August 10, 2006

Hello, it's August 10th here at 12:00 in the afternoon. We leave for our visit at 2:30 and we think today, again, we'll be driving in the Niva. Our driver has now broken his car and his cousins. The Niva is a cross between a Jeep Wrangler, a broncing bull, and a Wisconsin Dells duck. This means, it can fly over huge puddles, drive over pretty much anything, and the passengers feel as though their insides have been rearranged. By the time we get to the baby house, half our bodies are numb. But, it is a bit better than the other two cars which were VW station wagons. At least with the Niva, we get through the road construction faster and there is less of a chance of getting stuck on a boulder. We have water back this morning and yesterday we had a slight amount of water for about two hours. We were told that the city is changing their pipes for winter and that is the cause of the water outage this time around. Surely a different type of life. We found out an interesting fact. According to the people here, they are told that Koksheteaus sister city is Waukesha, WI. That means that Waukesha has the same climate and seasons as Koksheteau. We were told that from our translator and her friends. They all learned this in one of their classes at the university. Interesting, huh??

Mason has been awesome. He has been making all kinds of sounds and yesterday we heard the greatest sound ever!! He said...Dada. He said it quite a few times and he understands when we tell him to take something to Mommy or take something to Daddy. So, we are positive that he did indeed say that. And, it was in English. Woo hoo. We'll try again today and we'll see if we can get him to say Mama as well. But, we are so happy he's at least trying to make sounds and mimmic what we say. And, to answer Brittany's question, we've been trying to get him on the sippie cup since we got here and he's now drank from it everyday. Progress...Progress.

The countdown...we are officially 6 visits away from bringing Mason to our apartment and 13 days away from coming home. We can't believe how fast the time is going. But, we are very happy its almost time to come home.

Love you all lots!!
Ryan, Rachel, and Mason

Eating yummy cookies!!
Then, the milk (actually, Keifer) moustache.
This is one of the two play areas for the kids at the baby house