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!!!

The Rest of Day 6

AMAZING, AMAZING, AMAZING....

#1 no thumb sucking attempts for over 24 hours
#2 no regurgitating food for over 24 hours
#3 goes to bed without complaint (naps and nighttime)
#4 loves to brush her teeth
#5 TELLS us when she has to go potty and goes on a regular basis!

I really can't believe the bedtime thing, I mean she gives us hugs and kisses, she holds her arms up for Wade to put her in the bed, then she lays down and after a little while-she's out! No crying, whining, we don't even need to pat her back anymore! We do stay close by and I think she knows we're there, but that's it!

I think we finally have a routine, and that really helps. She gets up about 8, calls out "Mama" so we know she's up, goes potty, washes her hands (which she loves!), plays for awhile while we get ready, we get her ready, we go down the hall to eat, she eats a lot (1 and a half hot dogs, a yogurt, a piece of bread and a piece of cheese for breakfast today) and is well behaved for meals (still working on the NOISE of eating with her mouth open), we come back to the room to play more,potty a few times, have lunch (ham and cheese sandwich, banana, milk, 1/2 granola bar with dried fruits and nuts in it today), go down for a nap with no complaints, sleep for two hours!, go potty, play while we get ready to walk to dinner, get her ready to walk to dinner, walk about 30 to 40 minutes to a restaurant, eat, she's very well behaved at the restaurant looking at her photo album or playing with the toy animals we bring (had a chicken salad off the children's menu tonight-basically shredded chicken and cucumbers), walk 30 minutes to an hour back depending on how much of it we let her walk and how much of it we push her in the stroller, play, potty, bath, brush teeth, watch a short show (Little Einsteins tonight), then bed with no complaints!

I almost hate to go to Moscow now because it will mess up the schedule and things will be new again and I'm not sure how it will go. Then, I'm sure once we're home, we'll go through some problems again until she gets used to that!

New things for today...
...using the Crayola Color Magic Finger Paints that only show on their special paper. I painted on a piece and she painted on another piece, and then she carried them around all day. She rolled them up and used them as drumsticks, she unrolled them and pretended to read them, they entertained her for a large part of the day.
....PlayDoh! She liked this! We rolled it out with one of the cylinder building blocks and then stamped it with one of the stacking cups (they have an animal on the bottom of each cup) to see what animal it would make. Then she broke it up and put pieces into the cups, then she took a long rectangular building block and pretended to stir the playdoh in the cup and dump it into a new cup like she was cooking or something! I was rolling out strips and weaving them while she played 'baking'. When I finished, I held it up for Wade to see and she went wild! Yay!! Yay, Mama!!! she yelled and clapped! She seemed to have a name for what I had made and pointed and called it something (can't remember what)over and over. I was very surprised at her reaction, but it was very nice Playdoh weaving if I say so myself!
....holds the yogurt cup and spoon herself; I had been feeding her the yogurt, it seems so messy, but today we let her try it herself. We only had to remind her once to hold the cup with her right hand while using the spoon in her left (yes, we're about positive that she is left handed). We also thought she might take too big of bites, but for the most part she didn't
....Kind of 'played along' with Little Einstiens, patting and clapping and raising her arms when they said too.
....says, "Mama, kiki" and motions with her hand for me to follow her when she needs to go to the bathroom. We've now gone from holding it 20 hours to going every 10 minutes though. We think she's smart enough to have figured out that since we've given her a cookie every time she's gone, that if she goes a lot, she'll get a lot of cookies! So, now we're not giving her a cookie every time-it has to be about an hour after the last time to get the cookie.

Hmmm...I'm sure there's more, but nothing else is popping into my mind.

I do wish she'd learn my name though! Sometimes I'm Mama, but about half the time I'm Papa, or a word I don't recognize. But, Dada is always Dada. In the pictures I'll point to Wade and she'll say 'Dada', I'll point to her and she says some word that means 'boys'and I'll point to me and she usually says, 'papa'. So we just keep correcting her and saying 'Mama'. She follows Wade around everywhere calling Dada. She follows him around holding his shoes if she wants to go out, stacks books on top of him while he's watching TV, jumps in front of him and shouts 'boo!', etc. He's really been out-of-this-world-great with her. I knew he'd be good with her, but he's been 10 times as great with her as I even thought he'd be!!!

