Day 32--It Couldn't Last Forever

Day 32-- February 19, 2009

Well, it was a good run while we had it. We knew it couldn’t last forever! The knocking on the door and waiting…forget it. The going to bed and not getting up….nix that, too. Not liking raspberry preserves and apple juice….he was just kidding. Still, just when you think you couldn’t love him any more, you do.

Our day turned out to be not so busy after all. Our driver showed up unexpectedly and told John that he and John were going to the embassy to drop off the documents—no wife and no baby. That was great because I wasn’t ready, and they were back in no time. We took a taxi to the museum near the Ministry of Education. It cost about $7.50 USD each way. The museum was only about $1.50 for both John and me! What a deal! We spent the afternoon there (about 2 ½ hours), which was relatively quick, considering most of the displays had information only in Russian and Kazakh.

We went to dinner, and again, Aidar ate everything—his dinner, half of my dinner, most of the bread. When we got home, he went straight to the kitchen and pulled out a chair to eat again! I swear this child has a tapeworm in his belly! The thing that really surprises us is that he never spills his food, even though he has a bilateral cleft palate and lip. He eats yogurt with no problem, and tonight, he had chicken noodle soup. His clothes are as clean after eating as they are before he eats. I hope I don’t jinx him by writing that!

We don’t know if we’re meeting with his birth parents tomorrow. We haven’t heard back from our translator on that. We have to be at the embassy at 3:00, and our translator has a class at 5:00 (she’s in college), so there won’t be much time in between to meet with them.

As for our trip home, Lufthansa canceled Aidar’s ticket yesterday, after having reinstated the return portion of the original roundtrip ticket (that they had also canceled) last Friday (a one-way ticket would have cost around $8,000, so I bought a round trip ticket for $1500 thinking he could just use the second half of the ticket; they canceled it when he didn’t fly the first leg). Their explanation for reconsidering was that it would cost almost $3,000 for the flight, so they were canceling it again. This happened two days before we’re to fly. John sent them a note saying he was really disappointed that it came down to the dollar for them, and that the fact that we’re adopting a special needs child with dates that keep changing is irrelevant to them. I guess we’ll have difficulties to the end. God knows that I will be happy in more ways than one to get home.

FYI, the picture of the building is the museum where we spent the day.