He Calls Me Mama

But he also calls 8 other women Mama. Likely, if you are a woman seeing him for the first time, he will call you Mama too. So the topic of discussion that Gary and I have been having is in regards to getting Batyrhan to one day realize that *I* am his only Mama. I have done a lot of reading about this in the past (and will devour more books when I come home) and there are some steps that will need to be taken to help him know that we are his parents. What might appear to be “babying” a typical child in a home since birth will be mandatory actions in the beginning with Batyrhan. I have been doing some of this now when I feed him Puffs or give him water. While feeding him, he is often sitting on our laps or being gently touched by us in some manner. When I place a Puff in his mouth, I maintain a good eye contact and we are doling out “Malla Dyets!” (Good Boy!) left and right. Some of the things I will do with Batyrhan will be to “wear him” in an Ergo carrier when we get home. Of course he is a mover and shaker, but we will spend some part of the day being very close in this manner. Additionally, in the beginning, it will be Gary and I who will be the sole providers of food and the sole diaper changers and the sole people who put him to bed. This will be tough in the beginning to not be able to accept help with this from a grandparent or babysitter, but it is not different than me being the sole feeder for the first 6 months of Emma and Eden’s life when they were only nursed and had yet to try food. I have put in this time with my children and I will do so again. Will there be opportunities that this can not be the case, I am sure, but if we can maintain this 85-90% of the time, I think we will be in good shape with forming a very strong attachment with each other.

Batyrhan has no trouble drinking out of a water bottle and in fact uses ceramic tea cups to drink while here which he holds on his own. I have read that it is not uncommon to go back to bottles to feed milk or a nutrient laden formula to newly adopted toddlers, providing they are in your arms while doing so and are associating you with this babying and loving activity, likely something he may never have experienced properly in his life. I will have to do more research about that. Neither of my girls ever used bottles, so I am not familiar with them. They went straight from nursing to sippy cups.

Today was a nice calm visit but Gary and I left there both feeling unsatisfied. Our translator was in the room with us, a lovely guy of 24, and while it was a pleasure to have him there today conversationally and for information and answers to our questions, Batyrhan was very intrigued by him and his cell phones. A curious boy, he would often leave us to engage with Bolot, who did not do anything to purposefully take his attention away except respond sweetly in kind.

(Check back later today for photos from visit to be added)

Today we had yet a different room – another large music style room with a wall of windows with sheer curtains, a piano, writing desk in the center of the room, desk with sewing machine and swatches of fabric, soft building blocks, stuffed animals and a ball pit. When Batyrhan walked in to the room, he smiled and ran over to us. He did seem happy. He was extremely curious about this room initially and was very active at play with putting balls in bags and bins and manipulating bowling pins and dumping more bins. I thought this is something we can easily provide at home for him to dump and sort and place things into bins. His curiosity kept him very busy and, strangely, this usually “talkative” little boy did not utter one tiny sound or babble until about 40 minutes into the visit. It was a quiet and silent visit at first, with only me and Gary doing the chattering. Within this room, there was a door that led to an office with desks and a few women would enter the playroom to go to their “office”, and would always say hi to Batyrhan in passing. In fact, his hearing is acute and whenever he heard any sound, he would whip his head around to see what was going on. Often, he wanted to just follow them into the office. So the distractions prevented him from focusing on us fully, but yet he was a very good boy today in general. To describe Batyrhan’s personality today, we would say he was calm, playful, curious and sweet. Gary had to say “Nyet!” and “Jok!” (NO in Russian and Kazakh, respectively) to him today when he was brandishing a plastic stick around, but afterwards he was easily distracted and no longer upset. I found out today that some of the lessons he experiences daily are Speech Therapy, Sensory classes and Music and Dancing. This extracurricular stimulation is one of the reasons that attracted me to Kazakh Orphanages. The children here do seem to get the best they can in less than ideal circumstances.

