For all you Ava Fans

Play Room

She holds on tightly to Jason's shirt every time he holds her.

See the picture she's chewing on!! She loves her Grandma and Grandpa already!

Door to our apartment building

We had two great visits today. Ava is getting to know us better each time we visit. When we get to the baby house we take off our shoes, go to her room where she sleeps and bring her to the bigger “play room”. When we picked her up today she looked so happy to see us! All the families get their babies and bring them to the same spot. There are three Spanish families here also. There are throw blankets to put on the floor of the play room and two arm chairs. We will usually sit on the floor and put her toys down on the blanket for her. We also walk around and cuddle with her. She’s getting more comfortable with us and “talking” and smiling more. We also figured out ways to make her laugh, like kissing her neck! She has the cutest toothless laugh! She has a couple of teeth about to come in on the bottom. We can’t see them but can feel them. She likes to chew on everything also. We gave her the baby picture book and she did look at the pictures but really just wanted to chew on it. She has a little cold and a runny nose. Between teething and her cold you would think she’d be miserable but she was so happy and calm. We did hear a few whimpers when we put her down and she quickly learned that whimpers/cry’s get mommy or daddy to pick her up! She whimpers and the second we pick her up she laughs or smiles! She’s already a little manipulator!! We think it’s so cute!! But I’m sure we won’t think it’s so cute later on when we want her to sleep!

Our morning visit is at 10:00-12:00 and afternoon is 4:00-6:00. We usually just get up in the morning, eat and get ready to go. Then in between visits we eat lunch and look at all the pictures and videos we took that morning. Though today I took a nap and Jason walked to the store. The store is 5 min walk away! Then after our afternoon visit we are tired! We have also been posting on the blog, writing e-mail and looking through pictures in the evenings. I’ve made dinner a couple times (didn’t come out too good last night) and tonight we went out to eat. We walked to the restaurant. It was about 5 min away too. I had chicken with nut sauce, rice, cabbage and salad from the bar. The salad bar had dishes with vegetables, beans, croutons, fresh herbs and dressing on a counter. Jason had schnitzel (which was just basically a bun-less hamburger) potatoes, cabbage and salad. He also tried a local beer made in Karaganda. Everything was very good! We are planning on going back for desserts some afternoon because we were just to full to have any tonight.

Karaganda is much different than we expected. It is a very big city of over 600,000 people. Cars are very nice, Mercedes and BMW’s everywhere. People also dress very nice. It doesn’t seem as destitute as we thought it would be. Food at the grocery store costs about the same as home. Dinner was about $30.00. We also had to buy diapers for Ava and a pack of 64 pampers were about $19.00.

We will try to post a video tomorrow!