Friday, February 22, 2008

Wow, I like this new toy.

He was smiling a second before this picture was taken. He is so good at stopping smiling as soon as you get the camera out. I love this outfit on him.

Loving playing the piano today with Daddy. Look at his serious face, I love it when he makes that face.

Waiting for our court hearing – Day 2

The blizzard is over and they are working on getting all the streets open again. It is still super cold yet more pleasant than yesterday because the wind has died down a lot so walking outside is more bearable now. We checked the weather at 1:30 today and it was -2 F. Brrrr… I wonder when we will see a day above zero degrees??

Our morning visit with Lincoln was so much fun. He seemed to be just as happy to see us as we were to see him. We changed his clothes today. The outfit I put on him made him look more like a baby then his jeans and sweatshirt did. I have to say I definitely prefer the baby-looking clothes over the big boy looking clothes. The clothes that fit him best right now are carters size 6 to 9 months. We had lots of fun playing together this morning. He was crawling all around and stealing toys from both Gabe and Maria. There is a giant stuffed tiger that we got down today to show him. He sat on the floor looking up at it laughing. Eric then put him on the back of it and he just laughed it was really cute. We have been trying to teach him to pet the stuffed toys instead of just grabbing the fur. We still need to work on this a lot more although he has sort of begun to act like he might be beginning to understand. I can’t imagine our three fur babies at home will like being grabbed.

In between visits today we had hoped to have pizza at the bowling alley but were disappointed to find out that it does not open till 5pm. So we headed to the mall instead. We hadn’t ventured past the first floor of the mall yet so we thought we would check it out today. Surprisingly we found a little café on the second floor. We successfully were able to order a coke, a hot tea and some pastries. It was pretty good to have something different to eat. We are both “chickened” out. We have had enough chicken. We hung out at the mall for awhile then came back to the apartment for a little bit before we were picked up again.

Our playroom at the baby house is getting busier, we now have four families. Added to our group today was a woman from Belgium who is adopting a son. Her new son is 12 days older than Lincoln. He was a big boy, a few inches longer than Lincoln and he looked like he weighted much more too.

Lincoln was in good spirits again this afternoon but the added excitement in the playroom kept him busy just watching everyone. He did sit with Eric and play the piano for a little while, when the other babies were eating. He is on a different feeding schedule so we were trying to keep him occupied. He doesn’t normally like the piano that much but today he was having so much fun “playing” the music and dancing. He was wiggling like crazy “dancing” on Eric’s lap and smiling and just banging on the keys. It was pretty cute to watch. He has not wanted to walk with us around the room much. When we stand him up to practice he just buckles to his knees and takes off crawling. I think he figured out that he get to where he wants to go faster by crawling. When we were at the mall this afternoon we bought him a small plastic car (a yellow bug, of course). I thought he would have fun pushing it around the room. He doesn’t yet get the whole pushing part although we kept pushing it and he was chasing after it. We will have to keep working on this one. We have been teaching him more sounds to make. He is getting good at growling and if you pretend to cough he now copies that. He is not showing any signs of saying Mama or Dada; I guess he is just not ready for that. Or maybe he is waiting till he officially is our son before he says it. * Bonus we got to change another dirty diaper today. I have a feeling this is going to be routine now. No, Eric did not change it even though last time he said “I will do the next one.”

After our visit this afternoon Ceric drove us to the Kazak restaurant and dropped us off for dinner. It was just as good as the last time we ate there. We like it there because we get a huge dinner, which is very yummy and drinks for less than $10 a person. This is a bargain for Aktobe.

Tonight I am rushing to finish this because Eric needs to get on a conference call with IBM and I really want to be able to post this for everyone.