Official Days 8 & 9

Yesterday's visit with Kathryn was great. She was alert and playful. She "talked" alot and we could tell she was really enjoying the visit. She continues to get stronger. We are trying to do all the right things to help her build her strength including having her spend time on her tummy, stretching and putting weight on her legs. She is kicking and moving her arms more freely each day. She is even finding the way for her hand to her mouth. She loves to suck on her index finger!

Today was a very quiet visit. Just when we thougtht she was feeling better, she was not today. She was crying when we got there. She was warm and fussy. She was still adorable! It was just a different side we had not seen over the past week. Kathryn really just wanted to be cuddled and held. So of course, we obliged. She slept on and off for most of the visit. We were able to get a few smiles out of her. Not a big picture day - too busy holding her. Hopefully she will feel better tomorrow.

During our visit we took the opportunity to talk to Inna, our interpreter about a few things. We asked for some ideas for gifts for the doctors and then she also filled us in on some of the court proceedings. There is specific information that we need to put into our speech that will be given on the day we go to court on our second visit. They expect the father to do most of the speaking, so Dave is beginning to work on the speech. I will only say a few words unless they ask me any specific questions. Can't wait for this day to come!!

I finally decided to leave some of the toys in her room, rather than carrying them back and forth each day. She has her blanket, links and bunny in her crib already. The other things I just left in the closet. Yesterday we found out her nickname in the hospital has been "princess frog". One of the toys we have is a frog, so Inna thought that was quite appropriate. Frog in Russian is "лягушка" pronounced "lyaGOOSHka". Kathryn just smiles when we say it - it is a familiar word to her.

Winter is setting in here. We are preparing ourselves for the cold we will experience on our second trip. On Sunday am it was 32 degrees and yesterday was in the 40's. Today is a beautiful sunny day - just cold. We spent time after our visit to do some grocery shopping and go to the green market. We will be doing some additional shopping in the next couple of days to get the additional gifts we need for the caregivers and try to find a warm snowsuit for Kathryn for our second trip. I also hope to find a souvenir book of Kokshetau to have as a keepsake.

We miss everyone at home. We again want to thank everyone who is checking in with the boys and willing to help in any way they can! We could not do this without each of you!

Tomorrow we will post on our brief sightseeing trip around town, hope you enjoy.

Official Days 6 & 7

Well, we are halfway through our required bonding time, and halfway through our trip as well. One week from tomorrow we will file our petition to the court as a formal request to adopt Kathryn. We will then begin the travel process back home while we await our day in court. Although our visits seem repetitive at times looking at the same plain four walls, Kathryn always rewards us with smiles and an abject joy to see us when she opens those big brown eyes from her nap. Our time with her is never too long. Each day we see improved abilities in arm and leg movement. We continue to work on other exercises to improve her strength to hold her head up and balance in a sitting position, which she currently does only in a semi recumbant position leaning up against one of us.

Kathryn stayed awake most of the visit today until our last 30 minutes together. All the stimulation is exhausting. I think she mostly enjoys the time we spend rubbing her down with lotion and cleaning her up as well as just snuggling in our arms. She lies in our arms and stares herself off to sleep. Just wait till she gets home and has all the excitement of having 3 brothers. She will thrive on all the attention!

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.

Life here in Kaz

Life is pretty quiet here. We are still not fully adjusted to life 10 hours ahead of FL. We do, however, take a nap in the afternoons when we are tired - not something we are used to. Here is a picture of our cottage. We stay in the one on the right.

In the evenings we have been losing our internet connection. They say it is because everyone gets home from school and work and logs on, so it is flooded with activity, but who really knows??? So, we have watched one Bourne movie each of the past 3 nights - always good entertainment. Our cottage mates are also Bourne fans.

Mona, one of our cottage mates, and I have tried to be creative at night with dinners. Last night we made fajitas by improvising with great Kazakh bread for tortillas. When buying meat, we pray we end up with beef - I think we did. The national dish in Kaz is horse, but I'm not willing to go there.... We have also made chili - or more like a goulasch - which was good. They have the best dumplings here with cabbage and mushrooms which we had the other night. We bought another pack to cook because we liked them so much. So, needless to say, we are not starving here. We have tried the chocolate which is great. The yogurt is delicious! We bought some fruit yesterday and the apples are wonderful. They say "apples are from Kazakhstan".

