Anthony's Room.

Notice Alex's hair?... he needs to come home so I can buzz it again...
This is priceless! You see Alex holding down Anthony's hand? He was keeping him from grabbing daddy's notes. I am ready for my horrible passport photo!
You can see my little pipsqueak legs!

Sleeping... and still sucking... Out cold!
Really out cold!
Still sleeping, all the way in, upstairs and through several doors...
The playroom for his group which have typically been babies from 5-10 months.... so he should have been in here for 2 months already.
Large playpen and little playpen. As well as the door into the bedroom!

Putting our sleeping angel down into HIS bed...
The scared wake-up!
The mad screaming fit!
Caregiver to the rescue with a bottle of something!
His bed is along the interior wall... next to the playroom. We were thinking the empty bed in the front might have been Askhat's!

Playing with stacking cups... before the screaming fit!

what a mess!

The Judge's Son (day13)

Today was fun… we found out when we have pre-court! Olga told us we have pre-court on Monday at 10am! Woohoo! Maybe that means we will have court on Tuesday, but maybe Wednesday… we’ll see. The judge had a favor to ask of us… his son is leaving for London this fall to study English and he wanted him to come by the babyhouse today and chat with us and practice his English! We thought it was so funny… we were given a special chance to “brown nose!” It should be interesting…

Olga had Anthony’s book of questions, so I read that on the way to the babyhouse… there was some interesting stuff in there as well as his birth mother’s name! His schedule and what he eats and just some stuff about his baby life.

When we got to the babyhouse, Anthony was not in his room so we found him outside with his caregivers… covered from head to toe all in white! No wonder he is so pale, he doesn’t get any sunshine!! All the covered floors were in use, so we went inside… oh my, was it hot in there! Anthony could “crawl” around a bunch in there and check out all kinds of stuff! I check with Olga on the pictures we should bring to court… we need the ones that make Anthony look the worst… basically it pleads the case that he is unhealthy and unhappy and needs to leave the babyhouse as soon as possible… It was hard to pick out unhealthy looking ones, but I found a couple and there are several where he is grumpy looking… then a family picture, where Anthony is definitely looking grumpy… The judge will attach these to Anthony’s file as well as a photo of our house and the baby’s room. Then I showed her the excel program that Jerry made for our garden plan… I showed her the different type of tomatoes and other plants we are growing… She told us that they have a small seed store here in town and she will take us there on Sunday after our afternoon visit. She also asked if we could send her some seeds from our collection. I promised that I would send some over… maybe with a near future family. She was telling me about a tomato that they have that has a really long shelf life! Until January!!! I can hardly believe that! That would be cool! She is going see if her mom has any seeds right now… :) I am pretty excited about the seed store!

On to Anthony… he explored quite a bit, and he can move pretty fast, dragging his little behind around on the floor! It’s hilarious! We were just so hot in there! If we held Anthony it was too hot… he was even sweating! We just played… pretty soon Alex pulls over the chair and says he wanted to “talk” to us! It was so cute!!! Then he and Jerry went on to have a little conversation that started like this… “Hi! I’m Alexander.” Jerry: “ so tell me about when you were a baby…” Alex: “I was in my room in the babyhouse” and it just continued!!! It was the cutest thing ever… Actually last night, late… while Luba was still here, I could tell Alex was still awake listening to us… so I went in to remind him to go to sleep… he was wide awake! He whispered, “mommy, I need to talk to you.” I could not resist… so I got him out of his crib and we laid down on the twin bed in there and we chatted for a few minutes… about home… he is missing home, too. We talked about the gardens and Tiger and Romeo and if the blueberries were ripe yet ad how tall his pole beans might be on his teepee in the back yard. He wants to get some shoes for Anthony so Anthony can go in his teepee with him. We talked about swimming in the pool when we get home and sleeping in his bed with Anthony in his bed across the room! I don’t remember what else we talked about… It was priceless!

There was NO falling asleep for Anthony today… he could hardly stand to have his eyes off of us for a moment! He was fussy when he wasn’t getting exactly what he wanted. Such a mess… so we just kept him moving!

After our visit we went to the grocery store. We needed toilet paper, diapers, bread, pierogis, eggs, garlic, water… stuff… this grocery is so nice… it is in a very large, new mall. There is even a parking garage, when you walk in you ride the flat escalator up a couple levels… you can take a grocery cart up these flat escalators! It’s very cool. The eggs I bought were in a plastic bag… I thought that was funny!!! We came home and Alex napped.

