The Routine

Yesterday and today, we have finally gotten into a routine of sorts. This is how it goes. I wake up at 4:00 a.m. and cannot get back to sleep. I lie there until 4:45 or so and finally get up. I either write a post for the blog or I go online and read my emails. I make coffee get our tote bags ready for the trip to the orphanage. When Stan gets up, we eat breakfast (dry Cheerios, peanut butter on bread, oatmeal, coffee, and apple juice are our choices). We shower and dress and maybe watch some TV if there is time. We have one channel in English (BBC) and other channels sometimes have English-speaking programs. Our driver and translator pick us up every morning around 9:45. We watch for them from our kitchen window.

After they pick us up, we all drive over to Jenny and Ken’s and pick them up too. Then we go to the Baby House. We go up the stairs and around the bend to Sovet’s room. We know it is his room because there is a blue sign on the door, but we can’t read what it says because it’s in Cyrillic. We knock and enter and say, “Sovet?” to one of the nannies, and she brings him to us. We also ask her for the key to the bonding room. Charlie is usually pointing at the door this whole time, because he knows that we always leave and go to the bonding room. When we walk down the hallway toward the bonding room, he turns his whole little body in the direction we’re going and stretches his arm out in front of him as if to say, “This way, Mama!”

When we get to the bonding room, Stan takes off his shoes first (you must take off your shoes to go into the room) and then I hand Charlie to him and it’s my turn to take off my shoes. We get down onto the carpet and PLAY. We play on the carpet for two hours TWICE each day. (Our backs and hips and knees are getting really tired!) We have a few toys that are sure hits. His absolute favorite is the key chain. He also likes to chase after beach balls, chew and bang stacking rings, pull the choo-choo, and touch the little buttons and levers and things on this plastic toy that is sort of a little table designed for cruising. He doesn’t yet have the cruising skill, but he does like to stand and hold on to this table. There are a few levers that start a little song going, and Mommy likes to dance to the song and clap when it’s over. Charlie makes Mommy dance about 100 times before he gets bored with it. He knows what he’s doing. He pulls the lever and he looks at me, just waiting. Daddy holds Charlie’s hips and “helps” him to dance too. During the morning visit, there are lots of other little runs in the room, and Charlie likes to observe them. He is especially interested in Ken and Jenny’s boys (toddlers) and just looks at everything that they do.

When the morning visit is over, all four families are driven to a restaurant for lunch. After lunch, we usually do some kind of sight-seeing or shopping. I’ll post more about the food and the city later.

At 2:00, it is time for Stan and me to go back to the Baby House for our afternoon visit. (Charlie napped while we were gone.) The other families do not go to their afternoon bonding visit until 4:00, so we get the bonding room all to ourselves. This is when we get some REAL bonding done! When we arrive at the Baby House, we again go up to Sovet’s (Charlie’s) room, except this time, we stay there for a while. We get to feed him his lunch! This is funny because he is such a goofball, but it is hard also. He really doesn’t want to eat – he wants to play!! But, of course, he has to eat and he needs to eat, so we have to be the Mommy and Daddy and make sure that he eats as much as possible. We remove our shoes to go into this room too. Then, we wash our hands. The first day, they asked us to wear overcoats and hair scarves, but yesterday we did this in our regular clothes. Then, they bring Charlie out and he just breaks into a huge smile and everyone says, “Mama! Papa!” and Charlie laughs and bounces his arms and legs. They put him into a highchair and give us his food for the meal. Yesterday, his meal was mashed potatoes with carrots and meat. He liked that better than the cereal/porridge thing we had the day before. They feed the babies with regular size spoons, which seems really big for such a little mouth. He gets one bowl of food and one cup of juice. We are very careful not to spill and to keep Charlie’s paws away from the food bowl. Stan and I have to be sitting right next to each other and right in front of him, or he will turn his head looking for the us and never get any food! We take turns feeding him and the nannies seem to know when he wants juice and when he is done/full. He loves the juice and slurps it all down like a madman.

After eating, we go back to the bonding room and play on the floor until the other families arrive and we know that it must be 4:00. At this time, Charlie goes back to his room and we are taken by the translator and/or driver to the market or just back to the apartment. We usually get on the internet at this time. We also do a load of laundry and hang it to dry. If we didn’t pick up prepared food at the market, we cook a dinner. We actually haven’t prepared a full “meal” since we have gotten here, but we do plan to make spaghetti tonight so we’ll see how that goes. We have one pot and it’s very small!

If we can, we try to stay up to at least 10 or 11 before going to sleep. Last night, however, we both crashed around 7:00!! Our U.S. coordinator (Andrea) called to say hi and woke us up (around 8:30). We think we remember what we talked about. We have to be careful not to do that again, because I was wide awake at 1:30 a.m.!!