Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Forever Family Day

Yay Football!


More Borscht Please

One year ago today we arrived in Astana after an 18+ hour trip, drove to the baby house, and were finally handed our son to be part of our family forever. Nikolai’s favorite care giver dressed him for the last time, reviewed the outer clothes we planned to put on him to keep him warm for the last time, and kissed him good bye. We then headed back to the airport and to Almaty.

This past year has been more amazing than we could have dreamed. We have been blessed with the cutest, silliest little boy in the world. He is currently obsessed with football. This morning at 6:30 am, he greeted me with: “morning mama; watch football?” Apparently he had his morning milk sitting on Chris’s lap watching Sports Center. He likes to play football too, but unfortunately seems to be emulating Jason Campbell. He wildly throws the ball, and then spins and falls down. Anything exciting gets a “Yay football!” sort of the same way that any music he likes is described as “drum!” I played the Happy Adoption Day song by John McCuteon in the car on the way home from daycare, but Nikolai barely tolerated it before requesting his current favorite song – a Laurie Berkner song called Song in My Tummy that he calls “La La”. We usually listen to that song at least three times on the way home.

We went out to dinner Saturday night to celebrate because Chris knew he had drama rehearsal with the youth tonight. We finally ate at the new Kazakh restaurant in Arlington – CafĂ© Assorti. It was SO good, had a great atmosphere, and was totally kid friendly at the same time. The food leaned more towards the Russian rather than Kazakh side of the cuisine. I could smell the dill when we walked in, and had four different Pirozhki – cabbage was the best (as usual). Chris had pelmeni, and Nikolai had chicken blinchiki. Chris and I also ordered borscht, and Nikolai ate a lot of it. I think it was more vegetables than he has eaten in months. It was really fun to see Kazakh people too. I do not think the people we met who worked there were necessarily Kazakh, but there were several tables of people who were. They clearly were a little amused to see a little Kazakh with us, too.

2 comments:

Joby and Marla said...

Happy Forever Family Day!!!

Time really flies when you are having fun & I know the last year has been full of fun moments:)

How cool that you have a Kazakh restaurant nearby. There was one in Karaganda with the same name.

dnd82001 said...

What a wonderful year it's been for your beautful family!!!

Darlene