A visit with 'R' now as his Parents!

Between the weekend and the holiday (Men's Day) it has been 4 days between visits with 'R'. Yesterday we met up with 2 other adopting couples from the States and visited a mineral (rock) museum that sounded to me like it was going to be boring, but I have to tell you, it was pretty impressive and best of all it wasted some down time, which we have alot of. Afterwards we all walked over to the Scotish restaurant, Dr. Scotch, for a quick drink and dinner. It was nice, because we all share something in common and have experienced many of the same things on our journeys to being parents.

Today we visited with 'R'. He had a bit of a runny nose and the air in the baby home is so dry that it appears he had previously gotten a little bloody nose, though it was all dried up now. That said, he did not cry at all and started playing with us immediately upon being brought into the room. He's obviouly getting more comfortable around us. We can now say we have experienced his 'Terrible 2' stage as he would try to slap us in the face and then have a grand old laugh about it. In turn, we tried to give him a 'timeout' and it seemed to do the trick. He's going to be a handful. I think we'll need to introduce him to baseball real soon as he has this think about throwing everything as far as he can, even the Teddy Bear we introduced to him today. The only unfortunate thing about the visits to the Baby Home is that we are almost always relegated to play with 'R' in this small and hot empty office on the first floor because the Asst. Director has this thing about germs being easily spread if 'R', Dawn, and I play in the same room as the other couple and their 2 children up in the large play room upstairs. It would also be nice if we could at least walk the hallways, if not the outside yard with him. We're hoping we will get some kind of tour of the facility, if not just the room 'R' sleeps in, before 'Gotcha Day', March 3rd or March 4th.

On the way back to the apartment, Svetlana stopped in a small village not far from the Baby Home to show us an old church that had practically been destroyed in the 1917 revolution. When communism came to an end and people got their religious freedom back, work slowly began on the restoration of the church. A church monk gave us a tour and chronicled the history of the restoration process. In the attached pictures you can see the bell tower (unpainted) that was just erected last year. The monk had the bells rung in honor of our visit. Apparently many more bells will be added, some of which have recently been delivered and lay in the yard, awaiting their upheaval into the tower. The paintings in the church are all new and are still in progress.

Tomorrow will probably be a down day as Svetlana a third couple that is here for their first trip to meet their 3 children. Unfortunately the children have been separated into 2 different Baby Homes in opposite direction. There is a small liklihood that we may get to visit with 'R' late in the day tomorrow, but we're not too optimistic. We'll probably get nto see him again in 2 days.