Our 3rd visit today. Again, first thing, I fed her. I try to make it fun, but I am not sure if it is helping or hurting. She and her nanny were going back and forth (in Russian), “Yucky!” “Yummy!” “Yucky!” “Yummy!” I imagine it is pretty yucky… it smells like wet dog food… and the whole idea of oatmeal with pureed meat does not sound appealing either.  She eats that and some speckled small egg… anyone want to guess what kind of egg it is? We will have the translation tomorrow. I also taught her the sign for eat. She tried to do it right away and said “aeeeet”.

I pretend to eat it along with her.

Another doctor came in who spoke fluent English and asked if we had any questions. I don’t think anyone had told her that I already asked the other doctor about 50 questions, since she seemed to think I did not know much. Really, between the medical documents we’ve gotten and our questions to the nanny and her other doctor, I felt like my questions had been answered. This doctor also gave me her phone and email address, in case we or our doctors have any questions.

This was her favorite toy of the day. I asked if we could measure her, but they had just measured her this morning. Her nanny remembered the measurements and told them to us. She is the same height as Lena and about 5lbs heavier! Lena has a very slim build, so this is not surprising. Alyona’s measurements are more typical proportions. They should put her right in the 3T range, no falling down pants for this girl!

The balloon is a favorite of hers. Her nanny tells her to hit it, not kick it. That entertained her for a few minutes.

Then, I got out my phone. Oh boy, she LOVES my phone. I can tell it makes her nanny nervous that I just give her my phone, but I am aware of the risk of giving a 3 year old electronics! Today, she looked at videos of Reed and Lena. That was a hit.

Sitting on my lap with the phone.

This girl is smart. She would get really mad if I started to get close to her with the phone, thinking I’d take it away. So, whenever she’d turn to yell at me, I’d jump away, put my hands up and say “okay! okay!” Within minutes, she was repeating “okay!” Neither R or L were repeating English words this quickly… we heard two from her today “eat” and “okay”.

Sitting on the floor with the phone. Per Russian superstition, she is not supposed to sit on the floor, so she hid behind the bed to do it.

Here she is talking on the phone to her babushka. Pretend talking. I suggested it was babushka calling.

Today was our second day visiting Alyona. I asked Alla to spell Alyona for us and she said it is spelled Алёна. That is like Alena, with the umlaut over the e. Do you call it an umlaut in Russian? I do not know.  I like the spelling Alyona better, since it makes it clear that it is a different prononciation than Elena or Alina. For those of you who asked, you pronounce it like Ah-loh-na.

Our visit today was not bad. First thing, I got to feed her. We were bonding over it, which was nice. I was mirroring her and opening my mouth wide to get her to. She was having a good time doing that. She had a bowl of porridge/oatmeal with meat added, an egg from some kind of small bird– not chicken and some tea. She said that she did not like the porridge or the egg, but quickly ate both of them.

We played with her for awhile inside. We showed her the photo album. She was curious, and seemed like the idea that she has a “sistra” (sister) and “brat” (brother– pronounced like the food, not a naughty child).

After awhile, we went to play outside. She was SO excited. She kept asking, “will Papa come outside? will Mama come outside? will Alla come outside? Maybe Masha is already out on the playground. Do you think Masha is already out on the playground?” Over and over again, while jumping up and down.

Masha was not out at the playground when we first got there, so we played for awhile. Check out the playground equipment…

Can you recognize what the theme is? Hint, it made me feel very at home! Or maybe it made me wish I was home? Not sure which.

After a short while, “Peter”(Petrushka?) came out with his nanny and then Masha followed. They are both orphans who live in the hospital as well.

The children and their nannies. I think Masha is the same little one we see on Alyona’s floor at the hospital. If so, she is ADORABLE.

We tried to play outside for awhile. Alyona’s nanny is a bit of a helicopter nanny… she hovers or is holding her hand the whole time. She is very sweet, but it makes it hard for us to interact with her.

