Another day in our adventure

Our second night was a little bit more eventful. Ava woke up around 1 AM, and we gave her a bottle according to the schedule that she was on at the orphanage. Unfortunately, she didn’t want to go back to sleep once it was done. Instead, she wanted to play! Needless to say, we didn’t. It took about an hour to get her back to sleep. After that, she slept pretty good until about 6 AM, but Amber & I didn’t. Ava is showing us more and more of her personality too. Her cold has her a little grumpy at times, but she’ll go straight from crying over having her nose wiped to giggling and rolling her tongue in the same breath. She doesn’t seem to cry unless she’s really upset. Her appetite isn’t what we hoped either, but we think it’s probably just the cold.

We were able to take a little tour in Almaty today as well. We’ve discovered that while Ava doesn’t like being put in her snowsuit, she is tranquilized by it once it’s on. She got lots of smiles from people on the street today too. We went up into the mountains, which are quite beautiful and remind me of the Rockies, the way they start from nowhere and go straight up. There was an ice skating rink where speed skaters were practicing too. The 2008 Asian Olympics will be in Almaty, so that’s my guess as to the training. We went to the Park of the 28 Heroes, which had some massive statues of the aforementioned 28 heroes (stopped a tank on their own), and other war heroes from various battles. Statues are everywhere in Kazakhstan! We visited a 100 year old church and did some shopping as well. But in a city this size (1.75 million people), I’m sure there was a lot we didn’t see.

I wanted to add a little bit more about the Embassy. It was actually a very simple process. We filled out one more form once we got there, handed it in, paid for Ava’s visa, and then waited to be called. Once we were called, we talked to Jeff, and it took less than 10 minutes. He told us our paperwork looked good and was very friendly. He then handed us one packet that has all of the Kazakh documents relating to her adoption in Russian and English. Included in this are her medical history, original birth certificate, new birth certificate, adoption papers, and even the hand written letter written by her birth mother relinquishing her. It was odd looking at that form in particular. He also gave us a sealed packet to give to customs in the US when we first land at our port of entry. I think the only question we got was ‘how are you doing?’! Lola told us that though it’s easy for us, they are very picky about the paperwork that is supplied to them, so I guess the pre-work is very involved for our coordinators over here. Of course, there’s still more paperwork when we get home, but the fact that we can get home with our baby is fantastic.

Second Day Together!

This is from yesterday...we didn't get around to posting it last night.

Everything is going great! We were a little worried about what and how much to feed her, are we doing something wrong, etc. but we are so happy to be with her now and are treasuring all the little moments with her. We feel like we know her better now (and she’s more comfortable with us) after a day and a half then all three weeks we were here before. Ava has really taken to us. I don’t know if it’s that she remembers us or she is enjoying all the love and attention. She has also become very attached to me and wants me to hold her a lot. If Jason has her she looks for me. She is so good natured. She was all smiles yesterday! She laughed and played and took a nap for us. We are trying to follow her eating/napping schedule as best we can. We also have a wall in the apartment that is all mirrors and there are mirrors in the bedroom (it’s a real “love shack” in here). You can slide one of the mirrors over to reveal the doorway to the bedroom. Ava loves the mirror, she looks at herself and laughs, squeals and moves her arms and toys in front of the mirror and just stares at the movement. She is fascinated by it! It really keeps her occupied!
There is no crib or playpen in the apartment so we were unsure as to where to put her last night. We decided it would be best to have her sleep in between us with the end of the bed blocked off and a blanket on the floor in case she did make it off the end of the bed. We also put her in her sleep sack so she was less likely to move around (although we found out later she can move and crawl in that fine). At about 9:00pm she fell asleep (in mommy’s arms) and then we all went to bed. She slept well and only woke up two times (one time I think she was just scared and then when it was bottle time) and fell back asleep quickly. She then slept until 6:00am. I thought she did pretty well considering. For her naps we fold a blanket on the floor in the living room and put her on that with a blanket or sheet on top of her. She loves the pacifier and I think it calms her. They give the babies pacifiers at the baby house so if you are adopting you may want to bring some for when you pick up your baby. We do feel stuck in the apartment because we want to make everything as calm as possible for Ava. But it’s not too bad. We’re still getting over jet lag also and Jason is still very tired…which means I get to hold Ava more! We tried giving her a bath last night in the sink, we had toys for her and the camera ready to take some cute pictures…it lasted about 2 minutes. After the initial curiosity she cried and cried until I quickly removed her. Jason bundled her up in a towel and she calmed right down. We felt bad though! Today we went to the Embassy. They gave us Ava’s passport and visa and they told us she will be an American Citizen when we touch down in Boston! We had Ava bundled up in her snowsuit and Jason was carrying her in the baby carrier. It was the cutest sight! We then went to the mall and ate in the food court. They had pizza, Baskin Robins and a Dunkin Donuts. They also had an ice skating rink in the middle of the mall. Ava has learned some new things like kneeling, sucking her thumb and waving. She is also much happier and smiley than she ever was at the baby house. She is really the sweetest baby and we are so in love!!


