Thursday, May 27th - I wake up at about 7:15 to "Mama, mama." When my eyes finally come unglued and Scott has my attention he says, "Peesit!" Wonder how long the little fella has been patiently sitting there waiting to go to the potty? I respond with a smile, "dah, dah, marsh."/ yes, yes, go! and off he runs to the bathroom - happy! Does it get any easier than this? We both slept all night long - alleluia!! Dressed and down to the 2nd floor for breakfast together. We join Mark (whose wife is upstairs with baby Emmy) for breakfast. The options for breakfast are endless, an incredible spread of food, yet after eyeing everything - the only thing Scott was interested in were the raisins and some orange juice. I don't know what they were served for meals before. We had faced so many more challenging issues during our weeks in Karaganda that learning what foods he liked and was used to just didn't register on the lists of important things. I hope it's more than juice and raisins - that could be a problem.

The day before, we enjoyed an outing with the Camps and Woods on a gondola up to the top of a mountain near our hotel. Scott loved that and it was a wonderful way to see the city. Spring is in full bloom with flowers and green grass (something we saw none of while in the cold of Karaganda). Today, Scott and I have a LOT of time to ourselves. The other 3 families with babies are on entirely different schedules with their 8 month olds requiring 3 naps a day. Scott is too excited to stop for a nap right now. So we do some more walking around, finding small playgrounds behind random apartments, sitting on the curb enjoying our drinks together. He was so excited to have his very own fruit large fruit drink that he kissed the plastic bottle in delight. Especially with him drinking so much, I'm afraid to venture too far off in case I might get lost or I hear the word "peesit" and there is nowhere to go potty!

Not sure when I've experienced a LONGER day. I made the decision to check out of our hotel room at noon instead of paying for Thursday night. We'd be leaving at ll:30pm and I'd just as soon Scott not take a nap in hopes that he'd sleep very well on our ride from Almaty to Frankfurt. Jennifer (another mom we bonded with in Karaganda) offered us her room to hang out in and keep our luggage in while Scott and I explored the outdoors. 12 pm to nearly 12 a.m. is a lot of time to kill with a 5 year old! He did awesome. Never fusses or complains (at least none of his Russian sounded like complaining). We claimed a couch in the lobby as our home from 9pm until 11:35pm when our taxi driver was to take us to the airport. Scott finally passed out on my lap at 10:45 while we waited then was up from 11:30 til nearly 3a.m. as we took a taxi to the airport, went through passport clearance, and boarded on the plane for his first airplane ride. Sure wish I could understand his words - he was thrilled and not scared a bit! No problems with being fastened in a seatbelt, no problems with pressure in his ears. No problems with ANYTHING. He slept like a log til breakfast was served at around 9:15 - how about that?