Kyley & Greg's Adoption

Grace is 4!

2011-10-26T22:40:00.000-04:00

Well, our baby turned four on October 8. Can you believe it??!! We had a party at our house on the actual dayto celebrate. We were so lucky to havean absolutely beautiful day. It was 80degrees and sunny! We rented a bouncyhouse which was a big hit with the kids and some of the adults! We painted pumpkins and decorated visors forthe kids to wear home. Grace chose aFairy Princess theme. Surprise! She was concerned when we picked up thecake. She had wanted a chocolate cake,which is what we ordered. But when shesaw it had white frosting, she thought the whole cake was white. I assured her that the cake part waschocolate! She was very happy when thecake was cut and she could see the chocolate inside!

I need to catch up on all that happened during the rest ofthe summer and the beginning of fall. The first two weeks of August, Grace took swim lessons. She is such a fish! She loves the water and made really goodprogress on swimming by herself. Shepassed the class with flying colors. Theonly thing that she didn’t demonstrate was holding her breath under water for 3seconds. Of course, she does this allthe time when she is with us and even when she is in the bathtub.

We bought Grace a tag-along bike that hooks to my bike. She loves it! It’s a lot easier for me compared to the weight of pulling her in thetrailer. The whole balance thing is alittle tricky to get use to. If sheleans to one side, I have to really be on alert to compensate so that we don’tfall over! No falls yet, knock on wood! The longest that we’ve gone is fivemiles. She did really well and didn’twant to stop even then.

In August we took a long weekend and headed Up North. We wanted one last getaway before going backto school. We stayed at Shanty Creek Resort,which was the perfect location. We wentup to Petoskey and Charlevoix for a day. We also went the other way to Traverse City. It isjust so beautiful up there. Thehighlight for Grace was the swimming pool. She is fearless with the life vest on and wants to be fearless with thelife vest off, but she’s not quite ready for that.

Just to keep myself involved in music, I teach piano lessonsat our house. I only have five students,so it doesn’t consume too much of my time. Anyway, Grace is usually there with me in the room while I’m teachingthe lessons. I always have a pile ofthings for her to do to keep her occupied while I’m teaching. Since she is in the room, she is hearingeverything that I say to my students. Ireally never dreamed that she was really listening, but here are someexamples. Whenever I am having mystudents review the names of the lines and spaces on the staff, Grace will pipein and complete them before the students even have a chance. Grace knows E, G, B, D, F for the treble clefand G, B, D, F, A for the bass clef. Shealso knows the sayings that go with them, i.e. Every Good Body DeservesFudge. She doesn’t understand how itcorrelates to the piano or the music, but it sure is a good start. Here’s a funny story. We were having breakfast together back beforeschool started. We were just eating andtalking about nothing in particular when Grace asks me, “Mommy, can you show mea dotted half note?” My mouth droppedand then I just started cracking up. Icouldn’t believe she had any idea about a dotted half note! Of course, I grabbed a piano book and showedher right away what a dotted half note looked like!

Grace has always been one to ask a lot of questions – abouteverything!!!! Lately, she has beenasking a lot of questions about God. Sheloves to read from her Bible. We alsohave a couple of books that she likes to read. They are “I Am a Promise,” “God Knows All About Me” and “Where Does GodLive?” She picks both of these booksfrequently. Anyway, here is just one ofthe great questions that she asked me. “Mommy, does God go potty in the boys’ or the girls’ bathroom?” Oh, my! Where does she come up with these questions?

We had our very last post-placement report due inSeptember. Three years ago, it seemedlike that date was so far off. What anamazing three years!

School started for both of us. I’m back in first grade – Yay!!! The first two weeks of preschool were prettyrough for Grace (and me). We had tearsand clinging when I was leaving. Oh, man,that is so hard! She goes to preschooltwo days a week. The other three daysshe goes to the same daycare that she has always gone to. It’s now been about six weeks and things aregoing much better. She is still not ascomfortable at school as she is at daycare, but there are no more tears. She seems to love “circle time” at school,because we have to have circle time every night at least two or threetimes. She is always the teacher, ofcourse. She also loves the “projects”that she does. She has to hang them onthe refrigerator as soon as we get home.

This week was “D is for Dinosaur” week at school. I was talking to Grace about it. I asked her if she learned any other wordsthat started with D at school. She wastaking her coat off at the time, so she said “coat.” I said, “Coat starts with c, /k/. D makes the /d/ sound.” Grace replied, “Okay, da coat!” She is getting quite the sense of humor!

Grace just had her four year check-up. She is doing great! She is at the 50^th percentile for heightand the 30^th percentile for weight. She’s long and lean. Her doctorwas talking to her about Halloween. Thedoctor said, “Grace, when you go trick or treating, what are you going to saywhen you go to the door to ask for candy?” Grace said, “First I’ll say please. Then I’ll say thank you.” Thedoctor started cracking up. Isn’t shejust the cutest thing???!!!

Well, I think that catches us up for now. I’m going to try to be better about postingin a more timely manner.

Gotcha Day #4

2011-10-24T22:25:00.001-04:00

A little late on the posting as we got a new computer and it took awhile to set everything up, but now we're up and running again. Thursday, September29th was Gotcha Day #4! We just cannotbelieve it! What an amazing three yearsit has been. Here is a picture of usnow.

Here is our picture on the original Gotcha Day.

What a difference, huh? Congratulations to Russ, Monica, and Micah for their Gotcha Day #4 also!

2011-08-14T21:03:00.010-04:00

We just got back from our big summer vacation! We traveled to Glacier National Park this year. We are on a mission to take Grace to all of the national parks that we can and this was our first one.

