Woods Family

Too tired to post except for some pics and one story.


Maksim was a doll. We took him to Pizza Blues for lunch and play time. It is a pizza place with a large play area. Maksim played so hard that by the end, he couldn't move anymore. He got stuck in the balls. I pulled him out and we decided to take him home and forego some shopping. We did however need to get him a little garshok - it is a little potty for kids. We thought maybe he could relax more than he was when he had to support himself on the big potty. He was sleeping on Papa while Momma and Lena went into the store to buy the garshok. When we came back out Maksim was awake - still comatosed on Papa's lap - but awake enough so that Lena could show him what we bought. He said (translated)- "Oooohhh a potty! It is beautiful!" What the heck! We all laughed all the way home. Except Maksim. He barely blinked.

Today is Family Day! We are so happy to say that we are finally united as a happy family. We had a lot of fun. We learned alot about each other. We are all pooped!

We picked up Maksim, gave some thank you gifts to the caregivers and orphanage director. We asked if we could return on Saturday to bring some things to the children. We were told that "would be fine. Maksim loved his new snow clothes. He told Lena they were "Beautiful Pants". We didn't take any pictures because we were stunned, I think.


At the apartment, he investigated everything. We had to scramble to put items out of his reach. We thougth we had already done this. Silly parents. Everything was interesting. He loved eveything that we gave him. Even Momma's food was really good. He kept saying It was really funny because Papa gave him a huge bite of chicken before Momma could grab it - it was in his mouth. He chewed on it for a while then looked at Momma with a scared face and spit it into her hand. All the juices were gone so what good was the chicken lump? Jonny knows all about this.

We finally got him to relax enough to watch Ice Age with us this evening. He was like wind up willy the whole time. Sorry Roni Ron! We think you have a new rival! When the movie was over his was still singing songs trying to redirect our attention from getting him to sleep. During the credits. I put him on my lap and rocked him. On the very last note, he was out! Yeah! I was so excited. I looked over at Papa - Now what? We managed to get him into his bed and now we hope he doesn't wake up scared in the night.

Anyway - I forgot to take pics for most of the day - but did snap a few. Family Day was as perfect as we imagined. Complete with pee on the floor, toilet, Papa, Momma, 3 pair of underwear and 3 pull ups. Toys everywhere! Bath time, lots of food. :) I am sure we will all sleep soundly.

We got the official decree this morning. We applied for his birth certificate and adoption certificate
which we will have tomorrow morning!

It is kinda crazy having him. It is like a dream.

Anyway. For some reason we are trying to put him down for a nap. Ahhh...not really working. He is wound up like a top. I guess we should've known that a nap on day one was not going to work. Kinda dummies. :)

More later...

Apparently there was some mistake and we are not able to pick up Maksim, yet. We have to wait until Wednesday at 3:00 pm to see if we can pick him up. So we are trying not to cry too much and trying to continue to surrender control of our lives to strangers. Lena was upset, too. She tried to say she was sorry. It is not her fault. We are sorry, too.

We went to visit Maksim. He made us smile and laugh and we were very happy to see the little guy. At the end of our short visit he was quite sad. Poor baby. He was very confused because everyone had made such a fuss that he was leaving in the last few days. He didn't understand why we weren't taking him (we don't understand either, Masya!) and we couldn't explain it to him.

It sucks really bad.

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We have had a while to digest the news. We even got to visit Maksim again. The caregivers were sympathetic and kind. So now we wait again. Lena told us that we might get the paper we need on Wednesday morning instead. We are not holding our breath. Cautious Optimistism. :) I wish I could draw one of Helen's funny faces here instead of this computer one. Will this one work? : P

Well - I can't sleep very well. I am so excited to go pick up Maksim for GOOD! Yeah!

We picked up a bunch of groceries and I cleaned the apartment very well this afternoon. Papa and Momma had a very nice lunch at a the Red Dragon (a Korean restaurant). The food was good and I had some SPICY chicken satays. Yum! I am happy to burn my mouth on capsicum. :)

I have had a bunch of questions about the timeline from now, so I thought I would get up and blog. After we pick up Maksim tomorrow, we can apply for his passport. This takes 7-10 days. Once we have his passport, we will travel to Almaty, visit a clinic for a medical check up, then we can go to the American Embassy. In Almaty it takes 3 days. So we are just a couple of weeks from home if all goes well. We hope that the paperwork goes smoothly and we have no more unexpected fees. We'll see.

