Arrival & Eight Doctor Medical

Artem and I are finally in Moscow after a very difficult trip over. We started on Tuesday morning at 5:00 a.m. and made it from our town to Atlanta to JFK without a problem. But once we boarded the plane at JFK and pushed back from the gate, the aircraft had maintenance problems and it all went to hell in a hand basket after that. From sitting on the taxiway for three hours while maintenance tried to fix the problem, to finally calling the flight cancelled at 11:00 in the evening because the crew would be past their work visa permits to enter Russia, to trying to get a hotel room in Brooklyn at 12:40 at night, to finally trying to get out the next day at 3:00 pm only to have a tug run into the airplane and damage it; it was a challenging time in New York. Thankfully Artem was a trooper and only had one meltdown but I couldn't have asked for better behavior from him.

After we made it into Moscow we ran to the hotel, had 30 minutes for a quick shower and headed out to the baby home to see Andrik. He didn't remember us at all and didn't want to leave his group and caregivers to spend time with us. I offered him toys but he threw them to the ground and turned his head away from me. Artem was only slightly impressed with seeing his new brother with his initial response being, "he's so little" and instead wanted to play on the playground equipment. It wasn't exactly the Hallmark Movie moment we were going for. Fortunately we get to go back to the baby home tomorrow to visit with Andrik again and hopefully he's a little more interested in us but me in particular. Unlike with Artem's adoption when Artem wanted nothing to do with Randy and would cry if Randy went near him, Andrik wants nothing to do with me and only wants to be near Randy. We have some beautiful family photos of me with the boys, Artem hugging me and smiling to the camera and Andrik screaming his head off. They are lovely and I can't wait to share them with you. Of course the pictures of Randy and the boys turned out great and Andrik is happy to be in his arms. Andrik is going to be a tough cookie to crack and is much more attached to his group than Artem was. Great news for us on the attachment front, but I think he's going to have some problems the first few days separating from his caregivers.

We had our Eight Doctor medical today. It was a piece of cake and Lauren, if you are reading this, I didn't have to take my bra off. :-)~ We didn't think we were allowed to take Artem with us and arranged for a babysitter to come to the hotel to watch him but when we arrived at the doctor's office the manager of the medical process told us that if he was here with us they would have given us a private room so he could remain with us. She smiled and said when we return for a third child, we can get a private room. The doctors were very nice and the hospital was EXTREMELY clean and I had no hesitation about doing my blood work there.

Tomorrow we are going to see Andrik again and then head to the market to do our souvenir shopping. Sunday we are spending the day at the park with our translator Pasha and his family and on Monday we have court at 10:30 am. We were planning on having Artem sit outside the courtroom door in the lobby with Pasha while we are in the hearing since they typically only last for 45 minutes but we were told today that Artem would be allowed in the courtroom with us if we want him in there. We have the same judge that we had for Artem's adoption and if she allows it, we'll bring Artem into the hearing with us. Artem already tells us about seeing the judge to ask her if Andrik can be in our family so we know he understands the process and we think it will be neat for him to be a part of the day.

I'll let you know how it goes on Monday. Hopefully we'll have good news after out hearing.