Tonight we are celebrating with our cottage mates. They had their court date today and officially became parents of a 4 year old boy! We are so excited for them and are looking forward to our day in court!

We are really enjoying our time with Kathryn and passing the time between visits.

Official Bonding Day #3

After days of stretching and working out Kathryn's muscles, she is now beginning to kick her legs on her own. She is getting stronger each day. She is starting to reach for things using her gross motor skills and she kick her legs when she is happy.

Today we saw her cry for the first time. She was drinking her bottle, more like gulping, and when we would take it away for her to catch her breath, she started to cry. It is amazing how she drinks her bottle, I don't know that any words can really explain it. She gulps and swallows and you can hear it dumping into her tummy. Of course she swallows tons of air! She would make her brothers proud with the burp that follows :-) Here is a picture of the Kazakh bottle she drinks from. Nothing like the ones we see now-a-days with the features to minimize air flow into the bottle.

The translator of our cottage mates, Makhabbat, told me today what they say about raising their children . . . "from 0-3 yrs old they treat them like kings (take care of them and give them all they need, from 3-7 they treat them like 'slaves' (teach them everything they can) and from 7 on they are your friends". We will provide all that Kathryn needs, teach her all we can and will be her friend when she is old enough!

Here We Are...

It's officially Day 2 of our bonding period. Initially we thought we were two days ahead of schedule and started our bonding on Sat, but that is not the case and we are right on schedule. We are enjoying the time. Our visits go by so quickly and it is getting harder each day to leave her at the end of the visit. She is starting to kick her legs and sort of bats her hands at times. I don't remember seeing her kick at all in the first few days. We spend time stretching her every day. I also massage her when we first get there while I change her clothes. I think this is her favorite time. She just smiles and starts talking to us. She spends some time on the floor on her tummy before she gets her bottle. We are hoping this will help her build some strength in her arms and neck. She is still coughing and congested, but seems better than yesterday. Once again, she fell asleep in Daddy's arms, but was awake when it was time for us to go. We kept kissing on her, we did not want to leave.

After the visit, we went to the Green Market. What an interesting place. Inside there all hundreds of booths. There are vegetables, fruit, cheese, milk products , breads and half the booths are meats. All the meets are layed out, many are fresh cuts of meet and others are fresh whole meats. Very interesting! They also sell clothes and other goods there. Maybe we will have a chance to get some pictures at some point. We can't take pictures AND keep a low profile.

Thinking of Home

Just sitting here having thoughts of home. It was almost a week ago that we were having our last day of work and getting ready to take the Boys out to our Family Night dinner. Hard to believe how quick a week goes. It is so great to be able to have internet access and cell phones to keep in touch with everyone. We look forward each day to checking emails and catching up with everyone.

I was also thinking today about Kathryn's room. Well soon to be room. She will stay with us in our room for a while till her room is built. I know this is the ongoing question, where is Kathryn going to sleep in our 3 bedroom house? We have just about decided to build a room in our living room for her. This is the best option so that she can have a room outside of ours and we still have plenty of room in the house with the family room. We rarely use the living room anyhow. This is a picture of the crib set we picked out for her room. No, her room won't look exactly like that but... It is pretty in pink just like Kathryn. Her great grandparents gave us the bumber, skirt and sheets at the Bon Voyage party last weekend. Can't wait to put the crib together and get her home.

Our thoughts and love go out to everyone at home. We have felt the prayers and love sent with us the whole time we've been here. There are so many people who have been a part of making this possible that I won't even try to start naming you - if you are reading this you are one of them. Our thoughts and hearts are at home with you all while we spend this time with our new daughter. This bonding time is so important in the journey of adoption.

Capturing our Hearts

Today was a little quieter than the past two day's visits. Kathryn wasn't feeling very well today. She has quite the cough. From what we have read for the past year on many blogs, these colds are very common. It was so hard not be able to just give her some medicine, though we were told she is getting cold medicine. They told us "there are lots of viruses around". Even with the cold, she was not fussy, just tired.