AMAZING, AMAZING, AMAZING!!!

Day 5/Half of Day 6

Wade's has said several times on this trip that his worst nightmare would be if we were walking to or from somewhere and it started to pour down rain. Well, yesterday we walked to the horseshoe, over by the Azimut, for lunch. About halfway back it began to pour!!! Wade ran pushing the stroller and I ran just behind them for about 1/2 a mile in the rain. She cried about the last 1/4 mile. We were soaked! Like, we could wring out our clothes soaked! She was shivering, wet, and cold when we got back. We immediately got her out of her soaking wet dress and into comfy pajamas, Wade wrapped her in two blankets and held her on the couch until she fell asleep.
Also yesterday, we spent our entire morning waiting for her to use the bathroom. She woke up dry! This was amazing to us because she hadn't gone since 3pm the day before and she had had a big bowl of chicken and potato soup for dinner, along with a good amount of water and some other food. We wanted to wait until she went before going to breakfast because we didn't want her to have an accident in the resaurant. Well, breakfast time came and went (8am-10am)and she still refused to go, so we ate some stuff we had in the room. Finally, at 11am, she motioned for us to come with her to the bathroom, held her arms up wanting us to lift her onto the toilet, and went! So 3pm-11am=20 hours. Wade says she has a bladder of steel! So we headed to lunch after this, and this is where the rain story comes in. The strange thing is that after that morning incident, she now loves to go on the potty! She went on her own three times after her nap! And, she was dry again this morning and walked right in there and went right away. And, she went just a minute ago about an hour after breakfast! So, now that that seems pretty well taken care of we're working on zakreetya rot (close your mouth) a little more. If she concentrates she can do it and smiles and points to her mouth to show us, "See, my mouth is closed!" She can do it for about 6 seconds now. Then back to the mouth hanging open with the 'Darth Vader' sound, and the drooling. So, at least she listens when we tell her to close it and she tries, so I'm sure it will get less and less as the weeks go on.
So, now we're just playing, reading books, doing puzzle cards, etc. all while reminding her to keep her mouth closed.
We plan to go to the French Restaurant for the second to last time for dinner tonight. You know we're close when we have the rest of our meals planned out; French Restaurant tonight, Chocolate Restaurant tomorrow night, then the French Restaurant Friday, then we leave early Saturday. We're so excited to know that there will be other Americans in Moscow when we will be there. One couple is going home for their ten day wait and will be in the hotel with us on Saturday. Another mom with her daughter will be in Moscow, but in a different hotel, the same days we will be! We've e-mailed each other and hope to be able to get together while there.

Day 4

Wow! It really doesn't seem like it's been four days! We've made a lot of progress in four days. For one, she doesn't suck her thumb all day anymore. Even when she's mad at us (like when we want her to use the toilet for example) she starts moving her thumb to her mouth and then-usually-stops on her own and slams her hand down on the ground. She really does seem to want to please us.

We're now working hard on 'zakreetya rot' which, we think means 'closed mouth'. We're pretty sure it does, because when we say this, she closes her mouth! Usually it only stays closed for about 1-2 seconds, but once she kept it closed for 5 seconds! Her breathing is a lot better and she CAN breathe through her nose now, but I bet she's never really learned how to because she's been conjested her whole life. We wouldn't be so adamant about her trying to keep it closed except having it open all the time makes her drool and we're tired of carrying around Kleenex to wipe her mouth off with! So, she's trying, and I'm sure someday she'll be able to walk around like most people with a closed mouth.

I just have to keep reminding myself that all this (chewing with your mouth closed, breathing with your mouth closed, going on the big toilet, sleeping in a new place, not sucking your thumb all day) is new to her and each day she'll progress and we'll almost forget about how difficult it was!

Today we walked to the Astor mall. It rained some last night which gave us beautiful, cool weather, but it also gave us-MUD! Jill's new white tennis shoes are now splattered with brown spots. I tried washing them, soaking them, scrubbing them, etc. but it just won't come out. It also wouldn't come out of her socks. Hopefully some bleach will do the trick when we get home. We walked around the mall, looked in the toy store, and rode in the elevator. She is very well behaved. She held my or Wade's hand most of the time, but we let her walk on her own some and she stayed close by and walked nicely. Unfortunately, she then wanted to let go and walk on her own every once and awhile on the walk home, which surprisingly other kids her age seem to do, but the driving around here scares me, so there was no way we'd let her walk alone around here even for one second! This led to a few tantrum like episodes, but I think she understands now that outside she MUST hold a hand.

