Gotcha Day!

We got him!! After seven years of trying to start a family, we finally got our son today! What a great day and an exhausting day. It’s just after 9:00 pm and Artem is finally down for the night. We found out his normal bedtime is 8:30 pm but I want to change that to an earlier time. We left for the baby home at 9:30 am and got lucky with only a 1 ½ hour drive to Fryazino. Normally when we go to the baby home we sign in and walk right back to Artem, but today for some reason we had to wait almost 30 minutes before we went back to see Artem. Everyone was busy getting lunch ready and the nurse wanted to look Artem over before he left. The director wasn’t there so we were not able to speak to her. The nurse said Artem has some “sinuses” but no fever. A caregiver brought him in and helped us get him dressed. She motioned if we wanted to keep the tights on him and I quickly said, “Nyet!!” No more tights for Artem. We got him dressed and she put some nose drops in his nose to help him with his “sinuses”. We presented all our gifts to the nurse and Pasha explained what they all were and who they were for. We gave them the shoes from Robeez and all the clothes and Desitin that we brought and all the pictures that other Fryazino families sent with us to give to the director. I expected a little more drama but it was really low key. We took a few pictures and then we were on our way.

Artem didn’t fuss or cry and we got in the car to go home and he started to fall asleep pretty fast. After a few miles, Randy mentions to me that he thinks Artem is doing really good and thought it would be harder. WRONG THING TO SAY! Lesson learned, don’t ever jinx yourself when it comes to a baby. After a few minutes, Artem begins to get car sick and projectile vomit all over me and all over Randy. Luckily we had a plastic bag but the damage was already done. Toddler breakfast was all over my sweater, all over my pants, all over Randy’s pants and all over the sweat shirts we had tucked between us in the backseat. Artem starts to profusely sweat and I take his sweater off of him. He was ghost white and had no color in his lips at all. He looked miserable but he never cried and just looked at us with the most pitiful look on his face. A few more rounds of vomit come shooting out but Randy manages to catch them in the bag. By this time it’s coming out Artem’s nose when he’s throwing up and I can’t figure out how this child has any food or liquids left in his stomach but he does. Little man threw up all the way home for the rest of our 1 ½ hour drive. At one point we had so much puke covering us that we asked Pasha to pull over so we could get out and try to clean up. We cleaned up as much as we could with the baby wipes and got back in the car and drove off. About a mile later Randy asks me if I got the wipes off the roof of the car. Nope, we drove off and left them on the roof which means we are left with half a travel pack of Kleenex left and at least another hour ahead of us. To make a long story short, Artem was miserable, we were miserable and as soon as we got to our apartment, Randy jumped out and took Artem out of the car as fast as he could.

After getting ourselves cleaned up and getting Artem cleaned up, I put on a tank top and put Artem on my chest and lay down on the couch for a couple hours so he could rest. After he woke up, we fed him some baby food and then spent some time on the floor reading with him and playing with his stacking cups. He is cutting his lower incisors right now so on top of being congested and car sick, he’s teething. Amazingly he did really well considering all he had been through today. He does not want to leave my side and I had to put him in the mei tai sling and carry him around the apartment with me. He spent over 2 hours in the sling today and never let out a peep the whole time he was in the sling. I would HIGHLY recommend getting a sling for anyone getting ready for trip 3. We brought an umbrella stroller with us too but he just needed to be close to me in the sling.

Artem has been a great eater so far and will shake his head “no” when he is finished. Even though he can feed himself we are doing all the feeding to help with attachment issues. He is quite the snuggle bunny and will be playing and all of a sudden stop and look right at us and smile. He loves to play with my teeth (I have no idea why) and continually tries to put his finger up my nose. He must get that from his father! LOL Tomorrow will be another low key day. Monday we will have to get in the car again and start his appointments. We are praying for an easier time in the car. Despite all the hoopla of the day, Artem has been an incredible baby and really easy going so far. We are truly blessed and can’t believe how lucky we are to have him. Life is so good!

We are having trouble with our international dialing and the rental company said they would come out and fix it as soon as possible. Mom and dad, I’ll call you as soon as we can. Of course I am leaving you with a few pictures of our day. Enjoy!