The beginning of a countdown to leave for a change of Russian scenery

We're. Still. Here.

Yep. We're still waiting on Russian passports before heading to Moscow for an interview next week with the US Embassy for their visas to get into the US. We are supposed to leave for Moscow a week from today, which means we FINALLY can start to countdown - i.e. this is our LAST Monday night in this hotel, our last Tuesday, etc. Last week was long and didn't seem to end and it was hard knowing there were still so many days behind it before we could leave. Now while we don't really see a light at the end of the tunnel quite yet we at least know there is an end to the tunnel and there should be light soon. Just being able to write "next week" about Moscow is psychologically huge for us. Change of scenery, change of food, one step closer to home.

This week is all about breaking things up. We've met another family here who adopted a 7-year-old boy and are also waiting for his passport. Today we all went to a park together; while it wasn't a new park it at least felt a bit different. Tomorrow we'll try to eat lunch out, which we typically don't do; Wednesday we'll go buy some souveniers for the girls. The rest is TBD. We have started going "swimming" in the spa here; they have water wings for the girls. It's a small spa-type pool but it gives us something to break up the monotony. We'll do that every other day - Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Baths will be in the rotation the other days, thought they typically end badly unless dinner IMMEDIATELY follows. We're also working on getting them to understand that it takes us time to prepare their dinner and that we know they want it right then but that we will give it to them no matter what.

We're also battling nap and bedtime issues and it's so hard to know what to do while we're here. Do we fight to stay on the schedule the orphanage said they were on? Do we try to phase out naps, or is that too much too soon? Our situation is just so difficult in this little hotel room; if we leave after wind-down time they get upset which we don't feel right about but if we're in the room there's too much energy and I feel like we're interfering with their abiity to get to sleep because they want to play and giggle and do something to get our attention. I know many of this will also happen at home, but there we have more options than we have here. Right now is typically naptime but we're taking a risk and seeing what happens without one. We don't know if we'll have total meltdowns tonight but we have to start experimenting because what we've been doing really isn't working.

Despite the challenges we are beginning to gel; there's a lot of new for everyone so we just do our best to be understanding of them and of ourselves. We just are so ready to be home to begin the true adjustment there and not in this odd place with so many limitations.