America's Favorite Pastime

Today started off with Brennan introducing Dzintars to two of his favorite things...first I had him show Dzintars how his Rokenbok quarry worked. If you've never heard of Rokenbok you should totally go here and check it out. They are the coolest, most interactive remote controlled toys I've ever seen. We got it for Brennan for his birthday and he loves it. Now that Dzintars knows what it is and how it works I've heard him playing with it off and on all day. He seems to really love to figure out how things work. He's a lot like Brennan in that way.

 

Then he was able to introduce Dzintars to one of his other loves...watching the garbage truck empty the trash of course!! Dzintars also seemed to think this was pretty cool:) 

After the littles went to school Dzintars and I headed out to pick him up some new "kicks" (aka shoes) so he can play soccer and baseball! Thanks Auntie Nay Nay and Uncle Mark, he picked them out himself!! 

After making one more stop at Old Navy to pick up an additional rash guard to protect his extremely white Latvian skin the two of us headed over to my in laws for more swimming! This might be his most favorite activity. He's learning quite quickly and loves to toss a water football back and forth. Since he can't swim I tread water in the deep end while we play catch. This is working out nicely for me since I can't really hit the gym while he's here:) It's a win, win:) And since we play A LOT of catch my arms are getting a little workout as well!

Check out how well he's doing! This is only day two of swimming and his first swimming lesson with a real teacher isn't until tomorrow!!

 

After hitting the pool I decided to take Dzintars to the batting cages to hit some balls. I'm fairly certain he had never seen anything like it before! He insisted on wearing his "baseball clothes" to the cages. Which means his Dodger jersey. I'd tried so hard to explain to him to save it for the game later on so that it wouldn't get sweaty but by 2pm I couldn't hold him off any longer. So off we went in his Dodger blue! He did softball slow pitch and did pretty well! Though I think he needs to work on his form a little...but what do I know, I never played baseball or softball. He's pretty darn good for someone who comes from a country that doesn't play the sport! I give him two giant thumbs up! I got him a half hour and he seemed to really like it! I even hit a few rounds as well!! 

This evening we had our official "home safety visit" from our social worker. It's required for all hosting families and is usually done before the children arrive, but with so few kids hosted in CA New Horizons doesn't have any social workers that it works with so we were at the mercy of her busy schedule. She was here about an hour, asked us how we met, about both our bio kids, and Dzintars personality and spent some time asking Dzintars a few questions as well. Then did a quick walk thru of the house and we were done:) 

As soon as she left we loaded up and headed for the Dodger game...but not before bringing in the trash cans of course!! 

 

And having my "twins" pose for a picture. Brennan LOVED that he and Dzintars were dressed alike!

We had a great time at the game. Thank you Schilz family for giving us the tickets! He was a bit confused, maybe a google translate fail. I'd tried to tell him we were going to WATCH a game but when we were walking up to the stadium he wrote me "Now we play baseball?" Once he figured out what was going on he really enjoyed himself! A few innings in he looked at me and said "Stacey, America YES!" with a huge grin and a thumbs up! This boy is just loving his time here! He followed that up with "Latvia has problems." (via google translate) and then he showed me with his two fingers that he liked Latvia only a little. Poor guy, it's going to break this mamas heart to send him back! But send him back we must, we signed and notarized a contract saying we would regardless of if we wanted to adopt him or not! All the hosted kids must go back at the end of the program, they only have temporary visas and are required to return to their home countries even for families who are intending on adopting them:( Here are some pictures of our fun at Dodger stadium tonight. 

First baseball game for all three kiddos!

He ate not one but TWO Dodger dogs! I don't think "hot dog" translates well via google translate because I'd asked him before if he liked them and gotten a NO several times! He gave these two thumbs up! And FYI Kaelyn ate TWO as well and if you've seen these things they are HUGE!

We snuck down a little closer halfway through the game so he could get a better view!

Feeling extremely blessed that we are having such a great hosting experience! This kid needs a family! If you know anyone please SHARE MY BLOG with them! He's just too great of a kid to let him age out of the system and be left on his own! The statistics are very, very sad! Trust me, you'll love him!