Trip 1 – Day 5: Ilya Withdrawals = Retail Therapy

Today was difficult to get through since we didn’t get to visit Ilya at all. Plus, I slept horribly last night because I was worried Ilya would be confused about us not being there, and our 171 (immigration approval) should have been mailed to our house before we left for Moscow and we STILL haven’t received it. I’m seriously stressing over the 171 issue. I cried myself to sleep and woke up in a not so good mood….angry about the 171 and sad and missing my little guy terribly.

Katia & Anton picked us up at 10:30am and we headed to the notary’s office. Yesterday Anton pointed out the notary building to me and I thought it would be a breeze to get there. Ha! Lesson #?? – nothing in Moscow is easy to get to if you’re relying on a vehicle to get you there! I wasn’t thinking about the fact that you can’t turn left on many streets here, and instead have to make a series of right turns and u-turns in order to get where you want to go. At first I found all these nonsensical right/u turns amusing. Today I was just annoyed – probably due to my Ilya withdrawals and lack of sleep. What should have taken 5-10 minutes to get to took nearly an hour.

We waited around in the notary’s office for awhile when in walks a Russian woman who, in English, told the man with her to have a seat. Then she asked for his passport. Being a skilled adoptive parent now, I immediately recognized this as most likely being a fellow American in Russia pursuing adoption. Then it hit me…I knew (or at least recognized!) the man sitting across from me. It was Nick, Beth’s husband and Jaxon’s new papa! You may recall that Beth/Nick and Norm/I signed with CSS on the same day and she is a GREAT friend of mine. We’ve been trying all week to hook up for dinner or something but the location of our apartment is proving to be problematic. So anyway, I elbow Norm in the ribs and whisper “Pssst…I think that’s Nick!” I suddenly got a case of shyness so Norm took it upon himself to say “Are you Nick?” and thankfully he said yes! Beth & Jaxon were out waiting with their driver in the car. Nick walked me out so I could FINALLY meet Beth in person! Yay! Jaxon is an absolute doll and Beth did not exaggerate at all when she said he’s a chunk! There’s still a chance we can go out to dinner with them tomorrow night & I really hope that works out.

After the notary we headed out to the notorious 8 dr. physical exam. It turned out to be a 6 dr. exam because the oncologist and psychiatrist weren’t there. The physical was NOT a big deal at all, but I’ll leave my comments about this process to that sentence only. If you want details, feel free to email me. Otherwise, I was taught that if you have nothing nice to say, don’t say anything at all. So, I won’t!

Next - - RETAIL THERAPY cured my blues! We wanted to pick up a few presents for Ilya’s 1st birthday. Anton suggested a mall close to the clinic where we had the exams. There is a very large and cute children’s store named Bananarama and we bought some stuff for as gifts for Iliya’s birthday and the other items are for the children in his group:

After that we sat in horrible traffic again on our way back to the CSS office, and then more horrible traffic from there back to the apartment. I thought my feet were going to be permanently stuck to Anton’s floorboard due to a couple near misses today. Not Anton’s fault nor would we have been injured had anything happened, but people drive way too close to each other for my comfort! A few times along the way I started feeling claustrophobic with all the cars around us.

Oh, and we saw one really funny traffic oopsie. I don’t know if I can describe this very good, but it was hilarious to see. For argument’s sake, let’s say we were going north on whatever road we were on. I wouldn’t even qualify traffic as “crawling” along because that even sounds too fast! Anyway, we eventually get to see the cause of the problem… a car had suddenly decided that instead of going north, he needed to go west and was blocking 3 lanes of traffic on a 4 lane road. He’s just sitting there almost getting T-Boned by 3 lanes of cars. No one would let him cross over that 4th lane to get out of our way. The funniest thing about this to me & Norm was that he must have been in the far right lane when he decided he needed to switch directions for whatever reason. There were no side streets he could have come from, nowhere he could have turned from to end up sitting sideways in 3 lanes! Once we got passed that, we saw a woman just stop in the middle of the right lane so she could park & go shopping. Craziness I tell you!

We also picked up a few more groceries this afternoon to get us through lunch tomorrow and sandwiches for the plane. Katia suggested we get a pizza for dinner tonight and it sounded wonderful after living off of Ramen noodles, instant soup, and Easy Mac for the week. We had her read the cooking directions to us in the store, which said to place the pizza in the oven for 8-10 minutes at whatever Celsius temp. I was super excited about our dinner plans because we didn’t have a chance to eat lunch today and I was STARVING!! So, we got back to the apartment and I took it upon myself to “cook” (remember, I told everyone awhile back that I do not cook…ever!) and then I came to a very horrible, very sad realization…we have no stinking oven here!!! You’d think after being here since Monday we would have realized this, right?! Grrrr….

While we’re on the subject of food…Want entertaining snacks while you’re in Moscow? Not much on the English speaking channels in your apartment? We have a cure! Pick up a bag of Saltletts Cocktail Mix from a Russian grocery store. As I type, Norm is enjoying picking through the bag finding crackers shaped like dolphins, stars, and fishies, and getting very excited over each one that he finds. What am I doing? Really wishing I had a slice of pizza….

We're also waiting on the courier to drop off our registration paperwork. No idea when that's gonna happen...

I can’t post without another Ilya preview. This picture, in its entirety, is one of my favorites of Ilya & Norm. Some day soon you’ll be able to see the absolute love in Ilya’s face as he stares intently into his new papa’s eyes. It is so very precious!