UPDATE 5: New people / new places

Elena is still uncomfortable when she goes places that are big or loud or have too many people.  We're slowly getting her accustomed to visiting other places, but it takes some time.

Remember that she's used to a relatively quiet, predictable, and regimented life in an orphanage.  Doing different things or going different places--something we take for granted--is something that's a new experience for her.

In small doses, though, she's OK.  I've brought her shopping a number of times, and she's usually pretty good about that.  She likes riding in the cart, and I think rolling down aisles while facing me makes even a large grocery or department store seem smaller, because she can concentrate on a small space.

We just brought her on her first restaurant trip (not counting supper in the DC airport seven hours past her bedtime).  Not a restaurant-restaurant, but a fast-food-restaurant.  The Wendy's in Hamtramck, to be precise.  Elena was mostly OK, but the large and bright dining room (it was sunny outside) was clearly overstimulating, even though there were only a handful of people inside.  It didn't help that the women in front of us, although nice enough, seemed not to grasp the "fast" part of "fast food," and spent a full 7-8 minutes clarifying various menu options.  Elena took a little walk, though, and was pretty good once we sat down.  She got gradually more and more antsy, so we cut the visit a little short, but she did make credible headway into her chicken nuggets and fries, so I think that counts as a success.

Large numbers of people are still overwhelming, though.  We attended a small Thanksgiving gathering at Auntie Mary's house, and Elena kept out of the way and stayed with just two or three people the whoe time--seeing all eight or nine people was a little much.  Contrariwise, we went to a friend's house, and eight or nine people gathered in the kitched was instantly way too much--too many people, all talking, in a small place.  There, we spent some time outside and left soon after.

We just spent dinnertime yesterday at Auntie Val's house (with cousin Helen).  This was the second visit there.  The first time, it took Elena a half hour or so to feel comfortable (she actually kept her coat on for a while, I assume so that she could make a dash for it if need be).  This time it took only about 30 seconds, due in part to Helen's new tramopline, which Elena thought was wonderful.  She's now asking when we can go back.

Then and now

August 2011: Kotlas, Russia

December  2011: Detroit USA

Merry Christmas

This is Elena's first Christmas here in the US.  We opted this year for what we call a "more traditional and natural Christmas tree" but one that most would call a "Charlie Brown Christmas tree."  It's main selling point with us was that it was lightweight and Andy could easily carry it tucked under one arm, while I carried Elena back to the car.  She quickly got overwhelmed (as we suspected she might) at the busy farmer's market and we made a quick exit--but with a tree!

Though it is less than beautiful, it still has room for presents underneath. Thinking that we didn't want to get someone too excited, we waited until Christmas Eve to put gifts underneath.  Hilariously, Elena didn't actually notice (or, rather, didn't categorize the new boxes in the "things to open" category) until we pointed them out on Christmas morning, even after running round and round right past them about a dozen times or more on Christmas Eve.

Anyway, let's see some pictures:

Christmas morning. Can we start now?

We bought a large sized, 10-doll set of matroyshka dolls on Ebay and used the biggest ones as gift containers.  Elena likes these.  She calls them "kuklas"--Russian for "doll".

Elena opening a scary fish bath toy; gift courtesy of Liam Monoghan.

 More pictures after the break:

UPDATE 4: Television

According to the staff, the kids in the orphanage would occasionally watch music-themed cartoons during their music class.  Now that we're back home, we haven't exposed Elena to much television.  That's not from any deep discomfort in the idea, but more just because our television is up in the attic, away from the rest of the house, and it's inconvenient to head on up there.  We tend not to watch much TV.

There have been a few exceptions, however.

One is watching football.  I took Elena upstairs with me to watch part of a game.  We've blocked off the attic stairs with a baby gate (they're pretty steep), so it was new and exciting territory for her.  I flipped on the television and told her what to watch.  The conversation went something like this:

"Ready, Elena? Ready? Watch...go! Run-run-run-run-run-BOOM."
"OooOOOooooo." (Delighted laugh) "More football?"
"Sure. Wait a minute. Ready?..."

