This is Jen. It is a beautiful, sunny day in Uralsk and probably about 20 degrees. Today is the day we met our son Benjamin Aidos for the first time.

    We arrived at the baby house at around 10:00 am. For the first 20 minutes Aidos sat on his caregiver's lap and refused to look at us - when we got too close he would shut his eyes as if that would make us go away. Eventually the Magnadoodle (like a magnatized note pad) became too interesting to ignore, and he was willing to watch mama draw things for him so he could erase them (as long as mama and papa did not touch him).

    Turns out he likes cars (machina) and balls. (sound familiar? I can't believe that we didn't think to bring those. You would think we would have known better.) By the end of the hour visit, he was willing to throw a beach ball (they had one) with us and even smiled and let us pick him up. He spoke very little - and of course we didn't understand. Turns out that while he understands Russian, he speaks Kazakh.

    The outside of the baby house looks terrible (think Gary, Indiana as viewed from the skyway) - old concrete block, rusting, broken trim ... inside the baby house  it is pleasant, poor but clean and sunny. The children each are part of a group of 8 or so. It looks as though they are treated well. They have a very structured day, they get talked to and touched frequently, they do not fuss. Many wanted to play with us. They do not look particularly healthy overall.  They are small, some have rickets, and many have bad teeth. It may be that their diet is not good? Benjamin Aidos is tiny - but seems healthy and happy. His caregiver says that he is very neat - he wants every thing organized just so (sound familiar?) - he talks a lot in the group - and he is a very easy and nice child. She said he eats everything and does not wet the bed at night. 

    I have been so sad since we left. I just can't stop crying. I am trying to sort it all out as I write. Now that I have met him, I am so sad for the baby he was that didn't have a mommy or daddy to take care of him. And there are just so many of them. Will he be alright? Joe is so big and strong and healthy by comparison - and I miss him so much. Are we doing the right thing? How can we take only one?

   We will go back to visit at 4:00 this afternoon. This will be our routine for the next two weeks: get up, have breakfast, go to the baby house for an hour. Shop, exercise, eat lunch, write, visit again for an hour. Write some more, watch a movie or read, hang out with Mary Lou and Jon, have dinner, go to sleep. Americans are spoiled people - most of the rest of the world lives a much different life.

Later:  Now it's Steve... we went back to the baby house this afternoon.  He didn't run to my arms calling "Papa, you're back!", but he didn't cower away from us either.  The Javines' gave us four really nice little toy trucks to take with us - they were great!  Aidos rolled them back and forth to us for quite awhile.  We got several smiles out of him this afternoon.  His caregiver introduced him to us as his "Mama" and "Papa" this morning, and that must have terrified him.  I think we were a little less threatening to him this afternoon as he no longer expects that we're going to take him away from his home immediately.  He spent a lot of time showing things to us - taking trucks and animal toys off the shelves and handing them to us.  And we also played with the beach ball with him some more.  Towards the end of the visit, he seemed a little bit bored with us, and kind of did his own thing.  We would say "Why don't you draw something on the Magnadoodle, Aidos"  Or "Throw us the ball, Aidos!"  But of course, all he heard was "Blah, blah, blah, Aidos, blah, blah."  (very Gary Larson!)

We played with Aidos in a room attached to the big playroom where all of his friends were.  We were separated from that room by a short divider in the doorway, and Aidos' friends were absolutely fascinated by us.  They pointed and laughed and talked.  They watched us roll the trucks back and forth and were excited when Aidos let them hold the trucks.  It was a very strange feeling being on display like that.  The children were so beautiful!  Most of his group seem very happy and outgoing.  But I can also see why some parents come to the baby house to get a son or daughter and leave with two!

Tomorrow will have much the same schedule as today.  We'll see Aidos for an hour in the morning and for another hour in the afternoon.  Later in the week our visits will be extended as he gets to know us better.  

We've been able to get to some Internet cafes.   (I'm still trying to figure out the "cafe" part - there's certainly no food, drink, or NY Times to be had!)  We haven't been able as yet to get a dialup connection, and so although we have been up to date on our journaling, we haven't been able to post it as yet.  Tomorrow, I'll try to burn our updates onto a CD and try to ftp the files over to our site.  We know that you're all reloading your browsers every 30 seconds, 24 hours a day waiting for our updates.  Please forgive us for the slow postings. :-)