French Fry Soup and the Giant Carrot

Hi All!

Today was a good good day. It started when I slept all the way until 7:30 and Rin did to. Then he wanted to snuggle with me for a few minutes. I don’t get that all that often anymore. This was followed by a good, hot, shower with plenty of water. Ahhhhhh. What is it about a good shower that just makes you feel shiny and new? Then I was folding up the laundry on the drying rack and I looked at a pair of pants and thought “Gosh, these are so small. Does Rin really fit into these?” and it dawned on me that they belong to my other son. The little one. This is your cue to knock on wood for us. It’s the first time I’ve really felt like it might be real and it sort of took me off guard in a good way. So what are me and my two sons and Peter going to do today? Well, it’s morning at the baby house and then the day is ours. I have a very strong feeling that we’ll end up at the Jungle Park at some point. And I am hoping for a latte and piece of cake from Charlotka. Momma’s getting’ a little thin around the middle. I gotta keep my curves up so as not to disappoint my sweet husband, right? And so my pants don’t fall off. ;)

I am not losing weight because of lack of food of course, it’s just that things here are so different I don’t follow the same bad habits that I do at home. It’s good. And Rinat has finally gotten over his eating boycott and is doing alright. Last night, we met our friends from Georgia out for dinner and he ate, get this, 3 whole bites of baked chicken- ooohaaah. He is still addicted to yogurt but he is now branching out a little bit at least. Hunger will do that eventually I guess. But it cracks me up how much he loves the yogurt. We had our usual Friday Night Movie Night and I let him have two of them and he was so excited. He wanted banana, no peach, no banana, “are you sure?”, no peach, definitely peach. It’s funny what makes him excited. My little cutie pie.

Later that day…

Well, I think our late night with our friends caught up with our sweet boy because he was not exactly perfect this morning at the baby house. I think he was tired and hungry and it was sort of a disaster when he dropped his snack all over the floor and I had to throw it away. And then we had another hour and a half to get through with a hungry 3 year old. Ugh. But I guess he can’t be perfect all the time. Overall he’s pretty good. He has been really sweet with our friends from Canada’s little girl (Mr Baby) and he gives her rides on the walker and yesterday he had her dancing and the whole room, caregivers included, cracking up. Post baby house, we went to lunch at Assorti and Rin has discovered that he likes fried eggs and ate 3 of them (minus the yolks). Not bad for him. So we then wandered for a while in the mall as we waited for our friends from Georgia to meet up. We let him pick one thing out from the Lego store. We spent a good 20 minutes looking at everything and he chose a school bus and has been really excited about it. And we let him get cotton candy because he actually ate something at lunch. I will have to get a photo if he has it again because that thing was HUGE! And it’s cool because they make it right in front of you to it’s a treat and entertainment for a 3 year old all rolled into one. And then, of course, it was off to the Jungle Park for bumper cars, ball pits, kiddie rides, and fun with our friends for a bit.

When we were adopting Rinat, I found myself always scanning the crowds for people who I thought looked like him. I wanted to know what his parents look like and what he might end up looking like. Here in Karaganda, I find myself at places like the Jungle Park/Babylon scanning the crowd for kids who look like our little Sumo. I saw this little boy, probably 4 years old, who looked exactly like what I expect our guy will look like when he’s that age and he was soooo adorable. And then I looked to see what his parents look like so I can ‘see’ him as an adult. Not too shabby. He’s going to be one good looking guy just like Rin. They’re both going to have to fight the girls off.

And then it was home for some quiet time for Rin and I kept myself busy making dinner with the leftovers from Saturday night out. I made Chicken and French Fry Soup. Mmmmm. I also added onions (which could only be bought as a giant bag of about 10- I see French onion soup in our future), carrots (can you see that photo? The biggest carrot I’ve ever seen), and pasta in the shape of sheaves of wheat that Rin picked out. It was pretty darn good. We had some really good French bread to dip and some creamy feta to smear on and I have to say that we dined pretty well last night. French Fry Soup may not seem all that exciting to you but it’s a world apart from meat pastries or Ramen noodles for the millionth night in a row.

I hope you all have a wonderful night! Much love, -m