Day 6 of Visiting Alex!

October 8, 2006
Sunday! Today we woke up and it is raining!!! Raining, raining, raining! Pouring, pouring, pouring! Holy moly! We did not want to get out of bed this morning, besides there is no hot water yet. They have dug up the whole street in front of our apartment building, and we suspect that is where the hot water problem is! We are going to boil some water and see if we can’t take a small bath. We figured out the washing machine here last night and washed 2 loads, I guess no body here has a dryer, so we all have to hang our clothes out to dry. Ours is all scattered around the living room, on a rack and the couches! It’s funny looking! But they are clean, and Alex had clean clothes now! Surprisingly when they give his cloths back the next day they a still quite clean! Didn’t really need to wash them, thought I had better, not sure what the care givers would think of us, if we brought back “dirty” clothes for him to wear! I think I should have brought more outfits… but we are ok. There are baby stores everywhere, so if we need something, like, more tights we can get them. J We are going to try to go to the Bazaar today, we hear they have good prices and good fruits and vegetables. We have not been boiling the water for everything we use it for… we are not drinking it either, but we do brush our teeth with it. So far we are ok! Tomorrow we will have been in Uralsk for a whole week!!! Wow, the time is flying, as we knew it would! Next week our friends, the Bucks are coming from Florida, they would like to adopt a 2-3 year old boy! We are really excited for them to join us! We are looking forward to showing them around. Yeah!!!!!
Yesterday the Babyhouse Director asked us to donate some diapers for a child that had surgery on his head, they can not move the child to change the diapers so they lay the diapers under him I guess, that is what we understood. So last night Jerry went out to the store and brought back 4 huge bags of diapers in 3 different sizes! I hope those will work! The babyhouse was extra quiet today though, hardly anyone was there.

So we had a new interpreter today, I am not sure how to spell her name, but she is learning English still. Tomorrow, I think we will have a different one, Natasha. Alex was all fun today and we left the compact flash card on the table this morning, so our camera was unusable!!! *Gasp* we were horrified, so we took a bunch of video and some still shots with the camcorder. We played and played. We did not give him a snack this morning, because he kept spitting up, we were hoping he wasn’t getting sick or something. He is laughing more now and making more noises. Today Jerry taught him the “make noise with your mouth and flap your lips with your finger” trick. Only Alex wants us to flap his lips while he makes the noise! It is quite cute! He absolutely could care less about stacking his stacking cups and knocking them over, he just gets one in each hand and then smacks them together as hard as he can! It can get pretty loud in there! Then there are the chairs! He hits them so hard, it sounds like the place is under construction. He would crawl to the chairs near the door and then stand up and try to make his way toward the door, today he got so excited that he missed a step and fell onto a chair corner with his big cheek. I grabbed him, but too late, he cried out one little “fuss” and that was it. But he had an instant bruise!!! (ok, medical people, what nutrient is he missing that he would bruise that easy and fast??) I picked him up and comforted him, but he had already forgotten about his fall and was trying to do it again! He’s a mess, and constantly “starving”!! At the end of our visit he was still happy to see our interpreter stand up and hold out her arms to him, he is ready to eat!!! He is so cute!!!

After our visit, we came back and had leftover pasta and I took a nap, it was still raining! Jerry did some stuff on the computer and then went out to the atrium to get our daily pizza from MacJohn’s!! Haha! While he was there he discovered an advertisement for someone that can draw or paint your picture from a photo! It is just what we are looking for! Now we just need someone to call him and get prices and information! His work is really good too! We were really excited! Then it was time to go again!

Alex was his usual self, happy, laughing and lunging toward the cameras! Bruise and all! He just wants to bang on things! We gave him snack this afternoon, but not too much just in case he was having tummy problems. He is so impatient! We make him stay seated in order to eat though, otherwise he would be crawling all over you trying to get the whole snack cup from you, if he grabs it we close it up and he can’t get any out. He’s pretty good though, just wants to eat!!! The hour goes so fast! Sometime it takes them 10 minutes to bring him out to us, but he don’t get to stay after 10 minutes, so I guess it is only 50 minutes!!! Soon we will have him for the rest of our lives though, so we can follow the rules for now! J

We are going to head out and see if we can find the bazaar, this evening. I think it stopped raining, but we will take the umbrella just in case! We will let you know what we find!