If it's raining this must be Friday

April 20, 2007

We want to start today’s post recognizing some important events going on at home! First, Happy Birthday to Grandpa Dave Lundberg, as well to Aunt Joyce (Lundberg) Hayden. Joshua gave us special drools for you both today! We hope you both had/have a terrific day, and wanted to know you’re in our thoughts! Next, congrats to Kyle Fortman for making the first frontline on the Lynchburg Hornets lacrosse team. Good luck this weekend! Special blessings to Jamie, Erin and new baby Luke Mabry in Wilmington, NC (born on 4/12). And also, kudos to Mike Kuehn on his new job in Philadelphia. Go get ‘em, Mike!!

And, on to important events here in Kazakhstan! We send special wishes and congratulations to our new friends the Morrisons, who today left Uralsk for Almaty to complete the final stages of their adoption of Bryce. He is a darling little boy, and they all packed up this morning to head off to the airport, for the first of many flights back to Okinawa.

News from Joshua-land: Another good day! We were able to feed him this morning, some kind of rice or cream of wheat cereal, along with the cranberry compote. He continues to be patient with me while I shovel in the food, and Dave distracts his hands with toys and funny faces. A mess was made, but it was fun! We had to then change his clothes – which went pretty well. Most of the sweating during this first half hour of our morning visit came from me! We then proceeded to have a nice 2nd half hour playing. The weather’s been rainy today, so no playground. Our afternoon visit went smoothly too, as Dave found some new ways to make Joshua laugh, and my face become an exploration site! As the afternoon wrapped up, Joshua was getting tired and we were able to settle him nicely for the caregivers who were waiting in the next room, readying all the tikes for dinner. Joshua hears them from our room, and starts his wiggling and fussing – we think he knows the sounds and his belly probably is starting to grumble a bit. We wish we could spend an entire day at the BH with him, but we are so fortunate to have such quality time with him during our 2 visits – it’s only that we want to get to know him and his routine even better.

Dave here: Amy is being kind about feeding Joshua – she did all the work, I have been only an assistant. Here is how a feeding might go: Amy: shovel, shovel, shovel food. Dave: wipe, make funny faces, bounce the ball. Amy: shovel, shovel, shovel food. Dave: sweat and consider “man, I’m already getting nervous thinking about my turn”. So you see how it goes.
Another highlight is a fine gift of several traditional hand-painted wooden Russian spoons given to us by our interpreter, Olga. We noticed them in a store’s display case and recognized them as the same style as a set of ornamental plates my parents gave to us a gift. They picked them up the plates while vacationing in Russia last year while on a river cruise from Moscow to St. Petersburg. Olga gave to us 3 spoons: one for Dave, one for Amy and one for Joshua Roman.
Observations: Several have asked about city life in Uralsk (also published as ‘Oral’ on some maps) and what our ‘hood is like and where in fact is Uralsk. We are on the extreme northwestern end of Kazakhstan. As a part of this post are some of the sights in our neighborhood and outlying areas. Our apartment is a very unassuming, grey concrete building but the building in front of ours is an attractive light pastel blue. This building is our landmark whenever we return from a visit with Joshua or a walk back from the Atrium for some groceries. Many of the natural gas lines are above ground through the poorer areas (not sure why this is but I have a good idea). There are many newer, contemporary buildings but also many older apartment buildings and very poor single family houses grouped together sharing common privacy fences constructed of many different types of material. We give thanks every day for what we have.