We're Home!

Hello World! Have just a few minutes and hope to spend more time here later, but here are a few of the details of our new life.

We are finally home after Matt and I spent a whole month aboard. Not as fun as it sounds. Suffering from jet lag, but Anya just keeps going and going and going. So much new stuff to learn. She was REALLY excited about the flight and ran down the walkway to the jet giggling along the way. The flight was a 13 and a half hour red-eye flight and the girl only slept for two of those hours! (The first night home she only slept an hour and a half as well...) We must have walked the aisles 25 times and people on board were very familiar with us after awhile and were motioning to me where she was the time she got ahead of me and I got stuck behind a food cart in the aisle.

The doctor from Moscow that examined her before we left was amazed with the other diagnoses that the orphanage doctors gave her. He told me that he is in total disagreement with their thought that she has any mental issues at all. That was good to hear officially.

I am trying to get her on a bit of learning and sensory schedule but she is just so fascinated with everything new that I will have to wait until she gets bored and used to things. She’ll play a game for a few minutes, but then runs after Dave, Scott or the dog if she sees them. Unfortunately she is still waking up at 3am, which is slightly hard on staying awake for me during the day-she doesn’t crash but absorbs and absorbs new things. This morning I got up at 3 and found her dressed in something new from her closet (which is good since she’s been wearing the same 2-3 things for the last week, for security sake) and she was holding the dog’s leash, ready to go on a walk.

She loves the car (she told a translator, “You should see their car!”), her walks with Dave and the dog Chico. At first she was really frightened by the Pug and we had to keep him in the kennel until the second day, but now she is his best friend. She sings to him and tells him all kinds of things and he just patiently listens. Accordingly, her first English words are “sit, down, shake, stay, come and Chico.” Dave caught her using “yes” instead of “dah” a lot last night and she was dancing in the garage with Dave’s Glenn Miller and surf music!

There is much more to share, but I will do that as I am rested in the daytime and actually have a moment and I am not dozing off. Dave and I take shifts at resting! But, it should only be a few more days until the jet lag wears off. Have to figure out how to explain Thanksgiving, but she likes the new things, so it won’t be too hard. That’s all for now!

 Two pictures of Anya in Red Square on one of "walking days" in Moscow.

 Painting with Dave