Things that are completely and totally adorable:

- My little Russian singing short snippets of the ABC's. He knows about five random letters and just walks around the apartment humming to himself.

- How much he LOVES the bathtub. The minute we say the word bath he runs around the apartment stripping off all his clothes.

- How he wants to give us kisses all the time and will just walk up to me and say "ya te-bya ly blu, mama" (I love you mama).

In other news, I think I'm learning more Russian than he is English and he's definitely getting more sleep than me. I think God gave us three cats to prepare us for surrendering all of the bed space to someone half our size. At one point I woke up and he had his head on my stomach, his legs draped over Tim, and his hand on my face. Who knew he would turn into a little mini whirling dervish at night.

We are absolutely ready to come home now though. Every time we go some where we get asked if we are going to America. It took an entire day to explain that our cars weren't here but in America. I don't know how we're going to explain the fact that Moscow is not America.

Still, I love being a mom. God created me for this, even when it's hard. And he's revealing himself to me more and more everyday. Even the fact that going to bed last night shrank from an hour and half to fifteen minutes was a miracle much prayed for.

We love all of you and can't wait to get home so you can meet our little miracle.

Signs I Have Been in Russia Too Long

1. When I close my eyes at night all I hear is Russian, and I don't understand half of it.

2. When the computer does something I don't want it to do I speak to it in Russian.

3. I am able to figure out who else sticks out like a sour thumb, and is not from Russia.

4. I wake up thinking this futon isn't so bad. Especially when you have three people on.

5. I am not really completely bothered by going to the store anymore.

100th Post

I did it. I posted the 100th post. Yay!

We are all so tired. We spent about 1 1/2 hours trying to put Sam down last night. He finally fell asleep with help from Mama. I am not such a calming influence on him. Sam was very tired today (Thursday) and is currently in the middle of a 2 1/2 hour nap (he just woke up). And Carrie is currently feeding him ice cream. It is really not helpful that it is cold and rainy here and we spend most of our day cooped up in the small apartment. Plus we keep giving him sugar.

He loves taking baths though I mainly let Carrie do that because I am not really sure about the whole bath thing. Kind of like in Big Daddy when Adam Sandler makes Julian wear a bathing suit in the bath tub. This a mohawk he had last night during his bath.

Gotcha!

Introducing Samuel Aleksey Stanley Tweten, the newest member of the Tweten family!


Thank you everyone for your encouragement, kind words, and generosity, all of which made this day possible. What a sweet, sweet gift that our father in heaven allows us to experience the joy of adoption. There is nothing sweeter than the sound of an amazing five year old boy playing with his new papa in the next room.

Tomorrow is Gotcha Day!

Tomorrow is the day!!! It's finally here!!!

Okay, now I will tell you what we've been up to. This weekend we had to venture out on our own to get Sam new shoes and a new coat (the ones we bought were WAY too big, I told Tim there was no way he wore a size 12 shoe). The whole thing was an experience because the first time we left we had not done our homework and had no idea how to convert the Russian sizes. So after eating lunch (at Chili Pizza, weird spicy pizzas) and looking at the four kids stores we came home and looked at what Russian sizes he should wear and then went back out. Turns out all the malls around us are like designer malls. There was no way we were paying $100 for a pair of kids shoes. Finally we found a jacket that looks very Russian and will probably be warn a total of three times when we get home since it's never that cold in Nashville, and a pair of adidas sneakers that were the right size. I've never spent so long by such little clothes.

Sunday we fully intended to go out but we didn't. It was cold and rainy so we just napped and Tim finally got his computer to connect to the internet so we could watch all the stuff off the slingbox (thank you Chip Hayner!). We are so desperate for American TV that last night when we got home we watched almost the full hour of The Price is Right. The time change really does mess with your tv schedule though.

Monday was our LOOOOOONG day. Everyone kept saying it would be long and they weren't kidding. It was the day we were officially declared Sam's parents so as of yesterday he belongs to us! However we spent the day driving three hours to Priorzersk, the town Sam was born in, to get a new birth certificate and an adoption certificate. As of yesterday Sam's birth certificate has his new full name and lists us as his parents! We then got back in the car and drove the three hours back to St. Petersburg. The pictures are from Priorzersk, which is a very old city right on the border of Russia and Finland. There is an old fortress there that the king of Russia used to stay in. The town is very pretty and sits on the edge of a pretty river. We were lucky that the weather was clear and beautiful. We also had about an hour to kill and ended up eating lunch at a Japanese/sushi restaurant. Our driver Andrey was laughing about how we had to fly all the way to Russia and then drive all the way almost to Finland just to eat Japanese food. I can confirm though that all Japanese restaurants look the same everywhere. All in all we spent about 11 hours driving and doing paperwork yesterday. Then we came home and crashed.