Repeated a few dozen times.  She eventually tired of watching the screen, but the upstairs was still novel, and she played up there for a half hour or so.  After that, she's asked to "watch football?" multiple times, and we've done so occasionally.  I half-suspect that she thinks "football" might mean "television," but she's also correctly identified football on the radio, so perhaps not.

The other exception is watching Russian cartoons via YouTube.  We thought she might recognize some, and at least be familiar with the cadence of the language.  We started with Cheburashka, an iconic Soviet stop-motion cartoon.  It's supposedly as familair to Russians as Bugs Bunny or Cookie Monster would be to Americans.  We bought a talking Cheburashka doll in Moscow (which Elena loves), so it was an easy place to start.  Elena sat on my lap and we watched a few episodes on YouTube. She liked them, but there aren't very many, so as I was looking around for more, I stumbled across "Masha i Medved."

Cheburashka doll

"Masha i Medved" ("Masha and the Bear"" is a pretty recent 3D cartoon; you can check out on this Youtube channel, or, if you're daring, on the official Russian "Masha i Medved" page (ummm... ignore the advertisements on the right-hand side).  My personal favorite episode is "Ski!": beautifully told in reverse, from different viewpoints and with almost no words.  Teresa likes the "Masha and Kasha" episode.  (kasha is oatmeal.)  Masha i Medved is based on a traditional Russian folktale about a girl who wanders into the woods and stumbles upon a bear's house.  The cartoon version is something of a twist, though; as a hint, Masha calls the bear "Mishka," which means "teddy bear" as opposed to a real bear. 

Masha

In any case, Lena loves the cartoon.  In part, I suspect, because she identifies with the main character.  Here, see for yourself:

Masha i Lena

So this prompted a Christmas gift this year: Elena's getting a small portable DVD player and a couple Russian DVDs, so she can watch Masha (or Cheburashka) most any time she wants.

Merry Christmas.

UPDATE 3: Pictures (but not what you think)

This isn't what you think because it's not about us taking pictures of Elena, it's about Elena looking at the pictures we took. We've taken a lot of pictures of her at different times: in the orphanage, in Moscow, and here at home with the idea of documenting things for her, as best we can.  The pictures tell her story--at least part of it.  We want her to remember her story, understand her story, and think about it when she needs to.

Like I said, we have a  lot of pictures; the best ones you've seen posted on the blog here.  So we collected the ones we thought would be most important for Elena and made them into a book:

Elena's book

We used Blurb to print the book--they have a downloadable program where you can drag-and-drop pictures into formatted pages, and the final product is pretty high-quality.  We tried to organize the pictures so that they tell the story from Elena's perspective.  We made four copies: one for Elena to look through now, one to keep for her for later, and two more for the grandparents (so if you know the grandparents, ask them for a peek!)

An interesting thing about the book is not just the pictures, but which ones Elena pays attention to.  We've paged through the book numerous times, and there are a handful of pictures Elena returns to.  First are the pictures at the very front that show her playroom in the orphanage.  Elena points out the toys in the room that are on the shelves behind the kids. A doll stroller, a little telephone, play spoons and teapot. There are not too many toys there for the kids to play with.  In that same section of the book she also asks to see the pictures we have of "snacktime" at the orphanage, with her and the other children at their little tables eating wafer cookies and pears.

Next are the handful of pictures at the very back that show her bedroom in our house.  I think Elena likes having a bedroom of her own, but she also likes the recursive nature of sitting in her bedroom chair and pointing out the picture of her bedroom chair, as well as the other objects in the room.

She usually looks at the picture of the small propeller airplane that flies from Kotlas to Arkhangelsk.  I like to think she recognizes that flight as an exciting, new point in her life.  But she repeats the droning propeller noise, so it may just be that she was favorably  impressed by how boneshakingly loud it was on that plane:)  RRRROWWWRRROOWWWRRROOWWW! 

She also likes the couple pictures of her in the bathtub  that were taken when we stayed in the fancy Moscow hotel.  For whatever reason, bathtime is one of her favorite times of the day, so seeing herself in the bath is a plus.  Those baths in Moscow were probably her very first to be enjoyable, where she could take time, feel relaxed and play with someone in the warm water.  I'm pretty sure the orphanage schedule and budget leave no room for bath fun and toys.

Over the years, the pictures she notices and feel most important to her will probably change as her outlook, emotions and knowledge grow and mature.

