A good visit, and shopping

Steve here. Today started with rain that soon turned to snow. More is expected over the next two days. We had a good day with the boys. I think going to get Aidan has helped with his fussiness when he comes to the playroom. While he was getting ready another child came up to me and wanted me to pick him up. I held him until Aidan was bundled up and ready to go. During the first visit Terri brought Aidan banana yogurt again—loyalty bought with food! Terri also pointed out that she saw a large plate of chopped garlic sitting in milk in the baby room. Gee, I hope this isn’t a drink sensation for babies here. On a plus side, if there are any vampires nearby they will steer clear of the baby house. Both boys were in good spirits and we had a nice playtime. Liam was in fast crawl mode today. The boy can move. Towards the end of our first visit Aidan went from playing to sleeping in my arms in what seemed to be about two minutes! When he went back to his group he actually seemed a bit hesitant to leave us and we got extra hugs from him.

We went to the Russian café and sat next to the Woods who happened to be there as well—fancy meeting them there! As always, it was fun to chat with them about the kids and stuff back home. They gave us some helpful information on some places to go around town. After lunch we went to a place that had many little shopping stalls, kind of like a flea market set up but with new stuff. There were a variety of specialty shops including shoes, flowers, books, toys, clothing and souvenirs. We spent a little while strolling through here. Terri did a lot of souvenir and gift shopping. We got a chuckle out of Bulat at the shop that sold traditional Kazakh items. There were quite a few items we wanted to buy and we were pointing them out in the window and he would go around and talk to the clerk and bring the items over to us, doing it all over again for the next item we wanted. Anya was scolding him as he took the items outside the shop area as we were looking at the next item we wanted to buy. Bulat was our own personal shopper. We also picked up a few new toys to take in the afternoon, one that I would later start to regret—a toy keyboard with one sound setting… LOUD.

Our afternoon visit was much like the first. I went upstairs to get Aidan and brought him back down to the room where Terri already had Liam. We put down the new toys and Aidan had a fixation on the keyboard. I am sure the caregivers in the next room hated us. Liam isn’t afraid to jump in the middle of things as he crawled over and wanted to play with the same toy leading to Aidan’s protest. But all seemed to work out and both boys played nicely. We are noticing that Aidan requires less roughhousing to be entertained now than when we first met him. He will sit and play with toys a lot longer now. Liam alternates between crawling around, wanting to stand and being carried around. When it was time to go Aidan gave us multiple hugs and again seemed to not want to just bolt out of the room—progress maybe?

 

Then it was off to the coffee shop to relax for a bit. I joked around with Anya and Bulat by acting like I understood everything in a Russian language newspaper that was sitting nearby. Bulat is trying to learn some English so every now and then he throws out some phrases with more frequency that we do in Russian. Anya was teaching him the word tired which he heard as tide. He thought that tired was the same thing as laundry detergent. We got a good laugh.

After this entertainment we came home for our usual night of DVD’s and a little CNN International. Watching the London bureau of CNN got me thinking last night of how small my world has been to this point. I have lived in the southern United States my entire life. It has only been in recent years that I have had the time to travel to some other cities in the United States. We have been to the border towns of Mexico and have taken a cruise that briefly stopped in Belize and Cozumel. But this is the first time to really be able to experience cultures outside my reality. I have great respect for my friend Jerry who has always been a world traveler. He was a creative director who went all over the globe to work. While he now lives in San Antonio he also has an apartment near Madrid, Spain. His wife is a Spaniard so they go to Spain for holidays with her family. He always talks of how Terri and I must go overseas. I think his point has become clear to me now. It is hard to explain but things seem different now in some eye opening way—and I want more of it. I also want my sons to experience this a lot sooner than I have. I hope that we will be able to travel after they have become adjusted to their new lives and are a little older. Terri said that it all comes down to our perspective of family vacations and what we make of them. Maybe my introspection is amusing to those who go places but it is better to have the awareness now than to never have it at all. So look out London, Paris, Rome…