Day 5 continued / Day 6 with Jakob

Hi Everyone!

Trying this again to see if I can get things working again. It is like I got all of you off of your routine and you're getting a bit fussy.

It looks like by popular demand, I will have to have some frequency of blog updates once we return to Calgary. I hear you people...(such demanding fans we have!) Ha ha!

EMBASSY STORY CONTINUED...

So, once we finally got our ticket (H016), we sat with about 20 other couples adopting waiting to be called to 1 of 3 windows, trying to keep our kids in control, Cheerios everywhere... Our number was the second to the last pulled of the 4 families, but as you know in the Amazing Race, anything can happen. We were already joking around with Lisa and Dave (ticket H015) that what if they skipped their number and called ours first. We were doing a slow motion "scenes for the next week" with Dave shaking his head and and holding his head. Then, moments later, H016 appeared at one of the windows! We did it...we moved ahead in the game! The pretend "scenes for the next week" came to life. Dave ended up asking someone at the window what happened and they said that he never went to window 6! We had all gone to window 4 and then you are supposed to go to window 6 for papers! We were ahead and loving it!

While at our window, I sat Jakob up on the ledge and he was so cute...he just kept waving to the guy behind the glass saying "Pah-Ka" (goodbye). The guy was laughing saying, "Jakob, you just got here, it is not time to go." The guy explained all of the paperwork we were receiving, etc. After 5 minutes, we were ready to go back to the chairs for them to call us again. Lisa and Dave were called up soon after us and were then waiting as well. During that time, Jakob and Patrick decided to bang on some air vents together. What I failed to mention before was a wrestling match the 2 of them had in the morning over Jakob's airplane. Sadly, Patrick won, but we gave Jakob a pep talk during the day. While they were banging on the vent, it was so funny because they kept kind of shoving each other with their hips. The parents each cheered their child on (don't worry...we won't make him a bully...this was just a 1 time thing).

I think Jakob may have given him a shove a little too hard one time as Patrick ended up on his behind.

A few minutes later, they said all families to window 5. Wayne and I jumped up, shoveled up our jackets and child and ran to the window. We MIGHT have shoved some people, I can’t remember… We were now in line to receive Jakob’s Russian passport, which let me tell you, has THE cutest photo of any photo we’ve taken to date! It is just precious! I will try to scan it in at some point and post it to the blog. As soon as we got his passport, we got our jackets on and headed off to pick up our cell phones, including the Fisher Price one that was confiscated. We were still ahead of 2 of the families, with Lisa and Dave close behind. As we were all heading for the cars, we were crazed when we saw that Boris, Lisa and Dave’s driver was parked behind our driver’s car!!!! The cameras were in slow motion again as we shook our heads in despair…telling Boris…”Move your car!” Luckily, Boris did and we were scared we were now going to be behind as Lisa and Dave were in the car….but wait, Boris is now back out of the car translating for the other families! We were ahead again (at least in 2nd place)! Anyways – we all made it back to the hotel with our family being 2nd which we were happy with.

Once we returned, we went back to the room for awhile and played with Jakob. He was loving all of his toys and playing “hide and seek” with Wayne. If Wayne even says, “Where’s Jakob?” Jakob just screams and laughs so hard! It is so cute. He also says “Koo Koo” when he is hiding and then shows his face. We think it must be their version of “Peekaboo.”

At 5, we went out to the lounge area for free appetizers which ended up making an entire meal for all of us. Jakob is not a picky eater and will eat just about anything. He had mushrooms, chicken, gnocchi, and all sorts of things. All the kids played together (somewhat) and we had a great last evening with everyone. I think the kids learn to "survive" together and don't really "love" each other so it is funny to see how they react with each other. This is something you know will change over time as the parents teach them love.

We took Jakob back to the room around 7 or so for his bath. The good news is he is ecstatic now with his bath and loves having Wayne in there for security until he gets more used to it. He even looks at his hands every once in a while as they get a bit pruned, which has probably never happened to him as he would have never been in water long enough for it to do so. It was also very funny to see his reaction when Wayne pulled the plug and was drying off. Jakob was determined to keep playing, but looked very confused when there was less and less water for him to play with…wait, there is no more water... where did my water go?

Once we got him dressed, it took me a whopping 5 minutes to get him to sleep! AMEN!

Of course, this was only due to the fact that he did not have a nap at all during the day. I’m not sure he could pull that one off every day (as his daycare will have a 2 hour nap he has to take).

So, that was our evening.

Day 6

So this morning, we had breakfast and then met all of the other families for a last breakfast in the lounge. It was so sad to know they were all leaving. Jakob and Patrick were just starting to warm up to each other…or should I say acknowledging each other since they still do a bit of shoving every once in awhile….boys!

At 9, they were all off and we said our goodbyes. I told Jakob to give Patrick a hug and just as it looked like he was going to do it, he gave Patrick a gentle push. Wayne and I jokingly told Lisa and Dave, “Yes....our kid got the last word!” They are such a wonderful couple and family that we plan to keep in touch with and visit. They totally have the same laid back parenting style that we do and love an adventure.

After they left, we went to the room and grabbed our stuff, heading through the park to the Military Museum nearby. It was great for Jakob to see all of the guns, dead body photos, etc. Let’s face it; he was not really looking at anything. He just liked to hear the sound of his boots tap on the floor in the quite museum and then worked out that his voice would slightly echo if he sang or shouted. We thought it was cute, but the Russians don’t really like kids to make any noise in public like that, so we got some foul looks. As we headed outside at the end to see the planes, Jakob feel asleep in the stroller. We looked at all the planes, etc and then walked back through the park and to the hotel for lunch. Jakob was a bit foul and 2 years old at lunch since he just woke up from a very short nap…guess we just have to get used to having that on occasion. We then headed upstairs for a little play time and tried to get him down for a real nap…as he was rubbing his eyes and getting a bit cheeky. After an hour or so of fighting it, he finally went to sleep. So, here I am now writing the blog during his nap.

I’m not sure what we will do this evening. We’d like to see how he likes the indoor pool here…even if just for a 2 min. splash to see what it is like.

Tomorrow evening, we are planning to go to dinner at the Relf family’s house which will be nice to get out and see them again and have them meet Jakob. They have 2 dogs so it will also be a chance to see how he does with them.

This is probably all I will post for today, so I’ll do another update tomorrow.

I hope you enjoy all the videos from Day 5! I tried to put a lot up since I left you all in suspense!