Our journey continues.

Our journey as brand new parents continues. We feel like waking up from a nightmare and except from running from the baby house to the orphanage every day, back and forward and enjoy our children, we did not get chance to do too many other things so far.

Sergey was very busy with his new musical telephone! We were trying to teach him the ABC, but with not too much success today. I don’t think he learnt the letters and the numbers yet and as we are asking him to repeat some words, I think he may have some pronunciation problems. However, I am sure in few months his English is going to be much better than mine. He copies the square and the triangle pretty well, but he refused to draw a person!. That`s OK, we`ll keep trying. I think I may be little bit obsessed and trying to test everything from the first days. It is pretty hard to communicate with him. He talks a lot, but he doesn`t seem to be very upset when we do not understand what he is saying, he just repeats it again and again until somebody understands or we will give up or our translator rescues us. I wish we learnt more Russian! He is very sweet otherwise, he calls us Papa and Mama already and today he asked, Igor – the translator: “if is he going to be in the car with his parents when he is going home?”. I think he pretty much understands what is going on, maybe one of the educators told him and he also saw other children in his class, going home with their parents.




Alina was dressed today in a blue pajama with “Here comes the trouble!” written on it. This was funny! We are already scarred! We witnessed her first step with no support. She pulled herself up from the sitting position, she waited few moments to make sure we can see her and appreciate her effort, the she fell and started laughing. She imitates everything what she sees. She says da-da and ta-ta but no ma-ma!!!! Too bad, I am the one who is trying to improve her vocabulary, while her father is enjoying teaching her to make funny faces, stick out the tongue and giving back kisses. She does everything back! She very much enjoys seeing her face the mirror, today she started laughing and give kisses to the mirror. It was so cute! She has such a beautiful laugh. She also discovered the massage today, Aveeno cream for her face eczema made miracles! Thank you, Allyson! That`s my girl!

We are waiting to find out when will they be together. We found out that the quarantine for chicken pox will be over only in March 24, which is way too late. The director of the orphanage offered today to move him in a shelter, just to be in the city for us not to have too much to travel, but we did not think it was a good idea. If he is not going to be with his sister, we think there is no point to move him again in a different place, with different children and caregivers. We may also leave after few weeks and we don’t want to confuse him more. Let`s see, unfortunately there are not too many choices!

For the waiting parents: try not to pack too much! We paid 150$ for extra 45 kg of baggage from Almaty to Astana. There is a limit of 20 kilograms/person for internal flights. Not to forget home: a flash light (we had no power yesterday evening for several hours), toys, books and DVDs. Also, very important, please keep in mind, when you rent the apartment, you can bargain!!!!

Tomorrow we will meet with Kristen and her beautiful daughter – Maya, I only saw sneak pictures of her, but tomorrow our girls will play together!