I see London, I see France,…

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Jaden gets bored occasionally, like most kids. But not often. He is a kid that wants to ALWAYS be doing something. Sitting and playing quietly by himself doesn’t often count as ‘something’, but he can be quite creative about thinking of things to do. Enlisting mommy or daddy to play with him is something he considers a personal quest. So, when he decided tonight to play dress up, well, you know who was along for the ride. Tonights' activity stemmed from two things. The first was a classic illustration of life in an orphanage environment.

Today, when we went to visit Tuma, he was wearing these thick stockings they dress all the kids in. They were dark blue with flowers and about 6 sizes too big, but at least they didn’t smell of urine, which was the case a few days ago. The excess fabric was wadded around his ankles and stuffed into his shoes, which were a pair of white Mary Janes with flowers on the toes. They were Crayola brand, and so probably came with another adoptive family at some point, who had a vision of how cute they would look on the little girls. They were at least a size too small, and the extra folds of the stockings made it difficult to get them on his feet at all. The back of his stockings were sliding down in the back as I picked him up, and I noticed he had no underwear on. I thought it was a bit strange, but who knows. A few minutes later, he was on my lap and I noticed a lump in the stockings about mid-thigh. I decided to investigate. Turned out he did have underwear on, only they were upside-down, both legs were shoved through one leg hole, and they had his legs pinioned together at the thighs. I undressed him and re-dressed him, and he had these red marks on his legs where the underwear were cutting into him Bruce, Jaden and I laughed pretty hard as we re-dressed him, wondering how hectic it must be to cram a little kid into his underwear like that and not even notice, or maybe not even care, while realizing that it really wasn’t all that funny in some ways.

The second thing that inspired Jaden tonight, was a story we have been reading. It is about a superhero known as “Captain Underpants”. He stands for all that is clean, white and cottony.

Now, for those of you who don’t have boys between the ages of 6 and 20, or have somehow managed to avoid the whole Captain Underpants thing, here’s the deal. It is a series of books written to appeal to boys specifically, and with the goal of getting them to read. There is a bit of controversy, not just about the subject matter, but also the fact that they use words like ‘gonna’, and ‘oughta’, and the spelling is meant to be that of a child’s in places, so what it does for kids learning to read is a little sketchy according to some. But he has seen and heard of these books, and they revolve around the kind of humor little boys find funny until they grow up and… well, the kind of humor boys find funny I guess. A superhero in his underwear is hilarious. Two little boys who have lots of misadventures that involve toilets and fake dog-doo, hysterical.

So, I secretly bought a few CU books to bring along on our trip, thinking they could be key in helping through the boredom of long weeks. We broke our first one out last week. Jaden finds the whole thing very entertaining, and it has thoroughly engaged his imagination. So, of course, he decided he needed to become Captain Underpants for the night. Actually, I don’t know that it will only be the one night, he enjoyed it so much. There really are few things as fun as shooting underwear at mommy’s head.

He put on his whitest, cottony-est, cleanest underwear, and we tied our red laundry bag around his neck as a cape. First he was going to take the extra pairs of underwear he planned to shoot and stuff them down the front of the underwear he was wearing, but I convinced him perhaps he could just tuck them in the sides…. After ‘loading up’, the game was on. It involves saying ‘Tra-la-laaaaa!’ in a sing-song way a lot, and telling me I am ‘under arrest’ while pointing a pair of underwear at my head. Better underwear than a gun, in my book, but I was glad there were no Kazakh people here to witness this game. The neighbors may be wondering about all the ‘Tra-la-laaaaa!’.

Jaden has been really wanting more people to visit his blog, so rather than posting the pictures of Captain Underpants Junior here, you will have to link over to Jaden’s blog to see them- clever, eh? www.kazbrother.blogspot.com Just think how happy you will make him. He tracks his stats very carefully....

