Days 7 and 8

We ate our last breakfast here this morning! 3 hot dogs each, peas, swiss cheese, bread, butter, yogurt, juice, and coffee. Jill just woke up from her last nap here! Pretty soon we'll go have our last walk to dinner. We have plans to go to the "French Restaurant", La Vanille, for the last time. Last night we visited our other favorite dining establishment "The Chicken Hips Restaurant", Chocolate (Hut?), for the last time. The girl who waits on us there speaks quite good English, so we told her we were leaving town soon and that this was our last visit and we thanked her so much for being so friendly and helpful through our trip. I know we ate there at least 7 times. We're pretty much packed, except for the toys that Wade keeps packing and then I keep getting back out so Jill has something to play with the rest of today! We have to leave at 5:30 am tomorrow morning and will not have a translator with us! Voloya, the driveer will pick us up and take us to the airport. Hopefully he will help with our luggage, but once in the airport we're on our own! I hope I remember how to maneuver my way around the place; I think I will as it usually 'all comes back to me' when I see it. We take off at 7:30. We hope Jill will watch an episode of Sesame Street for half of the flight, then there's a meal served, that will take about 10-15 minutes, which leaves about 45 minutes to fill with looking at her photo album and other books. I think it will go fine, really. We're excited to meet up with the other Americans in Moscow, we're excited to have a McDonald's Big Mac!, Wade's excited to see The Red Square/St. Basil's etc. and shop on Arbot street, since he hasn't yet had a chance to explore Moscow. Jill has a doctor's appointment one of the days there, probably Monday. I hope the doctor can prescribe something for the rash on the creases inside her elbows. She's scratched the one side so much that is has bled and is now scabbed over. She has a little of the same rash on a crease in her neck too. Maybe the doctor can tell us if she has bronchitis or something that makes her sound like Darth Vader. Her nose is a tiny bit stuffy, but the sounds she makes with her mouth open is awful! I kind of really hope that she is sick with something; that way it can be cured instead of finding out that that's just the way she's always going to sound!

Yesterday she finally paid attention to the other doll we brought. This one's not a baby, it's a girl with red hair and an all stuffed material, about the same size as the baby doll "Lala". She would yell, "Nyet!" and wanted nothing to do with it this entire week, but all of a sudden yesterday she pulled it out. She started singing with it, the only word I could catch was 'lala', she took it's jacket off and put it back on and made it dance. She used some of the big Legos and made a sort of car for it. Then she took all her blocks out of the dump truck and put the girl in it! She rolled it back and forth like a stroller, and pushed her around the room talking to her! Until then she had never moved the truck, she just used it to put things in and out, so it was so cute to see her using it as a stroller. Today I took "Baby Lala" out of her bed where it usually stays and she used both dolls in the imaginary stroller. She also wrapped "Baby Lala" up in a blanket and rocked her. Very cute. Oh-speaking of very cute, I can't believe I didn't take my camera to the grocery store yesterday! I mean, really, why would you need a camera at the grocery store? Well, if the grocery store has cute little child sized carts you do! Jill pushed the cute little child sized cart around and we filled it up with bananas, a bottle of Pepsi, a bag of Lays Crab flavored chips, a bag of Lays Bacon flavored chips, (the tiny vending machine sized ones) and some animal cracker type cookies. She was SO cute pushing the cart around. She kept rearranging the food in it whenever Wade and I would stop and stand there discussing what else we needed to get. But, she almost cried when we put the food up on the shelf to be checked out. We showed her the food in the bag that Dada was carrying, but once she wasn't pushing the food in the cart, she was in a bad mood. It was a little difficult getting her to walk back (we didn't take the stroller). Then once back here she didn't want to eat lunch! Of course when it came down to lunch or nap, she ate.

I guess that's it for now. Everything is going so well now! I kind of feel bad about posting all the "bad" stuff a few days ago now that it's going so well, but then again, I think it needed to be said for anyone out there who is reading this and soon to adopt a three or four year old. I searched and searched the blogs through this whole process looking for information on what it would be like adopting a three and a half year old and I couldn't find much of anything! CHI only had one family on their reference list that adopted a three year old girl; I e-mailed them, but didn't hear back. I really wanted to know what to expect as to if they're really potty trained, what I may need to know about eating issues, sleeping issues, etc. but I just had to jump in and do it find out. Hopefully someone out there is contemplating or even in the process of adopting a child of this age and they will know exactly what kinds of things to expect because I didn't hold back information, I didn't just put the good stuff, (of which there is a lot of 'good stuff'!) I put it all and I hope that it helps someone! If anyone out there needs to know more they are very welcome to e-mail us! Just leave a comment on the blog with your e-mail, we won't publish your comment (we have it set up that we can choose which comments to publish) and then we can e-mail back and forth about anything you want to know!

We hope to be able to update the blog at the McDonald's across the street for our hotel in Moscow. Then, once we're home I'll try to update here and there as most people who have completed their adoptions tend to do! Pray for a safe flight to Moscow for the three of us and for a peaceful one on Jill's part, that she is not scared and that the time passes quickly!

Next post.....Moscow!!!