Sorry People! We have been seeing so much we haven't had time to get this all on here... Journaling takes up a lot of time! Hopefully we remembered everything important!
October 10, 2006
Today was calm day! Alex was so quiet and sweet today! He just wanted to play and sit on our laps…. Well he also wanted to attack the box from the fridge farm! He loves the crazy box. But he still has to have the animals in his hand and sometimes mouth! He still giggles when you put him up in the air and “drop” him. Today I think I figured out that he crawls towards the door so that I will go and get him… because every time I get in front of him to stop him, he starts giggling and crawls faster towards me, then when he reaches me he tries to stand up and reaches toward me or lunges toward me, giggling the whole time! He does this if he hasn’t been held in a few minutes, I think! We will test it again later and tomorrow! He still gets excited when the interpreter stands or his caregiver comes to get him, he likes to eat! We try to get him to spend more time standing up at the chairs, but he just doesn’t do it anymore… that’s ok, he prefers to sit on us!
After our visit, Aliya took us on our Uralsk tour. She showed us lots of monuments and told us some history of the city. Then we had lunch at MacJohn’s and met with the artist who is going to paint a portrait of our family and one of just Alex. For 2 paintings, 50 x70cm and 40 x 60cm it was 65,000 tenge. About $510. We hope he is good, his samples were. If he is, we will let everyone know his number, so when you come to Uralsk, you can have a painting made, too!
In the afternoon, Alex was still quiet. Nothing really new happened today with him. But he loves that crazy box from the fridge farm. We just love him more and more everyday! He is really starting to attach to us now, we think. He is smiling when he comes from his room to meet us. I was wearing a jacket over my shirt, with a zipper, and he loved the zipper pull… he kept putting his head down trying to bite onto it! He makes us laugh all the time. If we had our way we would just hug him and kiss his cheeks all day long! He seems to love surprises! He gets excited when you surprise him with, mostly the surprise is in our actions though… it usually makes him laugh!
October 11, 2006
Jerry was a computer hog last night so I am writing the next morning! We went to our visit with Alex in the morning. He was so playful, and happy! We played for a little while and then the photographer came to take his passport photo! Of course, Alex just sat there calmly and let him take the pictures, he took 3 just in case! Alex did want to chew on his toy for the picture so we had to come up with creative ways to get the toy out of his mouth while looking at the camera… He is used to the camera, that is for sure! He wanted his vitamins today… I think he remembers that if he takes his vitamins, he gets to have a snack. He was all over that bottle of vitamins! It was funny! He is so smart!!! When you bring out the snack container, he starts smacking his lips and nodding his head, sometimes he bounces up and down with excitement… depending on how sleepy he is. As we were leaving we met up with the other couple from Michigan and made plans to have dinner with them at the Pushkin Hotel tomorrow night. That will be fun.
We went to the Museum of Kazakhstan History, with Aliya. She is so cute! We wish she would be our interpreter the rest of the time!
When we get him in the afternoon, he has usually been sleeping (we think). We decided that Alex does try to escape, because he wants me to “get” him! He just laughs and giggles and lunges at me. It is so cute! We practiced making noises and blubbering our lips, some more… Today he actually made sounds, usually he just whispers the noises. Then he would laugh! Today when he headed back to his room he was making the noises all the way back to his door while looking at us!
On our way home Phillipich stopped so Jerry could look at the gas station on the route to the babyhouse… Jerry took the camera and went across the street to the gas station and started taking pictures! Phillipich started laughing and carrying on in Russian…I had no idea what he was saying and the girl that was our interpreter for the day didn’t tell me… she started to and then didn’t finish… Finally Phillipich drove over to Jerry and honked at him and waved him to get back in the car. We had to ask a couple times before we were told that Phillipich was afraid that Jerry would get taken to jail by the police if they saw him, they would think he was a spy… In my head I was thinking, “The ones we build are a lot nicer, why do we need to spy?” But they wouldn’t understand that we just like to see how they design their stations, we already believe we build the best stations… :) haha! We are a little biased, I think. Anyways it was a good laugh, for Phillipich! Thanks to Phillipich, Jerry is not in Jail!
