A dreary day

The weather outside is gloomy, overcast, rainy and cool the past couple of days….the Weather Network forecasted differently for today so I'm not holding out much hope for the forecast they have for Karaganda for the next few days.  We even saw a few snow flurries earlier.

 

I seriously hope I get home and find a letter or a voice mail from Lotto Canada telling me we've won big, I really do not want to go back to work!!  Oh yeah and I need to pay off my bills!!

 

We had some tense moments earlier today with a Purolator package that was being sent to us with documents I need for court.  I had been given the tracking number and when I tracked it last night Purolator said it had been delivered yesterday to someone in Almaty, and did not know the name that Purolator said it had been delivered to.   After some very tense hours we found the package had been delivered safely to my coordinator here in Karaganda, not sure why Purolator said it had been delivered yesterday to someone in Almaty but at least it is safely here now.  It took 6 days to get here by Purolator, not bad I suppose.   However ,I could have done without the stress.

 

After 6 weeks here I found out tonight that the "latte" place in City Mall serves food and has desserts…I found that out after I promised Ciera "Mag & Daks", so I had some rather disgusting chicken nuggets (they had cheese in them tonight, even Ciera didn't like the cheese part) and an ice cream sundae….oh yeah (not).  I will be checking out at least one dessert at the "latte" place before we head home they look amazing!  We then spent some time at Babylon, after Ciera was done in the play part (she was the only child there!), the girl motioned to her to come over to the carousel ride (again she was the only child) and put her on it without us paying.....I guess a sign that we are frequent customers!!!

 

I can't believe that a week from now we will be on the road to Astana to await our flight home, at this point it seems totally surreal.  I was talking to Irina about some stuff this afternoon about leaving and I started to get all teary……even she could not believe we were leaving next week.  While it was hard to leave Ciera when she was a baby, I had only been with her 3 weeks so while she knew me and had bonded it was only 3 weeks out of her 14 months.  With Mr. Baby by the time we leave it will be 7 weeks, 7 weeks out of her 9 months, that's a lot of time for her.  I was telling her Dr this afternoon that I had the other bottle of medication for her and the Dr said "oh just keep it until we need it", I replied "we leave for home in a week", she said pointing at Mr. Baby "but she needs you", I laughed and replied "yes I know but we can't stay another 4 weeks".  After she left the room I thought darn I should have asked her to try and impress upon the judge that Mr. Baby needs to go with her mom to her new home and ask him to waive the 15 day waiting period.  Fat chance but a girl can dream can't she?!

 

Mr. Baby has some sort of irritation on her legs, little bumps all over the front and back as if she has goose bumps.  My best guess was an allergic reaction to something, perhaps the laundry soap I am using, however it is now where else on her body.  I asked one Dr. she also thought an allergic reaction.  Her Dr. then came up as I guess the first Dr. mentioned it to her.   She thinks it's due to me letting her crawl on the carpet without her pants on, I've been keeping them off her as they just get in her way when she crawls. That would make sense for the fronts of her legs as she drag them along but not so much for the backs of them.  It does not seem to bother her, she is not scratching so we will see.  We will put lotion on her and see if the irritation goes away.  This afternoon they had a couple of the other babies out on the floor in our room working with them and when I see the babies same age as her what they cannot do (sit up on their own) vs. what Mr. Baby can do I truly see how far she has come in 6 weeks, with love, one on one attention and me helping her,  I could not believe it.

 

This afternoon after we left the BH we finally got to the Russian Orthodox Church out by Stepnoy.  It is gorgeous inside, they are doing some work on it so there were some scaffolds at the back of the main area.  There was a service going on in one of the side chapels (I hope that is the right terminology).  I had to cover my head with a scarf (Ciera thought that was quite funny) when we went in.  I was not sure if it was ok to take pictures so I did it very quietly, without the flash and without holding the camera up to frame the shot.  Overall they came out not too bad.   It was truly beautiful inside.  We stayed for about 10 minutes, said a prayer for poppa and then we left.

 

Ciera's behaviour was better today, not hugely, but better, we had another long talk about it tonight so hopefully my threat of her staying in the apartment for the next week and her room at home once we are home gets through to her (with no hockey, no dnace, no play dates, etc).  This afternoon I gave her a timeout for playing with the camera when I had told her already to put it down, when she said she was ready to talk she came over and said she was sorry for something completely different.  She could not remember why she was in the time out…..that is not a good sign.  I think she has had more time outs in the past 3 days than she has had in total at home ever!

 

Today's pictures:

-       Ciera doing some schoolwork at the baby house

-       A couple of shots of the inside of the church ( the one with the top of my head in it is a shot of the ceiling of the main chapel)