Mom is an Idiot!

The past couple days our translators have been decorating our visitation room with party favors to celebrate the new year, it is looking very festive and the babies are having much fun staring at all the shinies in the room. Today we had an unexpected gift when many of the daytime caregivers visited our play room, soon we were having a little dance party with the kids and their caregivers, it was great fun! We were able to take many photos of the babies with their caregivers, wonderful memories!





The New Year is a huge holiday here in Kazakhstan! They celebrate as a family with an evergreen tree, fireworks, food and gifts; truly it sounds a lot like our Christmas gatherings. They even have a Mr. Freeze or Frost that comes to deliver gifts to the children even…….hmmmm sounds awfully close to Christmas.

Every day I adore Zahri more; I know that I say this often, but it is true, she just blossoms more and more everyday. Today she gave up many laughs, she just loves to be tickled and thrown in the air. I can tell now that she is starting to attach to me, which is a wonderful delight. After this afternoon’s visit, I had one of the translators hold her while I put on my boots and she looked down at me and started to whimper a bit, soon she was crying for me to hold her again, it was such a great feeling. She prefers me! After only 7 days of bonding (we are ½ way there to our mandatory 14 days of bonding – yahoo) this little girl is starting to attach to me and that is the most wonderful feeling! Z continues to adore her bottle and her nook, today she had Banana juice & so far so good, she doesn’t seem too picky. Okay……….here is where I tell you what an idiot her mom is…………..I started to feed her a bottle this morning, and she kept sitting up and looking around, she never does this, she usually devours her bottle and is intent on just looking at mom, but she didn’t seem to have any interest in her juice. Hmmmmm so I tried again, as she kept laying back, I knew that she did want to drink so I would try again. Soon my translator Aina came over and laughed, she grabbed my bottle and took out the travel stopper that was preventing any juice from coming out. Oooops, mom is an idiot! Poor little Z was trying to get that juice and mom hadn’t taken off the travel stopper. Oops! Once that was off, she was her normal juice drinking machine and all was good. Hehehe Zahri continues to love the boys in the room too, which is such a relief since she really hasn’t been around many men in her little life. I also gave her a teething biscuit today and she loved it! Within minutes her little face and fingers were filled with dissolving cookie, I am sure that it felt great on her little teething gums! But my favorite thing of all is how she reaches for me when she wants to get up, which is often, she puts out her little hands reaching for my fingers to help her to her feet and I just love it! She is so darn smart already! And Grandma, Z loves ‘You are My Sunshine,’ I told her that this was Grandma’s favorite song!

I also confirmed that Z has all 10 of her toes today, yes today was the first day that I was able to see all of her toes and they are there and perfect!




I am still unsure if I will stay for one trip or leave after about 4 weeks and come back for my ‘Gotcha Trip’ about a month later. Should I decide to stay, I will be in Kazakhstan nearly two months, which is a darn long time. Should I decide to make 2 trips, I would be here a month, back in the U.S. about a month and back to get Zahri for my last 2 week trip. I just can’t imagine leaving this little bean!

No bad experiences with food yet. Laurie and I have now gone out 3 times and have had great luck each time. Our first meal was at the Hotel Dastan where we ordered Potato Skins for an appetizer and then Fajitas for Lunch, these were super yummy. Next we had the Shashlik at the Hungarian Restaurant, and today we tried Pizza at a great restaurant in the basement of the Business Center and it was awesome! I know these don’t seem all that adventurous, but in a new country ½ way around the world you just never know what they think of as pizza, and it was so yummy! Really it was very similar to our pizza but it had more of an authentic flavor, and the cheese was a little different and of course they added dill to the top, dill is on everything here, and I mean everything……….even my chicken noodle soup had dill. We are planning to go to an Armenian Restaurant as a group on January 2nd and from what I hear it is all about MEAT in this culture’s cooking, so we will see about that. Bayana also showed me where a good restaurant is that has wonderful Kabobs, a popular meal here in Kaz, so I would like to try this as well. Here is a photo of the Chicken Fajita at the Hotel Dastan, super yummy!


Washing clothes in the bathroom sink was fun, tonight was laundry night and I felt like a girl on the prarie washing her clothes in a wash tub and hanging them to dry on a makeshift laundry line in my bathroom. I thought about hanging them out the window, as everybody else does here, but I wasn’t sure that it would look very inviting outside the entrance of the hotel.???!!!... I still can’t figure out how their laundry doesn’t freeze.

TIP – Do not forget to bring a really nice size blanket for the floor at the play room, the carpet is pretty yucky. I brought a little afghan and it has worked well, but many families just brought their comforters from their beds in the apartment and this is perfect! It is really nice having a big comfy blanket to play on and those tend to take up a lot of luggage space. Many of the apartments have 2 or 3 bedrooms, so if you know what size apartment you will get, you can probably count on stealing a comforter from one of the beds and making it into a floor blanket at the baby house.