Day 12, October 16, 2009

Today our normal driver and interpreter had the day off. With several WACAP families in Vladivostok recently, the WACAP staff has really been spread thin and all of them are working very hard. So, one of the heads of the WACAP office in Vladivostok took us to the baby home so Vlad (our driver) and Anya (our usual interpreter) could have a three day weekend to recharge their batteries.

When we arrived at the baby home, the first order of business was to talk to the head doctor to thank her for taking such good care of our little guy. We are truly appreciative of the way all of the baby home staff has taken care of him. When we were on our way out of the doctors’ office Michelle asked if we could see our little guys’ actual room so we could see where he has spent most of his life up until now. Thankfully she said “yes” so we headed up to his room. When we got to his room, there were about 8 or 10 kids all in a large playpen. They had just woken up and were getting ready for snack. All of them were wearing the same blue and pink outfit and were standing there anxiously anticipating the snack of the day. Our little guy was in the center of the playpen, but when he saw us enter the room he walked right up to us and grinned. We were happy to see that even in an environment where he had never seen us; the little man recognized us and was seemingly happy to see us. The baby room itself was clean and seemed like a little bit of a controlled chaos as the caretakers transitioned everyone from nap time to changing diapers to feeding them. We were only in the room for a minute or so, but we were happy to get a chance to see where our son has spent so much of his life.

After our little guy had eaten and was brought out to us, we took him out to the playground as it was a nice warm, sunny day here in Vladivostok. We spent about a half hour out there playing on slides and swings and just hanging out. Once we went inside, we headed to the gym where our little guy smacked the gator around a little more (go Vols!). There is a little riding car in the gym and our guy likes to push it around or ride in it. We also played catch with the bouncy balls he loves so much. Michelle says he is a typical little boy as he likes cars and footballs and bouncy balls and stuff. His favorite game today was to drop the ball and then look at me pathetically until I went and picked it up. When I would bring it back to him he would have this little devilish smile on his face, and I think he knows he already has me wrapped around his tiny fingers. Like yesterday, he tired out before our time was up so we decided to wrap things up a little early today as he has had a pretty exhausting couple of weeks getting used to us. We told him that we only have one more normal visit with him on Monday before we bring him back with us on Tuesday!

Tonight is Michelle and my last Friday night without a little one, so we are going to party it up tonight. If you know either of us, you may have gotten a laugh out of that line as neither she nor I have “partied up” a Friday night in several years. Actually we are spending our night making spaghetti and doing laundry then will probably go to bed early. We moved to a suite with a kitchen last night and we are taking advantage of some leftover spaghetti and sauce the Scrudato’s gave us before they headed back to Jersey a couple of days ago.

That’s all from Vlad tonight. We aren’t sure what we are going to do this weekend, but I think we’ll both be resting and preparing for the little guys’ arrival early next week!