The Cluttered Pantry

It’s mid afternoon on Monday here in Chita. We landed at 9 am and after an odd wait for luggage (one man with a small cart unloaded the entire 757) our new hosts Katia and Eugene whisked the four of us directly to the baby home.

As we stumbled our way past a little play yard and into the building as we went around the corner towards the music room we were being led into I caught sight of the 3 year old peeking from behind a caretaker and standing next to Sandi and Sean’s oldest son.

Within just a minute there were suddenly three tiny toddlers in the door way looking up at us four adults and trying to figure out which of us were the mamma and pappa they had been told were coming to see them. (we had no idea the children had been told in advance that we were coming and that we are their mamma and pappa!).

Sandi and Seans youngest was brought in from a differnt part of the baby home (our two girls and their oldest all stay in the same unit and clearly know each other. The adults in the room dropped down to kid height and welcomed them in. It turns out that all of the children in their unit have just recently had the chicken pox! Both girls have a fair share of little red spots left on arms and legs and faces. But they seem fine and got right to the business of playing with us.

We took a photo of Z. (3 year old) with each if us and the same for E. (2 year old). When we showed Z her photo with each of us she pointed to it and said her name and then pointed to Bobbi’s picture and said “mamma” and pointed to Mark and said “pappa” She also pointed to the photo of her liitle sister E. and in Russian told us we were her mamma and pappa too.

We spent two hours with the girls, playing with sorting blocks and big stuffed animals and toys that you pull with strings (machina). Z. Likes the “see and say” toy and plays with it llike a slot machine. She knows the names of all the animals and speaks much more than we expected (we’ll have to start intensive lessons when we get home) E. is a big fan of sorting shspes into the holders and both girls are tickle monsters with amazing giggles.

The time went so quickly that when they came to take the children to lunch we were startled.

We got waves and pacca paccas (bye byes) smiles and off they went down the hallway.

Since then we’ve had a wonderful lunch, gone to a store that puts babies R us to shame and picked up groceries for dinner and breakfast here in our 8 floor walk up apartment. But it is all a blur.

Our daughters and wonderful. They are small (but not as tiny as we had feared). They were happy and playful and interacted with us and eachother.
Other than the recent bout with chickenpox they seem in great form and certainly kept us busy trying to keep up with all their energy.

Tomorrow we will get to spend two hours in the morning and two more in the afternoon with them. And then again on Wednesday. We’re so overwhelmed with joy and emotionally wrung out that even the simplest task is proving difficult (please don’t judge spelling or grammer on these posts!)

We won’t be able to post photos on the blog, but well try to keep you up to date and will share photos directly when we can.

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