Back at home!

Yep, we are back! I think as the week progressed and we felt more used to Diego, our adrenaline went down and our energy went down too! But let me tell you about our last day in Moscow!

First, I have confessed that I tend to prepare myself for big events or situations by visualizing the moment ahead a time. I did it before our referral, I did it before our last day with Diego. And sometimes when I visualize events that can get emotional, I end up crying quite a bit, but then when the true event happens I feel "cool"... I think it hapened when Mark and I got married and it happened during our referral day... Anyways, on Friday night, I got really really sad thinking of saying good-bye to my Diego and going home without him!

The next morning, we were picked up by 10:30 am, they drove us through the Moscow University Campus (really nice area) and at about 11:30 am we were in Podolsk. The Director was not there, but we were happily surprised when we saw the "usual" round of caregivers that we met at the begining of the week. And then, our little prince came! I don't know if they knew we wanted to "celebrate" Diego's birthday, but he was wearing a REALLY cute yellow and green outfit, nicer than anything he was wearing the days before. So, just in case they did it for his birthday, we decided to not change him to the outfit we got him and not taking any risk to offend them or anything.

We told Violet that we had brought a card and that we would like the caregivers to sign it for him. Violet thought it was a nice idea and talked to them about it. They seemed to be busy feeding the babies and running around, but a bit later, the card came with three signatures! Yeah! In the meantime, we decided to take few pics of Diego, his cake, and the candle with the big 1! We didn't light it, but still were able to get some cool shoots! Originally, we thought that maybe the caregivers would sing him happy birthday in Russian, and then we would do it in English, but that didn't happen. Instead, Violet told them that we brought a cake, and that we wanted to leave it with all the caregivers to enjoy! They seemed to be really happy about it, so we took some pictures of the caregivers, Diego, the cake, and us!




Suddently, I was looking for the card and could not find it!!??!! Where was it?? "Nah, I find it later!", so I countinued playing with my kid. On Saturday the "traffic" in our little room was specially "heavy", and I noticed that when the caregivers passed by, they would send Diego kisses, or touch his little arms, or call his name to get him to give a big smile! And then, the main caregiver who takes care of Diego came by again, and gave me the card with a smile. She had taken it to write a long paragraph, which looks like a poem (I don't know what it says, because it is in cyrilic)! A few minutes later, Diego had fallen asleep, so we gave him a big kiss and said good-bye to our little boy. We asked them to keep the photo album in his crib, and they did. We collected the toys and gave them to them, and they accepted. And that was it, our last day in the orphanage and no tears!

Right now, while writting this post, I am little sad and I am missing Diego. But at least, after visiting him for 5 days, getting to know him a little, and witnessing how much love and care he receives from his caregivers, I have to admit that I don't feel too concerned about leaving him there. I feel confident he will continue to be the happy baby he is now and wait a few weeks until we can bring him home with us!

After the last visit, I was drained. Mark was feeling kind of sick, so even though the weather was nice and it was early, we decided to turn down Violet's offer to take us to the Pushkin Museum. We went to the appartment, I slept for 2 hours, ate some dinner, and got our luggage ready! The next day, Moscow said good-bye to us with a snow storm, and approximatley 15 hours in the air later we were home!