I should start out by telling you about the preparations for the trip. With the incident at Yellowstone, I was freaking out about bears! So I went on a search for bear spray, bear whistles, and a bell for Grace. Well, we live in the Metro Detroit area and those are not easy items to find. I started at Dick’s Sporting Goods, which is a big store chain around here. I asked the greeter as soon as I walked through the door. He replied, “Wow, that’s the first time I’ve ever been asked that!” Needless to say, they didn’t have any of these items. I drove to Gander Mountain and they didn’t have anything either. Next, I thought I’d try REI. Finally, they had everything that I needed! Did you know that bear spray costs $49.95 a can???? I couldn’t believe it! But at least we were prepared!

For those of you who know me, then you know that “roughing it” is about the furthest thing from describing me! Just the fact that I was shopping for bear spray was very funny! Well, I called to make the hotel reservations and I called a place that handles reservations throughout the whole park. Unfortunately, because of my school schedule, I didn’t get to make the reservations until much later than I should have. For the week, we ended up being in five different “hotels,” which was not a problem because we wanted to be in all different parts of the park. However, one of the “hotels” was a cabin room. What??? This scared me! I ended up surviving it, but it truly was a little scary.

We went on many unbelievably beautiful hikes. Grace was such a trooper. We stuck with all of the shorter hikes with a rating of “easy,” so her little three-year-old legs could handle it. It took us a longer than most people to go on the hikes, but she did them!

We had beautiful weather for the first few days. It was sunny and in the low 90’s. Just perfect for me! On day four, the weather took a change. It was in the 90’s and the sun was shining. We started out on one of our longest hikes – four miles round trip. Greg had the bear spray in its holster. I had a whistle ready and Grace had the bell on her shoe. We had walked about a mile and a half and the clouds started moving in. Around the mountains, the weather can sure change fast. The temperature started dropping and then the thunder, lightning, and raindrops started. We were almost to the waterfalls at the end of the trail, so decided we might as well continue. Well, when we got to the falls, it started downpouring! Luckily, I had a raincoat for Grace in my backpack. However, I had nothing for me. I had on a sleeveless shirt and was absolutely freezing. We stayed under a tree for about fifteen minutes. A beautiful deer walked about five feet from us. The deer just looked at us like we were absolutely crazy. The sky was showing no signs of relief, so we decided we might as well head back. We were already soaked even under the tree. We took turns carrying Grace, so we could move faster. She’s little, but she sure gets heavy fast as you’re trying to run and climb through trails! We were “soaking wet” (as Grace said). We were filthy from running through the mud. All I wanted to do was get to our hotel and clean up!

Grace and I both had a hard time with the mosquitoes. However, Grace had it much worse. Luckily, I had brought cortisone, Benadryl, and Sarna with me. I was able to make a call from my cell phone when we left the park one day, so I called Grace’s pediatrician who told me to use them all. On Wednesday, she woke up with her knee completely swollen. It was double the size of the other one. I thought it was the mosquito bites, but I started worrying that maybe she twisted it on one of our hikes. I asked the hotel if there was a doctor or nurse somewhere in the park. The person said that there was a clinic in Canada and about a two hour drive away. Arrgh! I didn’t want to drive that far for mosquito bites. Finally he said that there was a nurse, but she was really only there for park employees. He asked the hotel manager if it was alright for the nurse to see Grace. About five minutes later, the nurse came into the hotel. She agreed that it was mosquito bites. She did double-check by moving Grace’s leg around and asking Grace some questions. The nurse told us to give her Benadryl and put cortisone on it. Okay, now I could stop worrying about her leg.

After the rain, the temperature never warmed back up to where I would have liked it. The highs were in the low 70’s the rest of the time that we were there. On Thursday we drove the entire width of the park on the Going to the Sun Road. Oh, my, what a beautiful drive! We started at the east side of the park and traveled west. When we got to Logan Pass we could hardly believe our eyes. The snow was about ten feet deep! Grace was making snowballs and wanted to go sledding. She could not understand why I hadn’t packed the sled. Would that have cost us another $25.00 as an additional suitcase on the airplane?

On Thursday, July 21, we celebrated the three year anniversary of the first time that we met Grace. It is so hard to believe that it was three years ago that we made our first trip to Russia. I will never forget the day that we saw her for the first time in the director’s office of Baby Home #2. She was so beautiful! Grace has made our lives and family complete! We celebrated by having dessert after dinner. Grace ordered chocolate ice cream. That’s her favorite!

We never had to use the bear spray and whistles. We were lucky enough to see two bears, but both times we were safe in the car. We saw a moose, mountain goats, and several deer. It was an absolutely amazing vacation! If you’ve never been to Glacier National Park, it's a must see!

7 Months Since Our Last Post!

2011-08-07T21:30:00.009-04:00

Oh, man! This is really bad – seven months since our last blog posting! This is my fifth week out of school and I am just now feeling like I’m getting caught up on all that I didn’t get done during the school year. I taught a new grade this past year. It ended up being a great experience for me, but a lot of work. It’s a lot of work teaching the same grade, but changing grades really was a doosey!

There have been so many awesome things going on with Grace over these last seven months I hardly know when to begin. She is growing like a weed! Long and lean is the best way to describe her. She is an absolutely beautiful little girl! Yes, I have to say ‘little girl’ – what happened to my baby!

You wouldn’t believe it if you could listen to her talk. She has an unbelievable vocabulary and it just continues to grow. She seems to use new words almost everyday that just surprises us. Some words that are common for her to use are absolutely, actually, ridiculous, understand, accidentally, decision, certainly... And she uses them correctly! What a vocabulary for a three year old!

She is a complete drama queen! She will get talking on a subject and she will go on talking non-stop for five minutes – using her hands to gesture and emphasize all that she is saying! It is so funny to watch!

We’ve been busy during these last seven months. In February, I had a four-day weekend break, so we went Up North to Traverse City. We rented a condo at the Grand Traverse Resort. It was freezing cold, but we still had so much fun! If you asked Grace, she would say the highlight was swimming in the pool. The kid is a fish! We saw some great ice sculptures, ate some great meals, visited a lighthouse in the snow, and went to the Children’s Museum. It was a very nice break!

