They're finally with us. Now what?

So, there we all were, back in the hotel room after picking up the children, the four of us on the bed, all staring at each other, wondering:

"Now what?"

They brought up two cribs and put them in our room which was tiny as it was, but we stacked their hotel furtniture in a corner and have somehow made room. I'm sure the kids are saying to themselves, "Geez, you break us out of the orphanage, and bring us here? we had more room in the baby home? This is supposed to be a better life?"

After crying before he left the baby home, Ruslan was perfect the rest of the evening, his demeanor switching between docile to waterbug. Yana, however, who we had never seen cry in all of our visits to the baby home, and who had never cried on the two-hour trip back from Cherepanov, now decided to showcase her vocal skills. It may have had something to do with a rash she seems to have on her back and chest, or it could be mom and dad's parenting skills.

We tried to put both children down for a nap at about 4 p.m., more for our sake than theirs, but they had gone without their usual 12-3 nap. But apparently "putting the child down" is not as easy as the phrase suggests. We figured just by putting them in the crib, they would immediately lay down and go to sleep.

Hah.

Ruslan began trying to climb out, and thought it was pretty funny how his momma nearly had a heart attack every time he got his leg up and nearly over the top.

Yana, meanwhile, let us know that being penned up in a crib was not her idea of a good time. she also showed us that she is a much better and more connsistent crier than her brother. She belted out a cry which lasted over an hour. Fran tried to read to her, sing to her, speak to her in Russian, ignore her, stroke her back ... nothing seemed to help. Finally Fran gave up and went into the bathroom and then began cleaning up the room ... and Yana laid down and fell asleep, probbably out of sheer exhaustion.

I then tried something novel to get ruslan to sleep. I layed him down in the crib, and tucked him in. All of sudden, he went from jungle monkey to sleeping child in a second.

Amazing.

We let them sleep for an hour and half, for us to catch our breath, then momma fed them and we let them play kinda late so that they would fall asleep and sleep through the night. Well it's 4 a.m. and they are still sleeping, so that's a good sign.

What a first day. And not even a full first day.

Don't tell me every day is going to be this exhausting?