Our Reunion with Anya

After a looooong plane ride from Atlanta to Moscow, then a short one from Moscow to Anya's city, we jumped off the plane, found our driver friend, Boris, peeled through town, checked in to our hotel, threw on  our thermal underwear and additional layers (it's 0 degrees F, people...) hopped back into Boris' car, picked up our coordinator, then headed over to Anya's orphanage.

We were so excited to see her, we couldn't stop smiling.  We waited in the hallway and the orphanage doctor went to her groupa to get her and bring her out to us. A few minutes later, we could hear her cute voice echoing in the long, sterile hallway. We knew it was our baby girl.  It was all I could do to keep from running up to her and picking her up and kissing her all to pieces.  But I was afraid she may not remember us, so I kept my cool, other than a few tears.

Oh, it was sooo great to be with our Anya again.  She was excited to have us come hang out with her. The lady opened the little therapy room where we spent a lot of time on the first trip. Anya ran right in, then motioned for us with her hand, to "come on!"  Jeremy said, "she remembers!"

She has matured so much in the last three months!  Last time we were here, the only thing she was interested in was coloring, looking at pictures or the iPod, and going through flash cards.  But this time, she picked out the puzzles on the shelf, brought them over one at a time, and sat at the table for a long time disassembling them and putting them back together.  She also loved the stacking toys and things that she didn't want anything to do with last time. Her attention span and her patience with things has really improved. Yeah!

This is what she enjoyed the most today:

She found a box of little pieces of stiff felt shapes that are supposed to be used on a bulletin board thing.But instead of using the board, she used my sweater. She sat there and added the shapes one by one until I was covered in them .  She just loved it! And when it was time to clean it up, she painstakingly picked every piece off of me and put it back in the box.  We couldn't get over how much her attention span has grown, and how much more obedient and responsive she is. It's amazing what 3 months can do!

Off topic... I would love to teach her nannies a thing or two about doing hair.  Not that I'm all that great at it...I'm just sayin'. :)

The fun part was going through the photo album of our family. We would point to the pictures and say "who's that?" and she would point to Jeremy or I if it was us, or her if it was a picture of her.


She looks the same as she did 3 months ago.  I don't think she even grew in stature. Still a short little thing. I think the 4T clothes I packed are going to be too long.  She's got the shortest little legs.  Oh, she's just so cute!

This was the first time we saw her in her glasses.  I feel bad for her that she has to wear these things! First of all, they are too big for her. Also, one of the little clear nose rest thingies is missing, so the metal pokes into her nose.  It probably hurts, poor kid.  Can't wait to get her some good glasses!

It was such a beautiful afternoon with our Anya. We still feel right at home together and know that she belongs to us.  We love her so much!

PS...Our 10 hour layover in Atlanta with Gretchen yesterday was awesome! We knew it would be the only warm, vacation-like day the whole week, so we just soaked it in.  I'm going to wait until tomorrow to blog about it, though because we have to leave here at 7 am tomorrow for our 8-doctor medical exam and we need to catch up on some sleep!  Don't want those doctors to think that we don't take care of ourselves or something...

Oh, here's a picture I took for Anya's passport. They didn' t want us to take her out of the orphanage to go get it taken, so we tried it ourselves, against the white door for a background. We'll see if they accept it.

What a precious girl.