Day 14 - & Pre-Court News

Today dawned a bit cloudy but turned out beautiful! We have not had any rain since we arrived (just a 5 minute drizzle one day) but it has cooled off a bit.

First news first, we have pre-court on Monday! We are quite happy about this and hope that final court will be scheduled shortly thereafter. We learned that we will have separate court proceedings for the boys since they are from different baby houses. I believe these will be one right after the other. We are so excited!

We met with Patrick’s doctor today and just received the general run down of his health. Basically, nothing to worry about – aside from occasional colds he is very healthy. He crawled at 8 months, walked at 13 months, and had his first tooth at 7 months (he has about 8 teeth now). He currently weighs 10 kilos 100 grams – about 22 lbs! He is nearly 3 kilos (6.6 lbs.) larger than Calvin and is 3 months younger. Yeah, he’s a little chunk! :) He was super happy today and came running to me when we arrived. Our translator was with us today and commented on his beautiful eyes. They are unbelievably stunning (not that we are biased :) and he has very long, thick eyelashes. He turns 14 months tomorrow. His birthday is July 29. They asked us what we will name him and so the caregivers started to call him Patrick…very nice of them! We brought some medicine for his cold and we had bought some the doctor wanted him to have – well, they took all that we brought and asked to use it for all the children. We said sure but I’m kicking myself for having brought the saline spray little noses. Calvin really needs it and I only brought one bottle which I will never see again. Oh well, hopefully we will be home before too long.

We spent time packing today to move to the apartment. The hotel is buzzing with preparations for next week. We wonder who we cross paths with and don’t know it. “They” (whoever that is) have commandeered our phone line for something (computers, security?). I guess the hotel said they will come and find us if anyone calls. After receiving a call in the restaurant, I believe them!

Okay, we are ready to move now! We came back from visiting Calvin and there were two police officers at the door of our hotel. Our translator turned around and looked at us and said she would watch for us to go in. We headed to the door and they wouldn’t let us enter. We were with another couple and we all showed our room keys. Ilmira had to get out of the car to talk to them for us. They wanted us to open our bags so they could search them. We only had our diaper bag but it had some important things in it besides baby stuff…thankfully they did not dig around. They let us go inside but detained the other couple a little longer. So we aren’t sure who is here at the hotel. We know the president of Russia is not supposed to be here until Monday.

Calvin was not a happy camper today. He was screaming before we even picked him up – we could hear him. He did not seem pleased to see us at first and threw a huge fit. We have no idea why except that he was thirsty and we suspect he does not like the fact that we leave him each day and only see him once a day. He did pretty well and played with toys and had his snack but at the end he became very angry again. When Andrew dropped him off, he started screaming and crying immediately. Not sure what’s going on in that little head. We really just want to get him into a stable environment. I think it’s really hard on the kids to constantly be left. We feel so bad for him – we have such a great time for most of the visit and feel awful when he gets so upset.

Tonight we had Marie and Tomas from Oregon for dinner. They are adopting a baby boy. I made meat and potato stuffed tortellini type things (from the freezer) with a red sauce to which I added sautéed onion and carrot. Everyone seemed to like it! We also had sheep cheese, Swiss cheese, pomegranate, kiwi, orange, and bread. It was so relaxing and nice. We are all looking forward to pre-court on Monday!

We hope to continue with our blogging but aren’t sure what our access will be when we move to the apartment. So please bear with us. We still will love to hear from you and will do our best to keep you updated.