Trip 3 Day Four With Artem

I’m surprised at how much I can learn from a 17 month old that doesn’t speak the same language as I do. I mentioned that we went to Mama’s Pasta last night and Artem ate and ate and ate. This morning at breakfast he didn’t eat too much food, just his normal amount. Lunch today was at noon as was nothing short of a Shoney’s buffet as little man ate and ate again. We had no idea where he was putting all of this food. He took his usual afternoon nap and woke up at 2:40 in a real funk. Normally he whines and cries for me to hold him and carry him around like my little joey but then I can get him to calm down and play. Today he could not be consoled. He cried and cried and cried. I started to worry that he might be getting sick. I know he’s cutting teeth (3 of them now) but this was beyond cutting teeth. He was getting himself so worked up and was dripping with sweat. Pasha was on his way over for us to do our Embassy paperwork and I was starting to think it was going to be a real challenge to do all the paperwork with Artem screaming the entire time. I sent Randy across the street to get some prune juice thinking his tummy might be hurting since he hadn’t had a bowel movement for two days but had eaten so much food. I put Artem down and tried to walk him around the apartment thinking maybe he was constipated and the exercise would do him good. We walked to the kitchen and he did not want to leave. I tried to coax him to leave and he shook his head “no”. I tried to pull him a little but he sat down and threw a huge fit on the floor and would not budge. I picked him up and brought him to the family room and he arched his back and screamed harder. He did not want to leave the kitchen to go to the family room, which surprised me because he spends so much of his time in the family room playing. Randy returned with no prune juice. He couldn’t find any and couldn’t get anyone to understand “prune juice for a baby that won’t poop”. By now we are googling what to do if a child is constipated since we are on our second day of no bowel movements but lots of food going in and Artem is still screaming bloody murder. Online it said we could give him apple juice to help with constipation so Randy made a bottle. One minute later the bottle was gone, Randy makes another bottle. Another minute later, the bottle is gone. Randy makes a third bottle and this time finishes off the small carton of apple juice that we had but Artem polished off another bottle. We signed “all gone” which threw him into another tizzy. The doorbell rings, oh great Pasha is here and will see this baby in major meltdown mode. Pasha walks in and Artem is all smiles, waving and babbling at Pasha. Who is this child?? We had to go to the kitchen to fill out the paperwork and Artem takes my finger and walks into the kitchen, goes straight to the table and starts babbling, “dah, dah, dah”. Omigosh, this child is hungry AGAIN! He got so excited when we got his bib out and Randy began to feed him while I completed the paperwork. Artem sat and ate and sang and babbled and played with the lids on the food jars. And it dawns on me, Artem did not want to leave the kitchen earlier because he was hungry and wanted to eat! Duh! I could have avoided all the drama if I had figured out the boy was hungry and that’s what he was trying to tell me by going to the kitchen. While he was eating, he kept pointing to something on the table. Bread? *shakes head no* Banana? *shakes head no* Kiwi? *shakes head no* Orange? *shakes head no* Are you beginning to see a pattern here? The last thing on the table was the giant serving spoon. We hand him the spoon (same size he used in the baby home) and we get “dah, dah, dah”. We got a bowl out for him and filled it with yogurt and let him finish feeding himself the yogurt and you can see by the pictures that he really enjoyed it. After a few minutes he started asking for the yogurt cup and we handed it to him and he began to dip his spoon into the yogurt cup. This kid amazes us on a continual basis! Lesson learned…listen to your child even if he cannot speak your language.

Figuring it out Got Yogurt??

We went for another walk tonight on Novy Arbat but the weather was getting cold quickly and the rain was turning into snow so we quickly got another rotisserie chicken and headed to the Chinese food restaurant on the bottom floor of our apartment. Randy went in to get his food and I went back up to the apartment. Artem was in a great mood so we started to play hide and seek, which was a first time for us, when Randy and Jenna came home. Artem ran for Randy when he came in and they spent the next 20 minutes playing hide and seek. Randy called for Artem and he would run through the hallway for Randy giggling and laughing and saying, “dada, dada” and then he would run as fast as his little legs would take him to Randy’s arms. Randy would turn and act like he was going to chase Artem and Artem would run and hide behind a wall in the hallway. Randy would call Artem again and Artem would go running again looking for Randy. He had so much fun and giggled and laughed the whole time. I got it all on video but unfortunately our laptop won’t let us transfer the video so we’ll have to wait until we get home. Apparently the exercise did Artem some good because we got a nice full diaper tonight before bedtime and he went right to sleep without a peep.

Tomorrow is another light day; Randy has to go to the Embassy tomorrow to complete some paperwork and that’s it. We got Artem’s Russian passport today and it looks so cute! He’s ready to jet set around the world! We had hoped to go to the underground mall today after naptime but our time was spent with Artem’s above mentioned meltdown. Maybe tomorrow.

Artem discovered Randy's shoes... and figured out how to put them on.