She's almost here...

We pick her up at 3 p.m. tomorrow and I'm in a much better mood today. Amazing what a good nights sleep and a sunny day can do. Have also lucked in to a keyboard that works better at the 'online club' at Mega Mall. Right now Serik and Irina are doing laps around the mall - riding the escalators, elevators (which are glass and Serik loves to watch them go up and down) and playing on the slides and swings. Every once in a while they run up to me to check in - it wears him out and he has fun. We'll eat dinner in a bit and then get all the baby food and formula that we'll need for the next 5 days. We went to the baby house in the a.m. and my two favorite caregivers were taking care of Sasha. I've attached a pic of them. Only one will be around tomorrow when we take her from the baby house so I wanted to say bye and thank you to them today. We'll give the big thank you with gifts and donations to everyone on Tuesday when Kurt is back. He missed out on the thank you's last time and we thought he should get to do it this time. We could have waited until Tuesday to pick her up but thought it was more important to get the hardcore family bonding going asap. Kurt comes Sunday and Monday is a big religious holiday so that's why Tuesday and not Monday for the thank you's. Today when we got to the baby house Serik asked if he could go see the doctors. That group of women has been so kind to him and he loves visiting. He is especially fond of the one he calls the 'saubol' doctor (saubol is good-bye in Kazakh and she always says it when he leaves so he associates her with that word). She gave Serik candy - kid is spoiled - and asked me a few questions about English. She is trying to learn the language and has a beginning workbook. They all think I'm doing really well with Russian but I definitely still struggle to find the right words. However, some things/sentences have gotten very easy and I find myself waking up at night thinking about random words and wondering what they mean. I end up asking Irina because I don't know what they are or where I picked them up. It's a shame it will probably go right out the window when we go back since we won't be surrounded by the language anymore. Serik has picked up a ton and knows what things mean: paka, paka (bye), privyet & zdrastwitchya (hi), kok de la (how are you), ustal (tired) etc. He'll ask me what a word means if he hears me use it and then he uses it. It's pretty cool to see.