Doctor's Visit and Moscow

Our Smiley Boy!

Gum Department Store (very famous)

Thursday, Apr 23rd – 11am (Moscow time)

We just returned from Maddox’s medical clearance appointment. He passed and now we have the rest of the day free. He has a slight allergic rash caused by who knows what. We’ll figure it out when we get home…right now everything he eats is pretty much new. One thing we noticed was that he and Serge (the other little boy from St Petersburg) were the biggest kids by a lot. There were 4 other sets of parents there with their kids from other regions and they were all really tiny. The youngest was 12 months old and he was the smallest, but there were a few kids 16, 20, 19 months and they were all much smaller than Maddox. The doctor weighed him at 11.1kg (24.4lbs) and his length was 79cm (31.1in). He certainly is all torso…the onesies we brought him are just about too small and stretch across his big belly, but the pants are all a little long and sag in the bottom area. We had to wake Maddox up this morning at 6:30am, so he is tired. We are going to go walk around and get something to eat…all things revolve around food right now. Our hotel is a block or two from Red Square and we are hoping to tour St Basil’s Cathedral today or tomorrow morning. We picked up some groceries on our way back from the doctor and after 2 packets of instant oatmeal for breakfast Maddox has still managed to eat an entire banana, a glass of milk and some rye crackers. The kid just keeps eating. When the food is gone, he throws one of his fits where he lays on the floor and whines. Sometimes you can “trick” him by leaving his bib on, but once you take that off, the fit is back. Otherwise, he is pretty much like any other 18-month old…into everything. He has emptied his suitcase twice already. Well, we are off to explore Moscow a little bit before naptime…more later.

1pm (Moscow time)

Maddox is now sleeping. Knowing a few Russian phrases is really helping. We just say the Russian phrase and then the English equivalent after it. It has made some things easier. We have figured out that he doesn’t like to sleep with us. He doesn’t mind, but he when he is mad (like when it is time to take a nap or go to bed) he doesn’t want you near him or touching him. So, it has worked to just lay him on the bed or in the crib, tell him it is time to sleep and he is mad/fusses for a minute, we go in there and tell him “it is ok” and/or “don’t cry” and he finds his wrist, sucks away and falls asleep. Sometimes after he has been sucking on his wrist a few minutes, he’ll roll over and lean against you, but it has to be on his terms…you can’t reach over and touch him or stroke is head, etc or he’ll bat you away. That type of cuddling has to be on his own terms. Any other time, he loves it all. Maddox has figured out that if we pick up his jacket, we are going outside…we loves to walk around. We had him out in Red Square today and he was walking everywhere. Once we decided it was time to go he did not want to go back in the stroller. Maddox has also figured out the word “eat.” No big surprise there since he loves to do it. He has not voluntarily stopped eating yet like he was full, so that may be our first big issue. We found the Sbarro that we ate at 10 years ago when we were here. So, we had that for lunch. We got Maddox a roll and he ate the sausage from my pizza. It was like a brat cut up and he ate every piece on my pizza…it must have been almost an entire brat. Then he at a roll…when we told him it was all gone and there wasn’t anymore…he melted down again. We thought he was going to fall asleep in the stroller on the way back to the hotel, but he was too busy watching everything. When we got into the hotel, we let him out of the stroller to walk and he smiled at everyone that we passed. If the smiled at him, he just kept on smiling, but got closer to me. He as figured out the elevators too…he just walks right in, stands real still and looks in the mirrors then when doors opens he just strolls right out again.

6PM

Well, our trip to Red Square and St Basils Cathedral was a bust...we walked over there, but for some reason the entire square was closed. You couldn't go in. So, we'll try tomorrow morning before our Embassy appointment. We did walk around the other parks and squares and Maddox chased birds and we chased him...that made him giggle and smile a lot. We did see a few Lenins, Stalins and even a Nicolai Romanov (the deposed Tzar).

AN INTERNET NOTE: The hotel here has wireless access everywhere, but you have to pay for it by the hour. It is $12/hour and once you log on, it charges you for the entire hour. So, we are going to try to get on only once a day (mid morning, US time) and stay on for only 1 hour. We didn’t know this little bit of info last night…logged on with our purchased 60 min, used only 36min and then couldn’t figure out why we didn’t have any minutes left this morning. So, if you don’t hear from us, that is why…we’ll only be getting online once a day until we get back to the US (on Saturday).