I guess that was a boring blog. It sounded like it would be much better in my head when I was trying to sleep. :)

NO MORE GOODBYES! Nyet Paka Paka.

We can't believe that we only have to say goodbye to Maksim 1 more time. Today was a really difficult goodbye. Maksim held onto his Papa and wouldn't let go.

We had a great time. Maksim is adorable and we love him so much. He found a funny looking bug in the spider book that we read together. He copied the face we saw. It was too funny. Momma and Papa also did the face. Now every time we look at that page, we all make the face. Too funny.

He bonks his head on everything! We think we need to get him a little helmet. Do all children bonk with no abandon?? Notice all the bruises. Sometimes it is Momma or Papa's fault, somtimes Maksim kinda throws himself down and bonks it, other times it an accident. It all adds up to a bunch of bruises. Maybe he is just a rough and tumble little guy. I suppose that is what they mean. Cute Cute Cute.

He is coming to trust us. I love it when he copies his Papa. From his walk to things he says. He loves to sit on Momma's lap and snuggle. He loves Papa to swing him high and carry him around. He is very loving and shares hugs and kisses with each of us. We noticed that in the last couple of weeks he stopped saying I love you so much. We kept saying it but he wouldn't repeat. Today I asked him for a kiss and he kissed me and then said Nyet Paka. I said no we aren't leaving. Then he gave Papa a kiss and said Nyet Paka just to be sure. Papa agreed that we weren't leaving. Several times during our afternoon visit he just kept checking that we weren't leaving. Nyet Paka. Then I realized - we always say I love you so much at the end. He just didn't want it to come. Neither did we. At the end of the visit he cried and held onto Papa's arm as best as he could Nyet Paka Nyet Paka. We had to literally peel him off and shove him through the door. He looks so sad as we close the door. But we know it is almost over.

Lena and Semyone took us to take some pictures of the city. It was a little too cloudy/smoggy. We will try again with Maksim. Well, here are some pics. It is going by so slowly. 1 more day of visits. 1 more goodbye. I know I sound like a broken record. So.

Today Papa is writing his first blog.(It's true I'm not a blogger or even a computer guy).This morning we both visited Maks, but Momma had a migraine and couldn't make it for the afternoon.Papa got his first taste of what my next couple of months with Maks will be like.I loved it but still missed Momma.I had our translater Lena explain to Maks that his mom had a headache.He pointed to his head and said "does her head have pain"with a worried look on his little face.Then he said"banana?",just making sure it woulnd't affect his snack.At least Momma comes first.After our snack I suited him up for our walk outdoors.One of his caregivers told me this was the last time she would see Maks and she was going to miss him(he is one of their favorites).On our walk we saw the resident orphange dog"Reegshee"(the closest I can spell it without using the cyrillic alphabet).Maks was well behaved until it was time to go back in.He cried for just a minute until I told him I would swing him in his blanket when we got back in.He decided to start calling his toy dog "Reegshee"also.When I swung him and his toy dog I would sing "Rock-a-bye Maksim"with the last line"and down will come Maksim-e-Reegshee cradle and all".

Papa is very tired from typing the above paragraph. The end.

Sorry no post yesterday. It is too boring sometimes to write about. :P

We had an awesome day today! Maksim was a sweetheart. We shared an apple. He learned to count to 9. We sang 5 little speckled frogs and he loved saying "yum! yum!" We had tried Hokey Pokey - "Nyet!", I'm a little teapot - "Nyet!". Except he liked it okay when Momma sang it as fast as she could and then did a sommersault at the end when the tea pot tips over. Then he wanted to see that over and over. Momma recorded it into the cell phone toy we brought and he laughed and laughed as Momma acted silly.

He even showed off some of his English skills for Lena. She was impressed. I know. Our Masya is very smart.

At lunch time we went to the town square to look around. Today is Kazakh New Year. There was a street fair and some performances and a bunch of Yurts. The is a very large cultural difference between people here and back home. There is no such thing as personal space here. If you want to go somewhere you go - it doesn't matter if someone is in your way or not. There were several times that I was looking at an item at the fair and someone would push their way right in front of me between the table and my body. What the heck! No excuse me or anything. Jason got pushed several times. He was getting very tired of it and decided not to take it anymore if someone did it again. He prepared himself for this when someone pushed him really hard. He turned around to get angry and a 12 year old girl had her elbow in his back. Strange Strange. They are not being rude by their own standards. But by ours - man. If people did this in the States there would be brawls in the streets. We found a few cute items for souveniers and decided not to eat there. (Jason was getting freaked out.) So we left to have lunch at this new restaurant we found the other day. Actually Simyone took us to it. It was good food - but it takes about 45 minutes to get your food once you order. So we chatted about a bunch of things.

