Our Trip Home

I have so much to catch up on!  I'll start with our trip home and see how far I can get.

We flew out of Moscow last Saturday morning.  Ivan woke up Saturday morning with the sniffles and though he felt warm he didn't have a fever (more on this later), which was good news.  We had packed fairly lightly for the trip so we only had one large suitcase, two small suitcases, an umbrella stroller, a backpack and my carry on bag.  Check in and security went very well and we made it to our gate at 11am for our 1pm flight.  While we were waiting we met a gentleman who had just completed court in one of the regions and was flying back to the states while his wife stayed in country for the 10 day waiting period.  We had a nice chat with him about adoptions, Ivan, the process, etc.  The time passed fairly quickly and I was definitely relieved by this.

We purchased a seat for Ivan so that we could have a row of 3 seats for the trip to New York.  Once we settled in we decided to feed Ivan lunch and were hopeful that he would sleep after that.  Ivan had been a pretty good sleeper so we had high hopes.  He did sleep a bit after his lunch, but with all the activity of the carts and Bill and I receiving our meals, Ivan woke up and wouldn't go back to sleep.  I think he had been sleeping for about an hour at that point.  Unfortunately, he didn't sleep again during the 10 hour flight until we landed.  It was quite challenging to say the least and I think the fact that he was feeling bad did not help the situation.  I'm really not sure what we did the whole time to keep him entertained but somehow we made it through.  He literally crashed as we touched down in New York.  I was happy because the poor guy was exhausted at that point (~20 hours into the trip).  But moving him through Immigration, rechecking bags and going back through security, while trying to keep him asleep proved to be very difficult.

While we were going through security a couple that we had been sitting close to on the plane asked if Ivan was adopted, I think they probably saw the passport or the envelope when we went through Immigration.  Anyway, I said yes and they told me they were in the process.  So, I asked which region and then it hit me that they would have been meeting their referral so I asked if they had met their child and they told me that they had had to turn down their referral and apparently did not receive a second referral.  I started to tear up as I told them how sorry I was.  Having turned down our first referral during our adoption of Nick, I felt so bad for them and to go home without meeting a second child would be a very very difficult outcome.  They told me it had been a very tough few days but that seeing all the people with their adopted children on the flight (I think there were 3 or 4 families) helped remind them that it can and does work out.  They seemed like the sweetest people, I wish them the best as they go forward with the process.

Ivan slept during the bulk of our layover in New York and aside from moving gates twice, our flight left on time and we made it back home around 11pm.

The trip was pretty hard because of Ivan's lack of sleep, and our lack of sleep.  But, the good news is that he acclimated to the new time zone very quickly.  Aside from waking up between 4 and 5 am on the first two or three mornings Ivan has been sleeping about 11 hours per night and is taking two naps per day for another 3 hours of sleep.

I have so much more to post about our first week but want to get this out there so I'll write more as soon as I can and will close with some pictures!

 

 

New pics

Ivan Update

My plans to blog daily have been foiled by the technical issues we've had. They are due to a combination of poor Internet service in the apartment and the lack of an adapter that will allow transfer of pictures from my Canon camera to our iPad. We didn't bring the laptop on this trip and thought it would be fine but now to get pictures to the iPad is a major undertaking. We have take pics with the iPhone and then can email them to the blog for posting because the iPad and blogger don't seem to cooperate when it comes to pictures. So these are the troubles. Doesn't sound too bad but. Throw in the poor Internet connection and it can be pretty frustrating.

Aside from our tech difficulties our time with Ivan so far has been wonderful. I didn't mention it before but in our time with Ivan before this trip we had never seen him smile. I would say I was somewhat concerned about that but tried not to dwell on it. We also hadn't seen him crawl or even attempt to crawl. What we've experienced since bringing him home is an easy going, smiley, cuddly little guy who shimmies around on his tummy to get where he wants to be.

I haven't mentioned it yet but Ivan is almost one year old. We are thrilled that we'll be home for his first birthday and will celebrate with friends and family. So the reason I say this is that he is definitely delayed a bit. He doesn't know how to feed himself finger foods yet. We will hold out yogurt melts, puffs or cheerios and he just looks at them. I am making it my mission to teach him that he has the power to put the snack in his mouth but he seems perfectly content to be fed.

He is quite verbal and chatters away at times. He gets very excited at meal times and kicks his legs around until we start feeding him. He seems to like everything we've fed him so far. We're sticking with the canned baby food, yogurt, apple-pear sauce and have moved him onto Milk. So far so good with that!