UPDATE 2: Food preferences

I've had a couple posts on food preferences, and now that we've had some time to experiment, it's time for an update.

The neat thing, from my perspective, is that Elena's pretty game to try new foods.  Sometimes she won't like the new thing, and she'll spit it back out (neatly, into my hand, or a napkin), but the important thing is she's game to try.  And she's liked a suprisingly wide variety of things so far.  About the only things she consistently turns down are spicy or pungent foods.  She's not a fan of hot sauce or spiced foods of any variety, and there's a limit on how flavorful a cheese can get before she turns it down.  She loves pointing and calling calling hot sauce "eh-ooh-ur-ee-ah-ook-[make a face, frown]"  Huzzah for onomatopoeia.)  

After trying horse radish, it was a "Nyet" for a minute of watery eyes, then it was a Da.  "More!" "Are you sure Elena?", and she said "Da, Fun!"  Its hard to predict what she will like.

Also--and this is probably not surprising to many of you--her like of certain foods is situational.  She's more apt to request more of something when she's grazing, or if trying a food when helping with cooking or baking--she likes to sample ingedients to become part of the process herself.  As an example, she's perfectly happy sampling a raw carrot when Teresa's making a salad, but no way will she eat one as part of a meal.  If she can pick it herself she is more likely to eat a little of it--tomatoes, arugula and cabbage are examples, but not brocolli.

As for her favorite foods, she's a big fan of milk products.  Milk itself, of course, but she also likes mild cheeses, and she especially likes sour cream and yogurt (even unsweetened).  I think she enjoys the texture of the yogurt more than anything.  At first she only liked the dry-mix-made milk.  We suspect that was what she had at the orphanage, but now she drinks regular vitamin D milk from the store.

Meat products are a little more difficult.  There are a few things she'll eat without any real enthusiasm, and we were hard pressed to find anything she liked until (at the suggestion of multiple sources) we gave her some chicken nuggets.  Those were a big hit.  We also found  these little meat pies from a local Russian market that she likes.  I'm a bit suprised at that, because the meat is noticably spiced (although not "hot").  I suspect she likes, in part, the experience of holding the meatpie and biting off pieces.  Maybe the pies are a familiar flavor from Russia?

However, we've had better luck with non-meat protein sources.  Eggs she likes, and peanut butter, and she'll even eat hoummus (the texture thing again, I think).  However, her absolute favorite new food bar none so far is refried beans.  I doubt she got a lot of refried beans in the orphanage (not a huge Mexican immigrant population in northern Russia), but when we get takout Mexican (from Mi Pueblo, which she hilariously pronounces as "Ne Plop-plop") she will demolish the rice and beans. 

Oh!...and she still loves caviar. "Ikra" in Russian, which she pronounces "Eeka".

Elena's usually pretty good about bread products; I think she's only turned down crusty bread that's hard to bite off and chew.  Tortilla chips are also a big hit, so she's turning into quite the Mexican food lover.

Fruits of course are much easier to feed her than vegetables.  Fresh fruit, juice, or applesauce are all welcomed; vegetables, barring the occasional grazing during food prep, not so much.  Bananas and pears are OK but not oranges,  "Nye apleseen-(no orange)!"  We did find a Gerber toddler's stew with a nice mix of meat, pasta, and vegetables that Elena likes.  She's been eating that quite a bit, mostly for the vegetables while we find things to expand her accepted menu, but recently has shown signs of being sick of the stuff.  And, interestingly, she loves spinach pie.  Go figure.

And, of course, desserts haven't been much of a problem.  She has, I think, only recently discovered chocolate and adores it; even the faintly bitter high-cocoa-content stuff.

UPDATE 1: Language

It's been a while since we've updated this blog, and that's mostly on purpose:  the intention of the blog was to let people know how our trips to Russia were panning out; now that we're home, I don't really want to turn it into a "funny thing our kid did today" blog.

But there are still some things that are related to travel, and Russia, and orphanages, that are interesting, so I'll do some occasional updates.  The first one is on language.

Probably the most common question we get asked is how well we can communicate with Elena, and how quickly she's learning English.  I'm going to answer that question, in the form of "Tips for parents thinking of adopting Russian chlidren."