Today was a little easier. We met Irina (our coordinator) at the passport office. It's this huge building that looks like five DMVs all smushed together. When you go in you take a ticket with your number on it. Our number was 304 and they were on number 135. Needless to say we had to wait again. It's a good thing waiting has become our specialty. After lunch in the little cafeteria and about another hour of waiting finally Tim and Irina went in to the assigned office and came out ten minutes later and we were done. After a quick stop at a huge souvenir store where we spent way too much money but got all of our shopping done at once, we went to the grocery store to get stuff to take to the orphanage (tea and cakes and candy). And then we came home and now we are cleaning up and getting ready for Sam.

I've put pictures of Priorzersk and of our apartment below for your viewing pleasure. We miss and love all of you and can't thank you enough for all your sweet comments and kind prayers.

Uphill Both Ways

Today was interesting...

It started out normal enough, get up, get dressed, get ready to go see Sam at the orphanage. We went outside and it was snowing, just a little and not sticking so while it was pretty it was not a big deal. We got through town really fast, a miracle since it took 45 minutes to go a block on Monday. And that it was it all started.

About five miles outside of town it started snowing. Really snowing. And sticking. So we keep driving, north so it's getting colder, and there is more and more snow. And the cars coming towards us have about an inch on them. This same road on Monday looked like autumn, leaves changing and sun shining, and now it was the depth of winter. Overnight.

I don't know if all of you know this but the orphanage is down a very long, very bad road. I don't know why our adoption has been marked by impassable roads, but there you go. So we get to the road, after crawling down the highway for an hour and a half, and we can't even get 10 yards before the van is stuck. None of us, including Andrey our driver, were prepared for snow. In fact Andrey had even told us this morning before we left that he had planned to put on his winter tires this afternoon. So then we tried to go to the nearest town where the orphanage director told us we could catch a train that came to the orphanage. Only it turns out that the next train isn't leaving for an hour and the one coming back wouldn't leave until four o'clock, so that was a no go.

I was ready to call it off and just come home but the orphanage director had emptied out Sam's savings account in order to give it to us and she didn't want to keep the money over the weekend.

And that's when we decided to walk.

Do you remember those stories your parents or grandparents used to tell you about how when they were younger they had to walk 2 miles to school, in the snow, uphill both ways? Yeah. 2 miles, in the snow, uphill both ways. Actual childbirth cannot be worse than that.

And Tim did not bring his hat, and was wearing his work shoes that have a small crack in the sole. That is why in the pictures Tim has a blanket on his head.

But we made it and Sam was very excited to see us and was even pretty well behaved. We took his shoes and coat with us and neither of them fit, both are way too big, so tomorrow we have to go find new ones. I put some pictures we took below. Some of those Sam took. Master photographer in the making.

And then we walked all the way back and the car was stuck so Tim had to get out and push. So now we are real Russians. Snow and all.

Sam Takes a Funny Photo of Papa

Mama and Sam

Papa and Sam

The Orphanage

Tim and Andrey and the friend who wanted to follow them home.

Evening

If last Thursday was Night and last Friday was Day then yesterday (Monday) was Evening. Sam was trying really hard to behave but once again everything was different. We had to move downstairs because they were packing up files in our usual room. We brought a Where's Waldo book but Sam was going to have none of that. Really after about 20 minutes he was pretty much done being civil, but he was not as bad as last Thursday. That might have been because in the room there were about 4 other caretakers just sitting around (Not sure why they have the full staff when Sam is the only child under 15 in the orphanage and there are a total of 3 children). But he might have just been wound up because we gave him a bunch of sugar at the beginning of playtime. We really need to wait until towards the end.

Today we went to Ikea to pick up a couple of things. We walked about 1 mile to avoid riding the trolley or going an extra 5 stops on the Metro (subway). We then got to where we thought the Mall bus would come to pick us up but it actually was one stop too far. It also turns out that was the scariest areas around a Metro station we have been. We figured out that we had gone 1 stop to far and got back on the Metro and where riding the bus in no time. We ate at Ikea. Swedish meatballs and potato soup and it was very delicious. On the ride back from Ikea we got on the wrong bus. Apparently we should have gotten on the blue topped bus and not the red topped bus. Our mistake was rewarded hansomely with 1 1/2 hour Metro ride that featured 14 stops. Exciting!

We may go to see Sam tomorrow, but we might not be able to, because our driver bought a new van from Germany and is possibly going to pick it up tomorrow from Finland. Long story short, he bought a van from 2004, but thought it was from 2006, because of this mistake he had to pay an extra $7000 on top of the $7500 he had to pay for buying a non-Russian made car (Don't tell Obama or we might end up paying a ridiculous import tax on foreign cars too. He would do it. Yes, I just got political.). So we may go tomorrow or may end up going on Thursday and Friday again.