Julia and Oliver’s parents picked them up as well. Julia has gained 2 pounds! She’s so cute and pudgy! Ava and Oliver look about the same to me. Oliver is still stealing Ava’s toys and is as cute as ever. Ava is the same size as when we left. We will fatten her up though!

Reunited

We have our Ava again, and it is wonderful. We got to Almaty at around 4:20 AM (flight from Frankfurt was delayed 4 hours), met Lola, got to our apartment around 5:30 AM, showered, and then tried to rest a bit. At about 8:20, we met the car downstairs, and sitting in the back seat was our Ava nicely bundled in her snowsuit. Amber quickly grabbed her, and it was just a wonderful moment that we’ve waited so long for. We gave her hugs and kisses and she was all smiles. It did seem like she remembered us – almost that she was surprised to see us!

We then went to the doctor’s office. They took her weight and height, a blood test for HIV, and then a general exam. The only problem is that she has a little head cold right now, so we’re going to try to help her feel as good as we can before the flight home. The pediatrician who brought her down on the train said she was perfect the whole way, staying quiet and very content for the 10 hour train ride. Hopefully she likes flying too. She’s been a lot more talkative so far than she was on our first trip, but other than that and being a little longer; she’s very much the same little girl we left – sweet, smart, and easy going. She still has only the one tooth, though it’s much more pronounced.

The apartment is pretty nice, though not exactly baby friendly. We have no crib, and there are a lot of low things for her to go for. The toilet is in its own room as is the shower with the only sink being in the kitchen, which is inconvenient to say the least. The décor again is a bit odd, just haphazard like Karaganda. The grocery store is a block and a half away, but it’s a long block, past their “White House” and uphill. Almaty has some really good architecture, and the drivers set a new standard for barely controlled lunacy.

Tomorrow at 3 we go to the US Embassy to finalize her US papers and get the US visa for her Kazakh passport. From what we’ve been told it’s a straightforward process, but it is all needed to get her to leave the country. She’s our child officially to Kazakhstan, now the US has to agree. According to our plan, after that Friday & Saturday will be leisurely days getting to know our baby and her getting to know us, then a long trip home with our Ava.

Internet access so far has been a little problematic, so I’m not sure how many updates we will have this trip, but here are a few new pictures:

New Ava Pictures

"I heard Mommy and Daddy are coming to get me!"

Ava with her caregivers

We saw these new pictures yesterday on the Boykin's blog. One more day to go!

Two More Days!!

Only two more days until we leave! We leave Mon. at 12:30pm and get to Almaty Wed. at 12:45am. We will be brought to our apartment and will get a couple hours of sleep (if we can) and then meet Ava at 7:00am Wed. morning!!

Traveling will not be fun but seeing Ava again and taking her with us will be wonderful!

More Pictures and Return Dates!

We are leaving the 26th to go back and pick up Ava and we will be home on Dec. 2nd!

