Everything's Good!

I know I haven't posted since Tuesday, but I've been busy! Norah is doing very well - she will eat anything I put in front of her and everything's coming out well on the other end too :) She has been sleeping great too! The first night she slept from 8pm to 8am - not waking up once. Last night was the first time she woke up in the middle of the night but she went right back to sleep once I rocked her a little. For naps and bedtime, she'll let me rock her until she falls asleep and then I can lay her down and she doesn't wake up - awesome! Usually it only takes about 10-15 minutes for her to be completely out. There's only been a couple of nap times where it took longer because she was playing - poking my eyes and my nose, so I had to lay her down and lay on the bed next to her and she fell asleep on her own.

Wednesday we just hung out at the hotel and walked around Kaluga a little bit - it was cold and rainy so we didn't do much. Thursday, we had to go to the passport office to pick up Norah's passport. There was a chance we could have waited about 3 hours there but luckily it was only 1 1/2 hours. Norah didn't really care for the passport office, so my mom and sister took her on a walk in the stoller while I waited. Then we took the 3 hour car ride back to Moscow. I was a little worried about it because she's never been in a car seat before and 3 hours is a long time! But she did awesome - only wanted to get out a couple of times but I was able to distract her. Then she fell asleep for a little over an hour. Thursday night wasn't so great because she was off her schedule and it was just too much new stuff in one day! There were a few meltdowns over putting her shoes back on. Yesterday was pretty low key too - I've been trying to get her back to at least being close to her old schedule, and I'm hoping we're back on track today.

So far, she's been pretty happy most of the time except when her shoes fall off and we have to put them back on - oh the tears! I would have to say the hardest thing so far has been eating - and it's not her, it's us! She's never been around food that wasn't for her so it's been hard for my mom, Amber, and I to eat. Usually I feed her first, but she still needs something while we eat and we can't walk in the kitchen because if she sees food, she wants it now!! So we've been trying to go out for lunch after I feed her and then we just give her gerber puffs while we eat. We've been trying to eat in the apartment for dinner to save some money and that makes it a little easier - we can either wait until she goes to bed or take turns eating in the kitchen. We've made a little fortress in the living room of our apartment with the extra cots so she is contained, otherwise she would be everywhere! She loves to walk around but she's still not very steady on her feet and there are a lot of sharp corners in this apartment plus a lot of things she just can't have. So that has made it a lot easier on all of us.

She loves her stroller too! I was a little worried about it because we have been using it as a high chair too when we feed her so I was worried that she would always think she needs to eat when she gets in, but she is fine when we go on walks. When we get her coat out and her hat, she gets very excited!

I will post pictures soon. My mom and Amber went to the market while Norah naps and then we're all going to Red Square later today to take the mandatory St. Basils pic :) Today is supposed to be the nicest day this week so I wanted to get it done while it was sunny. Then Monday we start all of our embassy appointments and then we leave on Friday morning!