We have often said how blessed we are with how healthy Grace is. She has never had an ear infection. She usually has one cold a year and it’s over within three or four days. Well, we had a week in March when Grace was really sick and it was so horrible! I picked her up on a Friday after school and she seemed fine. We went out to dinner and she went to bed just like always. She woke up in the middle of the night with a cough and a low fever. Of course, it’s Saturday, so I can’t get in to see her doctor! This continued through the weekend. On Monday, I knew I had to get her into her pediatrician. I ran into work as soon as the building opened and did sub plans and Greg went into work a little late. I got Grace in for an appointment. We couldn’t see her doctor, but we saw another doctor at the practice. She thought it was just a virus that would have to run its course and I was to alternate Tylenol and Motrin. Well, on Tuesday, Grace was no better and I called the pediatrician’s office again. They wanted to have a blood test done. Okay, this is only the second time we have gone through that. The first time was when we brought Grace home and I had Greg with me. It was horrible! I felt so bad for Grace. We received the results later that day and believe it or not, Grace was diagnosed with mononucleosis. What???? They put her on a steroid and told me to wait it out. Greg took Wednesday off and Grace was absolutely exhausted all day. My mom came over and stayed with Grace on Thursday and Friday. Basically Grace just slept in her arms all day. By Saturday, Grace was still not any better. I luckily got an appointment that morning with the same doctor I had seen on Monday. After her examination, she wanted Grace to have a chest x-ray. We then found out that Grace had pneumonia. The doctor put her on an antibiotic. Within 24 hours, we had our Grace almost completely back with us! I took Monday off of work just to be safe. But Grace was doing so well. It was a very scary week for all of us. Hopefully, we can be back to our healthy little girl!

For Spring Break, we went to Las Vegas, Nevada. Greg’s brother’s family lives there and Grace has never met her Aunt Tracy and cousins Adrienne and Samantha. It was a family reunion of sorts. Greg’s sister Julie traveled with us and Greg’s other sister, Diane and her family met us there. It was so nice to have all of us together! We spent a day on the strip, of course. It’s something that you just have to do! We did some hiking in Red Rock Canyon, which is absolutely beautiful. We visited Hoover Dam, which is always breathtaking. Grace went bowling for the first time since there was a bowling alley right in our hotel. And there was swimming of course, always the highlight of any trip. Otherwise, we just spent time together as a family. It was a great trip!

We had a very rainy and cold Spring. We were still running the furnace in May! Every chance that Grace got, she wanted to ride her bike. She is doing a great job on her two-wheeler with training wheels. I’m amazed at how far she can ride. She easily rides for about two miles without stopping and clips along at a pretty good pace.

On Memorial Day, we had both of our families over for a barbeque. We got lucky and had a pretty nice day! Grace just loves her new baby cousin, Wes. She calls him Baby Wes. I don’t know what we’re going to do when Wes gets older. Baby Wes is going to be a difficult name to call a teenager!

On June 15, we celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary! Wow, 20 years! It is just amazing to think that we’ve been married for 20 years. Time goes by so quickly. Grace loves to make up songs – most of which do not make much sense. But she has been singing a happy anniversary song which is pretty funny. It changes every time she sings it, so I really have no idea what the words are.

We celebrated the 4th of July with my family. We have a 1911 Ford Model T – so that means it is 100 years old this year. My mom and dad had a sign made to put on the back of the truck to announce this milestone. My mom also had t-shirts made for all of us to wear at the parades. The truck drove in two parades this year to celebrate. We were in both the Eaton Rapids and Mason parades. Grace just loves riding in parades. She waves to everybody as she’s holding an American flag. Her favorite part is blowing the horn. My grandpa had a special horn put on the truck that plays “La Cucharacha.” Grace loves to press the button that makes the horn sound.

I have Grace enrolled in preschool for the Fall. In order to register early, I had to sign her up for two summer camps. They are each four days from 1:00 – 3:30 p.m. each day. We just started her first one this week. Drop off has not gone well!!! The first day she screamed and cried and wouldn’t let go of me. The second day she cried as soon as I started walking away. On day three, she started crying at breakfast time. We talked about all of the fun things that she has been doing at school – projects, songs, playground, etc. She told me that she didn’t like the snacks and she wasn’t going to eat them. I told her that she didn’t have to eat the snack and we packed a snack to keep in the car for when I picked her up. On day four, everything went fine because I told her that it was the last day of school for the week. I call everyday to see how she’s doing after I leave, and all seems to be well. She just does not like the fact that I’m not staying there too. We have read the book “Llama Llama Misses Mama” many times. So Grace knows that I’ll be back, but that initial Mommy leaving thing is very hard for her. I know this is not uncommon, but it doesn’t make it any easier.

Sleep issues have continued to be our hardest thing to deal with. It is rare that Grace sleeps through the night. She usually wakes up at least once during the night and walks into our room. We get up, take her back to her room, tuck her in, and usually she’s back to sleep within a few minutes. Unfortunately, it’s not so easy for me to fall back to sleep! It’s not so bad during the summer when I’m not working, but during the school year, it’s brutal. She honestly has not slept the same since the pacifier went away, which was a year ago! We keep hoping that this is just a phase and it will end soon. But at 2:00 a.m., it sure seems like this phase is lasting a long time!

We are so blessed in so many ways!

Happy Holidays!

2011-01-11T20:55:00.006-05:00

Well, again, here we are having to play catch up on our posts. It’s been a very busy, hectic last few months. The holidays are always busy, but on top of it this year, I’ve been finishing up a class. I took a graduate class this summer. (I’m trying to work on my next pay raise which will be a Masters + 15 credits). The plan was to finish it up during the summer, but time got away from me. The final paper was due on December 19 and I was panicking on how to get it done. Luckily, we had a snow day on December 13! I used a few hours of the day to finish the paper! Woo, hoo! Then Grace and I wrapped and packaged two gifts to mail to relatives in other states. We headed to the post office with my paper and the two packages before noon. Grace was so patient with me! Grace and I spent the rest of the day playing out in the snow!

