days 8 - 9: pizza blues and yellows, christmas trees, and lotiony toes

rob and i got out on the town yesterday and the previous evening, so there has just been no time to blog! something like that anyway. i'll do my best to sum up days 8 and 9 with a lot of photos. ;-p

on sunday evening we went out for supper with our translator from our previous trip, Dinara. it was great seeing her, as well as learning that Pizza Blues owns half of the restaurants in Ust. well, that's a slight exaggeration. they own only the two Pizza Blues (the yellow version pictured here), the restaurant above the Yellow Blues, which is where we went with Dinara, BBQ, Mazlenitza, the Russian restaurant below Mazlenitza, and Coffee Blues, pictured to the left of the Yellow Blues. there are some similarities in some of the menus, but all the ones that DON'T have Pizza Blues as part of their name serve better food than Pizza Blues themselves. says me. just an opinion (but i think i can back that opinion up with those of a few other fine friends here) ;-p

 

 our first taste of eel sushi - much better than i would have expected.  

so yesterday was our 8th day of bonding already! we put Munchkin in a little red and blue basketball outfit, which of course swam on him. he doesn't seem to mind us changing him, so maybe one of these days we'll buy him something that actually fits and start from the inside out (we haven't taken off his little under shirt or underwear/diaper; seems so weird to think he's going to be your little one, yet you haven't even seen all of him yet. at the same time you don't really want to just strip him down there in the baby home for now reason, do you??!! ;-p) 

there were definitely a couple of highlights on day 8:

1) the social worker comes in a couple times a week to get a photos with us and him (for court). he went to her OK, but once she had him he cried and reached out for me. YES! the moment i've been waiting for! now, i'm never going to be happy that he's having a sad or scared moment, but if I'M the solution to his sad moment, that makes me pretty happy!

2) then, as if to seal the deal...our translator was taking some video of us with him. just for fun, when she got ready to turn it off she waved and said "des des" (bye-bye) to get him to wave. Rob had just set him down, and he started to cry.  i scooped him up and he just clung to me! (pitter-patter my beating heart!) i didn't put it all together at that moment, but we think he thought our time together was up and he was upset by that. whatever the case, a little reassuring that we were gonna go play some more was all he needed and we were good to go. man, nothing has ever felt so good to me than those little arms clinging around my neck. :-)

3) the other highlight - i was pointing to a baby doll that was lying in this thing (I think it was supposed to represent a manger--I"m guessing?) and i said "there's a baby" and Babes said very softly "bebe". i couldn't believe it. i said it again, and again he said very quietly "bebe" - so i think this counts both as the first word he's repeated for us, and his first English word. exciting!

we always have a good time with him. he's really content to play with pretty much whatever we put before him, but when he gets a little bored, he'll keep going through the motions with the toy while his eyes look off to the other side of the room to check out what the other families are doing with their kids. so far, he's not an initiative taker as far as getting up and pursuing something different to do; don't know if that's just his nature, or if he's not quite comfortable yet/still a bit scared. 

this is the room we bond in. it used to be a baby room, but apparently their numbers are somewhat down now and they can afford to have one room empty. usually we are in the back corralled area playing with toys, but sometimes we walk around the room or out in the halls too. today we had all three of our families together in that yellow corralled area - nine of us! (Coles, Fleggetts and us) plus translators standing by. there are two other Spanish families as well, but they usually use the front room which is quite a bit smaller.

the music room. even the little ones have been practicing for some program they do on New Years. wish we could be here to see that. (well...rather, i wish they were doing it while we were here.)

  

lunch on the floor of our hotel room. nutella and PB, what more do you need, really?