Potty time in the mid-morning was great! She got on and went (#1)!!! But, in the afternoon, 45 minutes again. (probably a #2 issue) NOT FUN!
Playtime has been great.

We've read all the books, she piles them up and one by one 'reads' them to herself too.

We used the dry erase boards and markers for the first time today. She loved that! When she uses crayons she isn't very successful at making marks on the paper. They're always too light or the opposite, she presses too hard and the crayon breaks. But the markers write so smoothly. We used red and blue and tried to get a start on learing colors. I drew a circle and she tried to draw one too. A few of hers were pretty good!

Later she BUILT with the blocks!!! This is a milestone because she usually just takes them all out of the bucket and puts them back in the bucket. Or, she takes them out of the bucket, puts them in the truck, then puts them back in the bucket. Either way, not much excitement. But yesterday she would hand me a block and I would put it on the table. She would hand me another and I would stack it on the previous one, etc. Then today, she was taking blocks in and out, I wasn't paying too much attention, but I looked over at her and noticed-she had built something! She had two blocks stacked together, then had stacked two more together next to the first pair. She continued stacking pairs of blocks until she had 8! We took a picture of course!

She still loves the nesting cups! She puts blocks in them, or Fisher Price animals, she stacks them together, uses them in the tub, etc.

She played with the Fisher Price doll a lot today too, combing her hair and using the lace from the lacing beads to make a necklace for her.

She continues to be a big eater. Breakfast and lunch were about the same as yesterday. For dinner she ate tomatoes, cucumbers, chicken and potato soup, and bread. These might have been her first vegetables!

The only eating problem we have is that she seems to regurgitate food to chew on later. I'm thinking this must be an orphanage thing, like, when they get hungry again they make themselves bring up a little bit from their last meal and chew on it. I'm really just guessing, but that seems like what she's doing. When we see her chewing and take a napkin and swipe it out of her mouth, then brush her teeth (which she actually likes now!)She did this a number of times, on days 1-3, but today she only did it 3 times between breakfast and lunch and hasn't done it at all since! So, maybe she's realizing that she'll get enough each meal to be full until the next meal and she doesn't need to??? Either that or she has some reflux problem. We really don't know, but are loooking forward to the day that this stops for good.

Sleeping is getting MUCH better. Today, for the first time, she didn't complain about her nap! We had to pat her back, but she didn't scream about it. She's also slept in until 8am the last two mornings! When she wakes up, she doesn't cry, she just says, "Mama" and I go get her.

She hates the microphone we use for Skype, so Mom and Dad, and Ty and Jake don't get to hear her, but she does love to listen to them. She especially likes it when Ty and Jake laugh, she comes running to see where the sound is coming from. I guess getting the camera phone for the computer would have been a good idea. But, in 10 days she'll get to see where those voices are coming from and hear them laughing all the time!

Day 3

Well, it took two days to break the thumb sucking (during the day) habit, and it looks like it’s going to take two days for potty training! That’s not bad at all! Yesterday she only went twice; once on her pillow and once in the tub. Today though, we could tell she needed to go mid-morning. And we could tell that she knew she needed to go. She very willingly went to sit on the toilet, but got up after about 30 seconds. Then she would walk back out to play, turn around and run to sit on the potty again. She did this a few times when I started making her sit longer and longer each time. She cried after about 30 seconds and SCREAMED when we hit about 45 seconds. Wade suggested ditching the pants, that way we didn’t have to go through the pulling them up and down every two minutes. She hated that. SCREAMING, SCREAMING and more SCREAMING!!! When we ditched the pants, we’d let her off the toilet if she wanted, but didn’t let her out of the bathroom (The rest of the room is carpeted!) She really hated that. Crying, SCREAMING, laid on the floor with her head on a towel. I continued to try to put her on the potty, but at this point she wouldn’t sit at all without screaming. Wade said to let her out, but to not give her the pants back. She quit crying when she got to leave the bathroom, but surprisingly she didn’t go but about two feet from the bathroom door. Here she sat, laid down for awhile, cried for awhile, then came back in, sat down on the toilet and WENT!!!!! (both kinds) We cheered and cheered and hugged and kissed her and gave her animal crackers! Surprisingly, she continued to cry through our celebration. She ate the cookie, but cried while eating it. When we got her pants back on, hands washed, etc. you could tell she looked proud of herself. Now, fast forward to after dinner/before bath. She was playing, she was holding herself and whining much like she had been during our mid-morning ordeal (which I forgot to mention only took a mere hour and a half) she went and sat on the potty, didn’t go, got off, went back to play, played 15 seconds, went and sat on the potty, didn’t go, got off, went back to play, played 15 seconds, went and sat on the potty, didn’t go, got off, went back to play, played 15 seconds, Wade said, “If she does that again, ditch the pants.” She did, so we did, and then—SHE WENT RIGHT AWAY! So that time only took about a minute and a half instead of an hour and a half! WOW!