Now I’ll go back and fill you in on the last few months. Halloween was so much fun! Grace had so many parties and activities going on that we chose two different costumes. The first one she picked was a ladybug and the second costume was an elephant. She certainly chose at two very different ends of the spectrum. But both were so cute! She understood what trick-or-treating was all about this year. Along with several families, we met at some friends’ house in our subdivision for dinner. After dinner, I headed home to pass out candy and Greg took Grace with the rest of the group to trick-or-treat. Grace was the youngest of the crew. They were much more experienced at getting to the next house as fast as possible. Grace did her best to keep up. Greg did too! She came home with her bucket full, so I think she had a very successful evening.

We spent Thanksgiving at my parents. We always get together with my dad’s side of the family, which we just don’t do enough. It was very nice to have us all together. We had a wonderful meal! We all ate too much as usual! I was lucky enough to have Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday off, so it was extra nice to have the super long weekend.

We were pelted with snow on Sunday, December 12 (which led to the snow day mentioned above). I spent most of the day working on my paper, but Greg and Grace were outside playing. They made a great snowman together. Grace just loves the snow! She could stay out there all day!

Christmas snuck up on us before we knew it! Grace learned about Santa this year. I picked her up from daycare one day and she informed me that Santa was coming. She went on to explain that he was going to bring her presents. I asked her what she wanted Santa to bring here and she only had one thing on her list. She wanted a bike like the one at Jeanne’s, which is a two wheel Disney Princess bike with training wheels. We were shopping at the mall and she saw Santa. She was very curious. She just wanted to stand there (we were on the second floor looking down) and watch him. I asked her if she wanted to talk to Santa. She told me ‘no.’ There was a huge line, so I was not disappointed at all! Later, we talked more about Santa. She said that she wanted to talk to him. I asked her what she was going to do if she were to see Santa. She said she was going to hug him so hard that she would knock him right over! About a week later, Greg, Grace and I were shopping at a different mall and Grace saw Santa there. I asked her if she wanted to go talk to him. She said ‘yes.’ I was very surprised! We got in line (which luckily was very short). When it was our turn, Santa waved to Grace. Grace froze! I picked her up and we walked over to Santa. He was so nice to her! Grace did tell him that she wanted a bike, but was the extent of her part of the conversation. She would not let go of me the whole time. She would not sit on his lap. She wouldn’t let us take a picture with Santa. She would not even give him five when we were leaving. I really didn’t care if she even saw Santa at all, so I was surprised with what she wanted to do.

With all of this talk about Santa, we kept reminding Grace about the real meaning of Christmas. She has the Little Peoples Nativity Scene. We get it out every Christmas to talk about all the events of the birth of Jesus. Like with everything else, she has lots of questions. We do our best to explain everything to a curious three year old.

We headed to my parents on Christmas Eve. Grace wondered about Santa coming. I told her not to worry, that Santa knew all about it and that he would come to Grandma and Grandpa’s house. We all went to the Christmas Eve candlelight service. When we got back to my parent’s house, Grace went right to bed. After a bit of a rough night (she doesn’t usually sleep well at any place other than her own bed), she finally woke up at about 8:30 Christmas morning. I brought her downstairs and brought her to her pile of Santa gifts. Of course, there was a beautiful Disney Princess bike. She spent the whole weekend riding around the circle of the family room, kitchen, dining room, and living room. Santa also brought her a Fisher Price laptop. I don’t even let Grace watch TV, so I wasn’t so sure about the laptop as a gift. But she really likes it and hopefully, it will help her learn her letters even better. Grace, as well as the rest of us, was spoiled as always for Christmas. We had a wonderful day with our family and are so thankful for our health and happiness!

We celebrated Christmas with Greg’s family on New Year’s Day. We hosted, so we had a houseful! We had a great time. Grace’s two cousins are absolutely crazy about her. Needless to say, Grace received endless attention all day long! Again, she was spoiled by her two aunts. They got her a dollhouse. It is so cute and we have had so much fun playing with it!

We have been working on letters and numbers. Santa got Grace a Crayola dry-erase board that comes with templates to trace letters, numbers, shapes, etc. Grace really likes it. She’s getting pretty good at making a letter G. She knows that her name starts with a G, then an R, but the R has been a bit more difficult for her to write.

Bedtime has gotten easier. Boy, that was a rough two and a half months! Once she finally started sleeping through the night again, she started having problems going to sleep. Sometimes it took almost two hours before she was falling asleep. She wasn’t going to sleep until about 10:30 p.m.!!! We decided to try stopping daytime naps. They were starting to shorten. She was napping for about an hour, where before it was more like two hours. Even with an hour nap, she was still not going to bed without the two hour struggle. So we stopped naps altogether and ever since, she has been falling to sleep within five to ten minutes! Yay! She is pretty tired by the end of the day and can sometimes get a bit cranky, but it’s a lot better than the struggle to get her to sleep. She is sleeping through the night about two to three nights a week. On the other nights, she usually wakes up one or two times throughout the night. I usually just go into her room, cover her back up and tell her ‘good night,’ and she will go back to sleep. I say usually because I’m not always so lucky. Once in a while, it takes her awhile to get back to sleep. I stand in the hallway outside her bedroom door and tell her that ‘it is nighttime; time to go to sleep.’ Sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn’t! But at least, it’s a lot better than it was!

I think that pretty much catches us up! Merry belated Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone!

2010-10-13T21:55:00.003-04:00

GRACE IS 3!

Can you believe it? We certainly can’t! Grace absolutely understood what her birthday was all about this year. She has been talking about it for months! She also knew exactly what gift she wanted. She wanted a big camera, just like her daddy. Well, she got one! In a matter of about 45 minutes, she had taken almost 300 pictures. Just like her daddy!

