Day 6 - the zoo

This morning we were missing Matt again…but it was great for him. Our driver, Pasha, picked us up with his son and invited Matt to go to their house with them to play. He had a great time playing the Russian version of Dominoes which Matt said was really fun! Despite the language barrier, the two boys were fast friends right away. We, on the other hand, were again struggling to entertain little M without ‘the fun one’. It was pretty cool when we picked him up though, because we were walking down the hall when behind us we heard “Mohammed…momma…poppa!” Really neat!



This little kiddo is busy. He has a 3 second attention span and is always doing something. Today he was particularly interested in filling up the bucket on his tractor thing with sticks, leaves and rocks. While we were playing the speech therapist came by and told us that little M tells his buddies that he is going to America with him mom, dad and brother. So he does understand! She also told us that she would work with him on English while we were between trips, AND that her sister, who lives in Maryland, would help us translate when we got him home. Yippee!

This afternoon we got to go to the zoo with Pasha, his son, and Igor (our other translator). It was kind of a petting zoo but with exotic animals. Most of the large animals were right at the fence and we could pet them and feed them bread. If you are really upset by animals in cages then this isn’t the zoo for you, but we thought it was a really neat cultural experience…and the boys had lots of fun!

Funny log-cabin style houses in many of the cages.

They are very serious in pictures here...unlike Matt!

Albino porcupine

Matt with our translator Igor

I have a million great shots from this trip so if you're interested I'll try to post them on flickr or something soon. 

Monkey see - monkey do!

He is really coming along well with words. He picks random things to copy! When I was little my mom always sang the ABC song when she was pushing me in the swing, and this is something I did with Matt too. Today I started singing to little M while he was swinging and he loved it! Clint and Matt were joining in and Matt was being a little crazy with his singing (which little M loved!) and after maybe three times through the kid was singing his ABCs…all the way up to G! Music seems to be something that he really enjoys so we’ll get along just fine!

We ate at a fabulous Chinese restaurant for dinner and had a yummy lamb dish and the best eggplant I’ve ever had! More later...