Day 3 – The One With The Future Professional Ballplayer

Bonding Day 1 – Tuesday, November 6, 2007

Well, I managed to sleep 9 ½ hours last night, with the help of my friend, Ambien. I had a nice bowl of Kaz oatmeal with blueberries for breakfast, which was yummy, and then we were off to the Baby House. I’ll get to visit BabyKaz twice per day; from 10-11:30 and from 2-4. There are 3 other families here, one couple and two single women, who all just completed the two week bonding period. They all three received their court dates for this Friday. It was a very festive afternoon in the bonding room.

When I picked up BabyKaz from his room this morning, the caregivers gave me a little insight into his personality, via Larissa of course. He loves to look at this hands and he rubs his fingers together. The caregivers joke that he is counting his money. Larissa thought this was funny since I am an accountant. And little does BabyKaz know that I spent most of it coming to get him.

I met with the orphanage doctor this morning and she gave me his medical history. He was hospitalized once for two weeks for a respiratory infection at 1 ½ months but hasn’t had any illnesses since. He is mildly anemic and has some developmental delays which all of these kids do. At 8 months he weighed a little over 20 lbs and was almost 27 inches tall. He’s a big boy. He’s even bigger than all 3 of the other babies in the bonding room and they are all 1-2 months older. He’s a big hefty Russian.

All of the families and their babies bond in the same room. The morning bonding went well. They are usually a little tired in the morning so BabyKaz wasn’t quite as animated as the night before. But he is a happy baby. He is quite ticklish and smiles real big everytime I touch him on his face, even if it’s just to wipe something from around his eye. He can’t quite sit up unassisted yet but I don’t think it will be long. He loves anything that lights up and/or plays music. He has the chubbiest cheeks ever and dimples. Cutie Patootie!

After the morning bonding, Larissa took me to exchange money and set up internet service. Then Mom and I had lunch with the other families at a place called Royal. I had pork with sliced bananas and pecans on top with rice. It never would have occurred to me to cook bananas on top of pork but it was actually pretty good.

After lunch, we went back to the Baby House for the afternoon bonding session. BabyKaz got very excited when we started to play with an inflatable ball. I would place the ball on his chest and roll it down the front of his body and he just cackled away. He loved it. He especially liked it when we played music in conjunction with rolling the ball. I don’t think I’ll have trouble getting him to play baseball or soccer. Maybe a professional ballplayer? (If he doesn’t want to be a marine biologist that is!) Of course, he also really liked this toy that has water and fish in it, which also made me happy