Thought it was a catchy title, so I'd use it again! Okay, so not-so-catchy...but functional. So yeah, I'm using it again.

Let's see, I haven't updated since Thursday. Friday was nothing terribly special, until the evening, I went to meet with my graduate advisor to talk about getting crackin' on my thesis project. It's all I have left standing between me & graduation with my Master's...so I am totally ready to get the show on the road. So we met for a little while - I had not seen her in quite some time (well before our trip to Russia), so I updated her on how we have been & are doing. And then we talked about goals for the semester. I can't tell you how ready I am to have this finished. I'm not sure how I am going to be a full time working mom and a student - which is why I am ready to be done with the student label, as fast as possible. I love being a student (weird, I guess), but I want to have as much time as possible to devote to my husband & child. So we're going to start slowly this semester & build up to a good momentum to get me finished up.

After our meeting, I met the boys at one of our favorite restaurants, and we grabbed a bite to eat.

Do you remember on Thursday, I said that Iliya smelled like he had pooped but, in fact, he had not? Well...same with Friday. Nothing ever came about. So on Friday, I loaded him up with nature's laxative. He had plum juice in the morning, some prunes for a snack, and in the afternoon he had a plum for his snack. Still nothing.

He went to bed Friday night with a tummy ache and woke up to get in bed with us around 11:00, and I laid him back in his bed about midnight because he tossed & turned...never could get comfortable. He woke back up around 3:00 a.m....came back to bed with us, still tossing & turning. Which meant that I did not sleep either. Nathan & I finally got up around 7:00 - and Iliya finally woke up, crying, at 8:00. With lunch on Saturday, we gave him a couple more prunes, and were getting ready to break down & get some suppositories...when he pooped twice. But it was a constipated poop and reaaalllly hurt him.

By Saturday afternoon, he was extremely gassy - and rivaled any grown man with the smell! It was embarrassing because there was a man at our house testing our water & trying to sell us a water filtration system (um, no, not right now) and Iliya insisted on being with us in the kitchen a lot of the time that the man was at the house. Maybe Iliya's smell helped the guy out the door (finally)! Then...a really good poop. Not constipated at all. Whew! Crisis averted!

As a sidenote, I am taking his stool samples to the lab tomorrow, to be tested for parasites, etc. That could be the cause of his problems, but it may not be either. Who knows. I guess we will after we get the results back!

In other news (what could be better than poop?!), N's parents (Nana & Papa) came down for a visit this weekend. It was the first that they've seen Iliya since the hour at the airport a few weeks ago. Iliya did really well - it took him a few minutes to warm up, but then he seemed pretty comfortable playing with them...as long as he knew we were in the house with him. I'm glad that he takes to people (and so far, it's been mostly just with family & very close friends that he's warmed to), but not too quickly. It really makes me feel good about his level of attachment, and where we are in the process of being a little family!

Next weekend, we are heading up to North Alabama for the long weekend, and we are soooo very excited. This will be the first that my parents have seen Iliya since the hour at the airport & I am really looking forward to them being able to hang out with their first grandchild! It will be a nice long weekend to be with lots of family (some who only saw Iliya @ the airport, and others who have not seen him yet). Not to wish our life away, but we are ready for Friday to roll around so we can get on the road, headed toward home!

I think I forgot to mention that Iliya & I paid a visit to the daycare one day last week (I don't even remember which day it was - maybe Thursday?). I just wanted him to meet his teacher and see the kids in his class. We walked in the door and as soon as he saw all the toys, he wanted to get down & explore. Fortunately, we went at a good time for him to do just that (free play time) and he was able to walk around - all the children were very interested in him, and he was interested in them. Of course, he is a "tackler" - so his teacher probably has her work cut out for her in helping Iliya appropriate ways in which to interact with children (i.e., not grabbing a handful of their clothes and pulling on them - or not running at them and tackling them). We work with him on it when we can, but we just are not around a ton of younger children right now.

But in all, he seemed like he'll be pretty comfortable with the whole setting; of course, he lost sight of me once and was not really happy about it...but I'm hoping to take a few weeks to make the transition with him, before I have to be back at work 100% fulltime. I just don't want him traumatized by the fact that we have to be apart for 8 hours a day - so we'll be starting slowly & working our way up. And he seems to have a really good teacher & assistant teacher...so we'll all work together to make the transition go as smoothly as possible. I'm sure we'll need some prayers in that area, if you are so inclined!!

Today, we went to church for the second time, and Iliya did really well. Nathan had the foresight to tuck some interactive books into Iliya's bag...which kep the little guy occupied most of the time during church. We didn't even have to break out the banana, which was monumental! We also had a meal after church...and my boy ate really well (no surprise there) and handled the giant crowd of new people with grace and his little knuckle in his mouth. He got a bit overstimulated and didn't really want to lay down for his nap...and didn't take a great nap...which made for a cranky, still somewhat overstimulated child. So we had a quiet afternoon/evening at home...and finally, he wound down and went to bed about an hour ago.

This afternoon, we also had our first decent bloodshed. Iliya was dancing to some music - he loves to turn in circles, but he got going too quickly and fell face first onto the hardwood floor. He screamed & I went to pick him up & just held him for a second. Once I felt like he was reasonably comforted, I checked for boo-boos, and sure enough, he had busted his lip. We got a cool washcloth out and then N got a piece of ice for Iliya to suck on. (he liked that a lot!!)

And as the last news of the day, (I am ALL over the place tonight, I apologize for that!!) Iliya ate a pear for his afternoon snack. Not only did he eat the pear; oh no, he ate it all by himself. Nathan wondered what Iliya would do with it, so he just handed it to the little guy...who promptly tore into it. We had a sticky mess after he was finished with it...but he enjoyed it so much!

Alright, I'll apologize once more for being a bit incoherent tonight. I just wanted to update quickly (this probably should've been a bulleted post but...well, I'm too tired to go back & edit). I also have pictures, but they're not on the computer yet, so I'll try to get to that at some point tomorrow! Have a great start to your week & hopefully I'll be more coherent later!