We went back to see Maksim. He is so wonderful. We feel very lucky that we made it to him. On the way, we stopped at the hospital where he was born. I felt a tinge of sadness as we looked at the building. I thought about the 3 times that I had the privilidge to see my sister's children born. I feel lucky to have witnessed such a marvelous event and sad that I did not witness my son's. We took a picture and were happy to see the purple light patches all over the picture. Maybe you can see them, too.

Maksim was a joy to be around today. Smart, loving, fun, silly. We went for a walk and saw Rezhi. He is the orphanage dog. He talked to us for while and told us that he is lucky to have a box in a doorway to snuggle himself in. We really miss our Audry Bear!

We went back into the visiting room and took off the layers of outdoor clothes. We read books. Sang songs. Went to the toilet. Then, one of the caregivers called him back into the room. She told me that he was going to eat something (in Russian so I was confused a bit). So I thought we had stayed past our time and it was dinner. I glanced at the camera - my time keeper - and it said ?:59. We felt guilty for keeping Maksim past his dinner time. So we packed everything up. He came back in in two minutes with Kefir and Bisyeeni (yogurt drink and cookie) all over his mouth. This is his snack food that he normally has at about 4:00. I thought Maksim just hurried as fast as he could to eat his dinner. Well - we told him that it was paka paka time and he tried everything he could to redirect our attention to the beautiful child we were holding. But we knew it was time to go. He began to cry and wouldn't be comforted. Finally we pushed him back into the room. A caregiver told him to stop crying and he did. We sadly got our coats on and began to leave. Another caregiver brought him back to us and told us he had been crying. We consoled him and sang 5 little speckled frogs and said paka to all of the children in his group. We were so sad to leave. Why had the time gone so fast today?? It was just because he is so darn cute. As we got into the care to come back to the apartment, Lena asked us why we left Maksim so early. It was only 4:00!!! Waaa! We are supposed to visit until 5. It was such a bummer - because we could've had 1 more hour. But we didn't want to put him through the goodbye again.

I ignored all of the clues that it wasn't time. What a dummy.

We love him so much. 4 more days of visits. 4 more goodbyes. Only 4.

Well - we have six more days to go. Momma feels nervous. Papa feels excited. Will Momma make it home in time for school to start after spring break? Will we get Maksim's passport and airplane tickets? Who knows when? We'll see.

Maksim wasn't feeling very well today. He had a stuffy nose and coughed a bit. There was also a few strange noises and smells. He did not want to come inside after our walk, either, and cried all the way up the stairs and threw himself down and pouted and wailed. Poor baby.

The afternoon visit was much more fun for everyone. We tried to teach Maksim to sing the Hokey Pokey. That didn't go over very well. He watched Momma and Papa and wondered what the heck they were doing. We'll try it a few more times before giving up completely.

Counting the days. Missing Audry and Shamma and HOME - dom mali dom. Good thing JonJon and Natey visited with their doggie cousin yesterday. She really needed to see them, I think. I bet she got hair all over them - yuck!

6 silly 6.

Today we had a great day with Maksim. We read a book and learned some English words. We played plastilinee. Maksim learned to say "again". We have been swinging him in the blanket and singing Rock-A-Bye Baby. He of course, loves it and says again. Maybe we shouldn't have taught him again. He is sharp. Today as we were waiting for something to snack on, Maksim started singing the alphabet song. I think he made it to L without any help. Then he finishes it all by himself. "Now I know my ABC's" He obviously doesn't know what he sings but he is very musical. Momma and Papa learned that he loves to dance and likes to watch Momma and Papa dance, too.

Papa fed him some beef jerky and then we ask him "who likes beef jerky raise your hand?" just like JonJon. "I do!" He tries to feed Momma some beef jerky. Good thing he really doesn't like to share. Momma loves that he likes the clothes she brings him. He is very proud and shows us how cute he looks.

At the end of the day, we have realized it is much easier for all of us - if we just say bye quick. Da Svidanya. Paka Paka. Dobrae Vecher! Close the door. No tears. Soon no more goodbyes.
7 7 7

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We've got some great photos but blogger is being mean. Try again later.

Finally!!

Eight is Great! My favorite saying is back. But only for a day - so don't worry Uncle Punk. Maybe Uncle Punk doesn't even remember. :)

Today was a good day. Maksim listened and tried to learn some new English words. Verbs are very difficult to teach. I think Maksim is learning "where is...?", "More, please." and a few more nouns from some books.

