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01/06/2005: "We made it through day 1"
Wow--We are parents!!
Lidia is doing wonderfully, considering we have taken her from everything familiar. Yesterday she fussed a little bit when we put all the snow gear on her (who can blame her?). The car ride was uneventful, but she was starting to get irritated by the time we got to where we were going (again I think it was the snow gear) She ate well for snack and dinner. Bath time went great. No tears. She did get a little nervous when I poured water over her head to rinse the soap out. Otherwise, once we took her out of the tub and dried her, she played the typical "Catch the naked baby!" game. She posed for her first bare-butt shot (and her first shampoo mohawk). Then it was into jammies and on to trying the formula. We are wanting her to take formula, at least while we are here, for convenience's sake. It is easier to take with us to airports and you don't need to refrigerate it since it's in powder form. It would make air travel easier. We first tried soy, at the suggestion of our translator, however she made quite clear what she thought of that stuff. We didn't have any milk-based formula, so we borrowed a bit from Brian & Alicia. It was an American brand... but she drank it (a bit haultingly, but she finished 4 ounces). So today, Daddy went to the market to get some milk based formula, Russian style. Hopefully she will drink this. If not, I guess we will try weening her into it somehow before we go. We will figure it out.
We started trying to go to sleep around 8:15 or so last night. We cuddled for a while and I could see she probably was not going to really fall asleep in my arms (we have no rocking chair or good place to hold her to sleep). After a long bout of cuddling, I just put her down and left the room. She didn't even cry, just went to sleep. She slept pretty good. Woke up once around 1:30am. I was able to get her back to sleep and then she slept through to 8:30!
Today she has been in a great mood, but she is denying the sleep. She skipped her 10:00 nap entirely. We decided to go ahead and let her push it off, since it was getting close to Noon with no signs of her giving in. Then we ate lunch. She is not entirely sure about my food choices. I am sure it's not exactly what she is used to eating, but she is eating most of it, even if she is slightly irritated at the whole thing. At breakfast she discovered how great cheerios are. Lunch was just some baby food out of the can/jar.
At around 12:30 we started preparing for a nap. She will not let me lay her in the crib quietly today (I am not at all surprised). I think she has finally realized that this place is not what she is used to. She had a very dazed look when she woke up this morning and looked around. At any rate, we tried cuddling and such and she liked it, but was not giving in to sleep. After about 45 mins I finally decided she really needed to sleep, so I laid her down, said goodnight and left the room. She was quite unhappy about this, but I had made her so sleepy that she only had the energy to cry for about 2 minutes. After that she settled down and went to sleep. Hopefully she will not fight bed time as she did nap time.
Adam and I got the typical sleep of first time parents with a new baby in the house--very little. Oh she slept fine (other than waking up the once), but every time she moved or made a noise, we heard it. She cries out periodically in her sleep, too. Plus there were dogs barking outside. Hopefully we can relax a bit more tonight 
Hopefully she takes a good nap so her mood stays high this afternoon.
Our friends should be arriving in Komsomolsk right about not to pick up their children! (It's 2:00 as I am writing this--I may not post it till Lidia wakes up, though)
I suppose I should go for now and enjoy or bit of quiet for the afternoon.