Now Filling in for Mikel
Zdrostvoytye from Russia. No, you’re not dreaming. Indeed, there is already something suspicious about today’s post. We all know Mikel has admitted he knows no Russian.
MiNYA zaVUT Fran, and I’m the substitute blogger today. Let me go ahead and offer up front my apologies about not being as funny as my husband.
Sadly, Mikel is under the weather AND we don’t have our children yet. He just took three kinds of medicines and went to bed (at 4:15 p.m.). It was important for him that we post, so I told him I might could figure out how to do this.
We don’t have our children yet (we were only scheduled to pick up Yana today anyway) because the representative from our adoption agency’s main office in the states (Seattle) flew in this morning, and her plane was delayed two hours (she’d been needing to return to Russia and wanted to shadow one of her families). Actually, our lack of children in tow is due to a confluence of factors, that being the main one. We needed to be back in the city of Novosibirsk at 2 p.m. to get some papers to one of the government offices to speed up the children’s passports. Yana’s baby home is two hours from Novosibirsk one way (otherwise we could have done it), and we couldn’t pick her up after our 2 p.m. appointment, as the baby home director must be there so that we can sign papers with her, and she leaves at 3 p.m. Whew.
We considered picking up Ruslan only today and Yana tomorrow but were steered away from this because our representatives felt like Ruslan would not be all too happy about traveling two hours one way in a car and then practically turning right around for another two-hour drive. And we didn’t want to have to hire a babysitter for the little guy or have one parent stay with him while only one picks up Yana.
For sure, we’ll get them both tomorrow! After the delay, we said “Nyet” to the idea of getting Yana on Thursday and Ruslan on Friday.
So, here we are with one more night as just us. It’s probably for the best, as Mikel is feeling worse and got about zero hours of sleep. I found four hours of sleep and then got up for the day with him at 3:30 a.m.
We ended up visiting with Ruslan for a couple hours this afternoon and then traveling to the necessary government offices to get his adoption certificate and his birth certificate and then to get some things notarized.
Today, Ruslan’s attitude toward us was vastly improved, though still not as happy-go-lucky as toward the end of our first trip to Russia one month ago. No crying today, though he seriously considered it a few times. Ditto with the happy faces. He did seem to enjoy banging on the piano, and he also demanded to be helped down the slide many times once Mikel introduced him to it. He also loved flipping through a large cloth Elmo book I’d brought along.
On our way back to the hotel, we had the driver stop off at the Anteka, or pharmacy, where our translator helped up figure out what Mikel needed. When I was at the supermarket yesterday getting food for the kids (What fun trying to figure out exactly what you’re buying when you can’t read the box! … Among other things, I think I purchased instant mashed potatoes and two types of porridge/hot cereal/oatmeal. I believe I purchased milk, hopefully whole, and I know I purchased yogurt and butter. Strangely, Yana’s diet includes hot tea and butter on bread. I’m not so sure about the tea, but I figure I could spread a thin layer of butter on a piece of bread once a day for consistency’s sake … anything to avoid the diarrhea that another adoptive mother here said she’s battling.). Anyway, in Russia, all medicines are sold in the Anteka, which is either a totally separate building or at least an individual vendor inside, say, a supermarket. All the drugs are behind the counter, so you must ask for what you want. As the lady (was she actually a pharmacist?) did not speak or understand English, it was difficult for me to describe Mikel’s symptoms or ask for a specific kind of drug in Russian. There are no Tylenols or TheraFlus or NyQuils here. So I motioned to a box that showed arrows pointing to a person’s forehead, nose and throat. Pretty good guess, I thought, but it only seemed to totally clog up Mikel’s nasal passages to the point where he couldn’t breathe and, thus, could not sleep a wink.
Hopefully, tomorrow will be a better day. We know it will be for two reasons, anyway.
MiNYA zaVUT Fran, and I’m the substitute blogger today. Let me go ahead and offer up front my apologies about not being as funny as my husband.
Sadly, Mikel is under the weather AND we don’t have our children yet. He just took three kinds of medicines and went to bed (at 4:15 p.m.). It was important for him that we post, so I told him I might could figure out how to do this.
We don’t have our children yet (we were only scheduled to pick up Yana today anyway) because the representative from our adoption agency’s main office in the states (Seattle) flew in this morning, and her plane was delayed two hours (she’d been needing to return to Russia and wanted to shadow one of her families). Actually, our lack of children in tow is due to a confluence of factors, that being the main one. We needed to be back in the city of Novosibirsk at 2 p.m. to get some papers to one of the government offices to speed up the children’s passports. Yana’s baby home is two hours from Novosibirsk one way (otherwise we could have done it), and we couldn’t pick her up after our 2 p.m. appointment, as the baby home director must be there so that we can sign papers with her, and she leaves at 3 p.m. Whew.
We considered picking up Ruslan only today and Yana tomorrow but were steered away from this because our representatives felt like Ruslan would not be all too happy about traveling two hours one way in a car and then practically turning right around for another two-hour drive. And we didn’t want to have to hire a babysitter for the little guy or have one parent stay with him while only one picks up Yana.
For sure, we’ll get them both tomorrow! After the delay, we said “Nyet” to the idea of getting Yana on Thursday and Ruslan on Friday.
So, here we are with one more night as just us. It’s probably for the best, as Mikel is feeling worse and got about zero hours of sleep. I found four hours of sleep and then got up for the day with him at 3:30 a.m.
We ended up visiting with Ruslan for a couple hours this afternoon and then traveling to the necessary government offices to get his adoption certificate and his birth certificate and then to get some things notarized.
Today, Ruslan’s attitude toward us was vastly improved, though still not as happy-go-lucky as toward the end of our first trip to Russia one month ago. No crying today, though he seriously considered it a few times. Ditto with the happy faces. He did seem to enjoy banging on the piano, and he also demanded to be helped down the slide many times once Mikel introduced him to it. He also loved flipping through a large cloth Elmo book I’d brought along.
On our way back to the hotel, we had the driver stop off at the Anteka, or pharmacy, where our translator helped up figure out what Mikel needed. When I was at the supermarket yesterday getting food for the kids (What fun trying to figure out exactly what you’re buying when you can’t read the box! … Among other things, I think I purchased instant mashed potatoes and two types of porridge/hot cereal/oatmeal. I believe I purchased milk, hopefully whole, and I know I purchased yogurt and butter. Strangely, Yana’s diet includes hot tea and butter on bread. I’m not so sure about the tea, but I figure I could spread a thin layer of butter on a piece of bread once a day for consistency’s sake … anything to avoid the diarrhea that another adoptive mother here said she’s battling.). Anyway, in Russia, all medicines are sold in the Anteka, which is either a totally separate building or at least an individual vendor inside, say, a supermarket. All the drugs are behind the counter, so you must ask for what you want. As the lady (was she actually a pharmacist?) did not speak or understand English, it was difficult for me to describe Mikel’s symptoms or ask for a specific kind of drug in Russian. There are no Tylenols or TheraFlus or NyQuils here. So I motioned to a box that showed arrows pointing to a person’s forehead, nose and throat. Pretty good guess, I thought, but it only seemed to totally clog up Mikel’s nasal passages to the point where he couldn’t breathe and, thus, could not sleep a wink.
Hopefully, tomorrow will be a better day. We know it will be for two reasons, anyway.
posted by The LeForts | 4:38 AM
1 Comments:
Fran: You did a nice job filling in for Mikel. I hope he feels better when he gets up. Keep on telling all of us what you are doing cause we all interested. By this blog, we all feel that we are some how with you.
Love Aunt Connie
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