Day 4!?

October 6, 2006
Jerry makes me go out every other minute, so I hardly have time to keep up with the journaling! I might rebel tomorrow... Tomorrow we should get to go to the Zhas Dauren, the older kids orphanage, hopefully see our daughters. We have all the letters for the sponsor program. So I hope we get to go. We are having a lot of fun. We hate that we get to see him for only 2 hours a day though! Today we snuck him some treats though, he is so hungry by the time our visit is half over he is wanting to go with Assyia because she takes him to eat. He keeps crawling toward her, and laughing and smiling!!! How rude! Anyways he was downing those puff things! Like he is starving! I felt so bad for him! They are really strict at this baby house. Every thing is very regimented!
We took the toy hammer today, it has a soft head so he can bang it on stuff and it makes cute little boing-ing noises. He wasn’t sure about it at first , and wanted to chew on the hard end of it. By about 15 minutes before the end of our visit he is crawling toward Assyia every chance he can, he is ready to go eat. So, we started sneaking him the little puff snacks that Ryleigh loved when she came home. He is a mess, he puts them in his little mouth as fast as I will let him. Sometime we take a break, so he can swallow his little mouth-full. If he doesn’t have one in his mouth, and one in each fist he is lunging toward the container to try to “help” me get more out!
He is so cute eating! We can hardly wait to feed him full time… I think we will have to work on getting him to slow down! They tell us in the lunch room, they are tied to their chairs so they don’t fall off and told to “Eat! Eat! Eat! Eat!” They have to eat as fast as they can or they will loose their food. We don’t really know for sure how everything is done, because they don’t let us go and see, but we are hoping sometime before we leave that we will be able to have a small tour of the place! Alex is going to want to know all the stuff about where he lived for 11 months. We will keep trying.
After our morning visit, took Assyia to the painting store that we found last night and we learned that the artist is not local and most of the paintings are not even of local landscapes! Bummer! They are really beautiful paintings though, we may get one anyways, we will see what else we can find! Then she took us downtown to the art museum, where there was a display of school children’s artwork, she got the name and number of a guy that sometimes does family portraits for people, she was going to call and check on it for us. Then she and Phillipich dropped us at the Atrium where we ate at MacJohn’s for lunch again! They have good salad and pizza. Today I had the cheese sandwich (not sure where the cheese was,) but it was good anyways!

By then it was time to go back to the babyhouse for our second visit! The days go so fast! There is so much we want to do. But everything is harder, since we don’t speak the language and can’t even read it!!! Alex looks so cute in his little outfits! They are all a little big, but don’t look too bad. All of the pants are too long; we have to roll up his pant legs when he is walking along the chairs! He looks so cute standing up and clobbering each chair as he goes with that crazy maraca/rattle! But he loves it! He also LOVES the rocking horse… he doesn’t quite get that he needs to hold on to it yet though. He just wants to sit on it and put his feet up! I see a rocking horse in the future for maybe a Christmas gift or something… we saw at the baby store the other day these beautiful horses, they are not wooden ones, they are like stuffed animals, only very sturdy and on wooden rockers. Remember that the horses are very important in the history and modern times (out on the steppes) in Kazakhstan, that must be why the toy horses were so nice! Wish we could bring one home… We will have to try to go to that store again to take a picture, so that we can remember what they looked like! They had little saddles and everything! Alex tries every chance he gets to get a hold of my camera! Why are they so obsessed with those, anyways? He can be playing and doing his own thing and suddenly remember the camera off to the side and off he takes! The closer her gets the more excited he get and starts breathing hard, almost a laugh, of course he knows I am right on his tail to save the camera, which makes him smile harder! But he tries as hard as he can! Unfortunately for him he hasn’t succeeded yet! J It cracks us up every time, he is persistent! Near the end of our meeting we brought out the snacks again, same routine! Shoveling them in and smacking his lips with excitement! Then really getting excited when Assyia takes a hold of him to go to dinner! All the while we are blowing kisses to him as he leaves!!

We came home and rested for a while, then we went exploring in the other direction as usual, we were sort of looking for the Chigala hotel, we were told they have a really good restaurant. However we were unable to find it this time…We did see the Golden Church, a Russian Orthodox church that seems to be very popular here. After that we came back to familiar territory and went to dinner at MacJohn’s again! Convenience! What can I say! They have an English menu! Now, we are friends with the owner guy. He gave us a free Sprite, too. He is so funny (in a cute way). He is from Egypt and worked in Lebanon for 5 years at Pizza hut, Now he has quite the little business going in Uralsk, Kazakhstan! Crazy, huh? He must speak a lot of languages by now since almost everyone in Kazakhstan speaks Russian and Kazak!