Thursday visit...

At first look you'd never know these brothers have spent 99.9% of their lives apart - living half-way around the world from each other. Hopefully, beginning next week that will change!



Today's visit went well - no crying again, just a few minutes of shyness and hiding in the corner, but in no time the two boys were off and running - literally. Today we sorta just let the two of them play together without any unsolicited intervemtion from the big people. It was nice to see the two boys playing, laughing, chasing, and being boys together. As usual Harry wanted to watch some cartoons first, but they moved from one thing to the next the whole visit. They also played with an electronic book we brought for Harry, some Transformers (that I can't for the life of me figure out how to do), a folding racetrack (a huge hit - and cheap at $13.00 back home). Of course put these two together and they HAVE to spend a good deal of time chasing each other. Today Harry pretended to be a dog and kept running after Skip. As you can see from the pictures, they had juice and a banana for a snack - Harry's favorites. Oh, and if you ask Harry if he wants "sok" which is the Russian word for juice, he'll say no - then say "Jutch"...he's learning!

As for everything else around here - all I can say is that it is C-O-L-D. Today it was about -20 F with a nasty wind that was pretty painful. Luckily we didn't have to walk anywhere except for the corner store, because it is one of the few times I wasn't liking it here! The cold generallly doesn't bother me, but today it's a killer!

And speaking of killers...did I ever mention how much I hate the first few days of travel adjustments here in Russia? We're all so tired - taking long naps (like 3 hours!) during the late afternoon, and then struggling to get a full night's sleep. Poor Skip was BEGGING us to nap a little while ago, but we tried to keep him up. We played games, Mike took him outside for about 10 mintues, and finally we put him in the tub. He normally looks forward to his baths, but today he just sat there. I finally told him he might as well come out - and that I'd be back to help him (The tub here is REALLY deep and he can't quite manuever in and out). Well he didn't wait for me, tried to get out himself and hurt his knee...of course then the crying over the knee thing made him even more tired! We just made him a PBJ sandwich (since he'll clearly never make it til dinner!) and told him he could watch a DVD while he eats. I'm betting he falls asleep half way through! It is 5:30 by now, so at this point I don't care. I'll try and get to bed early too, and hopefully we'll get a good 7 - 8 hours!