Day 18

This post should be titled "The Good, The Bad, But No Ugly" The good is that the girls are having fun with mama. Sasha said "mme" today which I am saying sounds enough like mama for me! She also clearly said dog in kazakh. Both girls seem to love looking at pictures of Frosty. Frosty had better get ready for them!!!!! Sasha did a lot of talking babbling today, but those were the only 2 words I understood. She may be saying much more. Leeza was talking a lot today also. She was calling me aipie-which is Kazah for caregiver so I kept saying mama today and she said it once. The one time she said it she really wanted my attention so I think she knows it fairly well.

The Bad is that I just found out Monday is a holiday and I may not be able to visit the girls! That means I get tomorrow, then nothing Sat, Sun Mon and maybe not Tuesday depending on if I have court then. I will get to see them Wednesday, but if all goes as planned I will leave Thursday so that means I only hve 2 more hours with them until I go home. That is very very bad. The good thing about this process is that the girls get time to know you in their environment, but the bad is that just when they start to get comfortable, you leave. Some people stay for 2-3 months for the whole process, but I cannot do that. I'd rather have more time at home to help them adjust there.

Trying to find a good picture of Leeza is tough today. She was in motion from the very first minute. She gave her mom a good workout! This is when she captured the mama's purse. It was very heavy as it had a bottle of water, my video camera and other stuff in it. She spent several minutes going in a circle as she couldn't drag it at first.

Then she was off to crawl through the gym equipment. Mama had to "rescue" her several times when she fell. She wasn't hurt, but just wanted to prove that she could make me come and get her up. The minute I picked her up she wanted to go running again. Mama was happy to go and get her up repeatedly. I want her to know I will be there to help her.

Sorry it is sort of out of focus, but movement was her main theme today so good shots are rare.

The girls do share well. Their idea of sharing today was Sasha got the puzzle board and Leeza got all the puzzle pieces. They were happy with the arrangement, but mama didn't understand why. Leeza carried the puzzle pieces around in her zip lock bag. They both love zip lock bags!

I stuffed the zip lock bag full of everything I could find, toys, paper etc. Sasha had great fun unpacking it. then mama stuffed it full again, repeat.......

Smile are easy to come by now from Sasha. She is content to watch Leeza run and play and loves to sit on the swing with her toys. I hate that my time with them is down to a few hours now before I leave. I know it is the best plan long term, but it is still very hard to leave them when they have just gotten comfortable with me.