We went to the babyhouse and were determined that we were playing outside this afternoon. Alex watched vegietale and Anthony played with us… he was very vocal today!!! He said “dadadada” a little but mostly it was this funny whiny sounding “aaaaahhhhhhhh!” so we chatted with him! He had a lot to say today! He did NOT want to relax and lay back on us! No way!!! He was tired however! He seemed to be especially interested in his toes today… I don’t think he can normal reach his toes very easily… I can not bend his toes up and touch his nose for example… he just isn’t very flexible… but think it is the miotonic syndrome thing… he is so stiff… he seems to be getting more flexible though! So that was neat to see! I took a few more pictures of his and Alex’s feet together! My my my… I forgot how while he really is!!!! He has some new bug bites on his left little arm! Poor kid… I wonder what kind of bug is nibbling on him while we are not there! The bites stay around quite a while… that’s all I know! I photographed his rash on his head too… poor kid!

The son of our judge showed up. His name is Damir, and he is cute… probably around 19 or twenty. I forgot to take a picture of him… Maybe we will see him again… who knows! He asked about Anthony a bunch and about Alex… and then I think he said he has been in Astana for 2 years studying medicine. He is going to England to study English and take some more medical courses. He is hoping that he really learns English better there! I am sure he will… he said he was concerned about getting there and then finding a bunch of people who speak Russian! He said he didn’t want to go all the way there just to speak Russian all the time! He wants to hear English! He was very friendly and outgoing! We really enjoyed talk with him. Jerry asked him what sports he likes… he looked like he was into sports… we found out that he isn’t so much into sports like most boys… his dad is disappointed that he doesn’t like soccer like all the other boys… he likes them ok, but he prefers to play computer games and video games… then Jerry told him that he (Jerry) was into off-road racing and riding quads… His eyes lit up and he got so excited… go figure… our judge that we are going to sit in front of in a few days scared out of our minds… has a son that is really into riding “quadrocycles” So they talked excitedly about Baja 100 last year and we told him about getting Dust To Glory to watch sometime. He said he was definitely going to look for it… probably have to find it in England though in English… he told us that he did not take English in school but he learned it from watching English movies and playing his games that he does… he said when he was a kid… 12… the first quads came to Kazakhstan and he of course couldn’t afford one, because they were soooo expensive, but he worked and saved him money to buy a small one ad he rode that on a small track over and over and over! He just loves it!!! It was so cute to see him get so excited! Then Olga reminded us that we needed to go to meet the other Olga… Damir said he hoped to see us again someday… so I gave him my card and he could email us and maybe we will see him in England someday. Then he was quite interested in our Weed Free garden Bed business… so Jerry told him about that real quick and he thought that was pretty neat that we had a website and all. Just when we were getting into our cars, I realized we didn’t take a picture of us! Oh well… :)

We came home and Olga was waiting for us to go over Pre-court and court… It was long… we have a lot of stuff to memorize… we cannot take any notes in with us this time… Poor Jerry has to do most of the talking… we are scared!!! :) it will be fine I know, but we are still scared! Pre-court will be an hour. Court will last about 2 hours! *sigh* Pray for us!!! :)

Feet!

Our shoes while we visit. Just cute!!!
Just talking...
Brown and white!
Big and little!
Long little toes!
Heat rash!
TOES!!!!!
Bug bites!
Happy baby!

Countdown to Home! (day14)

So in two weeks from today we should be home!!! I really hope that we can stay on schedule! I am really ready to go home… this seems like the longest trip for some reason! And we travel all the time… maybe it is because we have been here before and we have explored most of the city… maybe it’s because it is summer and we don’t usually travel in summer… it is our busy season in the construction world! Plus our gardens are growing without us! That is one of my passions and I am missing it! I just want to get my baby and go home!! So the countdown starts…day 14… tomorrow will be day 13 and so on… :)

So we signed some more papers today and gave Olga our coordinator our tickets from flying to Uralsk, for the court to know that we did arrive the day we say we arrived! Tomorrow we should know our pre-court and court dates… Hopefully it is Monday and Tuesday! Then we can get Anthony Tuesday or Wednesday morning.

So today Jerry actually finally took the camera and thought he would play photographer! He took a class in high school, so he actually does know stuff… He just doesn’t use it much… plus he thinks bright sunlight is the best lighting… oh boy! *sigh* so after remembered the general rules of aperture and such… and I showed him how to change stuff on my camera… he took off…. I was frustrated by him as A LOT of his pictures were NOT crisp and clear… the lighting was good, but they were blurry!!! Those drive me nuts! Plus I was holding a pose and he would take two years to take the shot and then he just took one and it was blurry! Uuuuhhhh! Anyways he did get some amazing shots... basically I am a control freak… when it comes to my camera.