He is a pretty good sleeper too. Yesterday the embassy doc, Dr. Boris, came to the apartment to do the embassy physical at 7:30am. After he left we walked down to Red Square to take some pictures and to enjoy the gorgeous morning. The weather has been just beautiful. Ivan fell asleep on the walk home and during our stop for coffee. We went out around 1pm to get lunch and again, Ivan fells asleep on the way to lunch and slept right up until we left the restaurant. He finished his nap with me on our bed, too sweet!

Today we go to the Embassy to complete the process for Ivan's Visa. We found out earlier in the week that we would be done with everything by today and that we could leave Friday if we could change our flights. When Bill called yesterday we found out it would cost about $2000 to change the flights to Friday. Needless to say, we're staying till Saturday.

With that I'll say bye for now and will try to post more pictures soon!

Introducing Ivan Alexander Gemmill

We promised a picture! Hopefully we will get more posted later today.

Gotcha Day - Ivan Alexander Gemmill

Today was the day! At 1PM we picked up Ivan from Babyhouse 15. After a long drive back to the apartment we spent the afternoon with our new little boy. Unfortunately, I had to leave Meghan and Ivan for a couple of hours to pick up Ivan's passport. But, by all accounts they had a good afternoon, including some smiling and laughing. His personality is already starting to come out, he is starting to smile and interact much more than we had previously seen. The evening went really well also. Dinner was pretty easy with only a few tears during bath time. He stopped crying when I poured water on him to rinse him off, he must of liked that. Next we got ready for bed and listened to the Baby Einstein lulllabies which he seemed to enjoy. When we put him down in the crib, he cried for 30 seconds, and was asleep within 15 minutes, so far it has been pretty good. After Ivan was asleep, we enjoyed a traditional Russian dinner of Pelmini. Embassy Doc is coming to visit at 7AM tomorrow and then we need to visit the Embassy to get Ivan's visa (we think Thursday). After that, we are cleared to go home. And now what everyone is waiting for, pictures! But wait, we are having technical difficulties and after an hour of trying, we have decided that it's not going to happen tonight. For those of you with Facebook connection to Meghan or myself, we will post them there for now. We will be adding pictures to the blog as soon as we can.

On Our Way

I have been a terrible blogger this week! It's been very busy between preparing for our little one at home and getting ready for the trip and trying to wrap things up at work for a while.

I can't believe we are actually leaving for Moscow today! As far as I know our schedule will be arriving Monday, check in at the apartment and then relax until Tuesday when we pick our little guy up for good!

We have had a few set backs in terms of the exchange of beds and furniture. We are going to use Nick's crib (which is now a double bed) and then have a bunk bed coming for Nick. The problem is that late this week we learned that the new bed wasn't going to be delivered before our trip. So we've done some improvising and hopefully the bed will arrive shortly after we get home next weekend.

Nick is super excited for his brother to come home! He doesn't really like the fact that we're leaving again! We considered bringing him with ius either on the court trip or even this one but In the end we thought it would be too hard for him.

Well I am blogging on my iPhone and we're getting ready to board our flight so I'll say bye for now.

Enjoy the holiday weekend!

Paparrazzi at Court...but not for us

Today we had a busy day that started with court in the morning and a visit with our little one in the afternoon.

I forgot to mention in my post yesterday that the family we met on our first trip was back for court with us, so we all traveled there together is morning. It is so nice to have another family to share the experience with.

When we arrived at the courthouse there were many photographers and reporters surrounding the entrance to one of the courtrooms. It turns out that in the courtroom right next to ours was the appeal hearing (for money laundering and embezzlement) for the former richest man in Russia, Mikhail Khodorkovsky. It was quite the spectacle!

Before court we had a quick briefing on what to expect. We didn't have the same judge as our first hearing and I was a bit disappointed by this but it was fine. Our judge was a fairly young man who spoke very softly and didn't smile. Bill took the first set of questions, which are generally longer and more involved than the second, and he did very well. My questions mainly consisted of being sure I agreed with Bill's responses. We were done in about 30
minutes with the final decision being approval of our petition to adopt our son.

After court we headed to the baby home to visit our son. We were able to spend almost 2 hours with him and we had a really nice visit. The eczema on his face had almost completely cleared up and he seemed in good spirits...until we put him on his hands and knees to see if he wanted to crawl. He immediately broke down in big tears. For the rest of the visit, every time we tried to sit him on the floor to play, he would cry. He would stop as soon as one of us picked him up. He must have been tired because shortly before the end of the visit he fell asleep in Bill's arms, so sweet!

It's always hard to say goodbye, but this time it's only for a few days!

Tomorrow we fly back home and before we know it we'll be on our way back.

Have a great week!