Our first couple days of parenthood

Today's guest writer: Renee

On Wednesday, we ventured out solo onto the streets of Moscow in an attempt to make it to the orphanage and back on our own. It's about a ten minute walk to the metro from our apartment, a 30 minute ride on metro and about a 25 -30 minute walk to the orphanage. The easy part is going to the orphanage on the metro, because it's the last stop on the line (you can't really mess this up), but the fear is missing the correct station on the way back... Luckily, we were able to count the correct number of stops and find our way back. Side note: we wish we could take video onto the metro just to show you all the people, the fashion, the fur coats and the 4" heels that people wear in the snow. Fascinating.

Enclosed are some photos from our walk. The majority of the walk from the Metro is surrounded by tall apartment buildings. It's all residential, really safe. Interesting to see the babushkas out and about and vendors (in little kiosks) selling beautiful fresh flowers and produce. It's great to people-watch en route. The orphanage is on the outskirts of town, so we walk parallel a stretch of birch woods for the last leg of the jaunt, before turning up the street that leads us to the orphanage.

The main thing to know is that the streets are really icy and since the temperatures have been hovering around freezing, it's easy for snow to melt, then freeze again as ice, which is quite dangerous. You know how people say "break a leg," well I'm trying really hard not to. Larry on the other hand... likes to slide on the ice for fun. I remind him we don't even know the word for 'hospital' in Russian!

When we arrived at the orphanage, we had a great visit with Syevinch. Few tears, lots of laughter, smiles, imitation, peek a boos, blowing raspberries and we got it all on video. Unfortunately, the cable that would allow us to show you the video is at home, so we will have to post them at a later time. Just know that we had a really wonderful visit and the video will have to follow. The still photos just can't capture what it feels like to hear little Syevinch laugh.

On our return to our neighborhood we found a wonderful cafe. It's called Shokoladnitsa ... think the movie Chocolat, but with coffees, blintzes, tiramisu and a lot more. We had a celebratory coffee and crepe (in lieu of champagne) to toast the new and official member of our family.

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Happy belated Thanksgiving!

The purpose of our visit to see Syevinch on Thursday was to take her out of the orphanage (for the first time in her memory) to get her passport photos taken. She did such a great job at having to leave what was known and safe to her. She just observed everything, took it all in. The hardest part was having to take off her snow suit at the passport photo place to get her pictures taken (then put back on again once done -- then back off again when we returned to the orphanage). This seemed to be the hardest part for us all. So many zippers and so many tears. All in all she coped really well, and we were able to have a short but sweet visit with her when we returned to the orphanage.

Last night we had great intention to find an American restaurant and have a traditional meal of turkey and stuffing, but jet lag kicked in. We napped around 4p.m., woke up in a delirious state after 7p.m. and opted for frozen pizza. Not quite the same thing, but my mom said she would give us an IOU and Sandy (Larry's mom) made us an early Thanksgiving dinner before we left town. We were very thankful just to have any food at that point without having to leave the apartment and go out into the cold.

A thankful Renee (and Larry), craving turkey and the trimmings. :-)

Off for another adventure on the Metro today!!