TIP 1: Buy a Russian-for-adoptive-parents book.  We bought "Russian Phrases for Children;" it includes two pocket-sized phrasebooks (one for each parent!) and an audio CD.  The phrasebooks (and CD) are divided up by use: basic questions (are you hungry?), directives (come here), endearments (sweetie), and the like, so it's pretty easy to find what you want.  We memorized a few phrases and were able to look up more, so we could actually hold a mini-conversation with Elena in Russian right away.  Totally worth the money, because it really smoothed the language barrier.

TIP 2: Memorize a few basic words.  It's not that hard.  Yes and no.  Come here.  Would you like this?  What's that?  Who, what, where.  Hungry, thirsty, pee, poop.  Hi, bye.  That collection of words got us a long way in communication.

TIP 3: сказать.  "сказать" is Russian for "say," as in "say please."  That's one word that *wasn't* in our phrasebook, yet is extraordinarily useful.  How can you teach English without asking someone to say the Englich word?

TIP 4: Caca.  Yeah, caca, but not what you think.  (more after the jump)

Our Russian Travels

For those of you following along at home, here's a map of Russia, with place tags in all four cities we visited: St Petersburg, Arkhangelsk (where the court hearing was), Kotlas (where Elena lived), and Moscow.

Or click here to view our travels in a larger map.

The interactive map here is fun because it gives a sense of scale--there are hundreds of miles between each of the four cities, but within each city we walked around to see the sights.

I'm a manly man (or: Food Preferences, Part II)

When we have canned coffee, we buy Cafe du Monde.  It's a strong, dark roast cut with chickory, and intended to to be served as cafe au lait (mixed half-and-half with milk).  I'm a manly man, though, and I drink my coffee straight and black.  The Cafe du Monde is pretty dark and bitter that way, but I like my coffee like that.

So we were sitting around in the morning after breakfast, and Elena wanted to try what Dad was drinking.  My coffee was cool by then, and I knew there was no way she'd like such a strong bitter flavor, so I gave her a taste.

Of course she liked it, and immediately demanded her own cuppa joe.

Conclusion: I'm approximately as manly as a two-year-old girl.

Food preferences

For anyone who is or has been the parent of a toddler, the notion that the kid has his or her own food preferences isn't surprising.  We were a little concerned, however, because Elena presumably has a set of preferences that we we're not familiar with.  So far, though, we're doing OK as we discover things she already likes, or new things she's excited about.  The approved list isn't all that surprising: oatmeal, milk, fruit juice, most fruit, peanut butter, bread, eggs, stuff like that.

Supposedly, though, she ate fish in Russia, and so far we haven't found any fish or seafood she likes...with one exception.

The last few days we were in Moscow, we ordered a lot of room service, because it was convenient and private, if not overly cheap.  For one supper, I ordered a "cold fish" appetizer, with an assortment of four cold fishy treats. (Preserved fish seems to be more common, and cheaper, in Russia than here in hte US.)  I offered Elena a taste of each.

Did she like the sweetened eel (actually pretty good: think like Chinese sweet and sour meats)?  I thought kids have a sweet tooth, and she might like it. Nope, she spit it out.

Did she like the smoked salmon?  It was mild and soft, and seemed like the perfect fish for a toddler. Nope, she spit it out..

Did she like the salted cod?  A little strongly salted, but she might like the salt.  Nope, she spit it out.

So what did she like? This:

Yup; she loved the fresh caviar.

I checked prices yesterday here in the US: an ounce of tinned caviar goes for about $8.50 (or $136 a pound).  Fresh caviar is $30 an ounce: $480 a pound.

Home again, home again, jiggity jig

We have, of course, been come for a week or so now, but haven't been as conscientious about taking pictures as we were when we were foreign tourists.   Here are a few pictures, though:

Posing with a handpuppet monster.

The shirt reads "I love shopping" in Russian.
"Shopping" is even phonetic.

Playing with a complex marble toy in her room.
(Thanks to Liam and Madeleine for the toy!)
Teresa's showing Elena how it's done
(or possibly the other way around).

Modeling mom's shoes with dad's hat and mom's hat.

There's no such thing as too much accessorization.