If our posts are boring, good. Because visiting Maksim in a closet is boring and now you know how we feel! :P

We went through the "Chinese Mall" today (this is an outdoor flea-market) and I found the cutest jacket for Maksim and of course one for me, too. I need a nice spring jacket, too! We also found a few souveniers at a Bazaar - this is basically a mall-ish flea-market kind of thing. Some stuff is inexpensive compared to prices in the US; while some is about the same price.

Anyway... here are some randomn pics. A drummer for Uncle Bryan.

A hydroelectric plant for Uncle Punk.


8 is Great!!!

Momma and Papa have things straightened out. But boy is this experience tough on the level of the water in your ocean. I love you so much, Momma. I love you so much, Papa. I love you so much, Maksim. : )

Today is brought to you by the number 9!

We are counting the days until Family Day. It will be here one week from Monday. That is not too far. We try not to let the little things at the orphanage bother us.

Maksim loves to go outside and see the dog and the swingset. We spend probably too much time out there. He is really bundled up so we know he is warm. He wants us to carry him everywhere. He never wants to leave the swing. He is quite upset when swingtime is over. He grunts and whines. Yie.Yie.Yie. He calls to the orphanage sobaka endlessly whenever we see him. We were scolded once about the dog by someone we didn't know so we aren't sure if we are allowed to let him pet the doggy. We let the dog get very close today (sniffing and petting a little) and no one said anything. So hopefully we can continue this. We think that he is going to like Audry right at first. Phew. Actually - talk to us in a couple of weeks and we'll see.


Maksim continues to make progress in accepting us as his caregivers and authority figures. He is a really sweet boy and is trying very hard to make good decisions. It probably sounds like he is going to be trouble to you all- but really we think he is amazing. The fact that we can communicate at all with him is somewhat surprising. There have been a few days where he tests his limits (of course) but he is very responsive to our boundaries and our rules. He is so smart and loves to learn and repeat everything that he hears. Ah-Oh Mom and Dad. Better learn to curb the old sailor language.

He loves to sing. We have taught him a few english songs that he kind of sings. He likes ring around the rosies - especially because when we all fall down it is tickle time. We have forgotten all of the nursery rhymes we once knew. LOL Today we captured the cutest video of him belting out a song in Russian of course. Wish I knew how to share it with you guys from here. You will have to wait till we get home. JonJon and Natey - what song should Auntie Belissa teach him??

He is resilient. He is a sponge. He is our son.

10 more days! (and counting)

We just wanted to say thank you to all of our friends and family that have posted to the blog and written emails. We love to hear from home and appreciate the time you have taken to support us and Maksim.

We are so excited to be his parents. He is excited, too.

Yesterday, one of the caregivers was singing, playing games and dancing with the children. We have asked them if they will teach us one of those games to play so we can teach it to Nate and Jonny back home. So she took a hold of Maksim's hand to bring him into the circle and he started crying those big crocodile tears. Nyet! He said softly. I want to be with my Momma and Papa.

Papa and Maksim are developing quite the bond. He loves when Papa lifts him in to the air and carries him. They sing together "Family Goolets." It means "Family Walk". Maksim sings it all the way down the stairs as we go outside. We played follow the leader, Duck Duck Goose, and Redlight Greenlight. Maksim is getting more attached to us and stays next to us and won't talk to the "machina people" anymore. He just silently watches them clinging to one of us.

The Gaines family has there court date today and then we are all going out for a celebration dinner. They will fly out soon and return in a few weeks. We are jealous that they will get to eat Mexican Food!!

Here are a few pictures. We brought one of his new outfits for him to try on. Including new shoes. He loves it! He puts it all on and then turns all around so everyone could see how cute he is. Could we have another clothes horse? JonJon - we can all go shopping together. Yeah!!

We are Maksim Jason Woods' parents! We couldn't be any happier. Court went pretty smoothly. At about 11:50, we were called into the Judge's chambers to begin the hearing. The Judge, his assistant, the prosecutor, Lena, the orphanage director, Tahesia (the lady from the department of education), and us we seated in a small office. The judge said a bunch of stuff in Russian and then we began our speech. We were pretty nervous. We would read a segment "My name is Jason blah blah blah, we live at blah blah blah, we will take care of Maksim, etc." Then Lena would translate. Then I started, "we are rich, blah blah blah, we have more than enough money and can prove it, blah blah blah." "We love Maksim!"

