May 22nd, Part Jen HTML issue resolved

May 22nd

Last night after our dinner with the other families, we moseyed on home around 10pm. Rob was opening the last door, there are several to reach Fort Taylor, when he starts swearing. This is just part of the regular ritual of entering our apartment as the locks are weird and we never know if we are to turn the key right or left. But last night’s swearing was different. He turns around and says “sorry”. I have gotten used to tuning out during the door opening process, but this time, instead of continuing to jigger the door he walks away from it holding the stub of a key. That’s when I realized something was amiss.

After about 15 minutes of trying to pry the half key out with our pinky nails, we realized it was more then just pulling the key out—it would need to be turned and yanked which we could not manage. Rob considered breaking down the door, but you can imagine the ruckus and property damage this would cause and luckily I was able to persuade him that would be a bad idea. I could imagine the neighbors calling the police and hauling us off to jail and then we would have no one but the US Embassy to call. It was getting close to 11 or maybe 12, and we realized we did not have our translator’s phone number, a Russian-English book, or a telephone. Short of being Kazak homeless folks for the night, we decided to head over to the other family’s apartment to call Aizhan, our translator. Since we didn’t want to wake up their son we tried quietly knocking on the door and quietly saying “psst, are you awake, it’s the Taylors”. After a couple failed attempts I made Rob ring the Bird Bell. They were in their jammies but graciously let us in and called Aizhan. After she arrived we headed back to our apartment to see if Aizhan could jimmy the lock. No luck.

After a while she was able to get a hold of a lock smith, and about a half hour later he arrived with a black briefcase, looking very official. Then he pulled out an old broken and flattened plastic water bottle which he tried to pick the lock with. What high tech tools they have here! Without any luck at that he pulled out some other tool which I could not see to yank the half key out. Then we paid him about $10 and he went somewhere with Aizhan, and we were still in the hallway unable to get trough the locked door. But there’s a lot to look at out the 8th floor stairwell windows at midnight…lots of lights and construction to watch. Around 12:30 we saw the elevator coming up and opening on our floor, so we figured it was our translator coming back. We were standing at the elevator door waiting for it to open, and some other guy comes out. Turns out it was a neighbor who looked a little freaked out at the sight of us. Then to make things worse, he couldn't get his door open either. After about 5 minutes of key jigglling he got it, and no doubt called to report us loitering in the lobby of our floor at odd hours of the night. About an hour later the locksmith, who drives a big Mercedes with a security alarm, came back with Aizhan who had gone to the apartment owner to get a spare key. This was happily surprising because when we signed the lease she said she gave us all of the keys and ensured us we would be safe and that no one could enter the apartment wit any other keys. Thank goodness for little white lies.

By 1:30 we were back inside home sweet home and I was sleeping and Rob was blogging.

After a good night’s sleep we were ready for a visit with junior. We found out they moved him into a new room over the weekend. We had just built up enough clout with the previous room’s caregivers so we could feed him, change his clothes and diaper, put him down for his nap and see him on the potty. The new caregivers are a bit more clinical but we’ll try to wear them down. I guess Junior had the same reaction as us because he was a bit cranky. It could also have been that he was a bit irritable because his one piece footie to neck outfit was a little small and catching him in the crotch.

We started our visit outside because we got evicted from the playroom we were in because the cleaning lady needed to clean up for a visit of some government officials. There are lots of slides outside and that seemed to scare away his crankiness. He likes it when I barely hold him from behind and let him slide to Rob, who catches him and then makes him fly back to the top. After doing that for a while, I tried sliding down the spiral slide with him in my lap, but he did not like that at all…..maybe in the next week or 2 he’ll get used to it. Then we played at the covered picnic table for a while, knocking over the stacked cups, then chewing on them. I think he might have another chomper coming in because he gnaws on anything. Last time I checked there were 4 teeth.

When we went back inside, I pulled out some AA batteries I brought from the apartment to use in one of the “Don’t Ever Buy Me” toys. It was a turtle with a drummer on his shell and it played some bad Dolly Parton music. Junior was playing with it last week but we didn’t have any batteries with us. Well today, he was mesmerized at the racket it made. And it’s on wheels so it randomly rolls around, but only on the smooth laminate floor. He chased it down, then scooped it up and shook it causing the batteries to fly out because some wise parent before us ripped the battery door off. I’m not sure if he was happy or sad that the ‘music’ stopped, but we put the batteries back in and let him chase it down again. Hopefully his ‘shake the batteries to make it stop’ behavior is a sign of his good choice in music for the future.

We spent the afternoon getting some papers notarized and eating lunch then napping until dinner. Then I watched the Muppet Movie on the IPod while Rob surfed the web. How’s that for an exciting afternoon! Still no word on a court date or a planned date to return home, so I guess we’ve moving to Kazakhstan until our money runs out.