(Maureen's Post)
Hello again, everyone! Well, the last couple of days with James have been good. Not that they haven't always been, but we continue to see improvements daily. He's become so much more vocal and laughs more; his increased comfort and trust in us are becoming more apparent. He is now rolling from back to stomach and stomach to back without any assistance from us at all, so we have to make sure we're keeping an eye on him, lest he continue rolling where he shouldn't. Still not crawling yet, but today he started to scoot himself forward (not much - maybe an inch) just using his upper body. Also, when he's on his tummy and gets excited he still kicks his legs and slaps his arms up and down, but today we noticed that he's starting to slap his arms alternately up and down while he's kicking his legs. So, it's almost as if he's starting to get the crude mechanics of crawling, but still no forward motion. Maybe it's better this way, though. We wouldn't mind if he held off on learning how to crawl until we got home. He already wiggles around a lot when we're trying to put him down to sleep, and you can probably imagine what a crawling baby will be like on an 18-hour flight back home. Naptimes are getting a little better, as is bedtime. Maybe when we were going through the trials during the adoption paperwork and waiting, it was to help us improve our patience to prepare us for James. He's a wonderful baby boy who loves to laugh and play, but at naptime and bedtime his willful personality comes out big time! But he is also truly a beautiful child, and I'm not just saying that because I'm his mother (okay - so maybe I am). His hair is dark and wavy, and he has very pretty dark eyes, much darker than mine, even! I'm also envious of his long eyelashes.
Hello again, everyone! Well, the last couple of days with James have been good. Not that they haven't always been, but we continue to see improvements daily. He's become so much more vocal and laughs more; his increased comfort and trust in us are becoming more apparent. He is now rolling from back to stomach and stomach to back without any assistance from us at all, so we have to make sure we're keeping an eye on him, lest he continue rolling where he shouldn't. Still not crawling yet, but today he started to scoot himself forward (not much - maybe an inch) just using his upper body. Also, when he's on his tummy and gets excited he still kicks his legs and slaps his arms up and down, but today we noticed that he's starting to slap his arms alternately up and down while he's kicking his legs. So, it's almost as if he's starting to get the crude mechanics of crawling, but still no forward motion. Maybe it's better this way, though. We wouldn't mind if he held off on learning how to crawl until we got home. He already wiggles around a lot when we're trying to put him down to sleep, and you can probably imagine what a crawling baby will be like on an 18-hour flight back home. Naptimes are getting a little better, as is bedtime. Maybe when we were going through the trials during the adoption paperwork and waiting, it was to help us improve our patience to prepare us for James. He's a wonderful baby boy who loves to laugh and play, but at naptime and bedtime his willful personality comes out big time! But he is also truly a beautiful child, and I'm not just saying that because I'm his mother (okay - so maybe I am). His hair is dark and wavy, and he has very pretty dark eyes, much darker than mine, even! I'm also envious of his long eyelashes.
One thing I forgot to mention earlier is that James is one of the "Five Hamsters." The five hamsters are the five babies that were born and came to the children's hospital all within 2 weeks of each other about 7 months ago. This is the reason why there are so many of us families here at the same time, as all the children turned 6 months old and became available for adoption all within 2 weeks of each other. The reason they were nicknamed the hamsters is because all five of them had such chubby cheeks. There's a pic above of James with fellow hamster, Owen Mechem (from the playdate the other day). As I mentioned before, James was the first of the five to contract chicken pox last December and spread it to the other babies! I think that James and one of the other babies eventually got separated from the rest of the hamsters and were moved to the downstairs baby room by the time we arrived. Turns out James also had a little blonde-haired, blue-eyed girlfriend in the downstairs baby room whose crib was next to his. She's about a month younger than James, and her Mama arrived in Kokshetau this past week to start visitations with her. So, you've got the 5 hamster families, plus James' girlfriend's mom, plus two families staying in Kokshetau that have babies at the Baby House in Tschuchinsk, so that makes a total of 8 families here at the same time. We're not all on the exact same timeline, but they're pretty close. I'm sure the drivers and interpreters have got to be exhausted!
Although our days are pretty routine, usually there's at least one "event" daily, so to speak, for us to look forward to. However, these events would not be considered major on a regular basis, but when you're stuck in an apartment with a baby all day you tend to look forward to them. A couple of days ago was our playdate with the Mechems that I mentioned at the last posting. Yesterday's event was that Jodi Mechem and I went to a pick-up store which is walking distance from our apartment and were gone for almost two hours. Today was Sean's turn, as he and Bob Mechem walked to a hair salon with Rada (their interpreter) to get the guys' haircuts. Sean said everything went fine and that the only time the guys got nervous was when the hairstylist pulled out a straight razor to shave the backs of their necks. She did change the blade before doing so, though. Sean paid a whopping 500 Tenge for a shampoo and haircut, which comes out to $4 USD; tipping is not normal practice here. After haircuts the guys went to the baby store to pick up more formula and rice cereal, and Sean picked up a couple of new rattling toys for James.
Yesterday we got some great news that we will be leaving for Almaty on March 2nd! In fact, that's the case for all our travel partners who arrived in Kokshetau with us, so that makes at least four adoptive families on that flight. There will be a total of five babies (the Sullivans are adopting twins from Tschuchinsk). All those babies on a Yak-40 should make for an interesting flight! Oleg picked up our passports and the money for the tickets yesterday and returned our passports along with our new plane tickets today. That means less than 2 weeks left here in Kokshetau! We orginally thought we wouldn't leave for Almaty until March 4th. This doesn't change our flight coming home (which is still on March 7th, incidentally) but that does mean we get to spend a couple extra days in Almaty so we can do a little bit of sightseeing and going out to eat with the babies in tow. We're very much looking forward to it, as it is one more step closer to coming home. Can't believe it's almost been a month since we left home. The time here seems to be flying by faster than I expected. Of course, having the company of friends we made here also helps the time to pass quickly. As of today, only 17 days left to go in Kazakhstan!
One more thing - the last pic on this post is of the Twix Dark that Jodi Mechem has turned me on to. It has a chocolate cookie inside with the caramel and a dark chocolate coating outside - delightful! I think Jodi has bought out every one of them in every store in Kokshetau because we can't seem to find any more!
That's all for today, folks! Paka!
