Full House Today

Hi! So on Saturdays all of the families have visitation at the same time and it's kind of like a party. We go from 10-12 and it is so much fun with everyone in the same room playing with their kids and everyone else's kids and sharing toys and chatting about things. And we had our friend from Buffalo come to visit with her little girl who she brought home on Monday. I think her little sweetie was really happy to be in a familiar place and see familiar people. And it was nice to talk to her and just kind of get an idea of how things are going now that she has her full time. Apparently these kids can eat. They can eat a whole lot. Our friends from Michigan said the same thing of their tiny little one who also came home with them on Monday. I guess this will be the first time they have been able to eat as much as they want rather than as much as they are allotted or how much time it takes them to eat it. So we are going to stock up at the store tomorrow. And we are getting ready for the screamfest that is going to take place when we take him from the BH (although our Buffalo friend said her little one has been OK). Gulsanna today said she thinks that Rinat will have a tough time and she said we are welcome to keep him at the BH until we go to Almaty. I said thanks for the offer but I think we'll take him as soon as they'll let us. Now would be fine as a matter of fact. After visiting, Peter was in the mood for lagman (that reminds me- I need to write about the food. maybe tomorrow) so we went to a really good restaurant by the capital. We were talking about how quickly the time has flown by and Baheet told us that we'll only be here for a week and a half/2 weeks at the most. Oh my gosh! And then she said she thinks we'll be flying home around the 6th. Oh my gosh again! And I have to admit I am a little sad. Don't get me wrong, I am dying to get home and be back in my familiar life but I think I might miss this place a little bit. It has come to mean so much to Peter and I and we'll do our best to remember every second that we have spent here. Peter even said to me that he couldn't even imagine having a family the normal way now, it seems so boring. I don't know that labor is boring exactly but the excitement of us building our family has been great. And now we are off to our friend's house to hang out for a while before the Michigan couple leaves for Almaty tomorrow. See ya! -m

All Smiles Today

Hi! So babycakes was all smiles today. Well, mostly anyway. He was raring to go from the second we picked him up from his room and didn't really stop for 2 hours. BTW- his room is the Matryoshka Room (someone commented that the guy she adopted was in that room as well). It's what the nesting dolls are called. Anyway, he was a total sweetie and we had a great 2 hours with him. I think he is finally getting attached to us the way we are to him. Today he was whining about something (who knows what) and crawled straight over to me and climbed into my lap. My little heart was happy and I think maybe Peter was a little bit jealous. And Peter got quite a few belly laughs out of him by making googley noises and tickling his stomach. It was really cute and I was definitely jealous. And oh my gosh is he crawling! No more of this tentative, shaky crawling. He has got it down pat and he's getting really fast. He can now make it across the entire playroom without stopping except to pause for a couple seconds to eat a piece of lint along the way. And I was telling Carson that when I stand him up now, he starts taking steps. I'm nipping that in the bud. I don't think I can deal with him walking anytime soon. I mean, I can hardly deal with the fact that he's crawling. He seemed to master it a little too quickly for my liking. Today brought the IPOD to visitation to give Gulsanna something to do while we we play and she put the music to his ear and was laughing when he started nodding to the music. Apparently he likes Cat Stevens and Gladys Knight & the Pips. He also really liked it when Peter decided to drown him in the ball pit. Peter stuck him in there and squished him down until all we could see was his little head. It was really funny- guess you had to be there. After visitation Peter and I went to the Baby Mall (aka Pucha) and looked for some footie pj's for when he comes home to the apartment with us. It's been a bit chilly and the heat doesn't get turned on until Oct I think. We didn't find any footies but we did find a little outfit with elephants (we needed something warm to put him in when his blue hoodie is in the wash) and this funny outfit that Peter picked out that has a cat dressed like a pirate and it says Yo-Ho-Ho and has matching pants with anchors on them. I'm sure you'll see them in upcoming photos. (PS if you want the shutterfly photos you have to give me your email address and I'll add you to future emails). Then we went to dinner at Vaquero. Yes, there is a Mexican restaurant here. It's more like KazMex than TexMex but it's as close comfort food as we get here. And now it's time for some real comfort food- morozhinaye (ice cream!). They sell Baskin Robbins here although I don't know that it's actually the real thing but whatever. It's still good. Real good. Have a great day and weekend! -m

