All the surprises

It is amazing to me that just yesterday we picked Simon up from Pleven.  So much has happened in such a short period of time!  First off, I would like to say that your prayers must be working because everything is going wonderfully.  While things are going really well, I still find myself very very tired.  It is hard to not really know what Simon is thinking or really how to fully take care of him.  I find it very challenging to always be asking myself what it means when he makes a certain face, or whether or not we should feed him more or if we should do something about the fact he has not yet had a bowel movement in our presence.  It is hard to not know your child.  It is not unlike when the midwife handed me Ishmael--my first thought was you are going to trust me with him?  Then, wait you are leaving?  You are leaving him with me?

Jon and I talked today about how glad we are that this is our second time at parenthood.  We aren't freaked out by our urges to make sure he is still breathing at night. :)  We aren't thinking when we take him out of the hotel that someone is going to run us down. (we remembered when we drove Ishmael in the car for the first time how freaked out we were that someone was going to hit us!  Suddenly my petal-to-the-metal hubby was going 25 all over town!)

Anyway, enough of my rambling, you want to know how Simon is doing!  Well, he is doing great!  He is eating like a champ! We do think that sometimes he eats more slowly if he doesn't like what we are giving him.  Too bad we really want to give him the specialized formula we brought for him because he doesn't seem to like it a whole lot :)  (It is SO WEIRD to be feeding a child baby food again :))  We gave him a bath last night and he smells so much better.  I stopped at a pharmacy and bought q-tips and I was able to clean out his belly button and he was laughing today while I tried to brush his teeth.  LAUGHING. He thought I was playing with him. It was still a struggle to get him to open his mouth and then he would bite down on the tooth brush to stop me from brushing.  But I was able to rinse out a few things out of there....and his breath smells SLIGHTLY better.    

We have been feeding him in the stroller because we know that is what he is used to and we think we have figured out that he shows a lot of ticks when he wants us to move him into a new position.  He likes to lay on the bed in the hotel room and Jon has been cuddling with him in bed a lot.  Jon has also been doing daddy kinds of things, like throwing a blanket in his face, and tousling his hair roughly and honking his noise.  Simon has LOVED all of these things and has been laughing and smiling a lot.  I think he also likes laying on Jon's chest and feeling it rumble when he talks or laughs.  They seem to be bonding really well, I think Simon likes having a dad!

Today I was amazed when we decided to take him on a walk.  I wanted to put him in the Boba carrier, but I also wanted to bring the stroller along because I figured he wouldn't let me carry him for long.  Jon wanted to get some more pictures of the Nevski church at sunset and then at night.  So we set off in that direction.  We walked for 30-45 minutes.  Simon LOVED being in the carrier.  He relaxed and cuddled up to me and smiled and smiled.  After the sunset photos, we had dinner at a restaurant right by the church and then I put him back in the sling while we watched Jon get the night time photos.  When we got into the taxi I unclipped the back of the carrier and he stayed right against me for the entire ride to the hotel.  I think he would have fallen asleep on me!  AMAZING.  I am starting to think that sometimes he ticks a lot because he WANTS to be touched and WANTS attention.  We had prepared ourselves that he might need lots of space and push us away, but he seems to want us next to him... A LOT. :)  So thank you for the prayers and God bless his baba!!

So....we do have a couple of things that you could pray for him.  While we gave him his bath, he just let us...he kind of stiffened up and let us give him a bath.  So the bath was difficult only because it is hard to not feel like you might break him....this feeling is much more than just caring for a baby...Simon is so SMALL.  If you know the Keyzers you know that we joke about them having no butt....Simon takes that to a new level.  :(  After we got him out, I tried to snuggle with him in the towel, but he didn't seem to like it; then I went to put on his diaper and he was LOCKED up.  He wouldn't move or put his legs down, it was really hard to get that diaper on.  Speaking of diapers, we bought the wrong size.  Simon is 9 kg.  So I bought 7-14 kg diapers and they keep falling off of his butt (again, the no butt problem).  Today I bought some 3-6 month diapers. They fit really well.  I hope they don't leak--they aren't made for an 8 year old's urine.

I also feel blessed because he slept through the night last night.  He hasn't been taking naps, but we still lay him down to give him a break if he needs it.  We really messed around his sleep "schedule" which the orphanage gave us, but we figure, we are going to be flipping his whole life around soon, so what the hey. Last night he went to sleep at 11pm and woke up around 9am.  Tonight we laid him down at 1030. 

Secondly, he has not had a BM in our presence.  We aren't sure how long we should wait before we act.  So wisdom in that area would be wonderful.   Okay, and keep praying for that flight home!

Thanks again for following our journey and praying for us!!!
 Here are the pictures from our walk...I still need to do a post on all of our tourism!!  (we have so many awesome photos to show you!  And so many amazing stories to tell!)

St. Sofia!  

So we ended up walking right into the protesters.  If you were worried at all about the demonstrations, don't, the only thing that was a bother was the noise, but one guy put down his whistle and helped me cross the street!!!

pray for the people here...they are not happy with the government ;(

a stranger on the street pointed this out to us to take a photo...what a cool building!  It is across from a church that was built to thank the Russians for freeing Bulgaria from the Ottoman Empire.

Alexander Nevsky Cathedral...man it is big and lovely!

another kind stranger told us we should take a picture of the full moon!  People are so helpful when you have a camera!

;

One guy stopped and asked me if Jon was a professional photographer (when I told Jon this he stated adamantly that he  has no idea what he is doing).  This man's English was not great: I believe he left thinking Simon was a "daughter" (instead of adopted) and that my oldest son wasn't there because he had a different father. :)  Then he asked if I was Protestant...then he had to go. He was a very nice old man.

A woman spoke German to me while we were taking this photo...which I thought was cool.  I also found it fun when someone started asking me where something was in the grocery store in Bulgarian!