Her birthday was Friday. So Thursday night, we made cupcakes to take to her daycare. We took cupcakes, party hats, noisemakers, and goody bags. Jeanne took lots of pictures for me. It was so cute!

Saturday was her big party! We had 27 people over to celebrate. We rented a bounce house, which was definitely a hit with all of the kids. We also had pumpkin painting. The kids and some of the adults enjoyed this too! It was an absolutely beautiful day here on Saturday. We were so lucky to have so much sunshine and warm weather! Thanks to everyone who was able to come to the party and celebrate Grace’s birthday with us!

2010-09-29T22:41:00.006-04:00

Wow! Another post only four days after the last one! Today is our Second Gotcha Day Anniversary! We cannot believe it’s been two years. Here is a picture of our first Gotcha Day and then one we took today! My, how she has grown.

Congratulations to Russ, Monica, and Micah on their Gotcha Day Anniversary also!

2010-09-26T22:16:00.009-04:00

Wow, summer is over and I’ve been back to school for three weeks. I have a lot of summer adventures to catch up on!

We spent a week on Lake Michigan. The Canestraro family was spending time there also, so we met up with them for a weekend. We had Grace and Micah together on almost the exact two year anniversary of the date that we each met them! Of course, we got a picture of that. Then Greg, Grace, and I continued enjoying the coast. We went from South Haven to Saugatuck to Holland to Grand Haven. We had really nice weather. One morning of rain, but we spent that driving to our next destination. We went to Windmill Village in Holland. Grace got some wooden shoes. She calls them her cloppy shoes. She loves to dance in them like the dancers we watched at Windmill Village.

We came back home for just a couple of days and then we headed to Columbus, Ohio for our second annual Astrakhan reunion. The Roberts’s family was unable to join us this year. We really missed them. We had the Tassey-Woods family, Canestraro family, Beadle family, and us. Thanks again to Phyllis and Craig for hosting this year! We had so much fun! There were six children who were adopted from Astrakhan all around the same time! Here is a picture from last year’s reunion and this year’s. My, how they have changed.

We headed back home for laundry and two nights sleep in our own beds, and then Grace and I were off to North Dakota with my mom. We went to visit my cousins who live there. We had a really nice visit! After a week with Grace, my cousin Marcus (age 10) decided he really didn’t want a younger sister after all!

We went Up North for a long weekend. We stopped in Midland on the way up to break up the drive a bit. The annual dulcimer festival was going on and I wanted to check it out. It so happened that my cousin and her husband were there. We spent the afternoon walking around with them. We drove the rest of the way up to Torch Lake the next day. The town of Alden was having an art fair, so we spent most of the time around there. We stayed at Shanty Creek resort. It was a short trip, but it was very nice!

Grace no longer has a binky. She got a rash on her face by her mouth and I didn’t want her to have a binky with it. She only used the binky when she slept and always left it in her bed before she got out. I wasn’t really worried about her use of a binky. But I figured if she wasn’t going to use it because of the rash, I might as well get rid of it forever. It has certainly not been easy on her or on us! Her naps have shortened to an hour to an hour and a half, when they used to be an hour and a half to two hours. She has not been sleeping through the night. It has been a month and a half now and she has only slept through the whole night four times! We figure that this can only last for so long, right???

Probably Grace’s biggest achievement this summer is being able to pump on her swing. She is so proud of herself! Swinging is all that she wants to do now! She could easily just swing for an hour at a time.

Grace started dance lessons a couple of weeks ago. She is taking a combination tap and ballet class. She was so excited – at first! At the first class, parents were to put the tap shoes on the kids and then leave the room. Well, that’s what I did. Grace did pretty well for the tap section, then it was time to switch to ballet shoes. I heard Grace through the door that she wanted Mommy to change her shoes. The teachers tried to talk Grace into letting them put the shoes on, but Grace was adamant that Mommy do it. Grace started crying as soon as they brought her out to me. So, that was the end of that week’s class. The next week, she started crying as soon as we walked into the studio. I told her that I would stay in the class with her. She stopped crying. She did the “dances” that the other girls were doing, but she did them standing by me and only joined the group a couple of times. This week, I told her I would go in with her again, but she had to do all the dances with the other girls. Well, it went better. Grace joined the group a few times and did the other dances at a halfway point between the group and me. There were some tears when I was trying to encourage her to join the group. It’s progress, but I’m just not sure whether we should continue or not. She seems so excited about it during the week. She does the moves and sings the dance songs throughout the week. She tells people that she goes to dance class, like she’s so excited about it. I guess we’ll try a few more classes and play it by ear.

We met with our social worker for our third post placement report. It’s so hard to believe that it’s been almost two years. Everything went great and we easily got it off to CHI in plenty of time.

We went to the Hands Across the Water’s (our home study agency) annual picnic. We met Shannon and Tia there. We had not had a chance to get together all summer. It was so nice to see each other. Tia and Grace had a good time playing with each other and Shannon and I had a good time catching up!

It was hard going back to work after having the summer off. Grace and I had so much fun together! It was hard on Grace too. I had taken her to school a few times with me when I was just getting my classroom ready or just short meetings. She did not understand why all of a sudden, she couldn’t go to work with me. I know she loves it at her daycare. When I picked her up after school, she was always all smiles. But those couple of days of tears in the morning were so hard!

Well, I think that pretty much catches us up!

2010-07-21T21:05:00.005-04:00

Well, I finished the school year and have been on summer break for a month, and this is the first time I’ve gotten around to writing a post. We have been so busy and we’ve had so much fun!

Today is the anniversary of a very important day for us. We met Grace two years ago today! Can you believe it? Two years! I remember every detail. I try to tell Grace all about it. I know she doesn’t understand, but I’ll keep telling her about how she made our lives complete. Here is one of the first pictures we took of Grace two years ago.

I’ll go back over the last couple of months the best that I can to catch up!

