Day 18 October 22, 2009

Another fun day with Jack! So far today we have been able to stick pretty strictly to his routine from the baby home. We woke up, fed, napped and snacked at all the right times today which is a great thing for Jack. After lunch today we took him to the playground here at the Vlad Motor Inn for the first time. There we slid on the slides and swung on the swings and just enjoyed being together. We were the only ones out there, so we took his big cumbersome winter coat off of him so he could have a little more freedom. It was about 60 degrees outside today and since he was wearing a sweatshirt also it was way too warm for his coat, but we had it with us just in case some cranky Babushka’s wandered by and yelled at us. For anyone travelling to Russia for an adoption, here is some good advice for how to dress your child; take the actual outside temperature, subtract 75 to 100 degrees from this temperature and that is how you should dress your child. Instead of being called the “wind chill factor”, we can call this the “Babushka chill factor” because if your child is perceived to be underdressed, you will surely receive a chilly reaction from the locals.

Right now, Jack is napping and we are using the downtime to relax a little too. We love being parents, but wow, this is exhausting! We have a new respect for all you parents out there. Once Jack wakes up, we’ll go through the nightly routine and wake up and do it all again tomorrow. We can’t wait for him to wake up, but he really is cute when he is sleeping!

Okay, since this was sort of a short post, here are a few Michelle/Bill stories for you from the last few days.

Story 1: Michelle is still feeling the effects of her cold and ear infection, so she and our interpreter went to a pharmacy yesterday while we were out running errands. The interpreter was trying to talk Michelle into going to a doctor, but as mentioned before we have heard horror stories about doctor visits here. Anyway, after Michelle finally convinced the interpreter that she is not in fact dying, the pharmacist came out and immediately said to Michelle; “just by looking at you, I can tell you have a viral infection”. Really? Did you look into your crystal ball for that one? How can you look at someone and diagnose them? Luckily Michelle wasn’t feeling herself, or she might have countered the pharmacist with “Oh yeah? Just by looking at you I can tell you are a moron”. I wonder if the interpreter would have translated a shouting match between the two of them? That would have been a YouTube favorite!

Story 2: After the medical visit yesterday, Michelle, Jack and I as well as Gloria, Kristina and John Duda all piled into the van to leave. Once in the van, Michelle said “do I have anything on my back?” because she thought she felt a good amount of water or something drip on her while we were piling into the van. She leaned forward, and Gloria, said “yeah it looks like Jack spit up on you”. She had white stuff running down her back. Michelle then informed us that while she was in fact holding Jack at the time, he was always facing forward and therefore unable to spit up on her back. We then had a good laugh as it appeared as though a large bird had used her for target practice. Judging from the amount of poop on her shirt, Gloria and I estimate that she was either hit by a large eagle or a small pterodactyl. Michelle was a good sport about it and we all had a good laugh and helped her clean off her shirt.

Story 3: One of our errands the other day was to go to the passport office to get Jack his passport. At the passport office (like every other place we go to in Russia) I had to show my passport to the official helping us with this particular task. The woman took my passport, thumbed through it then made a comment. The interpreter translated her comment as “beautiful picture”, and I immediately turned bright red and gave an “aw shucks” kind of smile. As I was blushing, I said “tell her ‘thanks’ for the compliment”, then my interpreter informed me that she was not saying my picture was beautiful, she was stating that the drawings of American icons like the Statue of Liberty, Mt. Rushmore, etc. on the pages of American passports are beautiful. Guess I got a little too big for my britches there!

Michelle and I feel that it’s important to laugh a lot each day. Sometimes we give each other plenty to laugh at as we go about our daily routines.