Other good things from today…
She slept through the night, until 8:00am, when she woke up she didn’t cry or anything, just said, “Ma-ma”.
On our mile there and mile back walk to dinner, she only tried to suck her thumb once!
We think her eating may be getting quieter, or else we’re just getting used to it.
She was singing in the stroller, “Mama, Mama, Mama, Dada, Dada, Dada, Mama, Dada, Mama, Dada” while pointing to either side of her where each of us was walking.
She sort of did the puzzle cards! She really just likes to take them out of the bag, then put them back in the bag, over and over and over. We try to coax her into matching them up and putting the together, but she never will. Today, she let us help her do them! We would set out three, two that went together and one that did not to see if she could find the two that went together. Some she got right on her own, some we helped her with, but the big news is that she let us help her use the toy the way it’s intended!
She played with the Fisher Price animals and made the sounds for each animal. She thinks the black and white bunny is a cow though; it’s her bunny that says MOO!
She didn’t scream at naptime, just whined a little, then slept a little over 2 hours!
She didn’t cry, or scream at bedtime, and didn’t even really whine. She called out Mama, Dada, a few times, and now Wade is rubbing her back, our usual nighttime routine, but really, not a fight at all.

She was a good eater at all three meals; a yogurt, bread, ham, cheese, half a granola bar and a whole banana for breakfast….ham, cheese, a few strawberries mixed with applesauce, and crackers for lunch, and A LOT of my chicken stuffed with mushrooms and brie cheese that is so good from one of our favorite restaurants, almost all of the grapes from my lettuce with grapes salad, some of the lettuce, and a roll for dinner.

We walked to a new place today. I can’t believe we didn’t know about it until we went to buy our Aeroflot tickets on Friday. It’s very close to the Azimut and not too far from here. It’s right on the river with a statue of Peter (don’t know which one). The streetlights have a nautical theme to them, the paving is beautiful, there were people swimming over on one side, two big houseboat type boats there, speedboats on the river, 3 men fishing, lots of flowers, a beautiful view across the river, lots of people with kids strolling about, etc. If you are planning to be in Astrakhan, e-mail me and I can try to give you walking directions from the Korvet or Azimut.

So, three days down, five to go. We’ll be in Moscow in no time!