So Anthony and I sang songs and played baby “games.” I made him laugh. He felt the floor… then I took him away from it and he got mad and tried to start a fit!!! Then… Anthony got up on his knees… he was rocking back and forth like he was ready to crawl! It won’t be long now! It was so cute! Jerry got a couple pictures and I got some of it on video! We played some more and Alex came and smooched on Anthony… he wanted to hug on him a bit… and then he says, “I’m done… bye!” and off he goes! Then I was holding Anthony up and Jerry was taking pictures and all of a sudden Anthony got all relaxed and wanted to lay back in my arms… he immediately closed his eyes and fell asleep! Just like that! A couple minutes! I could not believe it! He snuggled right into me and away he went! He slept for probably 10 minutes and then Olga came to take him away… he woke up when she took him though… I asked her about yesterday… she said he woke up on the way to his room yesterday, but I bet he went right back to sleep! HE LIKES US!!!!!!!!!

We went and met Marina to give her the letters for Zhas Dauren, from the sponsor program with WPA! We met her at a building that is a gym… they started a new thing for the handicapped children in the city, focusing on the orphans. The kids can come there and play in the gym and they do crafts and stuff there! She gave us a letter to hand out to try to raise money for their project… Jerry gave her some money toward it all… We were the first people to give money… so everyone else local has given furniture or supplies. She was very excited and said thank you many times! She let me pick a beaded necklace that one of the kids had made. I chose a white, pearly colored one. They had a gym mat in there, so Jerry taught Alex how to do a somersault… after he showed him a cartwheel… Alex fall on his head when he tried it! We showed him a punching bag… we had talked about it recently so it was cool that we could show him what it was! There was a farmers market on the street where the gym is… But it was so hot today that we didn’t want to walk around there today! We went to Kamelot to have lunch… it was so hot we were sweating almost the whole way though lunch! Yuck! We walked to the apartment and we had a whole 15 minutes until Olga came with a different driver! Poor Misha was at the police station again! He has been there about 10 times since we were pulled over… his license is missing! The police who gave him the ticket was a police from a local village outside of town! The city of Uralsk had invited the village police in for some special thing… I don’t know… anyways, this officer took his license with him back to his village and no one’s seen it since! So we went to the babyhouse without our bag of toys and stuff, they were in the trunk of Misha’s car… no biggie really. Pretty soon Misha showed up with the stuff though… I forgot to ask if he had his license back yet… tomorrow!

We were playing on one of the covered floors with a rug and the kids came out, so we moved… We spotted the most beautiful little girl… but I could not get a sneak picture of here! I will keep trying! However we were told by the director not to take pictures of the kids… Doesn’t mean we are going to completely comply… I think it is more important for us to have picture of kids that lived with our kids! All these little kids are so cute and sweet! They watch us and play around, but mostly watch us! They were all out there in their little underwear… the boys wear girl ones too… poor boys! Some of the caregivers are nice and some are very short with the kids… I have seen a couple of the caregivers that just grab the kid by the arm and lift them up if they fall or they lift them over another kid and just kind of drop the kid on the floor... It’s not very loving… I just want to love the kids and teach them how a family is supposed to be! It is so sad that they are not available for adoption!!!! One little boy was very sad today… he would cry at every little thing… the caregiver dumped out the box of toys and he jumped a mile and started screaming! Poor little guy… and he was little… probably the size of a 12 month old… but probably at least two. Most of the kids are pretty small… maybe they are younger, but I am guessing they are undernourished some too! There are only 3 girls in there… there are probably a dozen boys! A couple of the boys are not well… they just lie on the floor and look around! So sad! We snuggled on Anthony and sneaked peaks at the other little kids! Pretty soon it was time to go… and just as we were getting ready to leave Alex’s old caregiver came out bringing babies out for some playtime… I gave her Alex’s book and asked her to write him another letter! She seemed very happy to! She is so sweet! I can’t wait to see what she writes to Alex!

We headed straight home afterwards, Luba was going to come over later. Jerry went to the bakery and bought some of those potato filled bread things… and some little cookies.

Luba came and brought her friend Helen and her younger sister! Her sister brought her 2 year old boy with her! So we played with him and Alex got a little jealous of him playing with our toys… but he wasn’t too bad! They left pretty soon, but it was so neat to meet her anyways! She was as cute as Luba! Helen has come with Luba every time… she translates for us! We talked about Luba’s plans for the summer and finding a job in Aksai. Luba wants to work in the big oil town that is maybe an hour away or so… the oil companies pay good supposedly. But the cost of living there is higher too… so who knows… Now Luba has a little part time job at a shop here in town, so she works there some… so that is good… I hope she finds something in her line of work soon!

Lots of Pictures!

Alex's old wing is on the left and Anthony's is on the right! Both on the Second Floor! We had some serious mommy time this morning... After 14 days, Jerry finally took the camera... he thought he was a hot shot though changing all the settings... So we got some really awesome ones and some really bad ones... those will not be posted!
Check out Alex's shoes! This is the way they go on quite frequently!
Scrunchy faces!
Trying to crawl... rocking back and forth... and making noises! He wants those stupid hardwood floor boards!
Alex wanted to *hug* Anthony!
ok... I look ridiculous, but he was smiling and laughing so... what are you gonna do!?
Singing the "Ants go Marching!"
I love this picture!!!

