I wish I could say I was sad to leave Novosibirsk, the city where our daughter was born. But we were confined to our hotel room, unable to go anywhere with the extreme temps outside. Sadie took this photo from our room at the Hilton, where we stayed. We were ready to move on to nice, warm Moscow that is only 28 below instead of 40, (ha ha) and place ourselves 5 hours closer to home.
*Note* Sadie took most of the photos in today’s post with the iPad and edited them with an app called “Aviary.” I like the vintage feel of them, so I’m going to use them all!
Our little gal is handling all this change like a little rock star. She went to bed at 9:00 the first night, then slept great through the night. If you consider 5:30 AM the morning, that is. I was already up, so it didn’t matter too much.
Sadie dressed her new sister in her cute Hello Kitty shirt, then decided that we needed to go eat at 7:00. Our schedules are so out of whack, we haven’t been eating dinner, so we’re famished by morning. By afternoon, we’re barely holding our eyelids open. I’m only sleeping about 4 hours every night. It’s starting to catch up to me. I’m fighting off a cold and woke up with a lovely cold sore this morning. Good times.
At 4:00 pm yesterday, we left for the airport. Our flight left Novo at 6:45. I will never ever forget heading out to our plane. Hazel had on her snowsuit and coat, but the hat that I brought was too big, and she immediately pushes her coat hood off when I put it on. People in Russia FREAK OUT when they see a child outside in the cold without a hat. In order to board our airplane, we would have to go outside, walk out to a shuttle bus, be taxied to the airplane, then wait in line and walk up the stairs of the plane. We had no idea that this would be the case ahead of time, so we left Hazel’s coat unzipped.
As we walked out the doors, a bunch of people looked at us with alarmed expressions, then one man started telling us something important in Russian. Of course I had no clue what he was saying. Finally, a guy who spoke a little English translated for us. “Please get your child dressed. It’s very cold outside!”
Many eyes looked at me as I zipped my daughter’s coat and put on her hat that I knew she would immediately be pushing off.
As we opened the door that went outside, the most extreme blast of Siberian air rushed into our faces. Imagine hurricane-force 40-below-zero winds coming at you. That’s pretty much what it was. :)Hazel was sitting in her stroller at this point. Immediately, she freaked out. Here we were, trying keep a hold of our bags while holding Hazel’s hood on and pushing her little umbrella stroller. We somehow squeezed into the shuttle. Hazel continued to freak, as it was still take-your-breath away cold. Finally, Sadie yelled, Mom, “take her out of the stroller and hold her!” So I took her out and picked her up as she wiggled and bucked her head around. Can you imagine how scary this was for her? Remember, she’s been locked up in a building her whole life.
When we stepped out of the shuttle, I looked at the line of people waiting to board the plane and nearly fell over. There was no way on earth I was going to keep a hold of this girl and wait in the line at the same time. Luckily, all the alarmed Russians that surrounded us knew this as well. Several people pointed to the front of the line. We figured they were telling us to go up there. We pushed and shoved our way to the front, then stomped right up those stairs before the attendants had even started telling people they could come up.
Craziness!
The funny thing about this is that on the day we took Hazel out of the orphanage, our coordinator kept freaking out about her hood sliding down. We would walk outside and she would immediately say, “Please keep her head covered!” After hearing her instruct me several times, I finally reminded her. “Anna! We’re doing all we can to keep her hat on! We’re only outside for 15 seconds or so! Remember I have six children. You don’t need to tell me how to protect them from harm.” I couldn’t keep my defensive side from firing up.
“But she’ll get sick! You don’t want a sick child during your trip!”
It’s really interesting how different cultures view things.
Back to the subject. Ha ha.
Hazel decided that she was OK as soon as we entered the warm plane. She settled right into her seat and coped well with the long ride. Sadie conked right out and slept the whole 4.5 hour flight, so I was on Hazel-duty the whole time. My eyes were sooooo heavy. I coaxed and coaxed sweet girl to close her eyes. Finally, during the last hour, she gave up. Did it ever feel good to close my eyes!
