Seriously! - Moscow Trip 2, Day 9,000

Who in the world decided it was a brilliant idea to make all adoption embassy appointments at 2:00 in the afternoon with 25+ families whose children have not napped allllllllllll day and place them in a small little waiting room?? Seriously. Was it someone]s idea of an April Fool's joke that just stuck? Is it fun for the embassy people to have to yell through the window (or in our case, have us read lips) while an almost 3 year old reads mama and papa's passports as loud as can be? Ughhhh... it has been a long, long day. What's amazing though is despite the number of tantrums and the number of "nyets", when you say "kiss" and you get a full on lip kiss followed by the cutest little giggle it all goes away... well, for the most part! :-)

Andrew has been a trooper. We were at the embassy from 2:00 until almost 4:30. By about 9:45 this morning (15 minutes after he woke up) I think he was ready for a nap so you can imagine what 4:30 was like. Dinner time consisted of eating some and then sticking his hands in the food to test us. One minute he liked what he was eating, the next he hated it. Long story short he didn't have dinner for very long. He was probably full from all of the food we fed him at the embassy to keep him calm. :-)

At embassy, we met so many nice people and so many little cuties! I met one couple that read our blog - they recognized us! We met a CHI family that had adopted a little boy from Tver, we saw the couple that we had our 8 doctor medical with and many, many more! Most of them get to go home tomorrow (lucky ducks!). Thankfully, Lea, John and Niko will be with us until Wednesday and we'll fly home Thursday.

I don't have any pictures to share today. We traveled camera-less because we knew we couldn't take it into the embassy. Of course it was funny when we found out we had to take all of the battery operated toys out of our bag too. It was even funnier when we realized those were the only toys we had. Speaking of toys... and the embassy... all of the families were in this little waiting room. Not enough seats of everyone. Well, I went to walk Andrew around to burn off some energy and wound up in this big waiting area. We weaved in and out of the empty rows (where there was plenty of room for all of the adoptive families and their kids) and low and behold we found a child's play area. Wouldn't that have been handy to have for the 2 and 1/2 hours we were there? :-) Too, too funny.

Bedtime tonight went better than planned. Keith and I had bets on how long it would take to calm him down. I said 30 minutes, he said longer. Well, the ritual started at 8:00 and ended (for the first time) at 8:05. At about 8:07 there was this cute little dude in his diaper smiling at me from the living room door. Ummmm... someone escaped from the pack and play! Another meltdown and 5 minutes of rocking and he was fast asleep. We're hoping to get back on a schedule tomorrow since we have the weekend free.

Monday is our last official day of paperwork and then Thursday we'll head home. We're really very ready to get home. Yesterday I wasn't too home sick and today I really was. We have loved our stay here - it's been great and there is still more for us to see but we miss our bed and our doggies and our family!

I'm going to take advantage of this early bedtime, lay on the couch with my book and decompress for a little bit. I'm getting a bit of a sore throat so hopefully I can fight that off!

Paka!
Becky