StanwardBound

Hi All!


We had a pretty good morning at the baby house with Mr Sumo. There was minimal barfing which always qualifies it as good. And Oxana had little man laughing and laughing saying nonsense words. It got so that all she had to do was turn around and look at him and he would dissolve into giggles. Rin was pretty well behaved and calm which was nice. We took turns trying to keep him entertained which helped a whole lot but I missed out on hanging with the Sumo. Mostly he wanted us to play knights with him which consists of us using the cone from the middle of two different sets of stacking rings as pretend swords and we joust and then we both die. It’s a whole lot of fun for my 3 year old boy. Then we headed to Line Brew for lunch and Rin acted like I was trying to kill him by making him take two bites of some shashlyk (grilled chicken) but was good aside from the drama queen act. And then Rin and I headed home to rest while Peter went back to the baby house to spend time with our littlest man. Rin had some quiet time and I read my book and I have to admit it was kind of nice. Then we went out bug hunting and watched the men build the building behind our apartment for a while. Pretty uneventful day. Uneventful is good as far as I’m concerned. I love seeing our little Sumo of course but we actually don’t have that much downtime here. We get up and have breakfast and then play for about 30 minutes before we have to get dressed and head out to the BH. After our morning visit, we head to lunch where we have to keep Rin under our thumb and try and finagle a bite or two into him and then it’s back for the afternoon visit. By the time we are done with the baby house and home it’s about 4:30 and we have about 30 minutes to hang out before I start on dinner and that’s usually spent writing, washing dishes, hanging laundry, or trying to sweep up the ever accumulating dirt. And that’s every day but Sunday. And it doesn’t include running errands or grocery shopping. So we really haven’t had all that much time to just do nothing or explore. As a matter of fact, last night I was looking at the calendar and I realized that we only have about 2&1/2 weeks left and I sort of panicked. I know this sounds crazy but I don’t want to leave yet. I’m not ready. We have sort of gotten in a groove here and aside from the sucky internet and showers and everything being dirty all the time, it’s gotten comfortable. I know, you don’t believe me, but it’s true. I know our time here is limited and I know that chances are we won’t be in Kaz for a good long while again and it makes me sad.

Rinat is really sweet to our friend from Canada’s little girl. They left last week (gosh, has it been a week?) and we are trying to give Mr Baby some love while D waits until she can come pick her up. Our translator made the comment “Oh, he is so sweet with her. You better make sure you get a girl next time.” But the sad reality is that I don’t know that we’ll be able to afford to do this again. I mean, we could take out loans but then I am afraid it could come back to haunt us and we’d have trouble paying for college and the other things to take care of the children we already have. I don’t know. We’ve talked and we will revisit it at some point. I just wish I could take them all home with us. Even Little A who cries every single second she’s not being held. I will miss them all and wonder if they ever found a family. I hope they all do but I know that’s not reality.

It’s finally starting to feel like winter here. There are grey skies that hang low all day, the trees are all bare of leaves, there is ice covering the puddles in the morning. Snow will be coming soon, I can feel it in the air, and Rinat couldn’t be happier. One of the ways that I got him excited to come back to Kaz was to tell him that there would be snow here. But so far, I’m a liar. Oxana said that there usually is snow by now but it’s getting later every year. Of course, the Karagandians (is that a word?) are happy that it’s holding off, but I do hope we get a decent snowfall in the next couple of weeks for Rin’s sake. But if not, he has informed me that we will be going to Gramma Shay’s house to ski soon so I guess he’ll see it then.

And for anyone who knows what it is, Rin made a Rube Goldberg machine tonight. He said “Hey Mom, you wanna play YouTube with me?” If you are curious, go to YouTube.com and put ‘OK Go Rube Goldberg’ into the search box and then watch the video that appears. Yeah, I think he might be a little Ted in the making. Ted used to make all kinds of booby traps for me when we were growing up that were the same kind of thing. Not sure if that’s a good or a bad thing (HaHa, only kidding Ted) but he is a smart little cookie. And this beautiful drawing below is a stingray with sand all around him.

Love to all, -m