I also received two more pictures of our baby girl and here's what they said about her:

"Ava loves to cruise around in that scooter-she's fast! She usually greets us at the door when we come in- she's usually standing up in the big crib with a big smile on her face! We are giving her love and attention every day while you are away!"

Here are the pictures: She is with her friend Kyle who is being adopted by the above mentioned family.

Spies at the Baby House

I am following two blogs from couples who are in Kazakhstan now at the same baby house Ava is from. They are both adopting babies from Ava's room too!! So of course I frantically e-mailed them hoping to get information and/or pictures from them. They both e-mailed me back and we have 3 new pictures of Ava since we left!! They (the couples not the caregivers) also said they are calling her Ava for us so she remembers her name. They said she is doing good, she seems healthy and happy! We are so thrilled to see her little face and know that she is well.
This is the link to one blog http://boykinfamilyadoption.spaces.live.com./ the other one is private.

This is what they said about her:

"Ava is doing wonderfully!! She smiles every time we come in, and lots of times she is standing on her own in the big crib in the play room. We always try to give her attention when we see her- it is so cute how she waves!"

"I do see Ava everyday and she is so beautiful. I recognized her the minute I saw her, and so did my husband. The last two evening visits Ava has come over to us while we were feeding Nick. I laugh and tell Brent that she wants to help us. She is very sociable and sweet. I always speak to her and call her Ava when I see her."

Here are the pictures:

Google Earth, etc.

I thought some of you out there might find this interesting. I had a lot of fun looking at Kazakhstan with Google Earth before we went, and thought that perhaps some of you might like to see where exactly these places are. So first off, you need to have Google Earth installed. You can get it for free here.
Next, you can download these 3 "placemark" files to your computer.

• First the Shapagat Orphanage.
• Next the airport we flew in to. When we flew out, I saw 9 employees in the whole building, and ours was the only airplane there!!
• Last, here is the apartment we stayed at.

Finally, in Google Earth, you can choose "File" then "Open", then open each of the 3 files above. Google Earth will show you the locations. Enjoy! Around the apartment in particular there are a lot of pictures of the region including buildings and the street we stayed on.
Our travel time from apartment to home on our return trip was 40 hours! I had thought I would be accomplishing a lot more at home after the return, but this jet lag isn't fun. Oddly I didn't notice any jet lag on the trip out, but the return is another thing entirely. I hope our layovers on the way back on our second trip with Ava are much shorter.

We are Home!

We made it safely home last night and into our nice soft bed! We are still tired but haven't been able to sleep that much...I guess it's jet lag. We are enjoying drinking from the faucet and showering again! We miss Ava, of course, but we know she is ours now and it's only a matter of weeks before we can go get her. We came home to a congratulations sign with balloons and framed pictures of Ava! It was so sweet! Thank you Lisa and Harm!! We can now see her little face when walking around the house.

We probably wont be posting much now that we're home but we will put updates when we find out more about the second trip.

Proud Parents!

We went to court today, and we were approved!!!!! Ava is officially ours (technically she will be after the governments 15 day waiting period, but that’s just a formality) and we are thrilled. The most beautiful little person I could ever have imagined will be home with us in 3-4 weeks. She’s very excited to meet you all and to get to see her new home. It’s kind of a mixed emotion time for us right now. The official part is done and she’s ours which is wonderful, but we’re also only seeing her for a few more hours today and then we must leave, which is very sad. At least I hope we will leave. A rather dense fog has just settled on the city, so we’re all kind of hoping our flight to Almaty is ok.

-Jason

After court we had a party at the orphanage with our group, the translator, the director of the orphanage and the babies’ pediatrician. We had juices, meats (including horse meat), cheeses, cake, candies and tea. You can ask Jason about the horse meat…I couldn’t eat it! Anyway, it was very nice and we gave them gifts afterwards. We are truly grateful to all the people who have helped us get our Ava that we were happy to give them the gifts we brought. We have one more visit today at 4:00pm and then we have to say goodbye. We will bring lots of tissues with us. We also bring gifts for the caregivers and give them cakes to have on their breaks. We are so relieved to have court over and be officially Ava’s parents! What a strange feeling this is…we are no longer a couple we are now a family!

