Thursday April 27: Meet "Grandpa Joe"

Today was a quiet day for everyone including Grandpa Joe (see photo – nice cheeks huh!). It has been overcast for a couple of days now and today it was particularly windy. Our visit this morning was uneventful. We had to arrive at 9am as the other two families were having their good-bye party in the music room at 10am. This is the party at which families bring a cake and some gifts for the care givers as a token of their appreciation. Joseph was still dealing with his congestion and so was not up for much play time. Besides a little cup playing we spent most of the time hugging him and walking around the room. He just could not get very comfortable and eventually he fell asleep in Laura’s arms until it was time to go.

After a quick trip to the grocery store for more water and lunch, Igor picked us up at 1:45pm for our afternoon visit. In the afternoon we brought his CD player for our fun session and thought it might get him excited to play as he seems to really like the Danny Zane CD. We played a bit with his cups, his musical rabbit and of course his books. Whether looking or chewing he really seems to enjoy his books. The baby house does actually have quite a few toys in the music room and we took out a Sponge Bob blow up ball and Joseph seemed to really like it. We are starting to think balls are a favorite toy. We passed it back and forth and he had fun but his congested chest just keeps him a bit down. As nothing was really getting him excited we figured we had to do something different. I remembered that when our friend Vicki (Klegman) was in law school at Pepperdine in Malibu, she used to watch Elvis movies and sing along. We figured it was worth a shot and good thing I had brought “Fun in Acapulco” – Joseph loved it! After the sing-a-long with Elvis, Olga asked us if we would like to feed him in the morning and so we are looking forward to it. At 10am is when he gets his morning 100 grams of semolina, 100 grams of mashed potatoes and…tea and biscuits! It will be interested to see this performance! The hour ended and it was time to say good-bye until the following morning. We asked again to confirm that we would meet with the doctor this weekend and supposedly it should happen.

Laura was feeling like she was getting a bit of a cold, probably from Grandpa Joe, and so wanted to take it a bit easy after lunch. I decided to take a windy stroll around our “neighborhood” and got a few photos along the way. The main drag is about 2 blocks from our hotel and has what has become our favorite bakery. As May is looming, there were many city workers out preparing the gardens in front of buildings as you can see from this photo of them turning over the soil around the rose bushes. The banner in the background has the President of Kazakhstan on it. There also is a great deal of sweeping up going on and you can see that it is very common to see these brooms which look homemade – made of twigs or branches – a rough type of whisk broom. Although there is a great deal of exposed dirt and dust there is very little trash on the streets. As you leave our hotel you enter onto this “side street” which continues down towards one of the main thoroughfares. As you can see there is a paved road but then dirt paths to walk down. In some places there are some remnants of sidewalks. As you enter onto the main street things are much different. There are very colorfully painted buildings some of which are government or university buildings. In front of one of the university buildings is the statue of the famous Kazakhstan philosopher Abay. Although there may be a great deal to see, there are many interesting things to see which you would not see in Chicago. (Note: if you click on any of the photos on the blog you can display a larger version in a new window.)

Well it was a slow day today but that is always good to have at times. Tomorrow will be a good one as we will get to feed Joseph. Hopefully he will be feeling better and better with each day. See you then and remember to keep on dancin’ Bossa Nova baby….