We also spent some time looking out the window at the snow falling on the trees. This room looked out on an L shape portion of the building and I saw a TV on in another room and wondered who was watching. Batyrhan enjoyed looking out the window. Each day that I see him, I always sing him the song (which by now Gary can not stand) from Gymboree “Helloooo, Batyrhan. So nice to see you! Helloooo Batyrhan, we’re so glad to see you too.” If I do this song every day, I hope that when I come back next month he will remember this strange but pleasant American song and there will be some memory as to who I am. I also spritz a little perfume on my shirt before I come. I only brought Callyx with me so I will make sure to wear this when I return next month. He seemed perhaps tired a little today, rubbing his eyes at one point during the second hour. He enabled me to hold him and rock him while walking around the room for the duration of three songs in succession — Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Baa Baa Black Sheep and The Wheels on the Bus. He didn’t squirm at all during this time since he was happy gnawing on our water bottle. He needs to chomp on something all the time and the water bottle seems the most satisfying. When he was done with the attention and singing, he squirmed and whined and we put him down to play. He had a lot of fun today running towards Gary to be lifted up and I was able to get this on video. Gary spoke to him in English only (we have learned some good toddler-friendly words in Kazakh) and he caught on so quickly to direction to sit, to put the cell phone down, to come to Daddy.

Today, while offering him Puffs with our palm open, he sometimes would use his pincers, sometimes would take a fistful and shove it in his mouth and sometimes would just bury his face into our hands and eat like a puppy lapping at a bowl. He also allowed us to play “airplane” while feeding him the Puffs and come from high up and place the Puff gently in his mouth. He is a very sweet boy and I know he will be well liked by all who meet him. My instinct tells me that he may be very active at times and “boyish”, something I have to get used to, but that his soul is very gentle and open. These are good things and seem to have served him well here.

At the end of the visit, Svetlana came to get him and he easily went to her and appeared to wrap his arms around her. It made me happy to see his love for her and I had our translator tell her that we like that he loves her so much and that she loves him. Her reply was to laugh and give him a big kiss on the cheek. Gary wonders if he will ever be able to love us the same way. I feel that because of his love for her (and likely other caregivers), there is much hope that we can be loved too. The sad part is, because he is nearly 2 years old at this point, he will experience grief when we leave the baby house. Imagine the feeling, if you think of your own two year old child. But that is why this bonding period is so very important. We are not strangers to him and we will not be strangers to him when we finally come to bring him home.

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Earlier today we took a walk in the drizzling rain to walk the streets of Almaty and to end up at Coffeedelia, which I can liken to a brightly lit Starbucks in that there are desserts to be had, some cafe-style meals, coffees and free Wi-Fi. It was pleasant to sit there for a while and people watch. My coffee was bitter and terrible (an espresso, perhaps?) and had to be doused in sugar. My pie, a triangular version of a lemon bar, was sublime. I had brought my Kindle with me and asked Gary if he wanted to read the newspaper on it. He said “Why would I want to read when I have you to talk to?” Many of you know how distracted Gary usually is with me when he has work on his mind so to have him say this, and have us actually share many uninterrupted conversations while here, has been wonderful. While walking, we also passed a high end store called Mothercare which had children’s clothing from Italy and Spain. There was a silver bubble jacket I *loved* for Eden and will need to check price and conversion again — was it really $550? The store also had children’s furniture, accessories, and play mats (Tiny Love Gym mat!) and some very nice toys and flash cards – some electronic toys in Russian. I must buy one before we head home.

After our visit to the Baby House, we asked Bolot to stop at the Ramstore for us to get some waters. All we do here is buy water and foreign candy and cookies!! We gravitate to the candy aisle and surely those who know us well will not be surprised to hear that. Twix in Russian is a heck of a lot more attractive, you know 😉 The Ramstore is a mini-mall with grocery store inside it and the main floor also has a skating rink with many excellent skating children. No one wears helmets here as they do at home. In the same way, many cars do not even come equipped with seat belts in the back, or they are hidden under furry seat coverings. I have learned to just sit tight and hang on.

