Wednesday, March 20, 2002

She awoke a few times during the night but went right back to sleep. She woke up at 5:00 am, which wasn’t too bad, because there was a 2 hour time change. Corey and I were exhausted. We put her in bed with us and looked at books. She loved the farm animal book and repeated “dog” when I said it. Daddy was taking lots of pictures of us and videoing. This was the first time that it all seemed real to me. Here we were, all together in the hotel and finally a family and all I could think of was, “What are we supposed to do with you?” Thank goodness many of our family and friends have children and we’ve been able to watch them, so we had some idea of what to do. We fed her breakfast and she ate a lot. I was nervous about how much she ate so I called my parents to make sure we weren’t overfeeding her. Then we all got ready to have the kids passport pictures taken. Her snowsuit was so cumbersome and the car was so hot that I wrapped her in my coat and put her hat on when we went out. So strange to have her on our laps in the car. After we had the pictures taken we went back to the hotel. Kara took a nap and Corey went out to get us lunch—McDonald’s. Tasted pretty darn good too!! After Kara’s nap we walked around Arbat Street. It was drizzling a bit but we really wanted to take her out on our own—just the three of us. We were such the proud parents!! While shopping, I wanted to buy a picture of St. Basils church for Michelle and Don. There was an artist selling a beautiful picture. Corey loves to barter with the merchants and has fun doing it. I’m mortified when he does and generally hide anywhere I can. The artist was missing an arm and had a limp and I was immediately sympathetic. Not only would I not let Corey barter with him, I over paid him and Corey’s never let me forget it!! That night we went to dinner in the hotel with Mike, Chris and Sean. It was our first restaurant experience with our girl—we even took pictures. Sean was 2 years old and they had him in a high chair. Kara was such our little baby that we ate with her on our laps and didn’t even ask for a high chair. After dinner we went back to out room and had Miss Kara in bed promptly at 8:00, after I rocked her of course. She slept well, thankfully.