He fell asleep again! He wanted to just go to sleep!

Isn't that so precious!!!!?
Making faces!


Finally he looks at the camera!

Alex wanted to hold him...
Afternoon was daddy-time.

DAY 14!!!!!

Today I was given the BEST gift! Anthony fell asleep in my arms!!!! He was so precious, he just sucked on his little thumb and finally fell asleep… I am ahead of myself here…

We got up… blah blah blah…Today I took a shirt that I had bought for Alex and it never fit him because we could never get it over his head, so I was a bit worried it wouldn’t fir Anthony either, but I sent it in for him to wear today. He came out wearing it, so apparently there was no problem! He looked so cute in it too!!! He and daddy matched today! We played… Alex watched a little of a veggietale… showed Anthony… he was entranced! Then we played some more… Anthony loves that little octopus! It was the first toy I bought for Anthony!! He adores it! He chews on the little fish that hang from the bottom, and feel the little legs… we held him a lot and snuggled on him and smooched his cheeks!! Anthony’s other favorite thing to do is pull himself over to the hard wood floor under the awning… and then pounding on the boards! He likes to scratch his nails across the boards! It’s so funny! It is his obsession! We try to keep him on the sheet… we held him some more and let him chew on the vibrating teether… Today he actually got the da-da-da-da-da out! We were so excited… before we knew it he had to go back to his room!

We stopped at the atrium for lunch again and walked home, Alex took a nap and we checked our email and took care of some business!

Off we went to the babyhouse… We had to sign some documents for Olga the coordinator to file at the court tomorrow so we can get our court dates. Then… Shocker!!!! We played!!!! Actually, he started the time yawning… It was only his second yawn I have seen and I got it with the camera! Daddy held him a bunch at first today… Then we let him touch his favorite floor… he lounged on daddy for a bit, played with the octopus some more… then it was time to snuggle down on momma and relax before naptime… supposedly naptime is 4-6 in the afternoon… He tried to fuss a little, but we ignored it and I just held him… he was sucking on his little thumb… it probably took him 10 minutes though to fall though!!! Finally his little eyes kind of rolled back and his eyelids closed! He was still sucking though! Pretty soon, his hand fell out of his mouth and he was OUT!!!! It was most precious!!!!! It was awesome!!! It almost made me cry! He is comfortable enough to sleep in my arms!!!! That is amazing!!!!! Alex never even did that!!!! He slept for about 10 more minute and then Olga came to get him… she took him and I think he stayed asleep on the way in. It was wonderful! Is he ready for us? I am sure he is going to be very scared in a few days! But until then he will go on living in those 2 rooms upstairs in the babyhouse with these fun people who come to visit 2 times a day everyday! Poor kid… he has no idea what is going to happen!!!! He will like it though! He just needs some time! :) Oh!! It’s going to be so fun!!! So today was day 14!!! Like I let any of you forget that!!!! Olga will file our papers in the court tomorrow! She is going to ask for pre-court on Monday and Court on Tuesday! I hope we get it! We were actually hoping for pre-court on Friday and Court on Monday… but we will see!!!
I am so excited that we have fulfilled our visitation requirements that I can hardly type… I don’t even know what to say… I think, like Alex’s adoption I have some reservations, that something will still happen… Last time, I finally felt relief on our drive to the babyhouse to get Alex… I finally let go of the worry! He was really ours! Not just in our hearts either… but legally!!!! Alex gotcha day was not exciting in that there were hardly any caregivers there to wish him well, and not much else happened at the babyhouse…we got to take some pictures with the director in her office in front of the Kazakh flag! This time we will bring the Tripod and I will have everyone in the picture that helped in the process! I hope that I remember that stuff in the moment! I almost have my gift ready for every one too! I just need to write thank you notes!

I better work on that tonight!

Well I found a place to get the carseat I want… I ordered and today I received an email saying they were out… so I found another… hopefully they have one! I ordered it! We will see!

Playing and Sleeping!

The Britax Boulevard - Park Avenue (colors) Hopefully this is the one i am ordering...

Isn't his skin just a wonderful color... and those eyes!!!!!

Daddy snuggles when he first came outside this morning!

and smooches...

Vibrating my teeth... while I zone....

just looking cute, as usual...Tired already!!??
More Daddy time...
They are tickling me!!!
Checking out my favorite rough flooring...

Tummy time...
Lounging with Octopus...
Just lounging...
I am starting to get tired...
Now I am getting sleepy!


Just about to sleep!

OUT! so precious, I can't even believe it!

I told you I would make up for the lack of photos yesterday!