Back in Moscow

Well, as most of you know we are back in Moscow and doing the embassy and consulate stuff to finish up our adoption.

Luke and I had a very difficult start at being a new family. I went on a downward spiral like I have never experienced in my entire life, and I think it was a combination of events. The first one being extreme homesickness and I’m not talking, “Oh, I miss home,” I’m talking, “Get me home now or I’m going to split in two.” I’ve only had this happen one other time when we moved to Germany and I recognized the feeling. The other event was lack of sleep, which I wasn’t getting much of before Hannah came to us. Luke always plays off of my emotions and we cried and prayed for several days. We called our adoption agency and talked with Kristen and found out this is very normal and 65% of all adoption moms have this problem. I guess it’s almost post-partum depression which I never had with Luke, but I had something very real that happened here. So, I prayed with Kristen and then our social worker called, and I prayed with her and our great God who loves His children heard my cry and helped me through it. It wasn’t right away, but I knew He was holding my hand with each step I took to feeling better. We are both doing much better now, and thankfully Scott was able to be a source of strength and keep our family together. I’m thankful to have that rock of support that calls us to pray for one another, and I can dial direct to our Creator and know He loves us and wants the best for us. I don’t have an answer to why it happened, but I do know I had some big shoulders to cry on.

Now I can move on to our adventure of being parents of the most curious child I have ever been around. It’s pretty amazing to look at Hannah and see her completely taken by this world of ours. She is amazed by cars, trucks, signs, people, flooring, buildings, in fact, you name it and she will be amazed by it. It let’s us realize how much of the world these little ones do not see. So, we now affectionately have nicknamed her Curious George, but with every nickname there’s a story. We decided to get out of this hotel and take the kids to the zoo, and with her this was an adventure. I don’t think she saw one animal but she saw lots of people and roared at many of them. I was carrying her at one point and realized she had someone’s balloon in her hand, and I think the woman was about to run me over to get it back. We finally bought her a balloon, and it may have been her first balloon ever, and she was so thrilled to have a balloon. She played with it all day, and didn’t care about any lions or tigers or bears. At one point, Scott was carrying her and kept hearing a strange sound, and he realized she was bonking people on the head with her balloon as they passed. When Scott told me this he was laughing so hard it made him cry! Some zoo characters are placed around the Moscow Zoo, and she was walking and decided to grab one of their tails and not let go. The person in the suit knew someone had hold of the tail and pulled with a quick jerk to be freed. We saw it all in slow motion and didn’t know who would win in that battle, but she finally let go and the tail survived.

I’m still very homesick and so is Luke. We miss our church, family, and friends, American food, reading signs, not getting lost. We will probably kiss the ground when we arrive back in the U.S.A!