Technical Difficulties...

Hopefully reposting will solve some of my lacking technical skills.  Sort of like a do-over!!
Andrei turned 2 this weekend. I can't believe he's two!! It seemed like it was just yesterday we were in that tiny apartment in Krasnoyarsk. He's come such a long way. We all have actually. Watching his transfiguration throughout this year has been short of amazing. He loved his birthday party. I think he knew he was the "star". Here's a short video of his last year....well, more like the last 14 months. I cheated just a bit and put our first trip to meet him on there as well. Doug creid; I even managed to shed a tear--OK, maybe two.  Then my husband asks me, "Why didn't you put pictures of you in there?"  Through gritted teeth I replied,"Because I'm the one always behind the camera!" He's pledged to do better in that arena.  We'll see.

2 Words!

EXCEL SPREADSHEET!  If anyone still reads this blog at all and you have just begun your adoption journey, do yourself a big favor and put all your expenses onto a spreadsheet as you're going along.  I've been going through ours (which has been stuffed in a FED EX tyvek envelope) to tally everything for our IRS tax return.  Trust Momma Shelly on this one!  I have spent this afternoon in adoption receipt hell. 

Oh, and highly intelligent people will label all those Russian receipts while in-country.  I can't tell what is a souvenir and what is cereal.  Should the IRS need to see our actual documents, they'll just have to trust me or find Vladimir to translate. 

Baby House #1

Last week a member of the Kras Yahoo group sent out a request of any who had adopted out of baby house #3.  He was trying to find others who had adopted about the same time and hopefully within their son's orphanage group.  There are approximately 100-150 children in each baby house, but they are grouped together in groups of 15 or so, and they stay within that group their entire tenure there.  Andrei was from the apple group--not their son's group.  We exchanged a few pictures, and I noticed that our children were not from the same orphanage either despite thinking we both were from baby house #3.  We had actually stopped at this orphanage to do paperwork, but then we traveled on to Andrei's orphanage. 

So, we started investigating. How could we both have #3?  There was another mom who had answered the request, and her daughter was from Andrei's orphanage AND was in his groupa!  Even though she brought home her sweet daughter 6 months after we did, she and Andrei would have been in the room together at some point.  So, I think that is pretty awesome that we can show him pictures later of one of his "groupies." 

The dad sent me a link with all the Krasnoyarsk orphanages listed on it.  There were two #3 Baby Houses listed there.  One was the orphanage where we had all been in to do paperwork (the actually orphanage was housed on the 2nd floor of that particular building), and another was listed there with the title Special Baby House #3 for Children with Mental Defectives.  That title just saddened me so much. I don't know if I had ever mentioned this, but an American couple whom we met at the orphanage had told us that this orphanage we were adopting out of was half special needs and half non-special needs.  I assumed, using that information, that this had to be Andrei's orphanage.

I decided to try out Google Earth and see if I could tell if this really was Andrei's orphanage.  I pulled up the address and I couldn't recognize a thing.  Then, this other mother emailed me saying she thought our children's orphanage was  Baby House #1 as she had the actual address of the home.  I remembered Lena, our translator, reading the emblem at the orphanage and telling us it was baby house #1, but there was a #3 at the bottom of the emblem, and I had just always assumed she had misspoken.  So, back to Google Earth in search of Baby House #1.  And what do you know! That one IS Andrei's orphanage!  Here's a snapshot of it:

I even recognized the pharmacy where our coordinator would stop for those simply smashing little blue booties we had to wear.  If you click on the picture, it will enlarge it.  You can vaguely see the wall around the orphanage property.  We entered from the street, would drive through the gate, drive around the east side of the orphanage, and park on the west.  You won't find a parking lot for the workers to park in.  They didn't have cars.  Most of them walked or took the bus. 

(We're still trying to clear up the confusion of #3 being on the emblems.  Jenn has an email to our translator to see if we can get an explanation.)

The emblem causing all the trouble!