Day 14

Hello all, one more day to mark down finished. Tomorrow is the end of the mandatory bonding days. What does that mean? I don’t know, except now we get to wait for a court hearing. When is that? Still don’t know; sometime in the future, hopefully near. We will just continue on seeing Erlan until we know more.

By the way Erlan was fine today. He continues to amaze us, for instance he put on his own socks and drank some juice today. Watching him walk around ‘two-fistin’ it’ with his juice and milk was pretty funny. This kid gets serious about his food and drink. Karla also thought this was the first day that he looked sad when he left us. He is starting to babble a lot. We have some video of it, that someday we will show when we have faster internet. (we had to take the peek-a-boo thing off, because it pretty much stopped our computer when we would get online)


He is just really coming out. Our translator said the nannies never could get him to smile. He laughs all the time with us, and not from us just tickling him. He has this game where he does something and Karla tells him no and he gets this devilish grin on his face and just laughs and runs away. (seriously, I did not teach him this, but I do chorus in on the laughing with him.) He is becoming all boy. Its goin’ to be so much fun.

He is letting me pick him up more and more, but he is still a mommas boy. I am trying to get him comfortable with sitting on my shoulders. The kid is a chunk and mom gets tired. She probably holds him half of our visits (about two hours a day). He loves ‘ma ma’ and believe me Karla loves him. The game described above is also done a lot so ‘ma ma’ will pick him up.

Well, better stop here and let you all get back to work (or on to your next favorite blog site). Remember we like comments. I think Karla gets tired of hearing only my voice and plus we don’t know if some of you are even reading or found this thing.

Ben about town

This one is more about ‘ben about apartment’. There wont be many pictures because I usually have no pants on when I am inside. It is way too hot. This is the excuse I have been getting away with .

I did find out that here in Aqtobe, they do have centralized hot water. Meaning nobody has there own hot water heater. They use this for hot showers and heat (through room radiators). Karla loves it. Over here I do not have to start a load of laundry at 6 am so Karla is guaranteed a long hot shower at 8. She has not run out of hot water in the shower yet and she has tried many times. All you women think this sounds great, but sometime in April or May they turn it all off. Then it is back to heating water on the stove if you want a hot bath (not shower).

My dishwasher still rarely works. It/she now only wants to dry while I wash.

We have been cooking at home.

It all started when we found chicken breasts at the store. Then we found flour, milk, oil, eggs, potatoes, butter, and some salt and pepper. It was like stone soup, only better. If you know Karla, you know where this was going, FRIED chicken and smashed potatoes and Gravy.

We ended up calling another adoptee couple,Gen and Joel, who live about two minutes away and asked them if they wanted to partake. They did and we enjoyed a very nice impromptu dinner. It turned out very good, even with the canned corn. The only thing missing was the chocolate flat cake.We are hoping to do this for the rest of the parents here. That evening, we almost forgot we were on the other side of the planet in another world. One of our translators, Aina, is also planning to come over to learn how to make this strange thing I love called gravy.

Friday night, all of us parents got together for a party at a pizza joint. It was a good change. The other parents did not to get to visit their babies that day for some undisclosed reason. We were lucky and got a morning visit. We finally got a hold of Rosa and Carlos. They are a Spanish couple who live in the Canary Islands with their other two adopted sons ages 15 and 10. We ride with them every day to the orphanage. They seem super nice. Their English is actually worse than our Spanish (seriously). But they bravely showed up and we celebrated their successful court hearing. They are doing two trips and left Saturday to go back and see their sons for two weeks. It was very emotional for them to have to leave little Maria.

