September 29, 2002

Evan woke us up around 7:30am. He was a little bit grumpy, and a lot hungry. He didn't want to spend any time playing or cuddling with mom and dad in bed. He wanted to go right to breakfast. Fortunately, Julia heard Evan soon after he woke up and she quickly got some breakfast ready for him: yogurt and bread: perfect! Lee and Kristin really appreciated Julia's lighter cooking. While Galena and Nina's food was wonderful, after a week of it, we were pretty overwhelmed!

After breakfast, we played a lot, changed diapers a bit, and started thinking about getting ready for some sightseeing with Inna and Vitali. Kristin found a dose of Dayquil gel caps in her purse, which Lee gratefully took. His cold (probably triggered by the allergy attack at Nina's) was still pretty bad. Kristin again did an amazing job putting Evan down for his nap. Just a little bit of playing quietly in his crib before arranging his blankets and settling down for some sleep.

Inna and Vitali arrived at 11am as promised, just ten minutes or so after Evan woke up from his nap. Perfect timing. We got Evan's baby backpack all ready to go (a big thank-you to Susan and Peter Carlson!), and we were on our way. Inna was unimpressed with Lee's cold on the elevator. She wanted him to stay at the apartment and lay in bed all day with tea, but Lee wouldn't have any of it, so off we went.

Our first stop was the market near St. Andrew's Church. We got out of the car, and almost immediately found a book seller's stand that had terrific photo books of Kiev and other parts of Ukraine. We picked up a couple of books, and moved down the street. Next, we found some wooden Easter eggs that Ukrainians often use as toys for babies. Six for $1 U.S.! Pretty good deal, so we bought half a dozen. Next, we found some wooden children's toys: nothing particularly special, but cute and decidedly Ukrainian, so we got a couple of those. While we were at it, we picked up a carved wooden plate with the seal of Ukraine on it, which we thought would look great somewhere in our house.

Inna pointed us toward a stand with traditional Ukrainian embroidery, because she remembered Kristin mentioning that we would like to have a shirt for Evan to wear for his baptism. We ended up with two shirts: one for now (for Evan's baptism), and one for later (about three years old).

Finally, Inna found a stand for us that had real Ukrainian Easter eggs: not the wooden kind, but the real eggshells painted in traditional forms. Kristin spend about ten minutes talking with the woman at the stand about the various patterns and their symbolism while Lee carried Evan in the Baby Bjorn (well, ok, danced with Evan to some pop music from a nearby stand--which Evan really enjoyed). Kristin came back with over a dozen eggs. They were very inexpensive, and all beautiful. We hoped that we could get them home safely in the plastic egg carriers (used normally for camping) that Kristin had brought for just this purpose.

We sent Vitali off to the car with our purchases, and moved on to St. Andrew's Church. It was just around the corner and down a small hill from the market, and it rose to well above the level of the market on its own little hill. We climbed the stairs to the entrance level, and Kristin pulled her scarf over her head and Lee removed his cap as we entered. The church was mainly used as a museum, so we were surprised to find a mass underway. We stood with a small group of worshipers and observers while a vocal quartet sang the mass, accompanying the priests who were serving the mass. The music was beautiful, and excellently sung. Evan was completely quiet, sitting in his Baby Bjorn and soaking it all in. We watched some of the worshipers taking communion wine, and eventually we were offered (and accepted) the bread. We stayed a little longer, and then left the church to continue our sightseeing.

We walked up the street past the apartments where the Ukrainian President lives, and then past the Ministry of Foreign Affairs building, where we would have an appointment on Monday morning. Next to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, we arrived at St. Michael's Cathedral. St. Michael's had burnt down many years ago (perhaps decades?), and it had only been rebuilt about five years ago. The Cathedral was at one end of a long mall through the downtown area, at the other end of which was St. Sophia's Church. At the near end, we saw a statue of Queen Olga, the first queen of Kiev/Rus, the original Russian empire. We also saw a man singing and accompanying himself on a traditional stringed instrument, dressed in a traditional garb--something like a troubadore. The gates into the Cathedral grounds were painted with brightly-colored murals, and we passed through them into the courtyard.

The newly-reconstructed church was elaborate and beautifully painted. The outside was all blue and white and gold--truly magnificent. The inside was covered with icons, painted directly on the walls--perhaps frescos? The colors were bright and vivid--probably a modern style. At one part of the cathedral (right of the main cathedral hall) there was a circular opening to the lower level with a spiral staircase going downwards. The staircase and the level below were from the original church: broken stone and plaster, with some of the original stone mosaics still showing on the walls. It was amazing seeing these old mosaics in a church that was otherwise so modern. The contrast was striking. Again, Evan was very quiet, observing everything intently and occasionally talking a bit in baby talk but not fussing.

After St. Michael's, we walked down the mall to St. Sophia's. At the far end of the mall--outside St. Sophia's--we passed a sculpture of the great Ukrainian King, Bogdan Khmelnitsky. It looked like bronze, sitting atop a mound on stone blocks. We entered the grounds of St. Sophia's, for which we paid a small admission fee--about one dollar for all five of us). Inna told us that the inside of the building wasn't very impressive, and Evan was finally starting to get grumpy (hungry for lunch), so we simply walked around the entrance (where there were some very old mosaics visible above the door and on the side wall) and then left again. We waited on the square outside for Vitali to return with the car (Inna had sent him ahead for it), and Mommy took the opportunity to help Evan practice his walking.

On the way back to the apartment, Inna helped Lee buy some tissue paper and cold medicine. The Dayquil and the outdoor walking had worked very well, but we weren't pushing our luck. Tomorrow would be a busy day!

Back at the apartment, we finally had lunch (which Evan was most insistent on as soon as we walked in the door), then put him down for his second nap. He was so over-stimulated from his sightseeing that he had a hard time settling down this time. Evan slept for about two hours, during which we enjoyed some relaxation: Kristin working on her adoption journey book, and Lee working on the many beautiful photos from the day of sightseeing. Then, it was dinner, play, snack, play, and bedtime for Evan. Bedtime went pretty smoothly, again thanks to Kristin's skill. A few false starts (quiet periods followed by crying), but after Daddy sang him some lullabies, he finally settled down for the night. We sat in the kitchen for a while working on our various journals, and then joined Evan in a good night's sleep.

Or at least it would have been a good night's sleep, except that Evan woke up around 2am with some kind of night terrors and wouldn't go back to sleep for about an hour and a half. Mommy and Daddy took turns holding him, wrapped in his blankets, then setting him down in the crib and patting him on the back while he tossed and turned and rearranged all the blankets, then fell off to sleep, only to have him wake up the instant we left the crib side to try to get back to bed and start wailing again. We tried having him sleep with us on the futon, but he tossed and turned and twisted and scooted and kicked and flailed so much (in slow motion--not all at once) that he just couldn't get comfortable (and mom and dad couldn't take any more whacks in the face or kicks in the ribs), so we had to keep trying to get him settled in the crib. Fortunately, Evan was almost as tired as we were, so he eventually managed to get thoroughly asleep again.