(She did this herself, by the way--no prepping or suggestions.)

USA! USA!

Elena is a Russian citizen, and will retain that Russian citizenship for life, unless she formally renounces it.

She's also, now, a naturalized US citizen.  The way this works is IF:
(a) a child is under 18,
(b) she's legally adopted by a US citizen, and
(c) all the paperwork is completed so she can legally emigrate to the United States as a permanent resident alien (on a green card, in other words)

THEN she's automatically a US citizen the minute the plane touches down on US soil.

That means Elena had to travel between Moscow and Washington DC an a Russian passport as a Russian citizen, but now she's got dual citizenship.

We actually sort of marked the moment she gained US citizenship.  This was the end of a pretty long flight, and Elena was getting more than a bit fussy.  However, the end of the flight has all sorts of bumps and dips and noises as the plane approaches the runway, and Elena likes the novelty, so she was paying attention.

As we were just about to touch down, I started psyching her up with "ready? ready? ready?..." and then kaBUMP! we landed, I said "NOW!", the pilot started decelerating, and at the same time the hydraulic flap control lines started vibrating the roof of the cabin.

Elena liked the kaBUMP and the overhead hydraulic whine, so the second we touched down, her finger shot up to point at the roof and she went, "OOOOOOOooooooo!"

Welcome to America, kid.  You're a citizen now; it's your country, too.

Elena's Russian passport picture

Photos With Stories

The Plastic Bag Shapka (hat).

Elena likes to wear hats.  For most of the year, Russian kids wear hats when they are outside.  She decided that the plastic bag from the airplane blanket made a very good head covering. I rolled it up to make it cute (and safe),but had to take it off regularly when her hair got super sweaty.  Later when walking Elena around the plane to keep from getting bonker stir crazy, the stewardess recognized her, (when sans the bag for a little while),as "the baby who had on the funny hat".

 

Brushing Teeth at Dulles Airport in Washington DC.

You know things are at a very low point when brushing your teeth is the most amusing and fun thing you can do.  The next on the list of enjoyable things was going to the bathroom.  This was during the extra 3 hours of plane delay that was added onto our 16 hour trip.  Oh it was awful.

At Saint Basil's Cathedral in Moscow.

The trip to Saint Basils Cathedral was about a 3 mile round trip from our hotel.  Not a bad distance to walk on a beautiful day.  I thought that someday Elena would like a picture of herself in front of one the worlds most beautiful and iconic buildings, so we ventured out.  We figured if it was not going to work out we could go back anytime--no big deal. It was also practice for walking through the airports later, when getting places in a timely manner as planned IS a big deal.  I had to carry Elena the whole way.  She only weighs about as much as 3 gallons of whole milk, (25 pounds) but milk does not throw your glasses on the ground, stuff a hat in your face, squirm, scream NYET! NYET! NYET! when ready for a raisin snack break, or want to get down to pick up pieces of paper (bumaga!!!!).  After lots of rest breaks and raisin breaks for Elena we made it!!

Presenting: Miss Elena Ekaterina

I just flew in from Moscow, and boy are my arms tired

We finally got back home at 10:30 or so last night (Detroit time), 25 hours after we woke up in the Hotel Peking in Moscow.  Elena's going through a "clinging to mommy" stage, which is perfectly natural, but which includes the bonus "expecting mommy to carry her."  Distances in airports can be quite substantial, and the line for security screening in Washington DC was insanely long, so Teresa's arms really are pretty sore.

Elena actually took the airplane flights pretty well, especially considering she's two years old.  She slept the first couple hours of our Moscow-to-DC flight, and the entire DC-to-Detroit flight.  She started to get really fidgity at the end of the Moscow-to-DC leg, but it's a 10-1/2 hour flight, so most of the adults were feeling the same way.  Most of the adults, however, could restrain themselves from running randomly around the plane, but Elena needed a little help in that department, so it's not like it was a completely uneventful flight by any stretch.

Although the flights were mostly OK, the airports were pretty stressful.  The Moscow airport was crowded and noisy, and way overstimulating for someone used to a regimented routine in a quiet orphanage.  As I mentioned before, the immigration, customs, and especially security waits in DC were completely insane, and Elena melted down in the security line.  Then our DC-to-Detroit flight was delayed for three hours, so we got to spend a lot of extra time waiting in a large, overstimulating gate area.  She finally fell asleep at 7:30 Eastern time, just before the plane started boarding.  That's 3:30 Moscow time, exactly seven hours after her bedtime.

