Fil & Mary Kaza: Laoura's B-Day!!

May 26, 2010

A little update on Dylan. It’s a couple of days now that Dylan is beginning to take more and more steps on his own. It seems that he is getting more confident with himself and will be walking on his own for good very soon. Everyday he adds another step to the ladder. Unbelievable. He progresses by the day and we are enjoying every minute of it. We can’t wait to see him walk totally on his own. We’ve been working with him everyday and making him walk as much as possible until he’s fed up and sits his butt on the floor to let us know he’s had enough. He’s got quite a character and shows it more and more each day. He eats, plays, laughs, cries, and observes everything. When he meets someone for the 1st time he pulls these serious and dirty looks and stares at the person for a long time with that same angry look, and everyone laughs because it’s so funny and we crack up too. We understand that he doesn’t know yet we are the 2 most important people in his life because he only sees us 2.5 hrs a day and it’s only normal because he sees a lot of people during the day but it’s nice to see his attachment towards us. There are 9 “NouNou’s” (caregivers) per group of about 8 kids and they do shifts of 24 hrs, and it’s 2 nounou’s per shift. Other people that Dylan usually sees everyday are nurses, doctors, lot’s of different staff members of the orphanage, cleaning women, janitors, other caregivers from the many other different groups, other adoptive parents, and who knows who else because this is the little we see from the 5 minutes we are there waiting for Dylan. In the morning when we go pick him up in his room, Fil and I play a game and we just show up at the door without a sound and wait until he sees us. It really does not take long for him to see us at the door and starts bouncing and screaming with joy………..The Best Part of Our Day, EVERYDAY!!!!!

In the evening we were invited to our landlords’ (Walli & Annara) house for their daughter’s 23rd birthday. We went over about 7:00 after we had supper and once we got there we saw the big table again full of food. We were forced to sit down and eat again. I thought Italian’s were exaggerated with having a lot of food when people came over but I think we met our match!!!! Also they have the same European mentality when it comes to eating very late in the evening. We began eating about 8:30 and once again Walli assigned everyone with their seats and once again we ate besbarmak (horse and mutton). During the meal, everyone had to make a toast for Laoura’s birthday. Every time someone made a toast, Walli would fill up Fil’s glass with his home made Schnapps, which was very strong, and by the 3rd toast, Fil’s face and ears were purple red!!!! It was a very pleasant night being with such nice people.

Cocktail!!