Day 2

We're just finishing up Day 2 with Jill. It's going fairly well. When we're just hanging out playing in the room things are great! She plays well with us or alone. We're having a little trouble with sleeping and using the toilet. I guess that's pretty typical for three though. Here's an outline of how today went...Jill woke up during the night at 1am (patted her back to get her back to sleep pretty quickly) then again at 4am (patted her back, but much longer to get her back to sleep again) then was up for good at 5:30 (after patting her back from 5am to 5:30). We watched Blues Clues: Blues Big Musical until 6:30, then Dada got up and played toys with her and I dozed off until 7:30 when we all got dressed and ready for breakfast. We went down the hall to the hotel restuarant for breakfast where they had fried eggs (They've finally learned that I like my yolks well done!, bread, butter, strawberry jam, banana yogurt, pineapple juice, cheddar cheese, some meat that looked like raw bacon, (but Wade tried it and said it was just smoked ham with a lot of fat still on it), pickles, and coffee. Jill ate about a fourth of one of my egg whites, a piece of bread, a half a piece of cheese, an entire banana yogurt, and almost the whole pineapple juice box. She said 'nyet' to the pickles and ham, and sat nicely waiting for the food. She also sat nicely while eating. What we will have to work on is the acutal eating. She 'chews' with her mouth way open and pretty much sounds like a pig. It's quite disgusting. We've learned the word 'closed' in Russian and have even tried holding her lips closed while she 'chews' to help her understand we'd like her to chew with her mouth closed. The problem is that the word for closed is zat-KRY-ta and the word for open is at-KRY-ta. They sound so similar that she probably doesn't know which one we're saying; whenever we say zat-KRY-ta she opens her mouth wider that I thought humanly possible and makes even more chewing noise than before!!! If you noticed that I put the word 'chews' in quotation marks, I did that for a reason. She doesn't really chew with her teeth. She smooshes the food between her tongue and the roof of her mouth. It takes forever! Anyway, after breakfast we went back in the room and played some more, then put her on the potty. She did not go even once yesterday, despite the fact that we put her on the toilet about four times. But, she did wake up with a wet pull up this morning. So, no luck on the toilet, then we went for a walk. We didn't put her in the stroller since we were just going around the corner to the small grocery store and we wouldn't have to cross any streets. She walked nicely holing hands with both Wade and me. All we needed was bread for sandwiches for lunch, so it didn't take us long. When we got back they were still cleaning our room, so we left again and went to the open market where we bought a couple of tomatoes and some strawberries. When we got back they were finished with the room and we fixed ourselves some lunch. She didn't eat as much today as yesterday, maybe because she had had a bigger breakfast today than she had had yesterday. She ate a little ham, a little cheese, a piece of bread and tried the strawberries three times, spitting them out each time. I think that she's never had strawberries before, as they mentioned that they don't like giving the children red fruits or vegetables. I was not making her try them, they were just on her plate. So, I was surprised that every once in awhile she would poke one with her fork (Something else we had to teach her; I think they only used spoons in the orphanage because she just tries to scoop everything and then it falls off the fork!), smell it, (She smells everything before eating it,even if it's a piece of the exact same thing she just took a bite of!)try it, spit it out and go on to something else. Then awhile later she'd poke another one, smell it, try it, and spit it out! So she's open to trying new foods and even trying them multiple times. You never know, maybe tomorrow she'll like them! After lunch we tried the toilet again. She sat there at least five minutes-nothing again, so-time for a nap. She SCREAMED! Even more than she screamed at naptime yesterday. This surprised me because she didn't even cry at bedtime yesterday. Maybe she just doesn't like naps. Anyway, SCREAMED, SCREAMED, STOOD UP, SHOOK THE CRIB (Which is on slight rockers and therefore we thought she was going to tip it over!)We tried to calm her, but nothing worked, she kept getting up, screaming and shaking the crib, then-she peed all over her pillow (that she was standing on). The only good thing about this is that it didn't get on the sheets. We put her on the potty while I washed the pillow, pillowcase and her blanket (it got on the blanket a little bit) and she cried the whole time. Then, we put a pull up on her and put her back in bed. She cried, but didn't scream like before and eventually we patted her back enough for her to fall asleep. She was asleep by 1:15 and slept until 3:00! I slept the majority of this time too! At three we tried the toilet again, you guessed it-no luck. We gave her a banana for snack and tried to practice the 'chew with your mouth closed' thing. Then played until 4 when we called home! After talking to my parents and the boys for about 20 minutes, we went for a long, long walk to La Vanille (The French Restaurant). For this one she rode in the stroller. I ordered a Ceasar salad of which Jill ate about two lettuce leaves of and a bunch of croutons, Wade and I both ordered chicken sandwiches of which Jill ate about 1/3 of my bread and hard boiled eggs, but minimal chicken and cheese, and NONE of that lettuce, and Wade and I both ordered the fruit salad of which I picked out all of the apples for Jill and she ate them all! A pretty well rounded meal for her! She is very good at drinking out of a glass. If you give her a plastic cup, though, she squeezes it while drinking, thus spilling it! So, we have to use a real glass. Another weird thing we can't figure out is when she doesn't want to drink any more, she dumps the rest of her drink all over her plate!!! This happened twice yesterday, and now we can see it coming and grab the glass and/or move the plate. Weird! When we tried to put her in the stroller for the walk back, she didn't want in; she wanted to hold my hand and walk! She walked at least a half mile when she started to try to let go of my hand, so we put her in the stroller. She DID NOT want to be in the stroller. She got used to it though, (even without sucking her thumb!) and we kept her in it until we came upon a park-like area. We got her out to walk around, but she freaked out when we put her on the grass! She settled down after we walked a few feet over to a pathway where you could see some water. There was a parkbench there too that we sat on for awhile. Then, we began walking towards the hotel again, Jill holding my hand and Wade pushing the stroller. She walked the rest of the way! It was probably about another 1/2 mile. Wade just can't believe she walked a mile!!! We played with blocks for about 1/2 hour after returning to the hotel and then I told her (in Russian) that it was time to take a bath. She put those blocks away so quickly! She ran to the bathroom! She remembered how much she LOVED that bath yesterday! Before we put her in the tub we wanted her to go potty; surely she had to go by now; she hadn't gone since 12:30! It had been 6 and a half hours! She sat and cried, and cried, and sat, and cried, etc. In the meantime, the bath filled up with water, so we took her off the toilet, put her in the bath and then...she looked down, and-THE WATER STARTED TURNING YELLOW!!! I swooped her out of the tub and plopped her back on the toilet. I dried her off as she sat there and cried, and screamed, and cried "NE KEKE" (No potty, perhaps???). After ten minutes of not going, we took her off, put a pull-up on her, brushed her teeth (which by the way she hates), put her nightgown on, and told her it was time for sleep. (By the way, while she was sitting on the potty, we drained to tub---you pee in the tub, you don't get a bath.) She of course didn't want to sleep. We said, sleep(spat) or potty (pisat)? When we put her in the crib and she cried. We took her out and led her to the potty, when she cried there we walked her back to the crib, and again said, 'spat' or 'pisat'? and she said "Spat!". So, into the bed she went; she would rather sleep than go potty! She cried some, but I patted her back and she settled down. It was a little early for bed since we skipped the bath, and so it took her a little longer than last night to fall asleep. But, she's alseep now, and we'll try the potty thing again tomorrow! One thing that is going very well is the breaking of the thumb sucking during the day habit! She did it A LOT yesterday and we would take it out of her mouth. Today, she hardly did it at all. On the walk to the restaurant (about a 1/2 hour to 45 min. walk with the stroller) she only did it twice; once about 5 min. into the walk, then again about 5 minutes later, then not again at all until bed! Wow!

