Happy O Is Back Again

The other night as I lay in bed unable to sleep, the chorus of a popular song kept running through my head … in Russian. Yep, we’ve officially been here too long.

I promised myself not to turn this into the “diaper diaries”, but as I mentioned Owen was having some serious intestinal issues that were pretty rough on all of us. After a few days of only rice cereal and formula didn’t help we asked Rada to call Dr. Victoria . She thought the only thing wrong with him was that we had fed him jarred carrots instead of the boiled cabbage and meat she suggested, and prescribed him medicine, capsules that we broke open and mixed with some water three times a day.

We are happy to report that the situation seems to finally be back to normal. Just in time too as we woke up this morning to no running water for the third day in a row (it has since thankfully come on) and the kind of clean up involved in previous days would have been difficult to say the least. And no, living without running water is not at all fun, particularly for me, someone who won’t even go camping unless we stay in a cabin with indoor plumbing and a shower (Audrey stop laughing!).

Owen has been mostly back to happy baby lately, although he does get cranky if we are a little late or slow with the food. He sure does like to eat and I’m looking forward to his medical exam in Almaty (required before leaving the country) to see how much he weighs now. We are still tinkering a bit with his schedule and think we’ve found a winner – more frequent, shorter naps and a slightly later bedtime.

Our social life is pretty slow at the moment as it’s been very cold and snowy for a few days. But we do manage to get out occasionally - Bob and Sean went on a walk around town to take pictures of some of the monuments (shown is a World War II memorial) and I met Maureen, Jenny, Joey, Diane (a newbie from Alexandria !), Bill and Jill for an afternoon of shopping at the Tsum store. The Tsum store is really just a bunch of small kiosks and stores that sell everything from auto parts to fur coats. There are stores for appliances, sporting goods, books, stationary, wigs, chandeliers, cosmetics, food, curtains, shoes, china and glassware … in short, if you need it, you can probably find it here. It might not be all that nice or even look like it belongs in this decade, but you can find it.

We do a lot of reading to pass the time; I’ve finished two books that I highly recommend: “The Boleyn Inheritance” by Philippa Gregory (Mom, I think you’d very much enjoy; it’s about the court of King Henry IV from three women’s point of view) and “A Short History of Nearly Everything” by Bill Bryson. The latter is just what the title suggests; it’s an explanation of everything from how the Universe works to what an atom does. It’s written by a non-scientist and is therefore accessible for everyone. Every five pages I was saying “Bob, listen to this …” Amazing stuff, great book. Thanks to Uncle Bud, Owen has some interesting bedtime reading too.

Hope everyone is well. Your comments, thoughts and prayers keep us going – but we are really ready to come home. Two weeks to go!