The prosecutor had no question for us. Pheww! Then Tahesia started. The prosecutor definately had questions for her regarding the circumstances of Maksim arrival at the baby house. She stood and vehemently asked Tahesia questions. It was scary for us because we couldn't understand everything and the tones in the voices seemed frightening. Lena would translate but they didn't stop for her to translate so of course we missed some things. We actually learned a bit more about his biological mother. The judge heard a few things from the orphanage director and then called for a break.

Before meeting with the judge again, a Russian man with a big smile told us "Good Luck!" We were pretty stoked to have someone say this to us. In this country and in public people are not friendly at all. They mostly scowl and stare. We have come to recognize this as normal behavior. It seems Americans are over-smiley. We met back in the judge's office at aobut 3 pm. It was a very short "You are now pronounced Maksim's parents!" We shook his hand and he gave each of us a very kind smile. We can count the number of people who have smiled at us on one hand. That includes the 2 today! We were elated. Lalalalala!!!

We went back to the orphanage and saw OUR SON for the first time. He was sweet and played machina most of the short time we got to spend. We shared an apple and Maksim wanted his Momma to have her own piece! Yeah! He shared with me. I was very excited. We taught him to say "America!" It comes out more like "Amarelica!" He loves to say it and boy do we love to hear it. "Amarelica!"

P.S. the "we are rich" comments are supposed to be silly..of course.

On our next post, we will be the parents of Maksim Jason Woods, formerly known as Maksim Viktorovich Ignatov. We cannot wait. Of course. We didn't get any new pics today - so below are some from our 20 days of precourt visits.

Maksim was a fun and loving boy today. We had a great time. We ate yogurt, practiced English, learned to count to 5. He is even singing part of the alphabet song. It is really cute.

After our great morning visit, Lena told us that one of the caregivers had a serious talk with Maksim about being kind to his parents. We were happy that he listened but wished we could have explained it to Maksim. I guess the first thing we have to do is practice learning more English. He is really smart and picks things up so quickly.

We had lunch and practiced our court speeches. We talked about violence and crimes in our respective countries. People are the same everywhere. Criminals in the United States have it much better in jails and prisons that criminals in Kazakhstan. That is for sure.

Our afternoon visit was a great bonding experience. Maksim was excited to see us and took out his blanket as usual. He is learning to help Momma. We ate cucumbers. Yumm!! Momma tried to eat too many of them and Maksim was getting anxious. We should bring the whole cucumber next time so that there is enough to share.

We went on an afternoon walk and met up with Lena, Anya, a new translator (we don't know her name yet) and the drivers. Maksim thinks Anya is very pretty. Especially because she always pulls candy out of her pocket. She gave him a 1 inch diameter hard candy. Through the crowd, Maksim called to and came to his Momma to help him. Aaahhhh. He made me feel like I really am his Momma. Now, we had to do something about the choke hazard. Papa tried to break it in half. That didn't work, so Momma bit it into pieces and gave him part. He happily bit into it, too. Then we went for a walk.

Near the end of our visit, we sent Maksim into the toilet. We try to send him every half hour or so because we are giving him "extra" fluids. Well, we didn't hear the bathroom noises or see Maksim for a few minutes. We started to wonder. Papa went into the room and there was Maksim with big crocodile tears. He was rythmically rocking himself and sitting on the floor. We think that he thought Momma and Papa had sent him away. Papa picked him up and brought him back to the visiting room. He tried to play it off and pretend to Momma that his wasn't crying. I am pretty sure that he did this so that I would think he was a "good boy". I told him that it is okay to cry and held him close and then I rocked him. He sobbed and sobbed. It was really sad. Why do have to keep leaving him? When he was done crying, he climbed onto his blanket and told us that he was going to go to sleep right there with us. "Pora Spot Maksim E Momma E Papa". Can you say heartbreaking??

It was time to leave and Maksim started to cry again. Papa soothed him a little. Then he wanted back into Momma's arms. I picked him up and sang him a sad Logan song (heehee) and he cried for a while then laid (I am terrible at grammar) quietly in my arms. Lena came in while he was crying and got to see first hand what we had been talking about. She helped to stop Maksim from being upset and we told him about our court visit tomorrow.

We left. We cried some more. We wait.

Wheewww! We made it alive and well.

Today is Papa's birthday. But...we haven't had court yet so he didn't feel much like celebrating. Not to mention that as soon as we arrived today, Momma got her first yellow shower. Maksim was sitting on my lap as we ate an apple and read stories. My leg and sock were doussed. Really pretty funny. I was initiated into motherhood today. (I think!)

