Little Walking Echo

I had to smile at my title. It sounds like a little Indian name. Maybe Echo's Indian name would more aptly be something like: Little-One-Who-Must-Be-Carried-ALL-Day, or Little-Busy-One-Who-Makes-Momma-Laugh-And-Cry-At-Once. She really wears me out with all the things I need to get done right now and all she was to do is sit in my lap and play. But I love that little girl to pieces. She is getting so grown up. Here are a few pictures of the latest.

She wanted to ride bikes with the big girls.

Marx, the cat, is a relic from my childhood. Here he is again to enjoy another generation of munching kids' toes.

Cousins riding bikes

Look at all those beautiful girls!

Eating like a big girl

Echo is very independent and will typically eat more food if I let her sit at the little table with the older girls and feed herself. We mop the floor a lot more, but that's probably a good thing.


Anyway, my little Echo is walking, finally. All my girls are slow to walk, but Echo has seemed to make it stretch out even longer. I think she likes me to carry her too much. But since she is so independent and curious, you would think she would've mastered this long ago. But we are off and running now, so that's all that matters.

Such a fun little girl. She's my most cuddly baby and the only one that has a special blankie to sleep with. It's hard to see my baby grow up.

4 more weeks...

The power is supposed to go out in a few minutes--for about 6 hours, so pictures will have to be posted later. But I guess the major update is that Shane is still not home. He was supposed to fly home April 3rd, but it was decided that for all parties involved, it was better* for him to wait until his visa expires before coming home. So instead of 6 weeks, it will be 10 weeks. I was highly disappointed, but I guess it goes with the territory.
I got to thinking about how long we have been apart--by far the longest we have ever been apart since we were married. Including when we got married and I flew back to Kentucky two days later to finish my internship. 10 weeks--that's like 1/5th of a year, or 1/4 of a pregnancy! It's been so long that it's starting to feel normal, as sad as that is. Day in and day out, the girls and I have our routine, and we just keep on chugging along.

*So, I have a little extra time tonight, so I thought I would update why it was better to wait.

First of all, there are two other Americans whose visas expired before Shane's did. That meant while they were all home renewing their visas, the company would be short 3 guys, which at this point in the setup would really cripple the operation. They are still in the hiring process as it is, so having that many workers gone at the same time would leave them severely short-handed. Shane is officially managing 2 full ranches at this point.  

Second, since the rest of our family has all their passports already, they discussed flying Shane home immediately (about 4 days earlier than we had anticipated), having our visas expedited, and then have us all hurry back to Russia (like 2 weeks or less). So the point was to squeak Shane home and back to Russia, before the other two workers had to leave. But, after checking with the Consulate, we learned that they would NOT re-issue Shane another visa while his current one was still active. That meant, he would fly home, we would cram the rest of our packing/leaving into 2 weeks, then fly back to Russia.  Seems harmless, until we found out that after the girls and I were settled in Russia, Shane would STILL have to leave the country again and wait a couple weeks to renew his visa because that one was still active. Not only would this leave me and the girls ALONE in Russia, mind you, but then everytime thereafter, we would likely be on different visa schedules, and possibly always out of sync with traveling with each other. NOT AN OPTION in my book. It would also incur unnecessary travel expenses for the company. 

Thirdly, I'm not getting cold feet, but I am really enjoying this little bit of extra time to visit with family, sort and pack, find a renter, wrap up business stuff, etc. 

So while 4 more weeks is not what I had in mind, I would prefer to spend the extra "apart" time IN America, CLOSE to family, where everyone still speaks ENGLISH, rather than alone in Russia.  Besides, I can always use a little more time getting ready, and we will hopefully all stay on the same VISA schedule this way. I'm discovering that this visa business is not for the faint of heart.