Better Today

Hey- So he was a feeling a little better today as you can see. A little whiny for the first hour but then we gave him some tea and he had a burst of energy and was crawling all over the place. They give them something that they call fruit tea here. The one that they usually use is a powder mixed with water (made by the British organic baby food company Hipp) but sometimes they make it from scratch and as I understand it they take a bunch of dried fruit, pour boiling water over it, let it steep for a while, add a little sugar and let it cool. Then they puree the fruit to feed them and use the fruitywater as 'tea'. They had some homemade stuff one time and so there was a bunch of lumps floating in his bottle. He kept sucking them up into the nipple which then, of course, clogged it up and he got so frustrated. In retrospect, I guess I could have fished the big lumps out but I know he would have been screaming thinking I was taking his bottle away. He loooooves his tea. And now we are off for today (Friday)'s visit. -m

Sleepy Baby

Hi All- Something was wrong with the little pumpkin today and he was EXHAUSTED. He had a runny nose yesterday so I am wondering if he might have a little cold or something. Or maybe one of the other kids cried all night long and kept him up. Or maybe there was a keg party at the Baby House. I don't know but the boy was tired. But the caretakers made sure we had a sweatshirt to put on him so I think they noticed that he didn't seem quite himself also. Or maybe it's just that it's cold here today- so cold I could actually see my breath! Anyway, he was fine for the first hour but then he got all whiny, which is unusual for him, and he actually cried when we didn't pick him up right away. I thought maybe he was doing it just for fun because he has been doing the thing where he whines until I pick him up and then has this triumphant 'Ha! I got her!' half smile on his face. But it turns out that he honestly was tired and just wanted soothing. Peter happily held him as he fell asleep. Anyone notice that Peter's the sucker that lets him break the rules (we are not supposed to let him sleep outside of nap time)?But after a while we got bored and we actually did the transfer from Peter's shoulder to the floor just to see if he would wake up. We had to do something to entertain ourselves for the 45 minutes that he was asleep since it was just Gulsanna, Peter, and I in there staring at each other. But he was completely sacked out. Anyone think that'll work at home? Yeah, I'm not counting on it either. And now it's time for me to sack out. Goodnight! -m

So Where Do We Go from Here?

Hey everyone- So I know you are all wondering what's next in the process with our little one. First, there is the 15 day appeals period. I thought I would really be sweating it out at this point but I'm not. Our coordinator and everyone here are so confident that it makes me feel as if we are done with the hard part. As a matter of fact, we went to lunch after court and our coordinator gave a toast and said something to the effect of "August 13th will live forever in your memory. Today is the day that you are parents." It was really sweet and I figured that if she is no longer worried about anything that could go wrong, then I need to not worry about it. And honestly, I think she might tear the head off of anyone who stood in our way- she's very protective. OK so 15 days and then we are hoping that we can pick our guy up on or around the 28th but it depends on if Dr. Alma is free to meet with us because, of course, there are a million papers to sign- we are taking a living person out of her care after all. Then we will have him with us forever. Yay!!! We will stay in Astana for as long as it takes to get him his Kazakh passport (between 2 and 10 days). Then we'll catch a flight to Almaty where we have 2 days of appointments. The first day we go to the SOS International Health Clinic and we have to get him an HIV test and the Once Over to make sure he's healthy. He's already already had all of these tests before but they want them done again by the US approved doctor there before he is allowed to immigrate to the US. Then the following day after all of the results are in, we have an interview at the US embassy to get all of his paperwork on that end done. We have to agree to take care of him and not abandon him to be a ward of the government and all of that. Then we get to come home- as soon as we can get a flight out. We bought the changeable tickets so we can change them no big deal, but we just have to find a flight with room for us. We are hoping to be home around the 12th of September. That sounds like it's a long way off, but we have been here a month already and it has just flown by. Hopefully the next month will too. Our friends from Michigan and our friend from Buffalo got their kids on Monday and let me just tell all of those people who said "It'll be great, you kid will already be sleeping through the night" that this is most definitely not the case. Their little girl slept about an hour the first night and I think about the same last night. Poor thing is so confused and scared. They said she shook the whole day long because she was terrified. And in the 10 minute car ride with us to the BH to sign some more papers, she yawned probably 5 times. She must be just exhausted. I am going to be so sad for Rinat because I know he'll be feeling the same thing when we steal him away from everything he knows. And just when he's getting comfortable with the apartment, we're going to fly to Almaty, and just when he's comfortable with Almaty, we're going to fly home. Peter and I are going to try to be camels and store up our sleep for when we get the little guy. Anyway, have a great day! -m