-Amber

Interesting Day

Yesterday we had a wonderful visit with our Ava in the morning. She was smiling, playing, even squeaking a bit today. She is so intent on exploring everything in the room every day. If she sees other toys, she must check them out. If she sees other people come in, she watches them to make sure they are ok. But she still looks for us the most, and seems more and more relaxed with us each time we are with her. She also enjoyed shaking off little cups we put on her little head.

We are both very sad that there will only be 2 more visits with her before we start the trip home.

The interesting part of the day started at 3 when we had our meeting with the MOE. There were 2 people asking questions, the 2 of us, and our Coordinator in the room. The first question was “What is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?” to which I asked, “What do you mean; an African swallow or a European swallow?” (this was not really asked - it is merely a meager attempt at being funny!) It all went downhill from there, but we still got the ok, or so we think. Actually, the questions were different for all 3 families, and some were a little surprising, but nothing too strange and we did ok. In fact, we didn’t realize it was over until Larissa told us that it was time to go. Apparently they tell you if they find something wrong or don’t like the answers, and we heard none of that, so our first meeting has been a success. Meeting 2, in court with a judge, will be Tuesday at 9 AM. Then we have a party at the orphanage (assuming all goes ok), another visit, a brief break, and then it’s on to the airport to begin the trip home.

One last thing is that the phone line in our apartment is no longer working correctly, so this may be the last update for a few days. That’s also why there are no pictures. Sorry!!!

Our Sleepy Ava

Today we went to the baby house for our visit. They seem to be getting shorter every day. She did have a little tumble when she was pulling herself up on the chairs and cried for about a minute but I picked her up and she quickly stopped crying and wanted to play more. She is such a good natured baby! After she tired herself out playing she fell asleep in my arms. It was so sweet to see her little face so content and still. Although, she had to see what was going on in the room up until the very last minute before she fell asleep, that’s why she’s facing out. She has only fallen asleep for us twice, once for Jason and now for me. :)

After that, we went to the notary and signed about nine documents for court. Then we walked to the store, relaxed and went out to dinner at the Rainbow restaurant. They have an English menu, but only one, so five people had to share the menu. It worked out and the food was excellent. I had chicken with vegetables in a paper-thin omelet and rice, the seasonings were great. Jason had a beef dish with spices in a cream-type sauce and rice. We also ordered a $30 bottle of wine that tasted like it was worth about $5. Although, it did start to taste better the more we drank! Then, before we left two people started to sing on a small stage. It was Karaoke but they were obviously hired to sing. They were really good!
Here are some pictures from our visit with Ava.

A foreboding day

The daredevil within Ava was unleashed today. It was a calm day, like most any other day. We sat on the small chairs in the playroom, Ava on my lap facing me. I was holding her sides and we were playing a little. Suddenly, she flung herself backwards and hung upside down off the end of my knees – and loved it. She would stay for a while, I’d pull her up, and then down she’d go again much to her delight and her mommy’s terror. She likes being upside down. My personal theory is that the extra blood to the brain, carrying extra oxygen, is going to make her even more intelligent than she already is.

As if that wasn’t enough, after pulling herself up on the little chairs, she proceeded to take a few little steps of her own, walking down the line of chairs in search of the camera. She made her way down, got the camera, and gave it a nice little bang like she does all her other toys. She even tried to pull herself up onto the chairs (no success fortunately). I am going to be doing nonstop baby proofing in between trips I think.

Today the little Ava wanted to play, crawl, climb, and explore until she tired herself out. Then she was very content to relax in her mother’s arms.

The thought of leaving her (which is 4 days away!) is getting even more unpleasant to think about. Hopefully we will only have a few weeks between though, and she will be home and meeting all of you soon.

After our visit this morning, we went to the museum we discovered on a long walk yesterday. The displays were in Russian and Kazakh mostly, but there were a few captions in English so we learned a little. It was a very interesting place though. I took a few pictures, then got yelled at, so we don’t have much to show for it except the few shots we got. Then we went to a place in the City Mall that serves brewed coffee!!! I got an espresso drink and was very very happy. We have no idea what Amber got, because it wasn’t what she ordered, but it was good too.

