August Andrey

Born February 1, 2011

Adopted May 29, 2012

Today was a day we’ve waited for for months. We’ve prayed about and cried about and anxiously anticipated. Today, he’s ours.

He seemed to know it, too. You can tell me it’s just because it’s our third visit, and he’s finally comfortable with us, or because we had him stripped down to his underwear, but I’d like to think it’s because he knew that he’s part of our family now. He’s a lover and a goofball, just like the rest of us.

See what I mean about the goofball part?

He loves to be grabbed and held, just like this. Tickles are okay, too.

It made me think of an old photo of Lena. He reminded me so much of his sister in that moment. There was another moment today, playing, of course, when he reminded me so much of his brother. I was barking like a dog, and he ran away, giggling, just like Reed used to do.

Thank You, God, for a story better than one I ever could have written, for a better ending than I could have imagined. For this amazing child and the painful journey that brought us to him. 

A’s orphanage is in a park. A huge, beautiful park. Think Central Park in New York City. So, we are driving down the road today, to get to it, and there are all of these cars pulled over. We drive by them and then, both our driver and our facilitator shout something out in Russian and they proceed to back up the street! “An elk!” our facilitator tells us.

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There, she was. I think this is actually a moose, also known as a Eurasian Elk.  The funny thing is, we’ve got on lots of hikes in Moose country in the US, and people have said things like “there’s a moose! Right up there!” and by the time we get up there, it’s gone. So, in a huge city, and we finally see a moose.

Anyways, onto the reason why you read my blog…

A was not too happy to see us, again. He seems to do well once we’re away from his caregivers.

He is still just checking out Aaron. Not sure if he likes him for more than a couple of minutes. I told him that this is okay, because Reed clearly has a preference for Papa. Lena doesn’t have strong feelings either way. So A is allowed to prefer me. 🙂

A liked this little merry-go-round, but only if I would push him. Do you see how he is holding on to my finger?

My favorite part of the day, right there.

We had him try on some clothes today. By try on, I mean held them up, because he wasn’t crazy about the idea. It looks like he is in about 12m clothes. His pants and jacket set yesterday were 9-12m.

We have court tomorrow, at 10am, which is 1am Central time. Please pray that our hearing is successful and goes smoothly.

We made it to Moscow! We literally went straight from the airport to the baby house.

He was not happy to see us. I can’t blame him. We are strangers, so of course he doesn’t want to leave his nice caregiver to go with us.

But, we went outside. Our facilitator grabbed a little push tricycle for him.  He was okay with that… we pushed him around for a bit, took him out and more tears. I distracted him… this boy loves kisses, raspberries and eskimo kisses. You can tell he doesn’t quite no what to make of it, yet, so he leans in for another one.

We started to get some more tears, so I sat down on a swing with him, and just gently rocked back and forth. He made himself comfortable. And barely moved for 20 minutes. I sang to him and he just cuddled up. I am not sure if he ever actually fell asleep, but definitely close to it.

He was starting to slip off my lap a bit so I moved him. He didn’t mind.

He laid like that, until Aaron got closer to him, then he sat up, alert. He does not know what to think of Aaron. He has probably not been around too many men, especially not ones who want to play with him.  So, I put A down after a few minutes, and we walked around. He can walk independently, but is still a bit unsteady, so he prefers to hold a hand. He did not want to hold Aaron’s hand, but later reconsidered…

We spent the rest of our visit walking around and playing with the gravel, which he tried to eat.

Excited to go visit him tomorrow! Hopefully he will feel a bit more comfortable with us for the entire visit.

Today was terrible. We got to KC with an hour and a half before our flight… with only 3 United agents helping ALL of the customers. 1 of them for economy, 1 who had no clue what she was doing (“I’ve only been doing this 3 days and I don’t know what I’m doing!”), and 1 for First Class, Business, etc.

I could go into details, but I doubt that anyone really cares…

I will admit fault to say that we should have been there 2 hours early. (Which was totally my fault, laughing at Aaron, who wanted to leave at 8am, which would have gotten us there 2.5hrs before our flight). I’ve flown out of KC many times (including internationally), and taken other people to fly out of KC many times, and we’ve always found an hour to be PLENTY of time. So an  hour and a half seemed very safe.

But, there was so much wrong with the situation. Poor logistics, understaffed, undertrained staff, staff who just didn’t care, and overbooked flights. Anyone, even just walking by, could see that the whole thing was a disaster.

We heard a whole lot of blame on us… I can’t tell you how many times that they told us that we should have been there 2 hours early and the statement “I can’t do anything”. Never once did we hear an apology or any sympathy to our situation.

There are two things that a customer service rep should be decent at… 1.) Whatever it is they serve you doing. 2.) Being nice to people. I saw neither today.

Anyways, we have tickets for tomorrow. Same airline. We will arrive at the airport 3 hours early. In the very likely event that we will have way too much time, I will stand exit of the customer service counters and hand out hugs and encouraging notes like “Better luck next time!” or “Fly Southwest!”

P.S. In case you are wondering how bad it is that we are arriving in EE a day late, we will see. Please pray it’s not a big deal.