An Adventure Outside

I think we managed to post some pictures today. Unfortunately I haven't yet figured out how to include them in today's narrative. Something to keep working on in our next 2 weeks here, I guess.....

Today's visit was an adventure outside. For the past week that we had been visiting Bryce at the Baby House, we always visited in their music room. However, today they were having some sort of concert in the music room. So Bryce's caregivers gave him an extra jacket and sent us outside. The Baby House has a playground outside, including a small pavilion. We walked over to the pavilion to see that it was occupied.....sort of. There were 3 or 4 cute (but wild) puppies. They ran away as soon as they saw us.

Our visits with Bryce have continued to be fun. He seems to recognize us when we pick him up in his nursery. He is part of Group 1 at the Baby House. We're not quite sure how many other babies are in his group. We pick him up in a play room that has a big playpen in it, but we only ever see one other baby there. In the back room there are about 9 cribs. He continues to babble to us (in Kazakh, of course). Lately he has been doing more crawling around (especially if he wants his favorite toy which seems to be our digital camera), and he seems to like to stand if we are holding him up. We are of course still experimenting with ways to make him laugh, as he has the cutest little smile (mostly gums with 2 teeth on the bottom). Today's hit was holding him up in the air and "flying". We brought a selection of toys with us from home. The car and blocks seem to be the most popular and he enjoys playing with them. Wish we had brought a few more, but I guess we can buy some here....or create a few on our own. He is also having fun with a zip lock bag full of cheerios.

Other than the Baby House visits, we have been doing more sightseeing. Yesterday, we took a walk over to St. Nicholas church, which was another Russian Orthodox Church. We also visited the national geology museum, only 1 block from our apartment. The mineral specimens, which were mostly from Kazakhstan, were excellent. Today we visited the Kazakh equivalent of Home Depot - a few building supply stores (at Chuck's request, of course). It was interesting to see the different types of products (plastic baseboards that were hollow for running wires behind, for instance) available over here. We also visited the national art museum where there was an extensive exhibit of Kazakh art, both traditional and modern. We are also enjoying just walking around. Almaty is a great city to explore by walking!