Third Post of the Day!

Well, I had to post as soon as I could after we got her here, then of course I had to post pictures!!! And now that we've spent the day with her I wanted to post again!

She's already saying some words! She says Mama, Papa, Dada, Ty, Jake, Jill, baby, ball, and up. She'll repeat other things we say, but these are the ones I think she really knows.

She played with the blocks and big dump truck a lot today. She actually built some towers with the Lego-like blocks, we played "Boo!" (Dada stands behind the corner, she runs to find him, he jumps out and yells Boo! then she runs away laughing) for a long time, we played with the 'My First Leappad' for a long time using the Winnie the Pooh and Dora cartridges, and she looked through the big photo album of mostly herself several times.

We went for a walk to the grocery store in the mall. She rode nicely in the stroller and it went just fine. For dinner she ate an entire chicken leg (cut off the bone) and some of my chicken thigh plus an adult serving of cole slaw for dinner.

She took a bath and LOVED it, playing with the stacking cups in the water pretending to soap up her hair and dump a cup of water over her head again and again and again and again (for a half hour!).

We all watched an episode of Sesame Street where she imitated Elmo acting like a chicken, made her baby dance to some of the songs, held up 10 fingers in a counting song, and then.......when I laid her in bed and told her it was time to sleep-

SHE DIDN'T CRY!

She's still awake though, so Wade is patting her back like I did to get her to sleep for her nap, but I'm still amazed because she cried off an on for 15 minutes before her nap, and stood up every once and awhile, so I'm shocked that this time she just laid down! Whewww!

So tomorrow will be our first FULL day! I will post when I can about tomorrow's adventures!