[dlhall]

Not sure of your schedule, but it sounds like you're not spending much time in the region with your son. One thing we did was we left all our baby stuff in Moscow (except a few things that we needed for the 12 hours we had our son before returning to Moscow). All the Marriotts have a bag check room that you can leave bags in while you travel to your region. This will solve the problem of too much luggage for the in-country travel part of the trip.

Also, you don't need to bring a set of clothes for every day. I think I only brought 3 or 4 pairs of pants and wore them with different shirts each day. Russians typically wear the same set of clothes for many days in a row, so nobody will care if you have on the same outfit from one day to the next.

I do second what someone else said above about bringing a hot water kettle (we bought ours at Bed, Bath & Beyond for only $10 and it heats water to boiling in less than 1 minute). It was a lifesaver for late night meals (instant soup packets).

Liz