Still, the whole trip was far better than I feared it would be. (We were talking to another couple in the Moscow airport who had adopted a Russian boy three years ago.  On the trip to the US, he repeatedly threw up, developed hives, and screamed the entire way.  Seriously.)

We're back in Moscow

Elena did arrive on Thursday morning as expected, and all three of us have been doing family-type stuff for the last three days, which is a novelty to all of us.  Unfortunately, the hotel internet went down, so we weren't able to post anything until now; and the computer facilities in this hotel won't let me connect the camera, so pictures will have to wait until we get home.

The first day Teresa and I had to figure out exactly what Elena was like (and I'm sure she was figuring out what we were like). What does she eat?  How much?  When, exactly?  Does it matter?  What is she afraid of? How can we tell if she's sad or scared or angry?  Can we do all this without really knowing much Russian?

It actually turned out easier than I expected it to be.  We made a few mistakes at first, and there were a few miscommunications, but we all lived through the first day, and there weren't even any major incidents.  Elena's much better behaved than I thought she would be (ummm...for now, at least).  Her attention span is short, as you whould expect, but she doesn't throw many tantrums, and takes the occasional "nyet" with equanimity.  She sometimes even obeys.  We've mostly been eating in our room for meals, and she's not that messy of an eater.

We evidently know enough Russian.  It's suprising (at least to me) how far you can extend a conversation using only four or five differnt words, most of them nouns.  It's still a little frustrating, because there's an awful lot of personality within the little person, and we can't quite see all of it.  But she's learning English at approximately the same rate we're learning Russian (lesson for anyone adopting in the future: "сказать" (skaZAT, meaning "say") is an awfully useful word.  Lena, сказать 'dog.' Lena, сказать 'up.' Lena, сказать 'down.' Lena, сказать 'mama.' and so forth.
Anyway, we stayed in Arkhangelsk until Saturday morning, then flew back here to Moscow.  We're staying in the Hotel Peking, a half-mile down the street from the US embassy and a mile from Red Square.  The hotel gives families adopting kids a discount: we've got a fairly large suite with a monstrous bathroom far only a few rubles more than we paid for a conventional double in the same hotel last week.
We'll be in Moscow through Tuesday (when we pick up a visa from the embassy) and we'll fly back to the US on Wednesday.

We're hanging around in Arkhangelsk

We've got a vouple days here in Arkhangelsk to kill, so we're exploring parts of the city.  We spent a couple hours at the city's History Museum.  All the exhibits were labelled in Russian, so we weren't able to understand everything completely, but the exhibits were grouped well enough both thematically and chronologically that it was suprisingly interesting for foreigners like us.  A few of the docents didn't quite belive in our inability to speak Russian, so we got some pretty detailed explanations on local fauna, of which 99% was beyond our Russian capacity.

Some of the more interesting displays were from the early Soviet era.  Here's a couple closeups of a carved bone chess set from the early 1930s.  The evil capitalist bourgeousie:

 And the good hard-working proletariat:

Peter the Great designated Arkhangelsk a center for shipbuilding in the late 1600s.  As far as I know, they still make ships here.  The museum has a pretty extensive collection of craftsman's models of ships of many different ships from different eras.  The flat-bottomed craft at the top is (I think) a river barge.  The longer ship at the bottom is opened up to show the inner construction.

We also did a little shopping.  We found a fairly large bookstore with kid's books and games, and picked up a couple puzzles and a couple books:

Clockwise from the top, the items are: a large insect-themed 1-10 number puzzle, a wooden telephone puzzle (bolshoi to malinki sized), the book of happy vegetable rhymes, and a "what do animals eat for lunch?" book.

The view out our hotel window

We're staying in the Pur Navolok Hotel in Arkhangelsk.  It's right on the Dvina River, but we've got a "courtyard room," which is a nice way of saying the rear parking lot.

We've got a corner room, which is nice, but the view out our hotel window seems a little on the non-picturesque side, doesn't it?  The best view of the Dvina River we have is a little slice between a stand of trees and a few buildings.

