALLY THE PARENTS OF REGINA AND LILIA MORITZ!!!!! I guess it officially happened last week when the 10 day waiting period was over, but to have Russian passports in their names, visas for them to get home, and a birth certificate with our names listed as the parents…well, it feels real. I wanted to jump up and down in the Embassy. We are done!! When we got back to the hotel a bit ago, Dan gave me a big hug and said our dream is complete. Oh geez, I’m gonna bawl just writing about it. You can imagine the relief we feel. We have some paperwork to fill out once we get back to the U.S. but it’s nothing compared to what we’ve done already. We will get a social security card for the girls and American passports and we need to file post placement reports for 3 years.

The Embassy was an interesting and actually fun experience. (David and Paula Potts—we sure were thinking of you!) Our agency rep. was not allowed to go in with us. We had to go through multiple security screenings. I don’t want to write too much about the whole process because I’m not sure if it’s secret or not. But it seemed highly official so I’ll err on the safe side. To see the American flag was absolutely wonderful. The process took about 50 minutes. We were with 5 other adoptive families….all of whom are very excited to get home also. Many of us are on tomorrow or Thursday’s Aeroflot flight. (We will find out later today if we can indeed start home tomorrow.)

One hilarious and entertaining moment while we were there: one of the couples went to the window for the “interview” and they couldn’t find their son anywhere. The dad said, “I thought you had him.” The mom said, “I thought you had him!” They couldn’t find him anywhere and they’re standing at the Embassy window waiting to get his visa. Not exactly the moment you want to lose your child! He was found hiding in a corner (a very lively 2 year old). Nothing like that to break the ice. We met some lovely couples in there. Oh, and we found out that some of those people are playing $450-650 a night for nice hotel rooms around here. Whoa! This town will empty your wallet fast.

Before our appointment we walked on Arbat Street for a bit. We needed diapers badly and the grocery store nearby is being remodeled so it’s not open. Those were not easy to find. We bought a few more souvenirs but the prices are so marked up here. Their nesting dolls are pretty funny cuz they’re all sorts of characters. And you have to be careful not to get killed when you cross the street. They even have underground sidewalks to try and control that. J Oh, and we saw road rage at its finest. Two guys opened their car doors and started yelling at each other (and they were far away from one another too).

Off to McDonalds! We’re all starving again. At least we know Regina will eat the ketchup. The girls are happily eating and sharing cheerios right now and picking them up off the floor. Dan and I are looking forward to when they sleep. We have much to look at tonight. We got the pictures of Regina’s orphanage back a few days ago and haven’t looked yet (for fear Regina might see them…she’s not ready for that yet). We also got all of the papers from the Embassy that were on record for the girls. It is translated. It talks about their early life and details about why their mother’s rights were terminated. The part I read was very intense and I decided it was something Dan and I should read together.

It’s 3:30 pm. We’re hoping to hold off on naps and just do early bedtime for everyone…hopefully we’ll be heading to the airport in the morning!

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BTW, no internet at our hotel. Very expense. Maybe no updates until we get to NY. Sorry for you who seem to be addicted! ;-)

Dan

posted by Dan @ 8:56 AM