Looking Ahead

It's Monday morning, the day before Tuesday morning, which is the day that marks the beginning of our last week in Kokshetau. You'd think that I'd be DYING to get out of here, DYING to get home. The truth is, I'm not.

It's not that I'm reluctant to return home. But, I guess I do feel some ambivalence. These last few weeks together here have been pretty amazing. Having the opportunity to focus entirely on the babies, to get to know their personalities, their quirks, to learn to care for them, to begin to find a rhythm as a family--all this has been really special. And our days are so flexible--we've got no commitments whatsoever except to each other. We don't even have to clean because Luba (pictured to the left) comes everyday to do that!
Lots of leisure for playing:

Here is Evelyn trying to bend my ear. (She actually leaned over and burped quietly in my ear.)

She loves to chew on my face: mouth, nose--and here--cheeks.

A lot will change when we return. When we get home I won't be able to ignore my work anymore. (I do have a reduced teaching load in the Fall, thankfully, but still there are looming paper deadlines.) When we get home Brent returns to work full time. When we get home there will be cleaning, there will be meetings, there will be a telephone and people calling us on it, there will be, in short, all of our usual everyday responsibilities. Part of me is looking forward to our life at home. I miss our house, our dogs, our friends, our church, our farmers' market. I miss smoothly paved roads and sidewalks, English speaking people, having multiple power outlets in each room... Even so, I will also be sad to say goodbye to this life in Kokshetau. It's been wonderful. I've not regretted the length of our stay in Kazakhstan one bit. 

This past week has, in fact, been especially fun. While the first week of custody was challenging, it feels now as if we're getting the hang of things. What is more, we've begun to go out and about with the kids. We take daily walks and, last Tuesday, Evelyn and I had our first "girls day out". (Brent was feeling a bit under the weather and so stayed home with Jess.) Evelyn and I met Angie, Renee, and Makhabbat at the Kokshetau museum and had a tour of the museum.

This is us (Angie and Renee to my left) in a mock Yurt at the museum.

Afterwards, went to an Uzbek restaurant for lunch, and ate Plav (a traditional Uzbek dish), which was delicious. I must say, it was a long walk (2-3 miles round trip) and because I had my 19lb chunk-a-lunk in the sling (the roads were too wet and muddy for the stroller), I was in some serious (back) pain the next day. Still, it was worth it. It was such a nice time and Evelyn had a blast: she was great at the museum and at the restaurant. Not a single moment of fussing even though we were out for almost 5 hours which meant she was very late for a nap and feeding.

Outside the Uzbek restaurant (Angie, Makhabbat, me and my girl)

We were sitting under a red awning at the restaurant, hence the red color.

On Friday night, Angie and Renee hosted us all for dinner at their cottage--Kathleen, Brent, myself, our kiddos, plus Makhabbat and her daughter and niece. It was such fun and the kids

loved the change of scenery--we all did. Saturday night was our anniversary, so we put the kids down and went out for dinner (Kathleen looked after them). We stayed in last night, but Kathleen cooked dinner so it still felt like a treat! In short, we're passing some very pleasant summer days here in Kaz.

Makhabbat and her girls put on a dance for us.

Going out to dinner to celebrate our 11 years!

The kids are doing great. They are making good progress on eating solid foods. In addition to rice (Evelyn) and oatmeal (Jess), they've incorporated banana, carrots, and apricot into their diet. And--just today--Evelyn also added a potato pumpkin concoction to her repertoire. Evelyn insists on sucking on her fingers between every single bite (she pops the fingers out, opens her mouth, leans forward for a spoonful and then pops her fingers back in as soon as she gets a bite), but we agreed that we'll get her to stop that by the time she starts high school. They've both begun working at drinking from a cup (water with just a teeny bit of apple juice). Jess with some reluctance and suspicion, Evie with great joy and gusto. 

They are both nearly able to sit up on their own. I found that putting them in the bath was the greatest help toward progress on this front. They don't want to lean their faces in the water so they work extra hard at keeping themselves up.

Evie sitting looking at a favorite book. Can you see who she's looking at?

Jess sitting up.

They love to play together--where by "play" I mean yanking toys from each other. Interestingly, neither seems to mind when the other takes the toy, they just grab it back again (and again and again). It's almost like when they were first learning to pass a toy from one hand to the other. Now they seem to think they have four hands and so just pass it back and forth among all the hands.

Here they are--"sharing" their toys.

Both of them are chewing their lower lip a lot.

Jess is obsessed with this chair, he goes to it every time he can.

They have started to smile at each other, which is very cute. And they continue to be pretty much in synch. They still go to sleep within about 30 minutes of each other and wake up (or, at least, start making their wakefulness known) at nearly the same time. During the waking hours we're hearing all kinds of noises. Evelyn loves to scream, but has also begun to make other sounds as well, mostly she says "aaaaaahhhhhh", "aaaaayyyyyyyyy" and "mmmmmmmmm" (this last is pronounced with much force and is spoken mainly when she's hungry or tired or frustrated). It's nice to hear her making these sorts of sounds since to this point she's been pretty quiet (when she's not screeching). Jess is a real talker. His favorite word is "gloik" but also enjoys "gah", "gal", "mmmmmmmmmm" (again, pronounced with much emphasis), and, as you heard on the video in the previous post, "dadadada". Unfortunately, he's also discovered a very high pitched kind of squeal which he has now introduced to express negative and frustrated feelings as well as positive spazy excitement. It's not a pleasant sound.

They both love to spin this little ball that's on their mirror.

Even if we've enjoyed this time together here in Kokshetau we also know that we've got lots to look forward to when we return. Not the least, we look forward to seeing you all face to face rather than having to communicate just by computer!

Jess peeking at me from around the computer.