September 18, 2015

Today was kind of my first day on the other side of the rainbow…I’m exhausted and I definitely had a nervous breakdown after I put her to bed this night.  This is so hard… It hit me so hard today.  She is so so sweet and has let me love her so easily.  Her gentle trust makes me feel so inadequate, so not worthy to care for her heart! 

Today we woke up at 430 as the night train protested against the turning of the tracks on our way to Kyiv. We would arrive in about an hour but the train attendant was already knocking on our door.  There was not enough light to pack up in an organized way so our things were chaotically thrown back into bags as we shuffled around our car like an awkward game of Tetris.   It would have been impossible to exit the train if Vitaliy had not come aboard to help us!  Slowly slowly we walked down the corridor and she let him carry her off the platform to the waiting chair.  Something I quickly learned today… Ukraine is bumpy…. Ok, I already knew that!  And I already knew that my new daughter has mobility issues but that is NOT the same as experiencing it! Oh my!  I was so exhausted and we had not even started the day! My wrists are wrecked from holding her hands up and down stairs and through the halls.  My legs are bruised form her bony elbows leaning on me as we sit next to each other.  My back is just done.  Done.  Done by the end of the day.  So here was our day:

Because we had arrived so early there was actually no place to go yet.  We had breakfast at the fanciest Ukrainian hotel I had ever seen, accidentally, but it was really yummy.  And it’s a good thing we were there because Annie threw up two more times in the very fanciest of Ukrainian bathrooms.   

After a fancy pants breakfast we went straight to the medical examiners office and slowly slowly we bumped to the door and slowly slowly we walked up the stairs, tripped down another narrow hall, waited for a while, threw up again in another bathroom, waited some more and then had a short exam with a very nice doctor.  It felt like we should be done with the day but it was only 10:45 in the morning!  We were then able to check in early to a nice little apartment down town and, while Annie took a nap, Katie and I finally got cleaned up.  Annie calls it “foo foo foo”  to be dirty so I explained to her that she can nap while I get rid of “momma’s foo foo foo.”  It was hard to fall asleep when she was laughing so hard… This kid!  We are going to have lots of laughs this year!

This area is called landscape alley and it is right down from saint Andrews.  We ate lunch here and had a nice walk through all the interesting sculptures. 

This bench is like a see saw... we saw a bunch of students piled on after us... they were having a blast! Also, notice katie is the "heavy" one here :)

a nice lunch at a "secret" nice spot. 

Before we went back to the medical center for the TB test in the afternoon, Annie informed us that she did not like shots but that she would not cry because she was no stranger to that kind of stuff!  And she was telling the truth!  It was no big deal to her! She barely flinched!  After that we basically walked around trying to stay awake until a reasonable bed time.  At the apartment we worked for several hours trying to figure out how to set up skype and use “VK” (another version on FB) to contact Annie’s brother.  It was very slow and complicated with Annie trying to communicate with me using my google translate app (this is a painfully slow process).  I am quickly learning that not much in my future will be… um……quick again!  Oh boy!  Lord help me to be so patient, help me to be worthy of the sweet trust and love of my darling new daughter!