One sick boy

Steve here. We arrived at the baby house this morning to find that Liam is not feeling well. He was in a good mood but he felt a little warm, had some small rash on his face and seemed a little labored in his breathing. This is the ultimate in helplessness for us as we can do absolutely nothing to make sure he gets better. He played normally but we are still a bit concerned as we thought yesterday that he may be coming down with something and today seems to confirm this. Aidan was in a good mood as he enjoyed his clandestine morning yogurt. He played with both mama and dada and we laughed at him when he was showing a little jealousy. Liam was sitting very near Terri’s lap and Aidan decided he wanted to sit in mama’s lap. He was trying with all his might to move Liam out of the way. Of course Liam isn’t much smaller than Aidan so it wasn’t working as planned. Aidan was also testing mama and dada by messing with some things in the room he shouldn’t be messing with. I know he will soon more fully test us. Sadly, these children will often rebel to see if you, too, are going to abandon the. Well, he’s stuck with us. We have heard of some really bad and sometimes violent behavior from other children. So far Aidan has had incredibly mild displays, he thinks it is more funny than anything else. Terri had gone to get Aidan this morning and thought she heard Lena mention something about him bragging about having parents. We aren’t sure what she meant by this as he doesn’t really have much of a vocabulary—I guess we will need to get a clarification on this when we see her again.

It turns out that the form they lost was still lost and had to be redone. Unfortunately, it was the three-page letter that had to be done in our own handwriting. Nice. At lunch, Terri re did the letter and gave it back to Anya asking her to please ask her higher ups not to lose it this time. She laughed as she could hear the syrupy sarcasm in our voices. After lunch we went to get a few more things as gifts and for the shadow box. This shadow box looks like it will now be a pretty impressive display with all the Russian and Kazakh materials we have started collecting. Terri also found a nice silver bracelet for herself. Why is it that gift shops always have that one item that has nothing to do with the place you are in? I have seen it in San Antonio and other places too. Why, amongst the Kaz pins and emblems, flags, beads, clothing and other trinkets were there two little Disney-esque Dalmatian figurines? It is not like they had a gimmick or a really bad pun like “I was spotted in Ust-Kamenogorsk, Kazakhstan”. There must be some sort of rule that every gift shop in the universe have at least one item of non-local appeal. This train of thought obviously left me drained so we came back to the apartment to rest up for our afternoon visit.

I cannot figure out the baby house fashion sense (or lack thereof). Aidan’s afternoon wardrobe included a pair of shorts over some long john bottoms. Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of the shorts? At least Liam looked more stylish than he has to date with a solid blue outfit. Terri and I have some good ammunition to use against the boys when they start dating. Photos of Liam in his lime green tights (wince) and Aidan in his pink coveralls (double wince—no—triple wince) will make for some really great parental blackmail!

After a good afternoon visit, we drove over to a place that had an Ust-Kamenogorsk sign in Kazakh so I could get a picture in front of it with my SPURS t-shirt on. I dodged across traffic to the center median so I could look like a stupid tourist. I felt well qualified. After successfully completing my mission we went to the coffee house. On our way we saw another Saturday wedding party going to the memorial where many people get married. They were in a really sweet stretch limousine, not just any limo but a combination of old roadster front with the rest being traditional. It looked like something that Hot Wheels should make if they haven’t already. Oh, and I almost forgot, remember the papers we had to redo at lunch? Well, by the end of the day the original ones had resurfaced. Haha! The joke’s on us!