We still got several smiles and managed to stretch her out a little. She was definitely happier being held! This is just fine with us for now! When we got there, once again she was just waking up. She looked right up at us and gave us a big Kathryn Smile! Of course, that grabbed our hearts right away. It occurred to us while Dave was giving her the bottle today, that he was the first man to feed her the bottle! That was special for Daddy. You can already tell she has captivated Daddy' heart and will be Daddy's little girl.

We started taking our MP3 player and the speakers with us and playing some nice soft music. Today was Pachabel Canon with ocean background. She seems to like it and it gives some background music to an otherwise pretty quiet room.
Speaking of technology... wow life is not bad here since we have so much technology. Dave and I sit and watch a few episodes of Seinfeld or Frasier when we can't sleep - like at 4am this morning. We play on the internet, look up local news, and right now I'm also listening to Z88.3 compliments of zradio online. There is local free wifi, but we do not use if for security reasons. We have DSL wireless access in the cottage for a fee. We have settled into a routine after our visits of doing some daily shopping for whatever we need, having lunch, internet time, nap and then get dinner ready, visit with our cottage mates, more internet and reading. It is pretty quiet, but the time passes. Nothing to complain about because the cottage is very comfortable.

We enjoy starting our days by talking to the Boys at home. We miss them so much! They are doing well. We missed talking to Michael this morning as he was at Brian's house. Thanks to all our friends and family that are taking care of and checking in on the boys. We are so blessed to have such wonderful people in our lives.

Sleep and Smiles for our Second visit

We are getting into a routine here, which happened faster than we had anticipated. It's amazing what a good night's sleep will do. We went to see Kathryn a little after 1000 wondering what her reaction would be to us today. Maybe yesterday was a fluke. She proved us wrong. When we arrived she was sound asleep in her crib and did not want to disturb her. She awoke about 15 minutes later, turned her head and smiled at us. The time flew by and before we knew it it was time to leave. She continues to be semmingly intrigued by us. We played, stretched her out, fed her another bottle and she fell asleep just before we left. She is easy going and playful. We will keep working on getting her strength increased a little at a time.

Life here is fairly quiet for us. Not in the sense that there are no kids, but in that we don't have the constant input of things like work, television, driving. Honestly, I don't miss the television much at all. Yesterday, after our visit with Kathryn our interpretor, Inna, took us to the grocery store for a few things. I'm a little rusty on my Cyrillic so I was happy to have her help in selecting the correct tortellini, the one with cabbage and mushrooms, and not horse meat. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

On that note, Karie and our other house mates went to the store to purchase some beef to go in the chili we were making for dinner. To get their point across in making sure they were getting what they wanted, they were "mooing" at the lady behind the counter. She laughed and said "Da"(yes). The chili turned out pretty good, more like a Gulasch though. Other than a couple trips to the store, we have not ventured out. It really isn't that cold to be outside during the day. It's the fact that you cannot blend in anywhere. Most people are very nice, but I would rather not have the attention. We are trying to keep a low profile and all we have to do is speak English and they know who we are. We will venture out a little more in a few days to see what kinds of Kazak items we will want to take home.

How Beautiful…

How Beautiful…

What a great way to start our visit but to be greeted by a beautiful young lady! Kathryn. From the moment we entered her room and saw her she greeted us with a steady stare from those big brown eyes and sometimes a smile. But mostly a look of curiosity and a look of content just to be held. We were told that we would have two hours visit with her and that would be the norm for the duration of our visits. She is small for her age (a little over 6 months and 12 lbs. Not bad for a preemie) but is well proportioned, nourished, has big brown eyes, and a calm disposition. She is very expressive with looks of content, interest, and delight. She does seem to lack some muscle tone for this age like holding her head up unassisted. But I’m no expert. There is even a slight showing of dimples when she smiles. She is already a joy and we know she will be a blessed addition to our family. It seemed like we did a lot during our visit; she looked at us and cooed, played, napped, drank a bottle of formula (kifer actually, like a yogurt) in record time, about 8 oz. in <4min.>