Lastly, our Ava discovered sticking her tongue out.

Not Much to Report

Today was a holiday, Republic Day, so we did not have our visit with Ava. But because we had today off we get to visit her Sunday. We just hung around the apartment then went for a 2 hour walk. We decided to walk down some streets we hadn’t been on before. We found a museum that was closed and that’s about all. It started to snow and was very cold out. Then we got together with the other families and just relaxed for a couple of hours. That’s about all for today. Hope we will have a more interesting post for you tomorrow!

Happy Girl (And Parents)

Ava was so happy today! She was all smiles most of the morning! We absolutely LOVED that!! Of course we couldn’t get many pictures of her smiling but we enjoyed it! We dressed her in an ‘I love daddy’ shirt (we need an ‘I love mommy’ one next) and some blue pants!

We can change her but then we have to put her original clothes back on when we give her back. She is very squirmy but seems to like us fussing with her and changing her, if it doesn’t interfere with chewing on something. Her clothes she has on are usually cute though. We found out nap time is 11:00am and we can see her getting tired at that time, rubbing her eyes and yawning. We love the yawns! She also didn’t want to be put down, every time I put her down she whimpered until I picked her up again. I know I’m creating a monster! Also, today it is cold and snowing very lightly today. But it’s mostly melting as it hits the ground.

I wanted to respond to some comments also. Ava liked her snowsuit even though she was making a funny face in the picture. When I held her up in it, everyone was looking at her saying how cute she is and she loved that! She likes attention!! Heather, I wanted to tell you, I would buy the snowsuit for $16! That’s a deal. You can pack it in a space bag to save some space. I love the travel space bags! We brought some 6-9 month clothing and she fits in most good. Some things are a little big. She’s one of the smallest babies we saw. Most of the babies we were shown are probably wearing 9-12 or 12 month clothes.

Here is the video Jason promised. It’s from a few days ago. Look at how high the pants are! That outfit was way too big so they tucked the shirt in as you can see! She’s even cute in that though!

For those travelling soon

So if you are coming to Karaganda soon here are some things that will hopefully be helpful. It is getting cold outside; you will want a hat, scarf, and gloves. It is warm in the apartments. Some have thermostats and valves on the radiators, but ours doesn’t. Windows regulate the temperature for us. The baby house is hot too, so prepare to be warm there. And they want you to take your shoes off, but if you bring slippers or crocs you can wear them inside. Food is good, and not real expensive, though nicer restaurants compare w/ American restaurants. Clothes and nice jewelry is expensive. We’ve been buying 8 liter jugs of bottled water for about $1.40 US and staying healthy doing so. It looks like the water and electricity issues are behind us now, but a small flashlight is not a bad idea, and you should be prepared for slightly brown hot water. We have been told that it’s just rust in the water though. Air Astana for flights from Almaty to Karaganda will charge you for checked baggage in excess of 44lb per person. I want to say the overage is about $1.50 per pound above that if I remember correctly. We paid.

Bring gifts from home if you can, as that type of thing is definitely cheaper there. Watches, wallets, costume jewelry, ect that you can get for $10-$15 are more like $20-$3o here! Baby clothes and toys are a lot more expensive, no sales racks here (where we are anyway)! We bought one long sleeve onesie for $10. Also, snow suits are about $40 and higher. If you are in an apartment, pretty much everything you need is walking distance… groceries, souvenirs, mall, restaurants, park, etc. As for hotels, we haven’t been able to get a lot of info on them. I guess there are 2 that people will stay at. One is kind of isolated, the other not so much, but we are fairly sure that you control your own heat there at least. Regular brand cleaning supplies (Tide laundry soap, ect.), toiletries (Old Spice deodorant, Pantene shampoo, ect), and soft TP, tissues and paper towels are easy to get at the grocery we went to, and for about the same price as home as well.