The Nitty Gritty on Court

Hey- So some people were asking for more details about court. I'll give you the play-by-play both for our families who are curious and for those soon-to-be adopters out there reading this. Our appointment time was 9:30 so we got there a few minutes before with Gulsanna, Baheet, and our Ministry of Education representative in tow. At 9:20 I was really nervous sitting on the bench outside the courtroom and the butterflies in my stomach were going insane. At 9:30 I started going over my speech in my head. At 9:45 I started going over Peter's speech in my head. At 9:50 I started going over my grocery list in my head. At 9:55 I asked Gulsanna what we were doing and she informed me that we were waiting for the prosecutor who then walked by us on his way to the courtroom. At 10:10 I asked Gulsanna what we were doing now. She said we were waiting for the court secretary who then walked past us into the courtroom. Game On. We went into the room and sat on the front bench and Baheet told me to stop smiling. It is bad to smile- I should cry instead. Well, let me just say I was not the first of our family to break down. We stood as the judge read our petition to adopt Rinat. Then it was Peter's turn to give his speech and my sweet, strong hubbie got about 2 sentences into his speech and his voice started to crack and he got all choked up. Which of course made me cry and Baheet had to give me a tissue. Peter talked about us, about our families, jobs, marriage, why we wanted to adopt, why we chose KStan, and most of all how happy we are that we came here and that we met Rinat and that we just want to give him a good home. And when we come home we will tell everyone what a wonderful place Kaz is and how they should come here. And that we want to come back for another child. Then the judge asked him a couple of questions about why we did not adopt from US and if we knew about all of the rules and regulations of adoption in Kaz. Then it was my turn. I was already crying from Peter's speech and then I had to get up and talk with my face all red. Embarrassing. Oh, and I was shaking like a leaf. You know how sometimes in a book it describes how some one's knees were knocking together? Well, I never really knew what that meant until today. My entire body was going into spasms and I really couldn't help it no matter how hard I tried. I couldn't even really read the notes I had written out and I had to sort of wing it. I talked about how we had waited a long time to have a baby (sob) and we were so happy to have met Rinat (sob) and we adored him and wanted to have him with us forever (sob). And how we would make sure that he was healthy and happy (OK I am getting myself together at this point). And I would make sure he had a good education. And our family and friends are very happy for us and there will be a link for all of us to Kaz forever and we would be thankful forever to Kazakhstan for the opportunity (I had finally gotten myself together by this point). And how we looked forward to sending all of the post placement reports that we have to send for the next 18 years so they can see how happy he is. Then the prosecutor asked me who was going to take care of Rinat and judge asked if I thought that raising him would be difficult (aren't all kids difficult?). Then the Ministry of Ed rep got up and read this big four page document with all kinds of attachments and papers with stamps on them that Gulsanna translated as she read. It was all about how they had attempted to find the mother and were unable to. I'll give you the short version: Rinat was born in the Maternity Hospital in Astana. The mother left him there and when they tried to locate her they found she had give the wrong address. They also tried to find her by tracing her by her name but there is no one by that name in Astana or the surrounding areas. There was a whole lot more but I didn't really catch or remember all of it. The prosecutor and judge asked some questions but she seemed to be able to show the correct documentation and they were satisfied that every attempt had been made to find her. We then all left the courtroom for approximately 1 and a half minutes and then came in and the judge read her 2 page decision that came down to "he's yours as long as no one contests it in the next 15 days". And then we were almost-parents. Whew! It was such a relief. We went out into the hallway and chatted (and waited some more for the next couple to go so we could then give everyone their gifts- they are very big on gifts here). Gulsanna told us the judge said we sounded like political advisers for Kaz tourism because we mentioned many times how much we loved it and how much we wanted to come back. And she said the judge must have liked us because she smiled at the end and she never smiles for anyone. Yay us! So that is the very abbreviated version of our court experience. I know some of you out there are wondering what version of the truth we are going to tell Rinat about his parents. We are going to tell him the absolute truth. I cannot fathom how hard it would be for a mother to give up her child and I can only imagine that it must have been the most difficult decision that she has ever made. The only reason I can think of to do that is that she thought that he would have a better life with someone else than she could have given him herself. I'm sure it will be hard for him not knowing where he came from but I know we will give him a loving home and I hope that we can give him all that his mother wished for him to have. I would like to imagine his mother out there somewhere thinking about the family he might have gone to and seeing a family like us. Alright, I think my adrenaline is finally wearing off and I am getting tired. Peter, Mr. I'm-not-nervous-at-all, didn't sleep a wink last night and went to bed hours ago so I am off to join him. Have a great day! -m

Photos!