Saw my cutie pie today :)

Well, our extremely long 8 days ended today as we went and saw our little pumpkin. :)

She was feeling very poorly last Monday when we saw her and she's still a little congested, but is doing better. I can't do anything about it until she's mine for good on MONDAY!! MONDAY is our gotcha day.

We went this morning and bought some swings for the orphanage. They wanted swings and we tried to find wind-up infant swings but had terrible time looking. So we bought swings that are for about 1 year olds. They said they can use them for the older group (1 year+). But we had brought a pyramid of clothes we dropped last week that will work for Alina's age group. It ended up being a pile about as high as my knee (two suitcases worth...thanks to all my friends/family who gave us clothes for that purpose).

Anyhow. She was so fussy today. She's definately teething again and we think she didn't remember us much. Took her about 45 minutes to warm up this time. Too long between visits. But what can you do. She looked like a pickle when she came in and they gave her to us. She wasn't much into going to those strangers in the loud room. We had another couple playing with their little boy and the translators were talking. So she just wanted to be held. After a while everyone left and it was just the three of us and she warmed up because she relaxed. I found out if I fake that I'm going to eat her foot...she just thinks thats the funniest thing. We actually caught her on film with a full on 7 tooth smile. She even giggled outloud and started cooing a little. She's not a very verbal child yet, so that was a great step to me.

We only got two hours with her, but at the end she was in a good mood and we'd had a chance to talk at length with her caregivers and her attending doctor about her sleeping schedule, feeding schedule, and what they actually feed them. Apparently, they usually feed them pureed food they make in the kitchen of the baby home. It's a conglomeration of meat, potatoes, squash, carrots, etc. Her bottle last week smelled like tomato soup or vegatable beef, now I know why.

As for Tuesday, we went to the Pushkin Museum and the Church of our Savior Christ (which was bombed out by the Soviets and rebuilt by the Russian Federation). Yesterday, we had our last major out of town excursion. We went an hour north to Sergiev Posad which is a very historic monastery which has housed several of the Russian Orthodox churches patriarchs (equivalent of the Catholic pope). It was founded in the 15th century by St. Sergiev as a hermit and then a town grew up around it because he was said to be able to perform miracles. The monastery that grew there also housed a theological school as well as an Icon artistist traininng center. It was shut down in 1930 by the Soviet government and turned into a dormitory for the students of the local university. But in 1985 under Gorbachev, they church was allowed to reconvene the school returned to it's original purpose. The site actually houses novice priests and monks. Priests must marry. Monks don't. Interesting.

The really fascinating thing was the tour we had by a novice priest who was about 20 who gave us a history of icon painting. It was fascinating.

Also, housed on grounds was Boris Gudinov who was the Prince of Moscow before Mikhail Romanov came to power. Lots of the site was donated to the Monaster by Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great. They hid Peter the Great during the fight for his throne.

I also had a friend of mine come all the way over from Nizhny Novgorod (7 hours away) to go with us. She used to attend UAB and we became friends. Haven't seen her since 1999. But we kept in touch and it was so nice to see her.

Here's some pictures of our trip. Hope you have a great day. Pray for a smooth week next week. We will see Alina again on Sunday. Friday we're going to see a T-34 tank at the WWII museum for Andy and Saturday we're going to the big market at Izmayilova (SHOPPING!!). Much love to everyone.