We had a wonderful Memorial Day. My family all came over for the local parade. Here is my favorite picture of Grace watching the parade. Isn’t she beautiful!!!

Then more of my family and Greg’s family joined us at our house for a barbeque. It was great to have everyone together.

For the Fourth of July we went to my parents for our annual take-the-old-truck in the parade. We have a 1911 Model T. Yes, it really is 99 years old! Grace was so excited. It is all she talked about for the week before and the week after! My cousins were home from North Dakota, so they rode in the parade with us. It was a beautiful, very warm (in the 90’s) day! The next photo is Grace pretending to drive the truck.

We visited some friends who live on a lake and Grace saw her first fireworks show. She wasn’t scared at all. Although she asked several times, “What’s that?” and “What’s happening?” She also frequently exclaimed “Louuuud”.

Grace talks all the time. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had people say to me, ‘Boy, she’s a talker!’ She’s quite shy at first, but once she gets warmed up, watch out! She has to know what everything is and why it is so. I bet she asks ‘why?’ a hundred times a day. She has gained a great vocabulary. We went shopping and bought her some new shoes. When Greg came home that evening, I told Grace she should show her Daddy her new shoes. She got all excited! Grabbed Greg’s hand and pulled him over to her new shoes. As she’s opening up the box, she says, ‘Daddy, they are kinda awesome!’ Where did she learn that?

She loves music! Almost everyday, we have to put on the music (usually Beach Boys). She hands out instruments to everyone who may be in the room. And away we go with our own band. She is usually on the drum. We have to dance, march, and move around while the song is playing. She loves to sing. Some of her favorites to sing are ABC’s, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Rain Rain Go Away, Hokey Pokey, Barbara Ann, Ring Around the Rosie, If You’re Happy and You Know It, and Wheels on the Bus.

She is starting to get interested in letters. She’s beginning to understand that there is some kind of connection between letters and words. She’ll point to a letter on a paper and say ‘is that an ‘a’?’ Usually it’s not, but she’s very interested. When she has a pencil and paper, she’ll ask me ‘Want a G?’ Then she’ll write something on the paper. It’s not a G, but she thinks it is. She knows that her name starts with a G, Daddy starts with a D, and Mommy starts with an M.

We have been working hard on colors. I think she’s got most of them. However, when I want her to name a color, she will say the wrong color and then giggle. But I’ll hear her while she’s playing and she’s naming the colors perfectly!

Everyday is something new and special. I just love the Two’s. Don’t get me wrong, we do have some stubborn moments. Sometimes she wants to test us to find out what she can get away with. She can be the biggest staller around, especially at bedtime or anytime when I’m in a hurry. I just know these are all part of being two and learning her own independence and it’s amazing to watch! There are times when I have to remind myself of this!

There isn’t a day that goes by when we don’t say how blessed we are to have our beautiful family of three! Grace is a true blessing!

April 11, 2010

2010-04-11T21:57:00.008-04:00

Well, Spring Break is coming to an end. It’s been great to be off and to spend time with Grace. Greg took the week off as well, so we were all together!

Last Friday was an absolutely beautiful day! It got up to 80 degrees, almost unheard of for the first part of April in Michigan! We decided it was a great day to spend at the zoo. Grace just loved seeing all of the animals. Believe it or not, I think her favorite was the horses! It seemed that most of the animals were napping and not very active. But the horses were up and running around. We could hardly get her to leave the farm part of the zoo. Here is a picture of Grace by the fountain at the Zoo.

We spent Easter with my parents. I am the substitute organist at my church back home, and I was on for this Easter. I played at the Sunrise service and the regular service. Here are Grace and I at the piano afterward. Then we went back to my parent's house for our annual Easter Egg Hunt. There were 110 eggs hidden altogether. The photo shows Grace with one of them. After a lot of hunting, 104 were found. There are still 6 more out there in my parents’ yard somewhere!

My parents gave Grace a tricycle. Now, that is all she wants to do. Rain or shine, she is asking to go ride her bike. She pedals like a pro and loves to go fast! The photo of Grace on her bike was taken at a very nice park we found in Grand Rapids along the river.

On Monday, we drove to Grand Rapids. We stayed at a hotel with a water park, so Grace (the fish) could “swim”. On Tuesday, we went to the Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park. There is a butterfly exhibit there now. Grace loved it. There were thousands of butterflies! One landed on my arm and Grace was so excited! Luckily, it stopped raining and we could venture outside into the gardens a little bit. It was still a bit chilly (upper 50s) and misty rain. Grace didn’t mind. She was running around and touching every sculpture and trying every hands-on thing there was. The picture shows her by one of the sculptures there. It was the first time that Greg or I had been there and we definitely want to go back this summer when the weather is better.

Saturday was a pretty nice day. It got up to about 65 degrees. We decided to head to the Farm at Kensington Park. There were tons of baby animals. Grace pet a baby goat and a baby pig. We saw a sheep being sheared. Grace was pretty intrigued by this. We talked about it later and Grace said, “Sheep kicking and kicking. Sheep said baa, baa, baa.” Again, Grace loved the horses. She really wanted to pet one, but they wouldn’t come close enough for us to touch. The last photo is one of Grace at the farm.

Grace continues to grow and thrive. Her vocabulary is amazing. She is now using full sentences with words like probably, attention, and comfortable. With help, she can count to twenty. She misses a few along the way, but overall does really well!

When we are done counting together, she will say “Oh, I missed seven!” I don’t know why she says seven, because that’s one she usually gets! I guess she just knows that she missed something! She is singing more and more songs with the ABC song being one of her favorites. The l-m-n-o-p part is still tricky. It sounds more like lellolello-p. Oh, well, close enough for now! When we are in the car, I usually have the 60s on 6 st

ation on from XM Radio. They play a lot of Beach Boys. Grace loves the song “Barbara Ann”. She will just start singing it when we least expect it. It is so funny hearing a two year old sing a Beach Boys song. Another one of Grace’s favorites to sing is “Bushel and a Peck.” I have been singing this song to her since we met on our first trip, so I shouldn’t be surprised that she knows it. But it’s still funny hearing a two year old sing it!

