Meetings with the Doctors

Well, we are definitely into the daily routine here. Our visits with Kathryn are going great. Today when we walked into the room, one of the caregivers was playing with her. She said Kathryn woke up and cried because she was used to waking up and having us there. She was in a very content mood. We did lots of stretching and tummy time today. She really likes it and is growing stronger by the day. Her grip in her right hand is much stronger now. When we are streching her legs, we can feel her pushing against them.

Over the past two days we were able to meet with both Dr. Natalia and Dr. Victoria. Dr. Natalia is the head pediatrician at the Maternity Hospital where Kathryn was born. Dr. Victoria is the head pediatrician at the Children's Hospital where Kathryn is now and has been since she was 3 months old. They were both very nice and informative. They both suggested we do massage and stretching with Kathryn and we explained that we been doing this since we got here. Dr. Natalia gave us an idea of some of the questions we would be asked in court. Mostly about already having 3 biological children and why would we want to adopt another one. Well, for us this is a simple answer - because our entire family loves Kathryn and she will bring a lot of love into our family.

Last night we took our first excursion on foot into the city of Kokshetau. It was a nice cool evening - not cold. We walked about 15 minutes to the Next Store to use the ATM ( in English), then another 5 minutes to the Tsum store and on to Pyramid for dinner. The Tsum store is an interesting department store. It has tons of small cubicle like stores. Each store has it's own specialty. There were coats, purses, toys, nicknacks, etc. Apparently many of the "designer" clothes stores are all knock-offs. We were there about 15 minutes and we were ready to head on to dinner. We had salad and pizza for dinner. It was pretty good. I ordered a Sprite to drink. It came in the same kind of plastic bottle we get at home, but when it was opened there wasn't any carbonation. It was still good - believe it or not. I had not had a soda since we left Fl over a week ago.

Tomorrow we will take a driving tour around town with Inna, our interpreter, and Yuri, our driver. We hope to take tons of photos of the city as a keepsake for Kathryn.