Today was a day to catch up on some much needed rest. The drive to and from Armavir is long and those days tend to be mentally exhausting for us as well. We spent most of our time today relaxing in our hotel room which isn’t easy to do since it is a very small room Hopefully we will only have a day or two at this hotel once Sasha is with us. The place we are staying in Moscow is an actual apartment so she will have more room to move around there.
We were beyond tired last night when we did our posts on FB and the blog. So with a rested mind I can think of some additional things to share about yesterday’s visit. The primary purpose of these comments is to create a journal for us to look back on but I hope you enjoy reading them as well.
1. She likes music and dancing. The cell phone belonging to our facilitator rang during our visit and when she heard the ring Sasha began to dance around with a smile on her face.
2. It appears Sasha will need help learning how to be gentle. We’ve been told that at the baby home the children often fight. They have to fight for a toy, fight for attention, etc. So she’s used to being a little more aggressive with things overall. When she was playing with Matt and exploring his facial features she pinched at times and I also noticed she tried to bite at times. Obviously being gentle and patient is not how a child survives in an orphanage setting.
3. When we arrived for our afternoon visit there was another American couple there visiting their child as well. We were all standing in close proximity when Sasha came out. She immediately came to us and was again very excited to see us. The other couple was of no interest to her and she didn’t even acknowledge that she saw them. The encouraging thing about this is that it shows she is connecting with us and not just looking for attention from anyone and everyone around her.
4. Oh how she loves other babies! In a book or in person she doesn’t miss a young child. Interestingly in one of the books we took for her there is a page with pictures of several babies. She kissed and pointed to all the pictures except one. Even when I pointed the other picture out she wasn’t interested in that particular baby. As we talked about it later we realized that picture was of a colored baby. In Russia you don’t see people of various ethnic backgrounds so she’s never seen a black person of any age. On occasion you may see an Asian or Indian person in Russia but our facilitator told us that these people would be students here studying at one of the medical schools. It will be an experience for Sasha to see people of varying color and looks once outside of Russia.
5. On that same note, our facilitator told us that at court the judge and prosecutor commented on our appearance. They thought we looked like we were Russian and not like the Americans they typically see. We wondered why and our facilitator said it was because we dressed neatly, the way I wore my make up and that we were both thin.
Hard to believe we’ve been here almost a week. The time has gone fast and I’m sure this next week will fly by as well.
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