The Last 48 hours

Our last meal in Russia – Dinner Friday Night
We have loved our travels, but we are MORE than ready to be home. After the “rat” experience, we were not interested in being adventurous for dinner, so we headed out to find the “Teremok” restaurant that we loved in St Petersburg. We had seen one in while walking the day before. If you remember “Teremok” served the Russian version of crepes. We found it, but it wasn’t a sit-down restaurant, it was a food stand. After waiting in line for about 10 minutes, it was finally our turn to order. Britt had been practicing while waiting to order 3 ham and cheese crepes in Russian. He did a marvelous job, and the lady even understood him. However, she showed us that she didn’t have enough ham for 3 ham and cheese crepes and handed us a picture menu. We changed our order to one ham and cheese, one chicken and sauce, one mushroom and cheese, and one strawberry (for dessert). Then she started to make it…now we realized why we had to wait so long in line…she was the only one in the booth. 4 crepes later and many animal cracker bribes to Maddox to keep him still, she finally finished. Then instead of handing over the crepes, she proceeds to seal each individually in these little aluminum foil bags and write IN RUSSIAN what each one was on the outside of the bag. Britt and I just look at each other and start laughing…totally a “blog-able” moment. We are finally handed our crepes and we speed walk back to the hotel to eat them while still hot and feed our starving boy (he hadn’t had anything in 2 hours except a dozen or so animal crackers…no wonder he was starving ;).
PS. The crepes were good!

Friday night – Maddox’s 1st Real Bath
Prior to tonight, we had only given Maddox a sponge bath with him sitting on the vanity with his feet in the sink. The first time I didn’t fill the sink, the 2nd time I filled the sink and let him dangle his feet in it. So, tonight was THE NIGHT…a full bath. I ran the water, tested the temperature and got Maddox undressed. We told him (in Russian) it was bath time and he ran into the bathroom…so far so good….then we put him in the tub and he had a calm look on his face for about 5 seconds…then it was complete terror and he was clambering to get out. Britt, ever at the ready, hopped in with him to try and keep him calm. After some convincing with our limited Russian vocabulary, he seemed to tolerate it pretty well. Bath #1 all done…maybe it will go better when Jackson joins him next time.

Saturday morning – hotel checkout
We got up early and were ready to go about and hour before our ride was going to pick us up. We had some rubles left, so we decided to go get a cappuccino. When we got back to the hotel, we still had about 20 minutes, so we just decided to stay in the lobby, check out and let Maddox run around. We were the only ones in the lobby besides the 3 front desk clerks, the 2 porters and the 2 doormen (remember very nice hotel). Let’s just say that after those 20 minutes of us playing chase, peek-a-boo around the marble columns, going around and around in the revolving door, and Maddox practicing his stair climbing and descending the marble staircase to the 2nd floor restaurant, I am sure they were happy our driver finally arrived. We certainly left our mark on the Marriot Royal Aurora Moscow and I thought it was nice to hear some giggling and laughter in that huge lobby.

Saturday, April 25th – On the plane from Moscow to Washington-Dulles
Things are never normal flying with us it seems on these trips. So, we leave our hotel at 9am for a 12:30pm flight. It takes us over an hour to get to the airport because the nice weather has everyone heading to their dachas for the weekend and there is killer traffic going out of the city. We stand in line for 40 minutes waiting to check in…thankfully Maddox was in a pretty good mood and the rye crisp crackers take him a while to eat. When we get to the check-in counter, the printer breaks and she is talking (in Russian, of course) to 2 different ladies about our tickets. So, finally over an hour after we had arrived at the airport they tell us that we are listed in on the “departure management list” and we have to come back to the check-in counter at 11:40am. Last night when I checked the flight, there were no available seats, so we thought we would be lucky to get seats together…now we just want seats on the plane. Keep in mind, we are supposed to board at 11:50am, we haven’t gone through security, customs or passport control yet and can’t until we get our boarding passes. So, we find somewhere to let Maddox run around for 30 minutes. When we go back to the United counter, at first the lady acts like she doesn’t understand (must be the language difference) then we must have gotten through to her and she calls someone else over. We finally get our boarding passes and run to customs-no problem…passport control – the immigrations officer takes our passports, looks at us, looks at Maddox and asks for our paperwork, I hand her all our documents (Maddox’s birth certificates, his mother’s release of his birth rights, the adoption certificate…you get the picture…a thick stack of papers) and she proceeds to read ALL of it…finally she starts stamping our passports (thank goodness…it is now 12:05pm)…security – no problem. We are moving very rapidly to the gate. Once we get to the gate there is a HUGE line to get into the gate area (we have found in all our recent international travels that you have to enter a secured gate area with another round of passport/boarding card checks before you even actually load the flight and give someone your boarding pass). We made it through that line and the gate agent asks us if we have a “gate check” ticket for the stroller…no one ever gave us one…they said we’d get it at the gate. So, she tells us to follow her and we proceed to the front of the LONG line of people and she fills out our “gate check” ticket for the stroller. Just about that time, the crew shows up (it is now 12:30, remember we were supposed to leave at 12:35). We decide to just stay at the front of the line…that is where the gate agent put us, right? So, we finally start boarding and we are the first ones on the plane…as we find our row we see that we are in the “Economy Plus” section…United wanted an extra $119 for the seats if you upgraded (we didn’t it…must have been the “departure management list” :) in the middle section…3 seats (we have 2 of them). We are getting settled and we realize that there aren’t anymore people coming on the airplane. The flight is 100% full in the “economy” section and less than 50% full in the “economy plus” section. We hold our breaths, hoping a huge load of people aren’t still coming…the flight attendants start closing the overhead bins…the aircraft door closes…YES, YES, YES….we have a ton of extra room because the flight attendants won’t let anyone from “economy” move up because it costs $119 (there isn’t even a bulkhead between the sections on this aircraft. The row behind us is “economy” and it has 5 inches less space between the rows…that is the only difference…not worth $119 for me, but I’ll take it, plus the extra empty seats if United wants to give it to me. So, right now I am blogging, in 27C, Britt is reading in 27H (there is no D, F or G) and Maddox is sleeping stretched out in 27 A&B (with a seatbelt around him). Britt and I were not looking forward to an 11-hour flight on a packed airplane with our son sharing our laps. However, God takes care of even the small stuff sometimes.
As for our other flights, right now they have one of us in 10B and the other in 34F on our way from Dulles to Chicago…we’ll work that when we get there and they have us in 3A&B (1st class) from Chicago to Minneapolis…we’ll let you know how that all works out…keep reading.
IT IS OFFICIAL!!! At 4:10pm eastern daylight time Maddox Singleton became a US citizen at the Washington-Dulles airport. The customs guy was super nice and the process went really smooth.

Saturday – 9pm (in Chicago) - Well, with a ton of flight delays due to crew issues and weather, we are now waiting for our flight to Minneapolis. It will end up leaving about 2 hours late and we’ll get in around 11:30pm. Maddox has been champ and done really well.