The next time anybody catches me planning a trip to a major tourist attraction on a major holiday, shoot me, OK?

As a mother, I ought to know better. And as the mother of two kids adopted from Russia, I really, really should have known better.

Maybe I got lulled into a false sense of security yesterday. We had a wonderful outing to the Adventure Aquarium in Camden, N.J. If you have not been, it should go on your to-do list immediately. But today we went to the American Museum of Natural History, along with about a million other people. And it was awful. Wall-to-wall crowds, and such a long line at the coat check that I had to carry all our coats. My little guy had a meltdown about 15 minutes into the planetarium, after, of course, we had already plunked down $30 for parking and $58 for tickets. And we then discovered that that ridiculous ticket price didn't include the one exhibit we all wanted to see.

What does this have to do with Russian adoption? One of the things you are likely to hear from your agency and your social worker is to limit the stimulation your child gets when you bring him home. It sounds counterintuitive: This kid has been under-stimulated in the orphanage and needs to catch up, right? But it is precisely because of the lack of stimulation in the orphanage that you have to take it easy.

That of course, isn't easy. There will be crowds at the U.S. Embassy when you process your paperwork. There will be crowds at Sheremetyevo and Domodedovo when you board the plane home. They are unavoidable. But I have to admit I was scratching my head reading this post on Mike & Melissa's "Russian Adoption Journey" the other day: Their agency rep picked them up after a 9 1/2 hour flight to Moscow and took them, and their toddler son, to a mall to wait until their flight to Rostov. Their poor son didn't get a nap and began crying uncontrollably. Please understand, I am not coming down on this couple, who were on their way back to Russia to adopt a second child shortly after adopting the first. But what was their rep thinking?

When I brought my kids home, I limited my kids' visitors to family members, in very small groups for the first month. I asked for, and got, a very controlled Christmas. I didn't take them grocery shopping or to the mall for months.

America is, all too often, the land of over-stimulation, and there were a lot of bio kids having meltdowns at the museum today too. But I will definitely plan my next trip differently.