Sept 15 - no visit today... again...

Sept 15 Monday 12 noon... looks like another nice day - sunny and warm. Hi everyone! We had a great day yesterday - we each had GLORIOUSLY long hot showers (more information than you wanted, I’m sure – but hugely significant to us after waiting 2 weeks). This was wonderful – and made us feel much more human…….

We had a quiet day yesterday leading up to our visit – we blew a light fixture in the kitchen a couple of days ago, which isn’t a big deal except in the evening when it’s dark and we’re trying to make dinner. Sergei (the building owner) has come over a few times now to try and fix it, but nothing’s working so far. We feel better at least that it wasn’t something we did to break it! So Sergei came by a couple of times Sunday in the afternoon – he speaks some English but it’s slow going….but he seems very nice. He’s told us he’s a retired geologist, and that he rents the apartments in our building only to foreigners, as he doesn’t trust the locals – too funny! We’ve met his daughter Anna (mid/late 20’s) who also speaks a little English, as well as his wife Irina who speaks ZERO English but insists on speaking rapid-fire Russian to us...

Then we had our visit later in the afternoon – the kids had just gotten up from their nap so Angelique was a bit sleepy and cuddly to start with (which is lovely), but then she got back into it after a few minutes and we spent the rest of the visit playing and running around. The bubbles are still a big hit, and the Itsy bitsy spider book is still a fave so I get to embarrass myself by singing the song and doing the hand motions over and over…... :-)

Angelique said a couple of English words yesterday which is very exciting – she asked for the water bottle by saying ‘water’, and pointed to the jar of bubbles and said ‘bubbles’. Funny how excited we get by such simple words!!! We’re talking to her completely in English, but we’ve learned some Kazakh words by asking our translator to ask the caregivers, and using our Kaz dictionary. At our daughter’s age (3 ½), we feel we need to know the Kazakh words for some everyday things in case we’re not able to understand each other once she’s with us... So we’ve learned words to do with eating, sleeping and bathing routines, which is interesting in itself – hopefully they will be helpful!

Angelique has mostly to this point referred to each of us as ‘Mama’, but yesterday she broke out with ‘Papa’ pretty consistently, which of course turned Paul into a big puddle of goo…

After our visit we made some dinner (chicken thighs, alfredo pasta and pan-fried peppers- yum), and Paul tried again with Sergei to fix the light in the kitchen (still no go). One of the translators Anel came over at 10:45 pm for us to sign some papers - some to get Angelique’s passport and birth certificate started and some official ‘yes we are requesting to adopt this child’ papers. Then we crashed and had a good long sleep. Is it possible to bank sleep hours now, to use after we have a toddler in the house ??!

Today (Monday) we’re not able to visit, this time the story is that the prosecutor from court is inspecting the orphanage to make sure no children are being released before the 15 day waiting period is up. So I guess that means no early custody for sure. Grrrrr…. So hopefully we’ll get back to our visits on Tuesday, and (again) hopefully we’ll be able to whisk her away by the end of the week. We can’t wait! Trying to be patient………. which is not easy…. but we’re trying……..

We got a call this morning that we need those copies of our passports NOW (!), so we ran out and got the copies done, just 2 blocks away - nice thing about being downtown this time, there are all sorts of businesses very close by! This afternoon I'll do a bit more shopping, and maybe meet up with some other families for an early dinner.

Have a great day!
Take care- love N&P