 

went walking for a couple hours in the afternoon, did a little shopping, and found the mosque down at the center of town. mostly cement - not very pretty, really. Dinara says visitors are welcome, so maybe we will check it out sometime.

we got a tree! they celebrate a form of Christmas here on January 7, with their character Father Frost, though I'm not sure how much trees actually have to do with it. my guess is that it's just a tradition brought in from the West. we managed to find a little charlie brown artificial for about $7. 

not bad once he's all dressed up, ha?

some racing lights and a few bulbs later, our room is fully festive. we spent the rest of the afternoon playing games and listening to Christmas music - it was so nice! i also found that as i heard the Christmas songs, the imagery of the Baby was very fresh for me because of our little Babes being on my mind; this is going to give this Christmas a whole new special meaning for me. I hadn't made this connection before. :-)

in the evening the gang went to the Chinese restaurant again. in general i really like their food - but we had the sweet and sour chicken, and this was not a real hit. the sauce is ketchuppy - not exactly what we were going for. Mitch and Michele, the food connoisseurs of our group, ordered a whole fish. it came late and cost about 4500 tenge, and, they say it wasn't that great.  i chalked it up as the "peking duck" experience of this trip. ;-]

today's BH visit started with a visit to the notary that lasted the better part of the hour. one of the couples' was given a hard time because she had crossed out or corrected a letter in her name on her migration card coming in, so they were refusing to notarize some paperwork or something. i'm sure the coordinator will get it worked out, but it certainly made for a disconcerting start to their day.
in adoption , it seems like there's always something.

our visit was a little shorter today, but we still had a great time. Babes was dressed in pink again, and once again, i thought he looked great in it. (yikes! I'll be dressing my little boy in pink?!)

i brought a soft, furry navy blue baby blanket today, and i wanted to start getting him used to it; i figure we'll have it at home and i may bring it along when i travel home with him. so i showed it to him, laid it out on the floor, and sat him down on it. well, he immediately started crying! what's up with that?? i scooped him up and held him a little while longer and he was fine. i guess we're not ready for the blanket? not sure what that was all about.

all three families were packed into that little corralled area in the back of the room, since the Fleggetts visited the baby home in the morning instead of the afternoon. it was a little crowded, but it was actually kinda fun to see them with their little guy, since we haven't really had a chance to see him. he's very cute, with great facial expressions, including the cutest pouting lower lip i've ever seen. he and Babes are in the same room and nearly the same age, so they'd periodically check each other out, as well as checking out what each other were playing with.

we bought Babes a new little police car yesterday, which seemed to be a big hit with him. we got all four little cars out and that kept him entertained for quite a while. what is it with boys and cars? how do they know at that age to like cars? i'll never understand that.

the best moment today, though, was with the lotion...i noticed Babes skin on his legs was very dry (how sad, that a baby's skin could be dry!) so i brought along a little bottle of baby lotion. i opened it and let him smell it--or at least i stuck it up there by his nose. i took of one shoe and sock and checked out his feet - so cute! i rubbed some on one foot - he was quite intrigued.then on his lower leg. still very intrigued. i kinda pointed to the other leg, and he kind pulled his foot over for me, so i figured that was the go ahead.

we went through the routine on the other side, and then i put some on his hands and arms as well. i think he really liked it; he just kept turning his hands over and touching them. i put out my arm and put some on his hands and kinda showed him how to rub my arm with it, which he tried - it was so cute, and i was just LOVING this.  i don't know if this was doing a lot for him as far as bonding, but it sure was for me! we put some more on his hands for rob's hands and he patted them too. soooo adorable, and he smelled so good.

i think they're pretty good at the baby home with keeping the kids clean, but i just can't wait to give him a bath and soften him up all over with lotion! I think we'll make the feet and hands thing a regular thing while we're here. 

you know, i thought it would be so weird to "suddenly" become a mommy, and I'm sure when i'm finally handed that ultimate responsibility, it will be quite daunting - overwhelming even. but this, this that i've been feeling these last couple of days hasn't been weird at all. this has felt so much more natural than i ever expected it to feel, and i really like the way this feels. it feels pretty wonderful. 

rob probably wouldn't use the same words, but i think he feels pretty much the same way.  i know he's enjoying this little boy immensely. we are feeling incredibly privileged, incredibly blessed, and we're both really looking forward to our life as a family of three. :-)