12/3/06 – Part Two: Just the three of us

I guess that I should pick up where Jill left off. Shortly after she finished drafting her post in Word, I woke up. We talked about the day and listened to Helena sleep. After a bit, I got Jill set up with a movie and headphones while I readied myself for bed. We all slept fairly well, though Jill and I both woke up several times when Helena stirred. I admit to taking a Sonata at about 1:30 AM, but it didn’t really seem to kick in until later. Helena woke up for good at about 7:15, and after a bit of play and getting ready for the day we headed down to breakfast. Helena gobbled up the boiled rice from the buffet, especially after Jill mixed in some mashed up meatball (making it very similar to the types of food she had at the orphanage) and she also enjoyed the yogurt from the buffet. During breakfast one of the Spanish gentlemen that Jill met (who had adopted an older child) came over to see Helena. He was very excited to see her – Jill had spoken of her when they met.

After breakfast we headed back toward our room, but met another US couple in the lobby. They were on their first trip, so we chatted a bit. I was starting to feel really tired (perhaps the Sonata was finally kicking in – maybe it was just my body clock realizing it was about midnight back home). I took Helena up to the room while Jill stayed to talk, then she showed up to take Helena up to a sitting area on the sixth floor she had discovered so I could sleep. Around 11:30 Jill woke me to say that she had just got Helena down for her nap and that she was going to show the couples she had just met around town a bit (yes, I said couples, as Jill had met a second US couple while talking to the first). I reminded her that we were meeting our driver and translator at 2 PM, but said that she should have a good time.

I settled back in to map with her, but of course about 10 minutes later Helena woke up. So for the next two hours we had Daddy time. We crawled around the room a lot, I built towers for her with her stacking cups countless times to watch her smile, crawl over and knock them all down (with a big grin). At one point she slipped while crawling and hit her forehead on the floor – but she let me comfort her, which isn’t always the case with kids raised in orphanages. We had lunch together (I strapped her to the desk chair with my wool scarf as a makeshift highchair). Then we played some more and I introduced her to a couple of Jacob’s and Justin’s favorite shows on Nick – though they were in Russian. At about 1:30 Jill came back from her adventure and we got ready for a trip to pick up some souvenirs with Helen (Lana’s daughter). Helena enjoyed looking at all the brightly colored items in the store, but was getting tired so we headed back for her afternoon nap.

It took a bit of doing, but Jill got Helena to fall asleep once again. We thought we would have a short break, but Helena woke up after about 20 minutes. We think that she has been having quite a bit of gas due the change in her diet, as once we got her to berp she was all smiles. She wasn’t going to have any of that nap business anymore, though, so we settled in to play while we waited for our friend Mark and his stepfather, Vincent (who arrived today to get Mark and Mary’s new son out of the orphanage) to call us for dinner. The two couples Jill had taken out earlier stopped by, and once Helena figured out that they weren’t there to take her away she was all smiles.

After Mark called we got Helena all bundled up again and the five of us departed for dinner. Jill really liked the place next door to the hotel where she had eaten Friday night (and it had been the last place Mark and Mary ate before departing for home last time), but Jill said she thought they had said something Friday about closing for two weeks. It was close by, so we decided to take a chance and see if Jill had misunderstood and it was still open. We walked over, and opened the door (which was unlocked) only to find all the lights out and the place gutted. The hostess we had met there previously was there (in the dark), and said again that they were closed. We decided to move on and headed for the “Living Room”, a little coffee house/café around the corner from the hotel. Food was good, but I got the feeling that they didn’t really want to be a ‘family’ place, as it seemed to be a date spot for young Russian couples. The hostess seemed a bit unfriendly at first, but later offered me a toy for Helena to play with, so it might have been me reading something into the situation that wasn’t there (or it might have been Helena’s charm that won her over). After dinner we returned to the hotel, got Helena ready for bed, and Jill worked her magic once again to get her to sleep. After she was asleep. Jill was feeling a little cooped up in the room, so went down to the restaurant, where she ran into Mark, Vincent, and two other new couples from the states who were here adopting. I stayed in the room with Helena working on these posts until about 11 PM local, at which point I went to bed. Jill came in a short while later and we had an uneventful night. It is now Monday morning, Helena is down for her morning nap (Jill’s magic again), and we are packing up to go to Moscow this evening. We’ll post again from Moscow when we figure out how to get access. This trip it has been very easy to get online as they installed wifi in the hotel this fall – we just login in using the info on the scratch card we bought at the front desk. Take care and thanks for reading all this.

P.S. Be sure to read the post from saturday again, as we've added a picture.