Even Prisoners Get a Mattress

Another great day at the baby house. As usual, the day started out with Tim playing in the ball pit while I dug out all the necessary accessories that a princess needs to be beautiful - rings, hair things (although Tim's ponytail thing was already in her hair when we got there), hair clips, lipstick. All this girly stuff is quite a change from trucks and balls and dirt and jumping around! Fortunately, she also has an interest in that sort of thing too, at least the ball part. After she gets done beautifying herself and playing with her princess she gets Tim and Papa to play ball with her. Today we also had the small balls out (somewhere between a baseball and softball in size). I was quite impressed to see that she really has a rocket arm. This girl is gonna pitch for the Yankees some day. She and Tim will have a great time playing baseball together as it's something they both seem to enjoy and they both seem to be good at. In between princess stuff and balls, both kids spent a lot of time drawing pictures today and coloring. Thank goodness baby wipes can clean almost anything. I'd hate to send her back to her group with marker all over her hands.

After that it was back to the apartment for a quick bite to eat and naps for everyone. Later in the evening Zhanara took me to the Ramstore for another big shopping trip - much easier with a car and without kids. I even managed to come home with most of the things on my list. Later today I will still have to take a walk to a different store for the little kitchen items we are missing. We're also going to attempt to get some laundry done at the cleaners above the Ramstore. Either the owner of the flat likes to sleep on a boxspring (or a really, really, really hard mattress) or she took the mattress with her. Consequently we aren't getting the best night's sleep. I keep thinking of pictures of prisons I've seen where the prisoners' beds are concrete slabs or some metal thing that looks like something from a morgue, but I think even a prisoner gets a matress when they get to prison. There is a comforter in the closet that we are going to try to use as a mattress, but it's in need of some washing and will not fit in the washing machine in the kitchen, hence the trip to the cleaners. The apartment is looking better. I scrubbed the bathroom this morning and am feeling better about life. I can (and usually do) deal quite well with a certain amount of dust and clutter, but the kitchen and bathroom HAVE to be clean. Mike is going to clean the tile and linoleum floors today and I think we'll be in business.

After the baby house today we have to go to the notary to sign some more papers. Hopefully it won't take too long because the boys, Matt especially, are really overtired by the time we leave the baby house. We'll see how this goes.