Happy Faces from a Big Brother

Hi all-

Still on cloud nine over here. I have been hard at work nesting and this has not gone unnoticed by my firstborn (ok, not firstborn to ME but born first nonetheless). He too is catching Aibek Fever. He has been more than I ever hoped for in a big brother so far. For one, he has been talking about Aibek all the time without me even bringing him up. He seems to get that he’s coming here and staying forever and he’s alright with it. And he’s generous. One of Rinat’s favorite things to do is ‘read’ toy catalogs. But now, instead of telling me all of the things that HE wants, he goes through trying to find things that we can get for Aibek.






Another part of the nesting (and just me wanting to be settled again) is being on the hunt for a house. So the last few weeks I have been involving Rin in looking at photos of houses online and seeing what he thinks.  He’s actually very particular about which ones he might want to live in.  They have to have trees, room for a fort, and it must have a large basement for running around in.  Me, I’m interested in the kitchen most of all and room for Peter to work in that is not the middle of the living room.  I’m tired of getting Rin and I getting shushed when he’s on the phone.  We were scrolling through photos of a house the other day and Rin asked “Well, where am I going to sleep?”  I showed him one of the kids’ rooms that had a bunk bed in it (he’s dying for a bunk bed ever since he slept in one at the beach this summer) but he wasn’t super interested.  Then I kept scrolling through and he shouted “Stop!!!  That’s where me and Aibek are gonna sleep!”  It was a photo of someone’s nursery with a crib in it.  He said, “I will have my bed in there from this house and then Aibek can sleep in the crib right next to me and when he cries at night I will tell him to shhh and when he wakes up, I will get him out and carry him downstairs and feed him breakfast.  But if he has a stinky diaper… I’m gonna knock on your door.” 

And he has apparently been pondering this idea of sharing a room with his new brother a lot because he brought it up again today.  I hated to burst his bubble but I informed him that Aibek was going to have his own room.  And that it was kinda good because Aibek is going to wake up at night and cry and it might wake Rin up if he was in the same room.  “But why is he gonna cry?”  “Well,” I said, “He might cry because he is scared in his new room and doesn’t know where he is.”  And then my sweet, sweet Rinat offered the perfect solution.  “Well, you know, I’m a big boy now so if he wants, he can have my Glowing Man (nightlight) and I just won’t need it ‘cause I’m gonna try really hard to not be scared ‘cause I’m big and he’s little and he needs it ‘cause he might be more scared than me.”  M..e..l..t..  For every time I get mad, annoyed, frazzled by that boy, there is a time like this when it’s all I can do not to smother him to death with kisses.  Gosh, he’s a good kid.  Most of the time.

And so now I am all set in the travel department. It’s really going to happen. I sort of wish for the good old days when you got your tickets in the mail and you got to rip open the envelope in excitement and hold that golden ticket in your hand in the fancy company jacket and pour over every word on it looking forward to getting on that plane. It’s a little bit anticlimactic to just print them out. But it’s done all the same. My best friend Carson and I will be on a plane at the end of the week to go and pick up my sweet boy. We will get into Karaganda in the wee hours of the 23rd, pick him up from the Baby House, find a way to make it clear to everyone that has helped us along the way just how much we truly appreciate everything that they have done for us, and hop a plane that very same night for Almaty. We will get into Almaty in the wee hours of the 24th and have our clinic visit that day to clear him for immigration to the US. Then a day off -whew- and our appointment at the embassy on the 26th.  Then home in the early hours of the 27th. A whirlwind to be sure, but I cannot wait to put my little sweetpea to bed in his own little crib, in his own little house, with his own little family. I remember that first night home with Rin to be one of the most peaceful moments of my life. It was just this sense that all was right with the world. Our world has been a bit shaky these last few years but I knew we would get here eventually. And on Jan 27 all will be right once again.

Some of my friends have asked if I am nervous for Rinat to be without me for a whole week.  I am happy to respond, "Not a bit."  It's not that I won't miss him, not that I don't wish he could be there when his brother leaves the baby house for good, it's just that I have absolute, utter, complete trust in my wonderful husband.  We are fortunate enough to have Peter work out of the house.  Sometimes it can be a mixed blessing but it also means that he gets to actually be present in our kids' lives on an everyday basis.  He's there for playing Legos before school, he takes a random hour off to go to the park, he plays rough and tumble football in the backyard on a Tuesday afternoon.  He is just as much a parent as stay-at-home Me.  And so do I have worries about being gone?  Absolutely not.  He's got it.

Love to all,


-m

We have had a whole lot of happy faces around here the last few days.  These are courtesy of Big Brother Rinat.  The one at the top with the arms is Tienna  :)