Home Safe and Sound!

We are home and life is good! And actually this doesn't have to be my last post because my friend Matthew discovered that the blog "post counter" that I saw was not quite right - it apparently included a couple of old drafts that were never posted, so I have a few more to go before I reach 100.

Before anything else, I forgot to mention something about the links on the last post. Rob and I noticed when we looked at them that they seemed to emphasize "the mother". If you look at it, please substitute "the parents" there. We are both working hard on bonding well with her.

Our flight from Moscow to Atlanta was not too bad - it was about 11 hours. In the first hour and half on the plane, Meredith got her diaper changed and ate some lunch, and then slept for 2 hours. Wow! We figured this would be a breeze if she kept this up. Well, she didn't. But it was okay...there was just no sleeping again until about an hour and a half before the flight landed. (Sleeping for her that is... for us?... ha!). During the latter part of the flight, she started getting pretty cranky because she was tired and she couldn't quite fall asleep. We were next to the bathroom, which was great for the 7 or 8 diaper changes we needed to do (they actually had a very decent fold-out changing table), and nice because it was near the galley where we could walk a bit. But of course it was also not so nice, because obviously there was a lot of foot traffic, and because the sound of the flushing toilet was unnerving for our sweet girl. It didn't quite make her cry but it seemed to startle her pretty regularly.

Our pattern of trying to get Meredith to sleep went something like this....she's clearly tired, so we rock her or carry her around a big, she starts sort of falling asleep, but then keeps whining and can't seem to calm down all the way. We take a sniff and smell a wet diaper, so we change her diaper. Now she'll surely fall asleep. But then after a while, when she still isn't sleeping, we think, hey, she'd probably like something to eat. So we give her a bottle of formula, which she loves. Surely she'll fall asleep. A little while later, still no sleep, but what do you think? We smell pee again. Basically, we created a cycle by which the twin comforts of feeding and diaper changing were showing their relationship very clearly! But aside from some whining it wasn't too bad - and she made a couple of friends on the plane. One old Russian lady would talk to her when she walked by and one older man would give her a finger to grab. We were also blessed that the guy in the seat next to us (no, we didn't get all three in the middle row) was a young guy - probably our age - who is Russian but spoke English really well and told us he has a 3 year old and that Meredith's age is a good age for flying. He started making faces at her and she was delighted! The flight attendants were also crazy about her, and one of them would always whisper to me if she was delivering drinks and saw that Meredith was sleeping on me. (It wouldn't really have mattered - when she's actually asleep, voices of reasonable volume don't usually wake her).

We've discovered that there are many ways in which Meredith's adoption comes up early in conversation. People say "how old is she?" and we say "she just turned one" and they look a little confused because she's so small. So we say "she was a preemie" and that usually handles it somewhat. But after I told the flight attendant that she had just turned one, she said to Meredith "Did you have a nice birthday? Did you celebrate? I bet you had a cake!" and I just couldn't take it so I said, "Well, we don't really know, we actually didn't have her yet - we just adopted her 8 days ago." Then she was all the more excited - I heard her telling the other flight attendants and everything! So even if adoption comes up pretty often, I don't mind because people are usually really supportive. I think the weird thing that comes up pretty regularly, though, is people then telling Meredith how lucky she is - good gracious, do they not realize how lucky WE are? People sometimes think we are selfless orphan rescuers rather than people who longed to be parents. So I say, "We are all really blessed to be a family."

Our landing in Atlanta was uneventful, but the time it took to get through immigration - which involved a special separate stop for turning in adoption documents - brought us extremely close to missing our plane. Good thing that Meredith likes the stroller and doesn't mind a fast ride because Rob took off with her at full speed to try to catch the plane for us. And he did! They were just about to close the door. Phew! God's grace to some weary travelers.

We were met at the airport by a few very close friends, and then met at home by two more who had a hot meal ready for us. So wonderful!!! And they had bought us milk and juice for the morning too! We ate our dinner after feeding Meredith and laying her on a blanket on the dining room floor (didn't want to put her in a strange crib without us there yet). When I picked her up to bring her to bed (we have a co-sleeper bed that sits right next to our bed) I had never felt her little body so completely limp. She was exhausted! Not a peep - she just kept sleeping. We all were in bed by a little after 10:00. Around 3:30 Meredith woke up and we brought her in bed with us and played (to the extent we could, half asleep!) and gave her a bottle. A little after 4:00 she was drowsy again, thank goodness, so we laid her back down. Then we all woke up at 10:00 this morning. Wow! What a great night that was. Meredith tried out her new high chair for her morning kasha (oatmeal) and then we played for a couple of hours before putting her down for a nap around 12:30. She is being an absolute angel!

Photos will be forthcoming - just wanted you all to know we are home and doing wonderfully well.