No Spitting!

Tucker went to bed at 6:30pm last night which was wonderful, but he woke up at 5:11 am. Tucker immediately wanted a Luke Skywalker story. I kept falling back asleep as I was telling it. Perhaps this was just the push he needed as when we got in the car he created his own story! Yea! Oh no, separation anxiety.

Mia and I had some real contact today. She came into the music room took a look at us, tried to find something to throw, walked over to a fern and said in Russian that she was going to pull off the leaf. Sveta said no and then Mia spit on the floor. Yes, spit. She has spit once at each visit.

I told Sveta about the spitting and she immediately left the room. Mia was on the other side of the room at this point. She ran over to my side of the room, walked over to the guitar looked at me with a look that meant I am not supposed to touch this but I am going to. I told her no and put her in a chair and she cried. We "touch/talked it out" and I think got a little closer from the experience. She is testing us out.

Sveta had been promising earlier in the week to bring in the pediatrican to talk with us incase we had questions. Sveta asked if we would like to have our visit with the pediatrician now and we said sure. I asked about Mia's general health. Mia had chicken pox last April 2004 which I didn't know about but that was really about all that was new to me.

The pediatrician brought up the spitting incidents and said what we basically thought - that this was a way to get attention but also that she wasn't doing this with the other children when in group. One thing she also said was that this brought shame to the baby house and she turned to Mia and said that if she spit anymore we would not take her home. Of course Mike and I were mortified, but Mia just casually said she wouldn't do it anymore. I didn't sense any real fear. To me the spitting seemed quite a clever way of making sure she had our attention but keeping her distance at the same time. We will get to know the real Mia after she leaves the baby house. I do really appreciate this time together. I wonder if one of the most important aspects of the visits is that Mia has the opportunity to see how we interact with the people that have been important in her life.

We not only met with the pediatrician but we had rehearsal with the children. Mike and I will be performing tomorrow at the Celebration. We will do both Itsy Bitsy Spider and Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes. It was quite cute to watch the children learn this song. Sveta translated of course as we performed it for them first.

The other day we accidentally taped over the interview with Kunpash - with youghurt bowling - and so we redid the interview. it worked out quite well as this time we did it in her office and she was more in her element. I am just so moved that we are able to capture these momemts on tape.

I left the baby house feeling quite spent, but we had some shopping to do.

Sveta took us to the open market today to find tricycles. It was a successful trip but Mike was carrying Tucker on his shoulders when he was abruptly stopped. There are ropes running along the market I guess to hang tarps over for shelter. One of the ropes caught Tucker just above the neck. Ouch. It could have been ugly.

We got back to the apartment and while I was cleaning - seems to be happening everyday now, (this is not normal for me) I tried to open the bathroom door. I knew Mike wasn't in there and Tucker was in the bedroom. Seems Tucker had set the door to lock and then closed it. We called Sveta who laughed and called the apartment manager. Oleg was over in 15 minutes and gave us keys. See all the doors have locks. It could have been really ugly. What if Tucker had locked the living room door while we were in the bedroom?! We would not have had access to the phone. Of course worse case is Tucker could have taken the front door key out and put it in the living room and we would have been locked in the apartment with no access to the phone - anyway the worst didn't happen and we believe Tucker understands not to mess with the locks. We are happy Oleg gave us the keys anyway.

After the locked door incident we decided to take a walk to the clothing area of the green market. It is much quieter than the main area and Mike needed a pair of socks.

There are numerous obstacles on the streets here. Lots of open sewer holes and pipes jutting out of the ground. Today was extra bad as it rained which meant all the pot holes were filled with water. We walked out of the apartment this afternoon and made it about 50' before Tucker stepped in a nice puddle. We had to walk back up the four flights of stairs and change his socks.

Mike found socks and we found Tucker another Spiderman shirt - you can never have too many Spiderman shirts when you are a four year old boy.