Bonding Day #2

We had a great second day with Max (yes, we will be calling him Max although we may keep Misha around as a nickname). He was in a great mood and we think he may have even recognized us when they brought him in (though that may be wishful thinking on our part).

We did lots of exploring by crawling around the room and we even did some walking with assistance. He loves all of his new toys, especially the stacking cups and rings. He likes banging them around and making lots of noise. He had a balloon given to him by a very nice Spanish couple who were sharing the bonding room with us today and he loved squeezing it to make sounds. He likes throwing his toy and then crawling after it. There was a lot of giggling today and we found out he is very ticklish though it is difficult under all those layers. Since most of you are not familiar with their culture, here goes: The Kazakh people are generally very overprotective of children in any cold weather. Although right now, it is springtime and in the 60's, we still see most every kid out on the streets wearing a winter hat.

Max was wearing a (thankfully) thin blue hat. He ditched the girly pink one he had on yesterday. This matched his blue jacket which was on over his overalls which were covering his long sleeved shirt which was over his onesie with feet that were also covered with woolen socks. The poor little guy was very sweaty. We took his hat off (briefly, since this is frowned upon) just to see his hair color (brown, to match his eyes). He must have liked the feeling because he kept tugging on it and we were afraid we would get in trouble. The caregivers just happened to need to keep cutting through the bonding room though we're sure they weren't keeping tabs on us :).

Prior to our visit with Max, we actually ventured out of our comfort zone and went to the market without our interpreter. We took no offense to being followed around and watched by the workers. Since Jenny had her purse, they likely thought she was a shoplifter. Damn Americans! We noticed on our way out that all the women were putting their bags into these lockers, so that may have caused the tailing. Next time, we wi'll not bring the purse and then we'll see if they are still suspicious. :)

We have made friends with another American couple who also use our adoption agency, Little Miracles. They are from Alaska and have been here for about a month and a half. They are very bold and are staying for one loooooooong trip of at least three months. At least they have gotten some of the language down. Our language CDs generously lent to us by Laura Holland have been gathering dust for the last (almost) year. We'll start those some time soon, we promise. Hopefully, we'll be going out with Shannon and Jonathan for a drink later this evening.

Here's some video (assuming this works)...

And one more photo. Max has not yet gotten it perfected, but he is currently working on a "trick" that was originally shown to us by Jordan Darnell. Jordan, you'll have to show him how it's done when we bring him home.

Day 3 will be a morning session tomorrow, so we'll see how he is at that time of day.