 Well, the view is actually more interesting than you might think.  The obscured dome in the picture above is actually this building, part of the Gostiniy Dvor:

The Gostiniy Dvor was built back in about 1680, when Arkhangelsk was Russia's major port city, and served as the area's cargo trading center.

Not so many places in the US where one's hotel room overlooks a building quite so old.

It's raining in Moscow

We did get to spend a day-and-a-half in Moscow.  Unfortunately, the whole day-and-a-half was pretty much unremittent drizzle.  But we squelched our way through the city anyway.

Here's one one of the entrances into Red Square.  St Basil's, in the background, is obscured by the rain

Here's a closer view of St. Basil's, which is located on the south side of Red Square..

The walls of the Kremlin:

Soviet workers at the New Tretyakov Museum of Modern Art. 

We're waiting a bit longer...

...but only a little bit.

We're in Arkhangelsk, after flying in this morning from Moscow.  There's paperwork to do, but not very much of it.  We had thought we'd be able to pick up Elena on Tuesday, or Wednesday at the latest, but it turns out we'll have to wait until Thursday.  So we get to cool out heels in Arkhangelsk for two-and-a-half days or so.

Big Trips Big Changes

I'm getting nervous about keeping a child safe in Moscow! Its the NYC of Russia. Never been to NYC or Moscow before.   Exciting, scary!

Yes, many things are just common sense, but so much will be new for all of us.  Tired people don't always make the best descisions.   Just getting food will present logistical difficulties in a strange city.  I know russian food words at least...We will be getting to know each other in hotel rooms in 2 different cities, then survive a gauntlet of airports and long plane trips.   We bought lots of good snacks to dole out.

We will take more pictures during trip #3.  Its a fairly long trip, 12 days.  All of that wonderful huge Russian country is Elena's heritage.  Some things are already a part of her like the memories of favorite people, favorite foods, the sound of the language.  She will like to see pictures of everyday activities:  like markets, trains, parks, buildings etc...as well as a photo of her at Red Square(I hope).  She will always remember living in a place that overlooked a large, beautiful river. 

Lots of work/fun when we get home. I bought her a bathing suit at the thrift store--maybe we can use it once or twice before it gets cold.  I am working on making Russian style soups and salads.  They are really good.

T

Elena's New Blanket

We asked Martha Bishop to make a cozy blanket for Elena.  She crafts amazing textiles from recycled sweaters that she finds at thrift stores.  THANKS MARTHA--it turned out wonderful!  It will go along with us to Russia!  It is pictured sitting on a comfortable chair in Elena's room with Spud and Tater, two stuffed kitties I made from reused sweaters.

T.

Souvenir Magnets

These magnets show the official seals of Arkhangelsk and Kotlas.  A favorite local character of Arkhangelsk is the tasty Halibut (called Paltus locally), and The city of Kotlas loves the Red Star train that used to go to Moscow in the Soviet days.

Dvina River Geology Lessons from the Plane

You can see thousands of years of the Dvina River's history written in this beautiful succession of meanders and oxbows.  This is near Kotlas where the baby house is --400 miles from Arkhangelsk and the White sea.

Little towns nestled within the many channels of the Dvina River.  The river is even bigger further north 50 miles or so, where the delta expands and empties into the White Sea.

You can see why fresh fish is on the menu for every meal in the area!  YUM!!

Some Pictures from Kotlas and Arkhangelsk

The plane flights from Arhkangelsk to Kotlas are only twice a week.  I like the "porthole" windows on this vintage plane.  You load your own luggage on and off the plane in the small Kotlas airport.

While in Kotlas we use some of our time to get ready for court

We saw this spectacular, folk art inspired car in Arhkangelsk.  These flower motifs are usually painted on wooden bowls.

After the stress of court it was nice to relax for a while during a good meal.  The waitresses were patient with our limited Russian vocabulary.  The ikra and piva were excellent!  (caviar n beer) Then we got on a plane to Saint Petersburg.

A wedding custom in Arkhangelsk is to put a special lock on the bridge to the church.  You can see the couples' names and marriage dates.  There are hundreds edging the bridge.  I like the log cabin lock best.