Gary was adamant we try Horse Meat tonight. It is as popular here as “cow” is for us at home, though they eat regular cow beef too. Bashbarmak is a traditional dish which means “Five Fingers” because these homemade noodles and strips of meat are eaten by hand. We went to a Kazakh restaurant (Dashtarkan) for this dish tonight (Gary was so excited and was feeling very adventurous — he couldn’t wait the whole day!) only to be told in severely broken English by three waiters who worked as a team for us that their version of the dish was not made with horse meat, that their restaurant did not serve Mr. Ed. Then to make matters worse, the dish was served as a soup which Gary does not like and he found out later, they didn’t even serve him Bashbarmak at all, but a ‘similar’ dish that serves one person, since their Bashbarmak serves two. Those who also know Gary know that he can eat for two. He feels unsatisfied and therefore we are still on the lookout for horsemeat. Gary is amazingly adventurous — wanting to eschew typical restaurants that have been recommended to us as having English menus (Mad Murphy’s, Mamma Mia’s) because he said we have the best food like that at home in NYC, why not eat Central Asian and Mongolian food while here? Though I still want to try Mamma Mia’s because Lea loved it, I think we will spend the remainder of the week eating local foods. Even though I long to find English speaking expats in the “American-style” restaurants, we haven’t had much luck anyway in finding anyone to chat with.

Interestingly, almost every single time we go into a nice store (Mothercare, or a perfume shop called Mon Amie, the wine department in the supermarket) we are followed and stared at by security guards. We are the “distrusted” Americans and it is a very unique feeling to be in to be so blatantly followed by men in uniform who just stare us down as we walk through the aisles.

Our evening ended with an adventure – something I have never done in my life. Gary and I would call it hitchhiking, though the Kazakhs would call it “local taxis.” It was snowing hard after our dinner and we walked two blocks but could not find a cab in the dark (about 8:00 pm). It gets very dark here early and doesn’t get light out at all until after 8 am either. We are stared at all the time here, sometimes by men alone, and we do get nervous and sometimes cross the street suddenly or step into a store, despite it likely just being curiosity. Sometimes people stare at us and then yell out the only word they know in English. “Hello!” (with very Russian accent and “k” sound at beginning of word) or today “Hello Brother! English!!” as his car sped by. However, one never knows what they want considering Americans are seen as very “rich” and therefore could be carrying a lot of cash on us. Also, perhaps its the time of year but we are the only Americans I have seen on the street and it is very evident in our faces and dress. We could not get a cab this time (we didn’t see any in the street with the checkerboard known to be taxis) so we walked back to the restaurant where it took about 5 people to figure out we needed a taxi to go back to our hotel. They could not call us one (not sure why) so a non-English speaking man from the restaurant dressed in a suit followed us out into the snow. A waitress followed us out too and just told us “Follow him, he will get you taxi.” We crossed the street with him and he immediately held his hand out low and Gary and I looked at each other and realized, we will not be entering an ordinary taxi. We had read about this in the Lonely Planet guidebook and I had no intention of doing it. But here we were in the snow. About 7 cars later, a small car pulled over and our restaurant friend stuck his head in the car and spoke to the driver. When he stood up, he gestured for us to get in and said “400 Tenge” (about $3). The price was certainly right but I was nervous! It was a male driver, he looked middle age and did not smile. I said to the restaurant guy “Kharasho?? Kharasho?” meaning “is this good?” and he just nodded. Well we got in and since we knew our hotel was just about 12 blocks straight down and the guy made no sudden turns, I began to relax and feel better with Gary and I in the back seat looking at each other like we just did something miraculous. Gary again wanted to give the guy 500 Tenge as extra thanks but he gave us our proper change back from the 1000 Tenge bill. Unless he just didn’t understand when Gary said “Give me just 500 Tenge back.” Likely not!

Gary was still hungry and we had passed Biskvit, one block away from our hotel, a cafe that was also written about in the Lonely Planet guide as being a “smarter” Coffeedelia. We walked in the snow up the block and around the corner and found ourselves in a lovely little cafe style place that seemed like a great date place – big couches surrounding rustic wooden tables. The menus looked like magazine pages and the menu items were disguised as advertisements so you could simply point to a photo if you wished. We wound up getting a swiss ice cream that we had seen in the supermarkets and appeared to be very expensive in the Ramstore, so it was an opportunity to try a taste. And when I say taste, I am not joking. Once again, my one “ball” was served in a huge glass bowl with a miniature teaspoon. It might have been smaller than a golf ball. I could have picked it up with my fingers and just plopped it in my mouth. It was about $3. I had to take a photo of this tiny ice cream portion. What would they say if they came to American and saw the gargantuan servings? Once again, as my pants no longer feel as snug as they did before I left America, despite all the wafer cookies I have been eating, I can say again “I have much to learn from the Kazakhs about portion control.”