Day 9 waiting - A big purchase (double click for pics)

Friday, July 28--- (Day 9 waiting period)

Privet! Bobby’s back on the blog tonight. Where do I start on this action packed day?
We have some exciting details to share: news on the return visit, a little role reversal at the baby house and a family night out (one of our last as 3).

Lena and Kim had talked yesterday and planned to go around 9:30am this morning to pick up our tickets to Almaty for August 10th. As normal on this trip, we were pushed back a little bit on the time. Lena called around 9am to reschedule the time. Kim and Lena decided to leave a little early for the baby house and stop off at the travel center to pick up the tickets. This actually worked out well for us as we all got to go, so we had another photo opportunity. What an exciting moment to purchase 4 tickets instead of 3 (actually Landen‘s ticket was free, but they still had to print off the “boarding pass“). The travel center was interesting itself. There are 2 ladies working the front counter, one on airplane travel and one on train travel (the preferred way to travel around here). There were 2 other people behind the counter, one working a spread sheet on a computer and a man playing an intense game of solitaire on the computer. It took approximately 40 minutes to complete the purchase process. Lena made the comment during this wait that it’s a lot easier in the states to get a ticket. I could not agree more. Appears this is an old fashion process where everything is done manually and with limited access to a computer (the man had it tied up!). This was a small office to start with, maybe 20x20, and to utilize the other space in the office there was a flower shop. The flower shop probably took up more room than the travel center. Hey, get your tickets and tulips at the same time…maybe we should try this in the states. Anyway, we have 4 tickets for August 10th at 10:05pm.

As we got to the baby house, I talked Kim into letting me go and pick up Landen. I have been hearing how excited he gets when he sees her, so I gave it a try. When I peeked into the room where he was, there was 4 kids (Landen was in the swing with his head turned behind him looking at some toys, the little girl (we took a photo of her the other day) in the high chair, a little boy in the play pin and a little girl in the floor. I motioned to the lady that I was there for Landen and she nodded her head. Landen was still looking at the toys when I said “Landen”. He immediately whipped his head around and made eye contact. He kind of had a look on his face like “hey, but where is Mommy”. He quickly figured out that I was there to get him and he started rocking the swing intensely. He got the biggest little smile on his face and would look at the care taker then me and back and forth. The lady stopped feeding the other child and got Landen out of the swing to dress him for the visit. With in 20 seconds, she had stripped off his clothes he had on, put a diaper on him and put the first layer of clothing on him. Kind of rough handling, but he did not seem to mind. The lady got called away for a second and he immediately started looking at me and whining to get off of the couch. The lady came back to him and he was still giving it to her. I tried Kim’s trick of using the Dada, Momma, RyRy and Landen song and it worked perfectly. I did not have to embarrass myself with the full song as he calmed down quickly. I wonder, would I sound as bad singing to someone that can not speak English? Kim thinks so…..
The visit was another great one. We had 2 blankets laid out for Landen to crawl around a little more and get some exercise. Great plan, but he had another one in mind. He had decided that he would hang out on Mom’s right shoulder for a good hour. It was so funny when Kim would put him down, as he would give it a second then turn to her and start pulling up on her. Needless to say, she loved every second of it. Rylee took her DVD player and Landen had some fun pulling it away from her. We got about 30 minutes of play time (after the hour on Mom’s shoulder and prior to the 1:30 nap on Mom time) and made the most of it. Everyone around here (our crew and the baby house staff) says it is so great that Landen has bonded with Kim like he has. Kim took him back up at 2pm where they were giving the babies a little snack, so he was willing to jump into their arms when he saw that.

We had planned to spend the evening going to Lena’s church, but she told us in the morning that she had to go to the dentist today, so that was out again. We decided to take another shot at the ice skating. Rylee did a lap by her self! She’s getting confidence and that scares me. She only fell 5 or so times and even made some little jumps while hanging on Kim. She was so excited skating and had a lot of fun. We may do this again very soon.

Kim’s got some soup ready, so I’ve got to go….Poka, poka….