Hanging on a Sunday

November 1, 2009
Well, I have to say our first 24 hours went by like a dream! I haven’t found anything daunting really, with the exception of her crying for a couple of minutes when I put her down yesterday. I felt like a failure, but she passed out cold. I picked her up in her dead sleep at 10p.m. and fed her a bottle of formula. It is unbelievable how fast this child can suck down 8oz of formula. I couldn’t get her to burp, but I have noticed that she is good at getting the job done herself now, so I just put her back in the crib. After a bit of fussing she slept through the night. I, on the other hand worried that I hadn’t burped her and she would vomit all over her sheets for which we have no replacements… I finally fell asleep and Dad woke me up at 1:40a.m. thinking it was 6a.m. She was making noise, but it was in her sleep so I left her. Dad fell right back asleep and it took me two more hours to fall asleep. Great.

She woke up at 5a.m. and I gave her a half a bottle of Kefir and put her back down until abot 7:30 when she woke up all gang busters and ready to play. I am still exhausted, but glad that Dad slept well because he can watch her later today when I finally hit the wall.

Ok, you may all DIE now. LOL This picture is too much.

We played for a while, Anelya babbles away and then it was time for breakfast. We met up with Tammy and Kalamkas, who had a much tougher night, and went down to the breakfast buffet which is included with our hotel stay. Anelya was really hungry and cranky by that time, as it took me longer to get down that than I had anticipated. So, Dad held her while I ran through the line and grabbed her some porridge and an egg yolk. I also brought some peaches from the room. She gobbled it all down and got pretty tired when finishing her meal with a 4 oz bottle of watered down plum juice. She sat very patiently as Dad and I ate our breakfast. Tammy and Kalamkas did really well too. After breakfast we decided to take a walk, even though it was almost Anelya’s nap time. I just felt like she needs some fresh and and I do too. So, we walked about two blocks to a lovely park (Mom & Bob, it’s across the street from the Pomodoro restaurant where we ate on our final night in the pouring rain). We took some pictures and took our time. Anelya fell asleep in the stroller on the way back to the hotel.

When we got there, the room was so hot I cannot even begin to explain it. The government turned the heat on in the whole country on October 15 and the room is boiling even when we open the doors to the balcony. I was going to let Anelya sleep in the stroller, but it was just to hot, so I stripped her down and put her in her crib, where she took about a 1.5 hour nap. Now she is up, crawling around and is as happy as ever.

We are waiting to hear from Marina, our Almaty coordinator, who mentioned yesterday that she would like to come and fill out Embassy paperwork with us sometime today. We are not sure when that will happen. However, Now that we are up, I am planning a wi-fi strategy which will probably involve some lunch, sometime before Anelya’s afternoon nap… and hopefully ours too.
I am also posting some pictures of the Almaty Mountains, take from our hotel room this morning. The weather is lovely, about 60 degrees and I packed for Semey weather which is much colder. So, that’s all for today. I hope to get to the café daily, but we’ll see how that goes.