Today Was A Great Day

We had a late start today. Good thing because we slept in until 9 this morning after going to bed at 7:30ish last night. It's about 5:00 pm here and I'm still good - not tired at all so hopefully I'll miss out on all the jet lag fun. I'm sure I'll pay for it on the way back. We got ready and took a quick walk around the block before we had to go. The sidewalks are extremely icy and it was pretty cold today - about 0 degrees I think.
We met Nadya (my translator) a little after noon and went to the MOE. It was pretty uneventful. Basically it was a formality that they were allowing me to go the orphanage and visit.

Then we headed for the baby home. It was very clean and hot - I was sweating the entire time but that could've been due to nerves too. We waited for our coordinator and then went into the head doctors office to go over her medical file and ask any questions that I had. Then we got to go downstairs to see her in her groupa. She was hanging out in the large crib and the caretaker picked her up and brought her over to me. I didn't get to hold her yet - they wanted to get her dressed and kept apologizing that she wasn't wearing socks. It was about 95 degrees in there and I would've been running around in bare feet too if I could! There were about 6-8 babies in there but we were only there for a minute because the nurses didn't want us in there without masks. So we headed up to the music room and they brought her in a few minutes later.
She is super cute and still has a mohawk although her hair is lighter than it looked in the pictures. They put her in a walker and she just started running around. The doctor and a caretaker were in there for a minute but then they left so we were alone which was nice. Then I finally got to hold her and there were no tears! My dad even held her with no tears - she was pretty interested in him and his deep voice that she doesn't hear very often. We played with some of the toys I brought but of course my purse and the camera were way more interesting. She looks very healthy and seems to be on target or ahead on almost all of her development milestones. We got her to laugh and smile and she has a great toothy grin. It was really nice to have both of my parents there - one was in charge of the camera and the other had the video camera. I didn't have to worry about any of it!

We were there for about 2 hours and then we had to leave. We went to eat and then headed back to the hotel and now we're just hanging out until we go back to the baby home at 6:00. We get to visit her twice a day tomorrow and Wednesday and then we head back to Moscow.
So things are going awesome - I will post more tomorrow!