Day 23, October 27, 2009

Before we begin, I think Jack has had the best commentary on the state of the Redskins season to date. Early this morning he slipped into the bathroom and unbeknownst to us, placed his Redskins football in the toilet. Basically this is where the Redskins season is headed, so Jack may be some sort of genius to be able to make this kind of commentary before he can even talk. Does anyone have any connections at ESPN? Jack needs a job as a football analyst.

Our last full day in Vladivostok started with the usual wake up time, changing, feeding, playing and loving (oh, and trying to flush a football down the toilet). When it got close to naptime, we walked down to the Duda’s room to try to say goodbye as they were leaving today. We listened at the door but didn’t hear any noise, so we thought maybe John or Kristina were asleep so we returned to our room where Michelle wrote them a “goodbye” note to slip under their door. Luckily John saw the note being passed under the door, so he took it to his Mama and all three of them came down to our room to say goodbye. We were really glad we got to say goodbye in person as we have really grown fond of our new friends. We wished them well on their travel and new lives together back in the States. I have to admit, things weren’t the same around the Vlad Motor Inn tonight as we did not see John and Kristina playing or Gloria beaming as she told us of the kids’ latest adventure. We will miss them, but we hope to see them again sometime down the road. Until later, paka Duda Family!

Tonight we went through the usual routines including bath time where for the first time Jack was uneasy for pretty much the whole bath. We made it a quick bath for him, then we put him in his jammies and read his bedtime story to him. He didn’t get a very good afternoon nap earlier in the day, so despite being a little cranky after bath time, he went to sleep relatively well. He is sleeping away in his crib right now.

Michelle packed our bags tonight (Jack helped) and we are ready to go tomorrow. We leave the VMI around 11:30am tomorrow for 2 days of travel. We have truly enjoyed our time in Vladivostok. Obviously the month we have spent getting to know our son has been world changing for all three of us. When we came to Vladivostok almost a month ago, we knew in our hearts we were already a family even though legally speaking we still had some work to do for that to be official. Because of the events of the last month, we are now officially a Forever Family. We think we have made some lifelong friends bound together by common experiences, but most importantly we used the last month to grow together as a family in every way possible.

Not a bad month.

For one of the last times…. Paka from Russia.