Little did we know when we arrived in Moscow that our ride to the hotel would take TWO HOURS! This may not sound bad, but it was 1:00 a.m. Novo time. 4-5 hours past Hazel’s normal bedtime.
This is where Hazel's evidence of being raised in an orphanage started showing up. It doesn’t matter how good a baby home is, there’s no way for 2 caregivers to hold 10 babies when they need to be held. Kids in orphanages learn to soothe themselves. It’s interesting because these behaviors didn’t show up until Hazel was really tired. But, instead of crying like most kids do when they are tired, she rocks back and forth and continually sucks on her tongue, making this sort of quacking noise. Then she just acts silly and laughs at everything.
I remember Anya doing this on the long flight home from Russia, when she didn’t sleep a wink until the last hour. The good thing is that, as these children learn to seek comfort from parents and siblings, and that their needs will be met, the habit pretty much disappears.
One thing I’ve noticed with Anya, though, is that she always seems to have at least one or two sensory habits going on. She still chews on her tongue whenever she’s not talking or eating. And she still likes to run her finger along straight lines that she sees, in things like clothes seams, for example. One habit she had for a while was this single, dry cough every 15 seconds or so. That one went on for several months. We’ve kind of accepted the fact that people with Ds just need sensory input. I’m going to be honest, though. As much as I love about everything that comes with the extra copy of chromosome 21, this is not one of them! I want to fix things right away, so that they don’t drive me bonkers, or so that they don’t act inappropriately in front of others. This is teaching me a great deal about myself and my pride. I’m telling you, these girls are so good for us. The best self-improvement course ever, all wrapped up in cute, lovie packages.
After finally arriving at the beautiful Marriott Grand Hotel (Thanks, Dave and Michelle!) in downtown Moscow, the doctor arrived to verify that Hazel is as healthy as her records state. He was here all of 5 minutes. He took my $150, then left me with a paper that we would need to include with our US Embassy papers.
Other than being really wired, Hazel handled it all beautifully.
She slept until 8:30 this morning. All day, she has been really mellow. Hopefully, she’ll catch up on her sleep tonight.
This morning as my girls slept, I snuck out of the room and down to the lobby to meet with our agency’s Moscow coordinator, Svetlana. She came to look over our Embassy papers and make sure I had filled everything out correctly while I was with Anna. As we were leaving, I asked her if she thought there was a chance they would reject our paperwork for any reason. “Yes,” she said, this happens occasionally.
Well, it seems that if there’s a chance for anything like this to happen, we will be the ones to be the victims. It turns out that when our coordinator was translating our court decree, she accidentally forgot to translate one of the lines! UGGGGGG! The embassy sent Svetlana away and told her to come back tomorrow with the correction made.
What does this mean for us? It means I had to change my flight. I cried all morning because I had been told previously that the Embassy would be closed on Monday and Tuesday…Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. The thoughts of being stuck here 5 or 6 days longer and missing Christmas with my family depressed me horribly.
After several hours of stressing, Svetlana called and let me know that they Embassy assured her that it WILL be open on Monday. So we’ll be able to fly out Monday afternoon and make it home Monday night, Utah time. We’ll arrive at the SLC airport at 11:00 PM the night that Santa comes. I secured the last seats on the flight for that night. I think it’s safe to say that this will be our children’s most exciting Christmas Eve EVER. What a gift their new little sister will be. What a perfect gift.
One more thing to write about, then I must go to bed! The nannies at the orphanage told me that Varya is potty trained, but that she won’t tell you when she needs to go. So they take her to the bathroom to sit on her little potty every 2 hours. We didn’t have a little potty chair at the hotel, so I tried to get her to go on the big toilet. Nope, that was too scary. She wasn’t into that at all. So we put her in diapers for the first 24 hours. When we arrived at this hotel, I asked them if they have a baby potty. Yes, they do! They brought it up to our room, and Hazel has been doing her thing like a champ ever since. Looks like we’re gonna need a potty seat at home. Just a little pot is all she needs! See, it’s so tiny, you can’t even see it under her cute little hiney! Ha ha.
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