Boredom hasn’t really set in for any of us, but there isn’t much to do outside the apartment, which is past wearing thin and is downright threadbare. There is rumored to be a swimming pool in town, brand new and with a slide. Believe me, we would like nothing better than a few hours at the pool. But in true Kazakh style, nothing is that easy. When we asked about going to the pool, we were told we would need ‘medical forms’. The orphanage pediatrician would write them up for us. As it turns out, the form needs to state that you do not have TB, which is fairly common in this part of the world (along with a host of other things). Now, I guess I can understand how not swimming with TB patients would be a good thing, However, it strikes me as funny that they aren’t allowed at the pool, but there is nothing keeping them away from the food shops. Or the movie theater. Or the streets, for heavens sake. And while I suppose you could catch TB while swimming, it seems that there would be other, scarier things you could be exposed to at the pool. Like Typhoid or Hepatitis, or something.

In addition to the medical forms, we need an escort. We can’t be trusted to figure out the workings of a public rec center here. We barely made it through immigration as you may recall. And the other day I went to the store for apple juice, and although I know the Russian word for juice, I don’t know the word for apple. But I do know that Almaty was formerly known as “Alma-ata”, which means ‘Apple place’ or something like that in Kazakh. So I asked for ‘Alma sok’ which the lady thought was funny, only not ha-ha funny, but odd funny. So, when I came out of the store I told Bruce and Jaden the story. A few days later, Bruce went to the store to get apple juice (apple juice is a big hit with Tuma, as well as Jaden). Now, Bruce remembers my story, and doesn’t know the word, but remembers it has to do with a city name. So he asks for Astana juice (which is the capital of Kazakhstan, and means, well, “capital”). Like a game of telephone gone bad, only over the course of days…. All this by way of explaining why there is reason to prefer an escort to the pool, at least the first time.

While we wait for medical forms and an escort to be found, we mostly hang out in the apartment. We were going for walks daily, but had to send our passports to Kustanai to have our visas extended. In the meantime, we have been warned not to walk further than the orphanage without our passports. We don’t tell Habiba we have never carried our passports when we walked, as no one ever told us we should. I have a bungee cord exercise thing I found at a Ross store for $6 and brought along. It’s hooked over our door, and Jaden and I take turns working out. It’s something.

We play card games, Blokus, and board games with Jaden. The three of us together celebrated our 10th anniversary this last week. Jaden insisted on pouring our wine, and Habiba brought us a cake. We have all been learning Sudoku, something I never would have found time for at home. We are reading. Bruce finally finished ‘From Beirut to Jerusalem’ after 3 years, and I read an amazing book called ‘In Siberia’. Jaden has been reading the ‘Magic Tree House’ books, and the Moffats, and of course, Captain Underpants. Jaden is doing ‘homework’ in a writing/reading book and doing some math work. Bruce stays up every night until 3 or 4am working, although he tries to insist it is only 2am. He squeezes an hour or two in during the day most days. I blog and take notes for future musings. I am writing a journal for Tuma to have when he’s grown. I am reading grant applications for a committee I am on. They have been good enough to scan and email them to me.

We watch the occasional movie. If your kids have never seen “The Gods Must Be Crazy”, it is a great movie (except for one violent scene, towards the beginning). We have watched both I and II. I try to sit and meditate, but am instead being enlightened by noticing how I am having trouble ‘finding the time’. We are learning some Russian, just not the word for apple, still. We sometimes have visitors, mostly young people who want to learn English. Jaden goes out and plays soccer and Monkey in the Middle with the local kids. I watched him the other day, trying to get a soccer game together. It reminded me of him on the playground at school. The kids here all love to play though, and since they can’t speak to each other, they can’t argue about rules or teams. They just play.

And twice a day, at 10am and 4pm, we visit Tuma for 2 hours. We were told to show up at 10:30 for our 10am visit, and leave at 11:45. We are supposed to show up about 4:15 for the 4pm and leave at 5:45. We are continuing to work on getting Tuma more comfortable, more engaged, less anxious. He needs to sort out this 'mama' thing. As Habiba is now joining us at the orphanage, he is newly confused. When she brought her daughter and he heard her say 'mama', suddenly he thought it was she he should be going to. When she didn't pick him up, he cried. I picked him up and he cried more. She looks right, speaks right, and the idea of each child having a different mama is completely out of his frame of reference. But he calmed down finally, and didn't tilt his little head to the side for 'nyet' when I said Habiba was Nurbike's mama, and I was his mama. Another American family comes tomorrow to adopt a sweet little 4 year old girl, so maybe another example will help. Slowly I feel we are seeing results. Which makes all of the board games worth it.