Saturday, due to a holiday and no visits with Erlan, we invited everyone over for brunch. So it was off to the bazaar to find cream, for ‘Sunday eggs’ and baking powder for pancakes. No luck with the baking powder but I found cream, real cream not ½ and ½. When I got home planning to make French toast, Karla announced she had found pancake mix. (Yes, my wife brought pancake mix with her along with two boxes of homemade chocolate truffles. I only have two short sleeve shirts, but she did do the packing.) I bought way too much cream and had to dilute it with milk, because it was so thick. The eggs were really good and so was the ‘bacon’ I got from my crazy meat ladies. We made syrup with water, sugar and homemade jam I bought to go on Karla’s pancakes. It was a very enjoyable brunch. In the picture from left to right is Agnes (Belgium), Kami(NH), Karla, Eric (NH), Joel (NJ) and Gen(NJ). Joel sure did like his tea! (The group picture looks a little odd b/c we merged two pictures together so that you could see the whole group.)



Good night.

Day 13

Each visit keeps getting better. Erlan took a huge step today-he let Ben hold him! It occurred about ¾ of the way through the visit. It was awesome!

The visit started by Erlan spending some quality time being held by me. I think he missed our visit yesterday. (We didn’t get to visit yesterday b/c of the holiday—National Women’s Day.) He did his usual tricks with the banana and his sippee cup. Once he finally detached from me, he started playing with Ben.

He and Ben were having a fun time running behind the curtain. Then Ben flew him around some more. Finally Ben turned Erlan around. Erlan started to cry so Ben lifted him above his head a couple times, and Erlan giggled. He then brought Erlan back down and Erlan snuggled in. Worst news of the day was that our battery ran out on our camera so I didn’t get the shot! :-(

In the meantime, Mom hung out on the floor and looked as uninteresting as possible. He made one beeline for me, and Ben intercepted him and Erlan let him hold him. It was great to see Erlan hanging with Dad and letting Daddy hug him. I think Daddy enjoyed it a lot!

Ben about town

Hello all. (Hey Stork, great name for a blog, but Karla came up with the same thing about four days ago. I had just not gotten around to posting.)

Apartment living is not as bad as I had thought it would be. This city is bustling ,at least our street. There must be a huge population density here. For example, on the first floor of our apartment, there is a ‘convenience store’. It has milk, bread, beer, vodka, wine, butter, soda, water, candy, chips and a whole lot more stuff I don’t know in a 15 foot by 20 foot room. There is another identical store across the street. A one minute walk away, I know of another. There could be lots more, but since I don’t read Kazakh, I miss out . I usually just walk up to the door and look in the little porthole window to find out. Yesterday, I found an appliance store and bought a garlic press. There are not many plate glass fronts.

For any future adoptee parents (faps), I like this apartment and location. More on that in later posts.

Right now, I have a walking range of about a ¼ mile. Reason why is there are supermarkets about a quarter of a mile from us in opposite directions. These are called anbars (in Russian, it looks like “ahbap”). They all have blue fronts and are easy to identify. I don’t know if it is a chain or what, but I see them everywhere. If I walk west, my street ends at an anbar and tees with an even busier street. The business center is on it. I don’t know why they call it the business center, Karla and I went and it was a bunch of expensive clothing stores. Maybe it is where the business people shop.

If I walk east about 1 minute from our apartment, I come to a market on the corner. It is huge. It is three stories plus a basement. It has about 40 stores in it with toys, clothes, and whatnot. Attached to it is a bazaar. It is an open type flea market. I’d say there are 80 different vendors here. Some are even in a heated building, others with a roof, and still others totally outside. You can get anything from a toilet seat to a carrot. This is where I hang out. This is also where I get my sum sa.

There are a group of six women who sell meat and cheese. There are three on the right and three on the left. I call it the gauntlet. When I first started going they would jabber and try to solicit me. I don’t understand how it works. It is six identical cases with identical foods. I don’t know if they work together or what. Now I wave and they all wave back. I think they like me. They fit right into my idea of a stereotypical Russian woman. The one gal has a full mouth of gold teeth. None of the women understand a bit of English and I know maybe 6 Russian words now.

We woke up this morning to 4 inches of new snow. It was actually kind of pretty and refreshing. Everything had been melting and it just felt really dirty and drab.