2010-03-07T21:53:00.005-05:00

Another two months since our last post! Boy, time sure flies! Grace continues to amaze us everyday.

We had a Thursday and Friday off in February for my Winter break. We decided to head up to Frankenmuth for a couple of days. We stayed at a hotel that had five indoor pools. Grace loved all of the pools. She is such a fish! We had a hard time getting her to come out.

The HIGHLIGHT of the last two months has been potty training. Grace and I spent last Saturday training a doll how to use the potty and then training Grace. On Sunday, she did pretty well. She only had one accident. On Monday it was off to daycare and I was so worried about what this would do to potty training. (Grace is only one of five at her daycare, but I was still worried). I took her potty chair with us, in hopes that it would make her feel more comfortable. She didn’t have any accidents, but she hardly went all day. Boy, when we walked in the house after work, she went right to the potty!!!! Tuesday was a rough day. She had two accidents at daycare. They went to a play area to celebrate another child’s birthday and I think she was just so excited about it that she forgot all about pottying. Luckily, on Wednesday, she got back on track. No accidents. Thursday continued with no accidents – she even went poo poo on the big toilet instead of her potty chair. In the evening, we went out to dinner and Grace asked twice to go potty. She went each time! The book “Toilet Training in Less than a Day” was recommended to me. It worked for us! I will say that I made a few modifications to the program. Some of it was just a little much for me. But, overall, it seems to have worked! It’s been just over a week now and she’s still doing pretty well. Today, she didn’t have any accidents. We went go out to dinner and she asked to go to the bathroom three times. She actually went pee pee only once. I think she just likes the whole idea of going to different bathrooms.

Her vocabulary continues to grow and grow. We have some real conversations with each other. She can count to five and sing most of the ABC song. She has to do everything herself! And I mean everything! Put on her own clothes and shoes. Pour her own milk. Comb her hair and brush her teeth. Everything takes longer, so we have to allow extra time for everything. But that’s okay, that’s how she learns. Right??? I keep saying that to myself.

Here are some of our favorite photos of Grace over the last two months.

Her first snowman!

Grandpa's girl

Enjoying the pool in Frankenmuth

Reading with Mommy.

2010-01-07T21:49:00.008-05:00

I just looked at our blog and realized that it’s been two months since we posted. It’s been a busy couple of months. I’ll step back and fill everyone in.

We had a wonderful Fall of firsts! While we were home with Grace last Fall, she was so young that the typical events were not too special to her. But this year, it was totally different!

We went apple picking.

We went to Maybury Farm and did most of the corn maze. They had a small maze made out of hay bales for the smaller kids. Grace loved this!

She was a princess for Halloween. Perfect for her! She didn’t really understand what was going on, but she was taking it all in. As we walked from house to house, we practically had to drag her along because she was so busy looking at everyone’s costume. She wasn’t scared at all. I don’t think she really understood the whole trick or treat thing. She knew that people at each house were putting something in her bag, but that’s about it!

We had a very nice Thanksgiving at my parent’s house. Grace loved being with her cousins.

Greg and I both had two weeks off for the holidays. It has been so nice to just be with Grace. This time went by so fast I just can’t believe it. We were really busy with all of the holiday events. First of all, no we didn’t take Grace to see Santa. I couldn’t think of anything that she would like about sitting on the knee of a man with a lot of facial hair. We spent Thursday (Christmas Eve) through Sunday at my parents. Grace doesn’t understand the whole Santa thing. But she does understand presents! Last year, the focus was on the boxes, paper, and ribbons. This year, she knew that inside those packages was something special for her! Santa came to Grandma and Grandpa’s house. Grace had no idea that some presents were from Santa and some were from everyone else! Santa did leave one big gift at home, because it would have been too much to carry back and forth. Grace got a kitchen! This definitely seems to be a big hit. Everyday she is making and serving us coffee, pancakes, grilled cheese, eggs, etc. It is so much fun!

Grace had her first haircut. She did a pretty good job. We went to Carnival Cuts, which had a little car for Grace to sit in while she had her hair cut. At the first sign of tears, the stylist gave her a sucker. This was the first time Grace had ever had a sucker. Apparently, she thought it was pretty good, because she wouldn’t let it go!

Grace is just unbelievable. At her 24 month checkup (which was really at 25 months), she was in the 75th percentile for height and the 50th percentile for weight. Hard to believe that one year ago, she was not even on the charts for either height or weight! Her verbal skills are amazing! She is saying new words and putting more sentences together everyday. She is speaking in 6 to 7 word sentences. She says “I love you, Mommy” and “I love you, Daddy” to us all the time. Could anything be more wonderful???!!!

Pretty much everything is “I do it!” Grace is working on becoming very independent! She has to put on her own socks, shoes, coat, mittens, hat, etc. We’ve tried potty training a little bit. She has gone both pee pee and poo poo in the potty. She will tell us as she is going in her diaper. But she has yet to tell us beforehand, so we can get her to the potty in time. I just bought the book “Toilet Training in Less Than a Day.” We’ll see if this gives me some clues to help Grace along.

I think that should get us about caught up. I’ll try to be better at my blogging!

2009-11-04T20:42:00.004-05:00

We just got back from five beautiful days in Florida! My cousin got married on Sanibel Island, so we took a couple of extra days and enjoyed ourselves. It was an absolutely gorgeous wedding right on the beach. Allison looked beautiful and her new hubby looked very handsome, too! Welcome to the family, Mike!

Grace had a blast! Give her any body of water and she will never leave. She didn’t want to get out of the pool. Thanks to cousin Nick for being her personal lifeguard. She didn’t want to leave the beach. Thanks to cousin Marcus for building sandcastles with her. She loved getting up in the morning and eating her Cheerios out in the lanai. Picnic breakfast is a pretty cool thing!

