Friday, February 15, 2008

Bonding day 10 of 15

We woke up this morning to a very cold apartment. We both are now all stuffed up and coughing a bit. Neither of us slept very well on our make-shift bed. This is not good; we can not afford to get sick. If we get sick we will not be able to visit Lincoln and he is all ready still sick himself. We were running around this morning trying to find stuff to get ready with. Since we got in late last night we didn’t unpack anything. Then when leaving the apartment, Eric had a hard time getting our front door to lock. By the time, we got down to the car we were 10 minutes late. Ceric does not speak English so we couldn’t even explain what happened.

We need to take a picture of the keys to our apartment building. They are interesting one looks something like a screwdriver. We have 3 keys to get in: the outside door, a door coming onto our floor and our front door. All the doors are a heavy metal, it appears we are safe. We are also on the second floor which would discourage people from breaking in. We have three security guards that walk in between the buildings of apartments here on a regular basis. They tell us there are cameras too but we haven’t seen them. Our building is also on the main road running through town so again, I would imagine this would discourage anyone from trying to break in. The Mosque is a block down from us across the street, I’m sure we will be able to hear them on Sundays when they are chanting.

When Lincoln came in this morning we all wished him a Happy 10 Month Birthday! Unfortunately the little guy didn’t feel very well today. He was in the walker for only a few minutes then wanted nothing to do with it. He played with his stacking cups only a little bit. He did muster up enough energy to crawl over to visit Gabe and steal his toy. Gabe has one small toy that Lincoln loves. Mommy is going to need to find it at home to buy him one. It is just a simple little toy it actually doesn’t rattle or do anything. Gabriel really likes Lincoln’s dragonfly that makes noises so we give him that to play with. For much of the visit, Lincoln just sat with us. We took turns loving him. He was tired and yawning and he felt like he had a slight fever. I can’t wait to get him home, so we can take him to a real doctor and get real baby medicine for him. He was acting like he might have been doped up on cough medicine. He was having a hard time keeping his balance. He wanted nothing to do with practicing his walking.

About an hour into our visit, Gulnara and her sister show up. (I don’t remember the sisters’ name, they work together.) We need to find out from her what this apartment is costing us a night because we have no idea, even though they moved us in. She informs us that they will be looking for yet another apartment for us to move too because the owner of this one wanted us to pay $200 a night for it. When the owner found out we were foreigners the price went more than doubled. We are American’s we must be RICH, right?? Great we are moving again and we don’t even know when. Should we unpack, stayed packed, who knows.

This afternoon we are back to the apartment. Shortly after arriving they brought in a bed for us. I am doing a load of laundry, finally!! I honestly have no idea if I set the washer correctly. It is running, it is spinning and I can see the soapy water so things are looking good. Eric made us both ramen noodles and cappuccinos for lunch today. We are burning through our noodle supply quickly. They are supposed to be bringing us a space heater to help keep us warm. We have figured out that it is cold in here because the windows leak so much.

We are back from our afternoon visit. Our key to get us into the apartment building is no longer working. Thankfully someone else was coming home at the same time and they let us in when we showed them that we had keys but they did not work. It is below freezing outside. We were planning on going out to dinner tonight but can’t now since we are unsure if we will be able to get in again. Good news, we found out we do not have to move again. We still have no idea what they plan on charging us for the apartment per night but they told us not to worry about it. It won’t be expensive they tell us. It is so crazy how business is done here. We are just hoping we still get a space heater and shower curtain.

Our afternoon visit with Lincoln was good. He was feeling a little bit better. We found out that he didn’t sleep very well last night which was why he was so tired this morning. He walked with us around the room a bit and he did a couple laps crawling. Gabe was in the walker and Lincoln stood next to the walker and they played with the toys together. Lincoln does great at just standing and holding on lightly. We of course sit behind him in case he decides to let go. We normally have two walkers in the playroom one for each but the second walker disappeared. I hope it comes back because it was the one that Lincoln liked the most. It has 3 plastic teddy bears that dangle down and he loved playing with them. Lincoln did a surprising thing this afternoon; he grabbed his bottle with both hands and held it himself. It was so cute that he did this. He has never even attempted to do it before. He normally has his hands in little fists. It might be a bad thing because he kept taking the bottle out of his mouth and looking at it and laughing at himself. He never ended up finishing his juice. We gave him apricot today for the first time so maybe he didn’t really like it. Eric played Billy Joel on the ipod and Lincoln was dancing to it. His dancing is sitting on the floor and rocking back and forth with a huge smile on his face. It was a good visit. He makes the stress of the rest of our day easier to deal with.

Tonight Eric needs to be online for work. I guess I will attempt to unpack all though, unpacking just means stacking stuff on the floor.

We have to make two identical memory books of our visits with Lincoln. The judge gets one and the Department of Education gets the other one. I wish I had more of my scrapbooking supplies so I could make a really nice one. On each page we have to put one picture, the date and a couple sentences that describe our visit and why we want to adopt him. This is our homework that is due by Monday morning. It shouldn’t be too tough. The hardest part will be getting the pictures developed.