Well, unfortunately Sean's got whatever crud I had. He's not feeling sick enough to miss our morning visits, but lately I've been doing the solo visits in the afternoon. Surprisingly, James hasn't caught it. He did run a low grade fever for a little bit yesterday afternoon, but hasn't since then and is still doing well and playing hard as only James does.
Michael is still not back on his regular Baby House diet today. We were given a smaller portion of porridge to give him in the morning and afternoon, and instead of juice we gave him water with rehydration salts (similar to Pedialyte) during both visits; we would only give him about 10 ml's at a time every 10 minutes or so until it was gone (@ 120 ml total). He didn't feel warm today, so I think his fever is gone and he is on the road to recovery. He was very alert and responsive to us today. Today is our 11th day of visits, and I feel like we've finally made a major breakthrough with him. He babbled a lot and interacted directly with us, making lots of eye contact today with us. This is something you wouldn't be able to readily tell from pictures that we post. So, for us (and any other adoptive parent would understand this), this is a major milestone. It was a little warm in the playroom today, but since we had to give Michael the rehydration every 10 minutes or so, we just hung out and stayed in there today for both visits. He continued to play very hard and now pulls himself up to stand at every opportunity he gets, using just about anything as an anchor to hold onto while he pulls himself to standing - he'll use us, the side of a walker (we make sure it's stationary first), the crib, the side of a playpen, or even other babies that are crawling around.
Since we didn't have a driver available after our morning visits because of the limited traffic from the president's visit, we walked over to Uratu, the Armenian restaurant, to have lunch - this is the same restaurant we went to yesterday. Cindy Kaplan joined us today, and when we arrived we saw that Terry and Frances Chinn were already there (they have earlier visit times than we do). We had a good lunch then walked back to the Baby House. Since we had no driver, Sean and James walked back to our apartment while I stayed behind to have the afternoon visit with Michael. When I arrived and peeked into the crib room to see if Michael was napping, I found him standing in his crib, "conversing" with one of the twin babies in the crib next to his who was also standing in her crib - too funny!
The jury is out on whether or not the roads will be fully reopen tomorrow since the president may also be here tomorrow, even though his main focus is visiting Temirtau which is a nearby (smaller) city. If that's the case, then we will have to walk to lunch again, but I think we'll go to Cosmonaut Hotel, instead. The security coverage for the president's visit is something else! Yesterday I mentioned a police officer every 200 yards. Today, as we walked to lunch, we saw that there are even more police, with an officer every 100 yards on both sides of the street! It's interesting, especially since it doesn't look they're armed, or at least it didn't look like it to me.
So, that's it for today. Hope you enjoy today's pics!
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That's all for today - paka paka and love to all!
