Ego boost from the Peanut Gallery

I don't recall ever seeing the Peanut Gallery on tv personally, so I guess I am too young for that. In fact my brother, who is 10 years my senior, told me on a couple of occasions when we were younger that I was, in fact, the peanut gallery. It was he who first tried to convince me of its existence. But now I can see that it does, in fact, exist in the comments section of this blog! Evidence at last!! :)

Thank you, though, to all you PG participants, for making me feel needed and demanded once again. I'm thoroughly apologetic that I have neglected you all for nearly a month! I can't hardly believe it. Time has just flown the last few weeks.

This is our busiest time of year with work, on top of the relatively smooth adjustments with Anna (which is what I'll try to remember to call her from here on out since we are the only ones who call her Nastja and only at home). She is doing really well, learns more English all the time, and really loves it here. She has a lot of friends and is very social. We went to a party for a family member of Jason's in NJ so all of Jason's Dad's side of the family got to meet Anna. Everyone was enamored with her and she went all over the room showing everyone pictures of her with DogDog, and Katya and Roman. She loves attention, and is actually very easily made jealous. So we have to frequently talk to her about that.

She has gotten good at accepting discipline and counsel from us. If she gets the impression that we're really upset with her, more than usual, she will get a panicked look on her face and start apologizing. That is a big change from the beginning, when she acted like she didn't care too much if she was in trouble. She does tend to hide her emotions somewhat, though. We're glad to see signs of that changing. Sometimes she gets upset missing her sister and Katya and Roman, and it's nice to see her show those feelings sometimes, so that she's not bottling them up.

She talks to Anja every week on the phone and tells her about all the dogs we've had here for training, all the fun she's having and the new food she's tried, and the new English she's learned. I hear her sometimes say English words instead of Russian accidentally in conversation. Once when she called Katya, the person who answered spoke Estonian and English, not Russian. So she had to say "Please can I speak to Katya?" It was cute.

We have been taking lots of pictures of her. I'll post some soon.

It's still very tough not having Katya and Roman here. The family is just not complete yet. Katya sent us an email yesterday that basically said that she is very sad sometimes that she's not with us, and that she was crying a lot. She said Roman tried to calm her down, and everyone was saying "don't cry, don't cry", but she couldn't stop because she isn't with us. She ended by saying that she doesn't want us to be sad, though. It was a very sweet but heart wrenching email. We feel so bad for them, they don't deserve to have to wait anymore! They have a great attitude and they never give up, though. We get long emails from them almost every day. It's amazing how communication with them has changed over the months. They used to often send very short emails and not always this often. Now they are more detailed and long, and constant.

We haven't heard anything new, other than that the MOE promised they'd write the letter but they just "need more time." In the meantime, the documents from their file (birth certs, etc.) were translated into Russian and sent to Dmitry, just in case the Russians later want them we don't have to wait longer to get those translated. Dmitry was to take those in to the MOE this week and "check on movement." We have thought of and asked about and tried everything that can possibly be thought of and asked about and tried to make this go faster. But apparently that's just not the way it works there. They'll do it when they feel like it, and they'll ask for money when they feel like it. I don't know if Dmitry is trying to get them to mention $ amounts or not, and if he isn't, why not. Diana says he knows how the system works and he will do what is the most likely thing to work. So we just have to wait. Diana is checking in with Dmitry constantly, so unfortunately we're still just stuck here waiting, and the kids are stuck waiting. As long as they get here, though, that's all that really matters.

So now I think you're all pretty much up to date. I'll do my best to write more often again so you guys don't get all up-in-arms. :) Thanks for the shoves, though!! We're off to a roller skating party.

Love,
Molly