Greetings again from Moscow

We rose early this morning and flew west from Kemerovo with the rising sun at our backs and the Siberian snow clouds below us. It seems an apt expression of hopefulness and sadness. We are thrilled to be nearly complete with another major step in our adoption process. But we left with the words of our youngest ringing in our ears – “I don’t need a coat, I want to go with you now!” As they sent us off with hugs and kisses and statements that they were ready and anxious to have a mama and papa, all we could do is promise to come back for them as soon as we could. Their understanding is that we need to go away to buy the tickets and will return when we have them. We hope that the process leading to our court date goes quickly – but even if it lasts a week that would be too long.
We know that some of you have worried (or at least wondered) if we were really going to name our kids Peter, Paul and Mary – especially when we learned how much Mary loves to sign. While there is something endearing to that logic we have taken a different road. We are thrilled to share with our family and friends that we have petitioned the Russian Federation to rename the children Carson, Parker and Delaney (youngest to oldest) and keep their Russian first names as middle names. We asked Delaney, through the interpreter, if she wanted a new name from her new mama and papa she said yes, and when Nancy wrote it out on a chalk board for her she was both shy and excited. While she certainly doesn’t grasp all that was going on, her caregivers, and indeed all at the orphanage she was in, were very familiar with parents coming to visit and “looking for their forever children.”
In fact, on the second visit with the boys we walked in on a drama rehearsal where the 10 or so kids (including our littlest) marching around with snow shovels on their backs as recorded music played. They stopped and pretended to shovel snow and sign. It was a cute show and the tallest girl just beamed at us as she made eye contact. As the kids sang I told Nancy that adopting three was enough because I could see in her eyes that she wanted to adopt them all (I could hardly resist thinking the same)! It was only at the conclusion of the rehearsal that our interpreter shared with us the words they sang. The gist of the song was that they needed to shovel the snow so that their new parents could come to the orphanage to find them and take them home. It explained so much and broke our hearts that so many of these kids wanted desperately to be adopted into a real family.
Back here in Moscow, the sun shone as we walked about this afternoon. It was still cold but we explored for grocery stores and other support services for the several days we will spend with three kids in tow when we come back to pick them up. Tonight we are relaxing after what can only be described as our own version of a Christmas Miracle. The mental, emotional and physical exhaustion of the last six days has been enormous. We plan on hitting the hay early tonight and sleeping in tomorrow before we make the last day of flying home. We plan on a bit of city touring tomorrow but otherwise laying low and trying to rest up for a return to our ‘real’ world. Again, we thank each of you for your emails, comments and prayers. We have felt them and they have given us strength.
Our love to all of you.