Some Initial Attachment

We have been away from the apartment all day from 8 am to 7 pm, with 5 hours of that being travel time, either walking or navigating a foreign subway system. We are both very tired! Our orphanage visits were from 9:30 to 11:30 and then 3:30 to 5:30.

We thought we would try some more fruit with the kids, so this morning we brought banana and this afternoon, an orange. They both wolfed down the banana and Maya loved the orange. Tristan did not! He is definitely my son! :)

We are running out of new tricks for the kids, but they still seem to love all the old ones. We tried "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes" and they weren't too sure about that. We did bubbles with Maya's group this time. They are older and pretty much clobbered each other trying to get to the bubbles.

One of the best/heart wrenching moments was when we dropped off Tristan to his gruppa in the morning and they let us come in to watch him eat and be put down for his nap. First he had to change his shoes to inside shoes, then the caregiver washed his hands and face, then she put on his bib and he sat down with the other cute little munchkins and began to eat brown, murky stuff with a really large spoon. The caregivers were helping a few of the slower ones so that it would go faster. Jeff was sitting by Tristan and at one point Tristan reached out to Jeff for a little reassuring touch. It was so sweet! Then when he was almost done eating, I went over and sat by him and he handed me the spoon so that I could help him. It was fun to feed him the last few bites.

After he was cleaned up, he asked Jeff to pick him up and motioned that he wanted to go back outside. We told him it was time to take his nap, and tears filled his eyes! I wanted to cry too. We took him in the bedroom where the caregivers were taking off all the children's clothes--they just slept in their diapers. He was so sad while we helped do this and he whimpered as he climbed into his bed and they put the little comforter over him. He started sucking his left thumb while we told him that we loved him and said paka (bye-bye). When we were there this afternoon, the caregiver came up to us and told us that he kept saying "Mama, Papa" when he was going to sleep! I am so ready to just take them home!!!

In between our visits we decided to go see the Tretyakov Gallery, but then we got distracted when we realized it was near the address for our church here in Moscow. We decided to track this down as we plan to go on Sunday. We did it too! I had my doubts that we would actually be able to find a Russian address, but we did after I asked 3 different people for directions. :) The guard at the front finally let us in when we convinced him we belonged there, and after several unsuccessful attempts to find out what times the meetings were, he directed us up to the 3rd floor where we found a senior missionary couple from Idaho! Yeah! We talked to them for a long time and they invited us to go on a day trip with them tomorrow to see Tolstoy's Country Estate, so we might do that tomorrow.

Orphanage 3 has all these beautiful murals. I love them!

Here are the "Pansy Pictures." When we were here last time there were pansies everywhere and everywhere we looked people were taking their photos in front of them, like they were some sort of prized orchid or a historic landmark. We decided we couldn't take a trip to Moscow and not participate in this tradition. Besides, they WERE pretty. :)