Women’s Day (again)

This Holiday Monday started as usual for us – Genya woke up about 7:30am, announced that it was morning and he and I came into the living room to watch some cartoons. I dialed up to check emails and Genya ate a banana, apple and kiwi – no yogurt this morning! There seemed to be more cartoons on than usual again today, probably due to the holiday. There wasn't the usual amount of traffic on the street by us and it was, in general, quieter around the complex. Most of the businesses seemed to be open tho so again this must be a "banker and federal employee" holiday like two weeks ago!

I did some laundry and started gathering items for packing. At this point I can really do is figure out what is going and what is staying. This isn't like at home where you can pack your clothes and then wear others in the meanwhile! I'm going to have to pack everything at the same time and just have out what we'll wear to Moscow and we'll be wearing clothes either staying behind or on the plane. And then I have to remember that we still have 5 days worth of clothing needs while in Moscow/travelling home! We had accidently purchased some "hand wash only" laundry detergent so that will be good to take along and rinse out some items in the hotel sink!

I was going to make "hole in bread" for breakfast but when I opened the bread bag it had turned moldy so that's going to the birds instead! I made some eggs and fried mashed potato patties (leftover mashed potatoes from last night) instead. Then lunch was egg salad (all out of eggs now) and hot dogs, as usual, for Genya. Two hot dogs left! He also ate up the jello, had a kiwi (last one) and a yogurt. It took him awhile but he ate everything.

We then headed out for a walk. It feels so warm out but is really just over freezing – but I suppose in comparison…! We walked down to the river and fed the pigeons and Genya and Brian tossed the glider plane around awhile. They had lost the rubber band to make it fly so just threw it which worked well also. We have one more left so holding on to that for now! We then walked downtown to find some more DVDs with English. Now that I FINALLY figured out how to make them play in English we got a few more for evening viewing. We both love "Cars" but we have the dialog memorized now and use some lines in every day conversation! LOL So I got "The Bee Movie" and an animated "Garfield" DVD. I got a few final gifts purchased, Brian picked up a few more little car souvenirs and Genya got a little Russian "hot wheel" type car. He knows when he's good he gets it, if he's naughty it gets taken away. Only had it taken away briefly this afternoon (a few minutes each) before he apologized and was back to acceptable behavior. We're being very consistent with our disciplining for more major infractions and I think he is realizing that so his behavior is quite good now and he's learning to say "I'm sorry" in English and to look at us when saying it.

Tonight's dinner is hamburger steaks. I went to my favorite deli and got the ground beef and some treats for dessert. We'll have it with potatoes and a veggie stir fry. This might be the last dinner I make "from scratch". Even if we don't leave until Thursday or Friday I'll just either do the premade from the deli or we'll eat out at least once. Have to say "goodbye" to some of the people who were so nice to us during our stay! (I'm going to have Alex translate what we want to say and then they can just read it)!

He loves to watch "The Little Mermaid" DVD (only in Russian, sorry Sophia!) and now he even laughs along with it – before he just stared! And before you ask "yes" he picked that out himself – we had nothing to do with it! Maybe they saw it a lot at the Baby Home or Orphanage? Or he just likes mermaids in bikini tops!

Last night we watched "when a man loves a woman" – talk about a depressing movie! But it was somewhat interesting anyways. Now that the VCR knows it is supposed to work again we have had no problems with rewinding or watching the movies so it must have been the player and not the movies! So the stockpile remains here for others to view!

We'll be starting to do everything a little earlier the next few days – eating dinner a little earlier, Genya bath earlier so to bed a little earlier. If he wakes up earlier in the morning that is fine as Moscow will be a 5-hour time change for us before we embark on the additional 8-hour change to Wisconsin time. I know we won't adapt in advance but figure it can't hurt to try and change our bodies a little bit!

So as this evening will be a repeat of 20 of the 21 nights we've had Nathan Genya with us in the apartment I'm going to post this a little earlier than usual!