Tickets, must-haves, and the washing machine that won't go away!

I have our tickets. It was just so astounding to see in print "Nicholas Holland Almaty-->London London-->Chicago." Big doings for a little boy.

Isabelle and I spent quite a bit of time in Target today for "must-haves." Nicholas must-have a bike helmet, must-have a floatie for the pool, must-have XS boxer-briefs (they are the cutest thing I ever did see). So many decisions, spiderman print? Too scary. Sponge Bob, too wierd (for someone who hasn't been raised with that yellow creature).

Well, as you can imagine we were there for 3 hours! We even had lunch there. When Isabelle was on the verge of taking her nap in the cart, I finally headed for the checkout. Also in the cart were gifts for Sveta, Almagul, Aidar, the Minister of Education, and the Director of the Orphanage, Natalya. Thank goodness I had already found something for the 11 caregivers, online at the Lands End overstocks. Really cute fleece hats marked down from $15 to $5, all different prints and sizes--I mean ELEVEN caregivers? Anything I thought of that was mildly useful came out to a pretty penney, so I was glad when I found those.

I must say I am a bit nervous about how Nicholas will react away from all that is familiar to him. I heard from another adoptive Mom that her 5 year old son had a terrible time and they had to go back to the orphanage for an overnight.

An interesting tidbit to me was that in those first days her son preferred to watch the washing machine (a mini front-load so you can watch the clothes--all three pieces--in the bubbles) rather than "Cars," the movie. This caught my attention because my mom tells me that as a little girl I was fascinated by the churning water and soap of the washing machine. It is kind of hypnotic to this day. (OK, some of you are starting to think I have some weird type of washing machine fetish! Ha, maybe I do, come to think of it). ANYWAY, what this little detail made me think was that the whole language thing can be very overwhelming. It made me recall how after 4 months in Spain, a country I absolutely fell in love with, I just wanted to talk with an American for a little bit--just to be completely understood, not just my words, but the context, the nuances, intonations, facial expressions, silly puns that are all part of the communications package. There is something soothing about the monotony of the wishy-washy washing machine.

So, I should go easy on the language. Of course Nicholas is not going to want to watch American movies right away, after trying to communicate the most basic of things, like "gotta go potty", Nicholas is not going to want to "relax" with more words he can't understand.

With that in mind, I am going to try NOT TO TALK TOO MUCH (this is a mental note-to-self). Eating, eating is fun in any language. Bathing, bath time is soothing in any language. Hugs, hugs are good, no words required. That kind of thing. Come to think of it, Justin might like the new me too :). Eating, bathing, hugging, and no talking... Ha! Well, toodles (see that's a word no one would understand in another country no matter how many years they'd studied American).