There are things you can’t get. Peanut butter for one. Things do change quickly and you have to just kind of roll with it. We didn’t expect our visits to be cut in half, but they were, and new families are experiencing the same thing so far. Most people will work with you if you don’t speak Russian, but practice charades, and get used to pointing and indicating quantities with your fingers. Also, a phrase book is wonderful for pointing to words and numbers. Be prepared for some people to be less than happy to be talking to foreigners. This has been the exception rather than the rule for us though. Some people just laugh, but most people are very nice – especially when you are buying from them. You will find a fair amount of people speak English somewhat though, and it is remarkable how wonderful that feels! Books, DVD’s, playing cards, are all good too, because the only thing we’ve found in English on TV is a brief CaspioNet Newscast from 9-10 AM And some music videos. Most channels are in Russian or overdubbed, and there are no subtitles.

Also, if you want to fit in here wear nice clothes! People dress nice here and most women have nice high heel boots and pretty coats, hats, gloves and scarves. We feel like bums walking around town because we brought more casual, comfortable clothes. Coats are very expensive here too so I would bring one if possible. And lastly, dial-up is slow (in case you’ve forgotten), and you use phone cards for it. The cost has been about $1.25/hour.

More Ava content - including a video - coming soon!

Fashion Show

Yesterday we finished up shopping for the baby bag we need to leave for the escort who will bring Ava to Almaty to meet us on our second trip. They take them from Karaganda to Almaty via train, which is something like a 16 hour trip, so it’s about 2 days worth of clothes, plus a snowsuit that we have to pack. Fortunately Amber brought stuff from home, so we didn’t have to buy much. The baby clothes we found here aren’t real cheap. So today she got to try her modeling career. First, the snowsuit. She actually seemed to like it even though it’s a bit too big for her

Next we had to take her layers off to try on the next outfits, so here are her adorable little baby legs.

Next we have a nice yellow ensemble that was a very sweet gift from some very nice people. Ava liked it so much she decided to applaud herself.

Lastly we see a very cute pink outfit that her mother picked out for her. What a beauty.

She squirmed a little bit at being changed so much, but she did seem to enjoy the attention quite a bit too. It was a pretty quiet visit after the excitement of clothes. Her one tooth is coming in very well, and it looks like more will be here shortly. She actually took a few sort-of-steps while holding herself up on the small chairs in the room! All in the name of getting to a toy so she can hear the kind of noise it makes when you bang it on something. I am hoping I have a drummer in the family. We actually got a pretty nice shot of us with the other families we’ve been traveling with. So here’s Christine and Oliver (8 months), Jason & Ella (2 yrs - adopted last year), Amber and Ava, Rich, and Beth and Julia (almost 7 months).

What a smile

Our little one had quite the smile today once we went in to her room this morning and she saw Amber. Then she looked for me, saw me, smiled again, and looked very contented. We had a nice visit with her, but she was a little tired. Apparently 11 AM is her normal nap time, so she was pretty calm. She was very happy to be held today. She refuses to fall asleep in the play room as there is just too much going on. I’ve decided that Oliver is her nemesis (or boyfriend). If he has a toy, she wants it and vice versa. They are from the same room, so they are familiar with each other and are only 2 weeks apart in age. Watching her interact with the other little ones is really cute. Her eyes still follow us around the room. It’s neat that in the brief minutes we have with her and with the normal chaos of the playroom, she still picks out her mommy and daddy quite well. Once we are both near her, she tends to look around more.

There were some new French families last week and a new Spanish family today. The new Spanish family adopted one of our favorite little guys from Ava’s room. He would always come over in his walker and watch us feed Ava. It is great to see all the babies finding their families. We found out today too that we won’t see Ava on Thursday, as it’s a holiday, but instead we get to see her on Sunday, so it evens out. It’s pretty hard to believe that in 8 days we’ll be in court and then boarding Air Astana for the start of our trip home.

