Talking and Walking

We got to see LM today for the full 2 hours. It was still chilly and a bit damp (even for us) so we stayed in again today. He gets to be more fun every day. At first, he was very quiet most of the time, but each day he becomes a little more vocal. Today he was very “talkative”. I was worried for a while that Tim would out-talk him at the dinner table and LM would end up having to raise his hand to talk like Uncle Gary did, but I’m not worried anymore. He showed us today that he can keep up with his big brother if he needs to. Today we had to let our coordinator know what his name is going to be so she can get together the necessary paperwork for filing on Friday. We also found out that tomorrow one of the caseworkers from the Department of Education will come with us to the Baby House to see how we are bonding with LM. When we go to court, someone from DOE also goes and gives there opinion on whether or not we should be allowed to adopt LM. Hopefully tomorrow will be warmer and we can go outside with him for a while.

Since the weather looked like it was clearing up a little when we got home and we were both feeling a lot better, we decided to get out of the apartment and go for a longer walk today. We walked to a shopping mall called Eurasia and on the way passed the Catholic church that we didn’t make it to yesterday. It took us about 45 minutes to walk to Eurasia. For anyone that knows me, I don’t normally walk 5 minutes to Acme so you can imagine how much we want to get out of the apartment to be willing to walk 45 minutes to shop. Eurasia is a very large mall that has everything from groceries to appliances to building supplies. We found a nice, inexpensive souvenir store there and picked up a couple of Kazakh hats worn for special occasions for both boys and a larger one for LM to have when he is grown. The woman that was working in the store was very nice and helpful and took out all kinds of things trying to find something small enough for LM. After a little more putzing around we started on our way back home. We walked through a couple of very nice parks on the way. In Astana there are many nice parks with lots of monuments and flower gardens. We went through one today that Tim would have loved. It had more play sets, climbing towers, see-saws and other things for kids to play on than we’ve seen at any park here or at home. Outside the fenced area with the play sets was a kiosk that rented little motorized cars and trucks like his purple truck. There were 2 boys riding in a couple of trucks that reminded me of Tim and Justin riding Tim’s purple truck in the backyard. (Carolyn, I can see you cringing, but really, they were very cute.) We finally made it back home 4 hours after we left. I think tomorrow’s walk will have to be much shorter.

We’ll let you all know how our "inspection" by the DOE lady goes tomorrow. Hopefully LM looks suitably excited to see us tomorrow, since we all know that kids never perform when you need them to.