We went back and played inside for a little while more. It was nothing exciting. Alyona just yells at us in Russian and it is so frustrating if Alla is not right there to translate. It reminds me a lot of a certain little boy who used to yell at us in Russian. We try to distract her and come up with different games, but it is difficult in the teeny tiny little room that we are in.

I picked her up to look at her reflect on the mirror on the door. She knocked on the door and began to act our a Russian fairy tale where a wolf knocks on the door of a mouse’s house, the mouse opens the door and then the wolf eats the mouse? She was the wolf, her nanny was the mouse.

At the end of our visit, Alla gave us some medical paperwork translated into English. It is from last October. We will be getting the rest of the medical updates on Friday. I guess these papers were put together and translated because they thought she might get surgery in Belgium, which never happened. I read through what I could understand. Interestingly enough, the height and weight we got for her is from LAST OCTOBER. It is over a year old. We thought she weighed quite a bit more than that. She seems right in between Reed and Lena size-wise to us, which means she must be pretty average. Sorry, Little Lena, you are still going to be the family peanut.

After our visit, we were going to go to Pushkin Fine Art Museum, at Alla’s recommendation. We pulled up to the museum and there was a huge line. I guess they have some special Italian exhibition right now. Instead, we went to the Kremlin. We had walked by it by it, but not gone inside.

I can’t say that I would recommend it. We had tickets for the Cathedrals, which I did not understand. I expected more history, not walking around more cathedrals. I would recommend either St. Basil’s OR the Kremlin, and the Kremlin is a better choice if Alla buys tickets for you. It is twice the price for foreigns as for Russians, so Alla got us Russian tickets. St. Basil’s was just a bit less expensive.

This is my favorite cathedral from the outside. It was not open on the inside. The other cathedrals looked very shiny and similar and this one was unique.

I am sure I am totally dumbing-down the experience of the Kremlin. I think maybe we would have enjoyed it more with an audio tour? Or a real tour guide? We used a little pocket guide, but it is hard to read and walk. And, we were both cold, tired and hungry.

We drove by this monument today… we both were amused by it. It seems a bit out of place and looks like a huge pirate ship from far away! It is actually a monument to Peter the Great and the Russian navies. Pretty awesome monument, but all I can think of is Captain Hook.

We spent the day walking around Moscow. After our complimentary hotel breakfast, that is. And look who joined us at breakfast…

James Naismith! I picked a table close to the buffet, not too close to other people. I looked up halfway through breakfast and there he was. Rock Chalk Jayhawk!

We walked down to Red Square.

Aaron standing in front of the State History Museum.

First thing we did was go into St. Basil’s.

Me in front of St. Basil’s.

We did not take photos inside, because you have to pay an extra amount to do that. It is so hard to take good photos of a beautiful place like that, so we chose not to. There are tons of photos online if you google “St. Basil’s inside”. It is very, very beautiful.

Can you tell it was not such a nice day? It was warm, but rained all day.

The Kremlin.

The Tomb of the Unknown Solider, outside the Kremlin. We only caught the end of this changing of the guard ceremony.

Looking at the Kremlin, acrossing Alexander Garden. The Grotto, according to wikipedia, is fake.

This is the view from on top of the Grotto. We did a geocache up here.

The Bolshoy Theater.

I am not sure how much walking we did, but I think we left the hotel around 10:30, stopped for lunch around 3(the first time we sat down all day!), and got back to our hotel room at 4. We ate lunch at “Il Patio”. Il Patio is a chain Italian Restaurant which we ate at in Kiev. I would have preferred a different restaurant unique to Moscow, but I wanted Italian food and there it was. They have every chain here, or so it seems. Starbucks, KFC, Of course McDonalds, Wendy’s, Burger Kings, Sbarro. We also saw lots of stores we recognized, most of them upscale stores.

Tomorrow, we will meet “Helen”!

We Skyped with R&L for a few minutes. They were excited to see us, but then wanted to jump on the bed, instead of talking to us. Oh well, that doesn’t surprise me!