Visit to Orphanage

It's been a LONG journey but we are back in Kemerovo (Siberia).  Finally, some snow!  It's really not that cold though..but it is amazing, every single person in Kemerovo is wearing a hat.  I mean EVERYONE.  That should not impress me so, but somehow it does....and many are very interesting and beautiful hats...you KNOW I am going to be coming home with one.
Once we arrived here from Moscow we were greeted by Anna, the local coordinator and it was so good to see her again.  We made it to the parking lot and were reaquainted with Sergie aka "Sergei Andretti".  Anna promised us that Sergei was warned and would drive a little slower on our next trip to the orphanage...although I was not totally convinced, I was on such an adreneline high to get to the orphanage and see Maksim again, I could have probably driven even faster than Segei to get there.

Now the most important part...after our somewhat less scary 4 hour drive ...we arrived at the orphanage.  The children were having lunch so we had tea in Dr Ludmilla's office.  Finally they brought the babies in and Maksim was even cuter than I remembered.  He cried at first but settled right away when Kip sang our family lullaby.  He held on tight as we held him and seemed a little scared.  THEN I brought out the little stuffed horse and he once again broke out of his shell.  He giggled and even gave kisses to his horse first and Mama and Papa later.  Maksim is a little clown!!  He loved making faces with Kip and would then search me out and make a little "chair" out of me and sit for a quick minute and then run right back to Kip to make faces and be tickeled.  His favorite thing hands down is throwing...he loved to toss the horse and his cars etc., and with Mama being out of practice with a toddler, even got his hands on my video camera and gave it a good toss across the room.

The visit was approx an hour and a half but flew by.  I will say this is the first time I did not break down when they took Maksim for his nap.  I am sure it is knowing that we will be back to finally take him home soon.  We hope to make one more trip to play with Maksim before the final BIG Day when we take him home for good.