October 12, 2006
Today Aliya met us at the babyhouse, but she could not stay she was going to Babyhouse 1 for a going away party. The other 2 couples that are here with WPA got to take custody of their children today!!! Yeah!! So they always have a party at the end after court and here usually the next day you get to go take the kids from the babyhouse.
The doctor was done answering the questions she could from the list we had for her the other day. Now we have so many more to add to his book. Questions about his eating and sleeping habits and his schedule and playtime and, and, and…. We write the questions in Alex’s book and Aliya translates them into Russian and then the staff answers them in Russian, and Aliya translates the answers back into English! Ahhh! The pages look funny! Who would have thought, Russian can be written in cursive!? And the doctor’s hand writing is very neat, now if I could only read Russian! :) We finished, we think, adding questions to his book, once the doctor answers all of them she can, we will ask the caregivers to answer any they can and have each of them write him a letter in the back of the book, for him to read when he gets older. It will be fun to see what sweet things they say to him. I hear that the caregivers really love the children in the babyhouse, and they are happy that they get families, but sad to see them go… We have not really seen any interaction between the caregivers and the babies, yet, they just carry him out to us and carry him back in, that is all we see… and of course we can’t understand what they say to them when they get him, so who knows.
Alex was playful again today; we played with the box of the fridge farm again… Jerry also brought the calculator and a flashlight for him to check out…yeah, he liked those! He looks so cute in his little sweat suit! It is way too big though, it bulges all over the place. And not having a dryer at the apartment does not help. He takes his vitamins like a trooper, he knows that he will get those wonderful snacks after the vitamins! Today we brought the Playtex Hip Hammock to try, it was quite comfortable. We didn’t wear it long, but he kind of thought he was cool stuff sitting in that! We also brought a different pair of shoes, the little water socks from Old Navy. They are too big, but go on. So that tells us those other shoes that “didn’t” fit, will. We just have to work on getting his little feet in there, with all those layers of socks and tights! Ok, and in case you didn’t notice we spend a lot of time on the floor… Jerry usually lies down, so he feels more on the baby’s level and I usually sit. Sometimes I even crawl around with him… I am sure Jerry and I look rather humorous most of the time in there, we have reverted back to childhood. We do strange things, all to entertain a baby!!! And it is all so much fun!!! When he left us today, he had the hiccups. Poor kid, I sympathize, I hate the hiccups and I get them frequently. He was just his normal adorable self!
Aliya took us to the “Big Market” today. There are 4 floors in this building. The main floor is a grocery, the basement is a furniture store, the top 2 floors are small boutiques as they call them. We went to the Boutiques first, they sell shoes, coats, clothes, souvenirs, house wares, basically anything. Jerry bought a few things today, a soccer ball, a patch that says “Kazakhstan”, a toy car, and a pin with Kazakhstan’s symbol on it. I tried to buy a pair of boots, with heels and all, and a pair of high heels. Key word is tried! I couldn’t find a pair of boots with a big enough calf. So I resorted to lower calf-ed boots and then couldn’t find a pair that I loved! Anyways, almost every woman you see here is wearing high heeled boots, and there are hundreds of the different styles, so between all the markets and such I should be able to find a pair before we leave. Tissiana, you need to come here, they have lots of different styles with small ankles!! After all of that excitement we went down stairs to the basement to check out baby beds for the orphanage… we weren’t sure which kind we need to get though, so we will try to see if we can look at the kind they have now and then we should be able to get what the babyhouse needs. That was a cool place, it was huge and had tons of stuff there. We will have to go back.
We went to Jerry’s favorite restaurant again, the Kid’s Café. We “ordered” our favorite salad and the little pierogi things. It takes so long when you go to a restaurant here! Then we had to walk back to the apartment to meet Phillipich, we were a few minutes late! Ahhh!
Anyways we got to the babyhouse, Alex was so happy to see us. He loves to just sit on our laps and play. We always snuggle for a few minute until he wake up all the way, then we got out the snacks and played like crazy, as usual!!!! Jerry horse gallops him around the room and he just laughs and laughs!
We went to dinner at the Pushkin with some families that are staying there. We stayed out until almost Midnight!!! Whoa!!! We had a lot of fun. We walked home, it was quite a long ways, about 25 minutes of walking, but this place is quite safe, we have never felt in any danger here, yet! We are tired, and definitely going to be more tired tomorrow!!!
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