By the way, in the picture with the little girl with the umbrella , she is standing next to a cigaarette stand. Marlboros are a $1.00 a pack. The only two cheap things I have found here are cigs and vodka.

Day 11

We had an exceptional visit with Erlan today. He is feeling good again! The first picture shows how he spends the first 5 minutes of our visit--holding onto Mom. He was all over the playroom, just like a typical 2-year old boy. :-) He spent a lot of time hanging out with Daddy today. The two boys played at the lego table for quite awhile today.

Dad also picked him up and flew him around the room into my arms. Erlan didn't actually see Ben pick him up, but he loved being in the air. At the end of the visit, Ben did a similar activity in front of the mirror... so Erlan definitely knew who was doing the flying. He Erlan just squealed with delight! Erlan also learned to give a high five today.

He also has the banana routine down. We think that he said “banana” today. He heads for the backpack almost immediately now, and he digs through it several times during the visit. We ate carrots in front of him again. He was happy to hand me the carrots, but he wasn’t too interested in trying them.

The head doctor came into the room for a visit today. Erlan ran into my arms and snuggled in. Then he looked suspiciously at the head doctor (a man). Soon, though, I was able to get Erlan to wave to him.

We (Ben) did make the peanut butter cookies this morning. As the third batch came out of the oven, we got a call that we needed to meet our driver in 10 minutes—30 minutes early! (This means that the 4th and final batch will be for us!!!) Ben gave out the cookies at the orphanage to the workers. They were a hit.

Day 10

Hello, we are fine. The internet was down in the city and we couldn't get on to post.

Another 1-visit day. Erlan isn’t feeling well. He spent most of the visit being carried around the room by me. He really enjoys looking out the window. He starts wailing if I try to sit down.

The orphanage had brought the big toys from the main playroom into our little room today. They are preparing for Children’s day on Saturday. I thought that I was supposed to make something for the orphanage workers, but now I’m not sure. I brought some peanut butter cookie mix just for such an occasion. Our oven doesn’t have a temperature gauge, so it will be interesting if we decide to bake for them. Sorry, I digress…

Back to the toys… there was a lego table in our room today. Erlan discovered this in one of the few forays he made away from my lap. He enjoyed building things with Daddy. You’ll notice in the pictures that he doesn’t sit on the bench of the lego table, he only stands or squats.

He also decided to climb the climbing rack that is in our toy room. He went over and started climbing. We couldn’t believe it. He is such a boy. He went up three rungs. I missed the picture where he was hanging from one of the rungs.

Day 9

Today we are only able to visit Erlan in the morning. He has a chest cold. Apparently he was up all night. Poor guy. He acted tired during our visit, but he wasn’t overly fussy. He spent most of our visit on my lap. He never wandered very far from Mom. He would walk over to Daddy for food and drink, but then he made a quick retreat for me.

We were lucky to get to see him this morning. The doctor didn’t really want us to see him but (thankfully) relented. I wish that they would let me just rock him this afternoon so he could have some comfort while he’s sick, but it isn’t allowed.

We got a few smiles and giggles out of him. He really likes throwing things. Whenever he puckers his lips, you better watch out b/c he is going to hurl something across the room. We’re going to have to curtail this activity. It’s not something I’d like to see continue in our home.

Here's Erlan making a mess. He likes to practice this activity lots. I think he's just worried about fitting in with all of his cousins, not to mention his Daddy.

We also changed his clothes again today. We bought him some sort of terry cloth outfit. It is very soft. I think that it’s also very warm. The caretakers like to layer the children, so I put on a pair of cotton PJs and then the new outfit. He started sweating up a storm. We got the pajama shirt off. He would have been perfectly happy to sit around his undershirt (yes, he had one layer on under the two that I put on), but this is not allowed. I had to put the heavy shirt back on him. I think that he was much more comfortable.

He drank from his sippee cup again. He’s got this activity mastered! We didn’t give him any water today. We ate carrots in front of him. He put one in his mouth and then threw it. We’ll keep trying. (The carrots were actually very good.)