Gotcha!

(Edit to add: I typed this early this morning, but have not had time to actually post it until now! Oh well!)

He finally sleeps! And in his own crib too! I’m the only one awake at 2:42am, par for the course for me here with the time difference. It seems that unless I have a little help with my Dr. prescribed medicine, I am destined to wake up at this hour. Thankfully all goes back to normal when we return home!

Not that you were wanting to hear any of that…. Let me tell you about our Gotcha Day. The evening before we completely moved all of our stuff to our new apartment… (and you saw how much we had in the airport). It was way past 9pm when we finally had it all moved. The boys were exhausted and they went right to bed, and slept like rocks! We on the other hand had to prepare all our gifts and get our donations ready for the orphanage. I had been awake since 2am the night before, so I too was exhausted. After repacking and unpacking all our luggage and moving from one apartment to another, and wrapping and sorting and packing gifts and donations into our suitcases… we were finally ready to go to bed. (This is where all my southern friends would thow in a “Bless your Heart.” And it did need blessed by that point! Lol! Of course the biggest blessing would arrive the next day.

We awoke on Gotcha Day and prepared to head to the orphanage. Our last trip. I was tearing up in the car just thinking about this day. We arrived at the orphanage suitcases in tow. We waited again in a room for them to bring ds3 to us. When they did he just cried… he wanted nothing to do with us. My boys were a little stunned, as I am sure they had played out a much different scenario in their minds of meeting their brother for the first time. We managed to get his new clothing on, and his snowsuit (newly purchased in Russia since it has been so cold!) They did check by the way to make sure we had a snowsuit of some type, so I am glad we bought it! As I did that, Chris and our driver transferred all the clothing and shoes to a separate container. The social worker was sooo surprised at the amount of stuff we brought! She was touched.

We walked down the stairs and out of the orphanage and he did not cry at all. He slept in my arms a little bit on the drive back to our new improved apartment, and he smiled a bit at ds1 acted silly with his cap on his head. Once back at the apartment Chris ran all kinds of errands to the store to get some food, etc. We fed him cheerios, a jar of baby bananas, cereal, bread and a little formula and some arrowroot cookies. Not our best fare, but he ate it all like a champ. He walked all around the apartment and the boys entertained him sooo well! They stacked cups for him to knock down, they helped him with the connecting rings, and they just talked to him a LOT! At one point in the afternoon he gave each of us a huge hug…. So sweet!

For dinner Chris was tied up doing our final paperwork, so me being the superb cook that I am, grabbed a Gerber graduate (microwavable of course) of turkey, rice, carrots and green beans. He LOVED it, except for the green beans. We started with an appetizer of cheerios, and then moved to the main course, and had some more bread with it, and water. We naturally finished with the cookies and when Chris got home with the milk, he had some more cookies and milk. Yum! Having lived in an orphanage he eats so much and really stuffs his food, I think because he wants to make sure he gets it. So, I’m giving it to him in bits and pieces or he would shove a whole slice of Italian bread in his mouth at once.

Finally around 9pm, he fell asleep. Poor little guy actually fell asleep standing in his crib leaning on the soft rail! I peeked in and whisked him right into our bed which is where he stayed until I just woke up. He got a bit restless and so I scooped him back up and put him in the crib. He woke a few minutes later, and started to cry, but when I got out of bed and assured him we were right there, He lay back down and fell right asleep. Sweetie! He’s used to having people around all the time, so I’m sure this was a huge change for him. Overall he is doing great! Now we just need him to get used to Chris. He’s still very leary of him, and he’s been away for the day too doing paperwork etc. Hopefully tomorrow they will get more of a chance to bond, because I know Chris is soooo ready!

And THAT was our Gotcha Day, pretty smooth really. As true to our blog, I will not be sharing the names of our kiddos, but I will share a few pictures of our little man! These are from trip One, as I do not have the photos from this trip uploaded yet.