Tuesday April 25th

Sorry no pictures yesterday, we tried but after 3 failed attempts via Blogger on our dial- up internet service we called it quits. I’m hoping tonight to have better luck and to post many photos, including a few of our ever efficient helpers who decided it would be nice to hang some of our clothes on their homemade clothes lines vs. using the metal drying rack that came with the apartment.. I also forgot to thank Pop-Pop and Grammy Mim for calling the other day and making us feel a little closer to home.
Another sunny day had us venture outdoors all afternoon. We drug out the double wide stroller and lugged the boys down the very non-stroller-friendly Karaganda sidewalks and walked from our apartment, around the big park, all the way to Sam’s first orphanage, Nezabudka, and the Hotel Cosmonaut. Amazingly, the boys feel asleep during the bumpy ride and double side-by-side strollers must be scarce in Kazakhstan as we received many puzzled looks this afternoon. The Hotel Cosmonaut was quite nice. The concierge, a beautiful young woman with a cute bob-haircut and beautiful Russian ice-blue eyes was very friendly and spoke broken but quiet understandable English. The rooms were an ample size and quite clean. The staff was very friendly and the hotel itself had many quasi-Western amenities; a work-out area, a beauty salon, and a nice restaurant as well as some nice greenery areas outside where children could run around and their parents would feel safe allowing them to do so. We were considering having Sam and I move there after Tim and Ian depart, as it would be nice to be around more adopting Americans to swap stories, frustrations, laughs, etc. Unfortunately, living in a small room with no real space to play, no stove and/or microwave with which to cook, or having a washer just wouldn’t be feasible with a 4 yr old boy for 3 weeks! I also like living across the street from the grocery store and the park is about a 10-15 minute walk away. Sam and Ian act more and more like brothers every day vs. simply roommates. Most of the time they like to parallel play but when we have them play alone in the main room they seem to have a blast. They also like to be a bit silly at meal times. As an example today’s meal time tomfoolery was having Ian wear his napkin, (a dish towel) around his head like a babushka or Moses. Vitalik then had to do so and decided his looked better as a scarf. Sam loves to copy anything Ian does. Sam really likes it when he does something that Ian thinks is really cool. It’s going to be a bit of a reality check for both of them once we get home and live in a real home again with real rules about what’s appropriate and what’s not. For some reason Sam is still interested to see if our rules and disciplinary tactics might change. So each day, usually towards nighttime he tests them and each day he figures out that we are not pushover parents and although we give a ton of love and support, we also expect our children to be kind, respectful and thankful children