We had a couple of rough visits with Maksim. We have decided that he is actually doing great and trying be a really good boy. He is a really good boy and we love him. But testing us is his MO for atleast the last 20 minutes of our visits. We cannot decide if our leaving has something to do with it or if he is just getting bored.

We are visiting Maksim in a hallway. Several different people come in and out of our visiting room. It is really difficult because anyone that walks through has Maksim's full attention. He is dying for some communication about his toys in Russian. He tries his best to get their attention. If they do not look at him or interact with him, he starts gesturing toward them. Sticking his tongue out. Making the obeezyana (monkey) face. Hitting the air in their general direction. Screaming. Yie. Yie. Yie.

When we went for our walk, we taught Maksim to play the redlight, green light game. He loved it! We all took turns being the stoplight. It was really fun. Look at these adorable pics!

The afternoon was more of the same - and we apologize for being so boring! Maksim is bored, too. He seemed to tell us today - I'm hiding from you people who don't even know how to talk.
He is so cute. And so frustrated. And we love him so much.

We are frustrated too. We just want to be able to bring him to the apartment so we can be his true caregivers.

On a postive note, Maksim is intelligent, knows tons of English words and phrases, has the sweetest little voice, gives kisses and says I love you, he listens to his caregivers and tries his best to listen to us, is testing the ropes, and he is resilient. We are so lucky to have this chance to become his parents. We hope that everything goes well at court and that the waiting period doesn't kill us. We are worried! : )

We will have our court appearance on Monday, March 13th at 11:30 am. That means, if all goes well, that we will be able to take custody of our son on March 28th. Then, I will only have two weeks to get back to the US. They say it takes 10 days after you have custody. We will see.


Today, Momma and Papa made progress being parents. In the morning visit, the children came back from their walk. We had all of our toys out when the children came in. For some reason, some of the caregivers do not want the children to play with the toys. Neither does Maksim. But we don't really mind. Anyway, Maksim starts doing this grunt, grunt, whine, whine thing when one of his friends have one of his toys. I wish we could communicate better. Momma tells Maksim that it is okay if the kids look at his toys. We can share just for a minute. I had him on my lap because he was reaching and grunting. I told him nyet and sit still. He had other toys in his hands. He started freaking out a bit. I tried to calm him unsuccessfully. All one of the caregivers had to say was Maksim. He immediately stopped. I had said that, too. I even used a stern voice. He just doesn't see us as authority figures yet, I am sure.

Well, the children left and Maksim kept going a little crazy. We put away all his toys. He cried. Then he snuggled Momma until he stopped crying and then Papa took him to the window to watch the machina and sing itsy bitsy spider. One temper tantrum averted! Yeah! We felt a bit proud of ourselves. But of course we wonder if we are doing the right thing by redirecting his attention. Do all parents worry about such things - or just newbies??

Jason had a hair appointment at noon today. We went to a fancy salon and met with a nice looking hairdresser who was about 25 years old. I sat and watched while Jason was shampooed and then got a very precise haircut. While the hairdresser was cutting, Jason kept giving me the look over there look. I couldn't figure out what the heck he wanted me to look at. There was a 14 year old boy waiting next to me, a young bride getting her hair done, her mom, and several other hairdresser. The hairdressers were dressed in tight pants and high heeled boots...could that be what he wanted me to see?? Finally I spot it. The 14 year old had a Playboy. Just calmly reading it in the middle of the salon. His eyes were bugging out. We couldn't stop laughing. We were trying to contain it because we didn't want Jason's hairdresser to think we were laughing at him. Funnn - nnny.

The afternoon visit was more of the same. Except..Semyone's car needed to be fixed so his Dad picked us up instead...in a Mercedes. We really did feel like the "rich people". That is a running joke with Semyone and us. He drops us off at the front door of the baby house. We give the "rich people" signal (it is our hessian/heavy metal sign). Kazakhstan just instituted a selt belt requirment law! yeah! We don't have to hurt anyones feeling to buckle up. :)

Maksim is very sweet and we read lots of books today. We also looked at a bunch of the pictures that we had printed up from our visits. He really liked looking at himself and the other kids. He almost know the Miss Spider's New car book by heart. We read it for Lena today. She liked it. Maksim enjoyed showing off. It was the first time that he would do any of his cute things for other people. We were so proud!!

2 more days of visits and then court! We couldn't be more excited. :)

Can't do pics...try again later...
Okay only a couple - I don't know why