Back in Russia

Greetings to all - we have arrived in Moscow and are typing this from the comforts of our apartment that overlooks Novy Arbat. This apartment is quite nice and has ... get this ... drum roll please ... an airconditioner in each room! Ít's a very nice place that has been completely remodeled. Our greatest fear is that the little old ladies that sit at the opening will quiz us on something and we won't know what to say (they look like they've been sitting in this building's lobby since Lenin was in power).

We've had our breakfast of oatmeal and are now ironing all our clothes (well Nathan is ironing while I update the blog ... good deal, huh?). Our schedule today is that we're picked up at 9:15 a.m. then we're off to meet Masha who will assist us in the 'referral acquisition' process which is at 10 a.m. With referral in hand, we''ll go to the orphanage to meet the little girl. We will also have time to meet with the baby home doctor who I'm sure will be delighted to answer all 20 pages of my medical questionnaire. Okay .. maybe it's more like 15 pages but still ... it is long. I want to make sure that Dr. Davies has all the information that he could possibly need to help us make this decision. I even have some of the questions in Russian to help facilitate the process.

Once the little girl goes down for her nap, we'll be coming back to the apartment so that I can type up all the answers to 20 pages of medical questions to get them off to our IA doctor. If we're lucky, he'll be able to provide his input prior to us going to bed. If not, we should either have an answer tomorrow morning or additional information that we'll need to collect. We purchased a vintage 2002 bottle of Veuve Cliquot champagne in the Munich airport to celebrate our daughter once our decision is made. Hopefully we'll get to drink it tomorrow night.

Much love to everyone and I'll post more later.