Day 12 waiting "The week we have waited for" (double click for pics)

Monday, July 31--- (Day 12 waiting period)

Privet. The countdown is officially on! Can you believe that we are this close to having Landen home with us…it sounds like he is ready as well.

After the normal routine again, we arrived at the baby house ready to see our son. We had a little, well a lot of anticipation to see how Landen was doing. Yesterday was hard, but we kept saying to each other that it would be the last day without him. When Kim arrived at his room, he was in his swing awaiting his lunch. He saw Mom and got excited, but like a true Woodard, he was controlling his emotions until lunch was over. Kim watched as the caretaker feed him lunch and changed his clothes. His lunch consisted of the red soup and some kind of cereal mush. Needless to say he will be excited to get one of Papa Butch’s steaks in him….I’ve heard Papa Butch has been planning one for Rylee and Landen as soon as we get back. As Kim was handed Landen, the caretaker was trying to tell her something in Russian. Kim was able to make out that Landen had been crying for Momma and Dadda, as she was saying “Momma..Papa” and making a crying motion with her finger. This was tough on Mom as you can imagine.

The visit was great to say the least. Landen was all smiles again and had a lot of play in him to begin with. As has been the routine lately, Landen seems to attach himself to Mom right away and is so excited just to be in the room with us and especially glued to Kim. He has gotten to a point that he is hugging Kim so hard that he grunts. From my professional training in childhood psychology, it appears he is overwhelmed to see Kim and something inside his body puts him at ease to a point of exhaustion, or maybe he is tired. Anyway, he was asleep within 40 minutes of our visit. Some may ask why let him sleep during our 2 hours, but we feel this is what his body needs and maybe the best rest of his young life. It will be fun to see his schedule when we get him home…

Around 1:30 we decided to start waking him up and our RyRy did a nice job of this. It took 1 kiss to the forehead and he was up. I think it was that long hair in his face, but she thinks it was magical. He came from a deep sleep with another big smile. He did not get this from me! We had a wonderful play time to end the visit as he was into everything on the floor. We played bubbles (this is getting some big smiles now); he crawled from one of us to the other and threw some toys around the room. The boy has an arm…

The visit ended around 2pm when Kim took him back to his room. He was holding onto Mommy tightly, but saw that he had a snack ready for him (true Woodard fashion), so he was willing to go to the caretaker with out a fuss. We are thinking they plan this snack at 2pm now to avoid him getting upset when she leaves, as we don’t remember a snack until a week or so ago and we have been here for a loooong time.

After the incredible time we had at the visit, we came back to the room for a little lunch and plan the rest of the day. We finished our second puzzle of the trip, then we visited our friends at the Kodak store to get some pictures printed off for gifts on Friday, then found another little store where we got some frames for the pictures. After this, we had some pizza (something we are not going to want for a while back home) and are now planning to watch a movie and call it a night.

From Kazakhstan, good night and Poka, poka….