finally, the backache I've been waiting for!

I had a "to-do" list for our adoption - things to do before this second trip. One of them was "work out upper body." I bet you can guess whether I did that - hah! Well, the Sarah who made that list knew what she was talking about. The Sarah who ignored that item has been lugging around 14 pounds of pure sugar for the last three days and she can feel it! But you don't need to ask if it's worth it :)

Tonight is our third night with Meredith, and our third location. The first night we were still in Yaroslavl at our hotel. Then we took a van to Moscow that we had all to ourselves - there were two bench seats in the van and zero working seat belts :) Gotta love it. So we just put Meredith in her car seat, rear facing, and we both sat with her in the back row. We made it just fine.

Right as we were leaving in the van from Yaroslavl, our facilitator, while saying goodbye, let us know that the first night in Moscow we would be at a hotel and then would move to our apartment the next day. Oh well. Kind of a pain since we hadn't packed in such a way as to make a one-night stop that easy. But we did fine, and the apartment was literally across the street so - with the help our our driver/facilitator here in Moscow (an English speaker!) we just rolled our luggage over as if we were in an airport. Meredith got to try out our stroller for the first time and she enjoyed it. She is so easygoing! But yet she has a lot of personality, enough that we feel like things are going well and we are beginning the bonding process on the right foot. She lets us know when she's unhappy with crying and an arched back, and we are learning how to soothe her as well as to read her signals (rubbing eyes for sleepy, smacking lips for hungry - clearly she is a very bright young lady!). We are also developing a system for helping her tolerate our frequent use of the nasal aspirator....the poor girl is so congested (she was every time we visited her, we noticed then too) so that little bulb has been a lifesaver. If we lift her up a few times (the flying position) we get some smiles, and then we can sneak in one good suck...and then we have to do it again. Maybe our pediatrician in the U.S. will be able to tell us more about how to help her, but for now this is working OK.

This morning in our Moscow hotel, we did our U.S. Embassy doctor visit. This is an English-speaking Russian doctor, accredited by the U.S. Embassy, who comes to your hotel room and takes a look at the baby to verify that there aren't any medical concerns that the Embassy should be worried about. He had her basic medical info already and his brief exam (10 minutes?) revealed nothing beyond what we already knew - she is congested (which might be related to teething, or, he suggested, just living in an orphanage) and she is small but on the growth chart and a little behind developmentally but should catch up. She also may have eyesight issues due to her prematurity (which we also knew) but he pointed out that clearly she can see reasonably well - she makes good eye contact. He said they must have been taking quite good care of her at the orphanage, and that the Yaroslavl orphanages are know for doing a good job. How encouraging to us! So he gave us a report, we paid the fee, and he was done. The only downside is that all of this happened at 6:30-6:45 this morning - ugh!

At noon today we moved over to our apartment, which is fantastic! I guess it is technically a studio, but a very large one, with an L-shaped room that has the bed filling the smaller piece of the L and a nice large living room, and large kitchen. The playpen was already set up. We wondered what Meredith must be thinking - third crib in three days. But she seems to like it fine. Right after she woke up from one of her naps today (she does indeed take all three) she and Rob were playing a bit while she was still in the playpen - which isn't usually for long. He set up our webcam on the edge of the playpen to take pictures - our camera has officially quit working (ugh!) but the webcam photos are quite good quality, at least for taking photos when we're here at the apartment. Here are a few highlights from today's playpen playtime:

She loves her feet! We don't know if she saw them too much, being bundled up in the orphanage.

Shaking her friend the bear. We are naming it Masha, after the bear that is the symbol of Yaroslavl.


She discovered my toothbrush (with a cover on it, don't worry) and found it fun to flick around.


This picture cracks me up because, inadvertently, she is posed just like her bear!


I need to call it a night - the days are very full even without going out too much! Tomorrow we have just one planned excursion - the U.S. Embassy for an interview. I'm looking forward to it because I think we'll see other adoptive parents there - everyone who adopts from any region of Russia has to go through this, and so it is a kind of bottleneck I think (hopefully in a good way).

I'll leave you with a sweet smile from our sweet girl (playing on the bed in our apartment). No she doesn't crawl, but she gets in position pretty well - just a matter of time :)