The weather’s gotten a little colder with highs in the 40’s and it’s been overcast for a few days. We have been precipitation free except for a few sprinkles of rain, though the forecast is predicting snow. Perhaps the weathermen here are as bad as the weathermen at home? Time will tell. Despite the cold outside, our apartment is at a steady 80 degrees. The heat is on (city controlled steam radiators), and we can find no way of regulating it. So our windows are open as much as possible to keep it reasonable.

Here’s the Ava pictures…

That's Oliver reaching for the toy Ava has. Just another day of fun!!

Sunday in Kaz

Today is our day without Ava. We were very lazy today, just read, slept, ate and watched TV until it was time to go to the circus at 3:30. The circus had acrobats, trapeze artists, animal shows and a clown. It was a lot of fun! It was nice to have something fun to do instead of sitting around the house. We went to dinner at a Turkish restaurant after and Jason got what he thought was beef but it was lamb and it was the worst lamb we’ve ever tried. He couldn’t eat it and he can eat just about anything! While I’m on the subject of food, we found mini pizzas at the store yesterday and they were really good. Also, the store has Lays potato chips, Coke, Pepsi, Sprite and Cadburys Chocolate. No ice cream at the store but they have street venders that sell Good-Humor type bars. Jason has had a few of the local beers and he thought they were pretty good.
Yesterday our visit with Ava went good but it was way to short as usual. She really is not smiley all the time; we just like to post those pictures because they are our favorites. She makes us work hard to get those laughs and smiles. Most of the time she wants to crawl, especially since she is good at it now. Also, she wants to play with the toys we bring and find things to pull herself up on. She does like us to walk around holding her too, which we love, of course.
We also wanted to thank everyone for the wonderful comments, we love to check the blog to see if we’ve gotten more! It makes us happy to know that people are following along in this adventure with us! Here are a few pictures from yesterdays visit.

Our precious little visits

So when we arrive at the baby house and make our way to Ava’s room, we usually find her in a big play crib or in a walker. She sees whichever one of us walks in first (we try to take turns), then looks over our shoulder for the other one of us, and then gets this ‘they’re back again?!’ sort of look on her face, then we pick her up and she is all smiles. I really wish we had the 2 visits a day as I think she would get to know us better, but hopefully this will make our few weeks away from her less traumatic. The other families we are with adopted from Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan before so they’ve been very helpful to us new parents. They say that the babies really start to bond when you get them out of the orphanage and you are their sole caretaker since they’ve never seen one person for that long of a stretch before. The 30 hour trip home helps especially.

Since we only have the one visit, we have a lot of downtime now. We spend our days wandering the streets of Karaganda, taking it all in. When we’re at the apartment we read, watch TV in a foreign language, or watch DVD’s (though we’ve only watched two so far). Dishes, laundry, and grocery shopping all take up time too. It seems like we are both sleeping more too, perhaps just because we can, or maybe just because we’re bored.

We found out today that the gifts we bought for a lot of the people we are helping here were good. They got the stamp of approval which is a big relief. We also found out a little bit more about our court date. We will go to court on the 30^th and the local Ministry of Education a few days before, and get interviewed by both to make it official. We’ve been told the court visit should only take 15 minutes or so, and the MOE about the same I think. I found out a little bit more about what we have to talk about too. Things like why we are adopting, do I make enough money, do we own a house, will Ava have her own room etc. will be asked. Then Larissa said that we were an ‘easy case’, not much to worry about, which made us both feel a lot better. I guess families that have a lot of kids already, or don’t own a house have to answer more questions. As long as they don’t look at Shawn’s comments on the blog, we should be fine.

The other day we went around the corner from our apartment to the central park of the city, which was HUGE, complete with a pond, amusement park rides, little kid play houses, and interesting statues. It was very nice and a lot of people were walking around and enjoying the day, complete with their coats on in the 65 degree weather. I got some strange looks for not having a jacket on and (gasp) a short sleeve shirt! We took about 100 pictures in the park alone.

Today we will go grocery shopping, rest, spend our precious 2 hours with Ava, eat dinner and call it a day. Here’s some more Ava pictures from yesterdays visit.