She did great on both the flight there and the flight back. The flight there left at 8:30 a.m. So we had to leave our house at about 6:00 a.m.. in order to get the car parked, take the shuttle to the airport, and get through security. We thought she would fall asleep for sure, since she had to get up so early. But she had no interest in sleeping on that flight. She did really well though! We read books, played with toys, ate pretzels, sat on my lap for awhile, then on Dada’s. She was a bit of a squirmy bottom by the end of the flight, but so was I. It’s less than a three hour flight, but I can’t sit that long either! As soon as we settled into rental car, she was asleep in two seconds.

The flight home left at around 1:00, right at her naptime. She fell asleep after about 30 minutes in flight and slept until we landed. Just what she needed!

Grace didn’t do too bad with sleeping during the vacation. She took her usual 2 hour nap everyday that we were there. The nights were a little off for her. There was only one night that she slept the whole night in her crib without waking up. Every other night she woke up at about 2:00 a.m. and didn’t want to go back in the crib. She ended up in bed with us where she instantly fell back to sleep.

Just like here at home, everywhere we went, Grace was the star of the show. She is just so gosh darn cute! Here are a few more photos of Grace in Florida!

With her Uncle Darrin...

Sitting on a big frog...

With cousin Nick...

2009-10-13T22:23:00.003-04:00

She’s Two!!!

Yes, Grace celebrated her second birthday last week! Wow, we just can’t believe that she’s two!!!

Grace and I made cupcakes together to take to her daycare. She loved stirring everything together. Boy, that batter was sure stirred well! We also took party hats and ‘squawkers.’ There are only five kids there and Jeanne got some great pictures of the celebration. Here's one:

On Sunday, we celebrated with our families. Grandma, Grandpa, Uncle Darrin (who Grace just calls Uncle), Aunt Janice, Allison, Mike, Aunt Diane, Uncle Rick, Daniel, and Thomas all came over. We had Grace’s favorite dinner – spaghetti and meatballs. (She chose the menu). Then we had cake and ice cream. It was so much fun to have our family together.

The ‘Why’ questions have already started. Grace and I were driving in the car together the other day.
She said, “Mommy, where’s Dada?”
I said, “He’s at work.”
She said, “Oh. Where’s Dada’s car?”
I said, “It’s at work too.”
She said, “Why?”
I said, “Because Daddy drove the car to work.”
She said, “Why?”
I said, “Because it’s a long way to work and Dada has to take his car there.”
She said, “Why?”
I said, “Because it’s too far to walk.”
She said, “Why?”
I said, “I don’t know. Just because it is!”

I wasn’t expecting this to come so soon. I guess I had better brush up on my way of answering ‘why’ questions!

2009-09-29T21:38:00.004-04:00

Gotcha Day – One Year Later

Wow! We can’t believe that it has been a year! Greg and I have to be the two luckiest people in the whole world. Grace is amazing! That sums it up!

I remember September 29, 2008 so vividly. The director of the baby home was out for the morning, so we couldn’t go there until late afternoon. When you know it’s your Gotcha Day, all you want is to get to the baby home and hold that baby safely in your arms forever! I remember walking into the baby home with all the cakes and the flowers. Then things were a blur for awhile. We gave Grace’s clothes to the caregivers and we were ushered into the Director’s office. We met with the doctor for the last time. The caregiver brought Grace in to us. Pictures were snapped with their camera as well as ours. Then we left! I remember holding Grace so tightly. I remember walking really fast on the baby home sidewalk to get to the car as fast as I could. I remember that first night at the Korvet, she slept in the crib right next to our bed. She slept the whole night through. I didn’t sleep one wink! I kept getting up and just standing there, staring at her. She is so beautiful!

Here is the photo from the Director’s Office on Gotcha Day next to one we took today at home exactly a year later. Can you even believe the difference?

We were so blessed that Grace was so young (eleven months old). We have experienced so many firsts with her. Her first steps. Her first words. No more bottles. All the teeth! She has come so far. She is excelling at everything! She is easily speaking in three word sentences. She is even trying some four word sentences. Two weeks ago, we were in the kitchen getting dinner ready. Greg always sits in the same spot at the kitchen table. Well, Grace wanted to sit in his spot instead of in her highchair. She said, “I sit Daddy’s seat.” The next day Grace and I were in her room getting dressed for the day. She saw her binky (pacifier) in her bed and asked me for it. She only gets the binky at bedtime and she puts it down before she gets up. (I know, it’s time to think about getting rid of it altogether!) Anyways, I told her that she knew the binky was only for sleep time. This logic didn’t seem to work for her, because she kept asking me for it. Greg walked into her room and Grace said, “Daddy get me binky.” Another four word sentence! Since then, there have been several more!

We have so much to celebrate this time of year. September 18 was our one year court date anniversary. September 29 was our one year Gotcha Day anniversary. October 8 will be Grace’s second birthday! We can’t believe she is going to be two. Boy, time is sure flying by.

Here is one more photo taken today.

2009-09-10T22:27:00.004-04:00

Well, summer has come to an end. We’ve had an awesome summer together. I started back to work last Tuesday and students start this Tuesday. Here are some highlights of our last month and a half of summer.

We took Grace to Lake Michigan. We stayed in the Pentwater–Ludington area. We did a lot of hiking in the sand dunes. That’s a chore on its own, but with Grace on my back, I really got my exercise!

Grace loved playing on the beaches of Lake Michigan. She filled her buckets with sand and then emptied them over and over again. When we finally were able to tear her away from the beach, she was covered head to toe with sand.

We had a bit of a traumatic moment a couple of weeks ago. Grace and I were going to go into my classroom to get things set up. My car was in the garage. I opened the garage door and was starting to load up my car. Grace was waiting for me by the entry door (I thought). While I was in the garage, Grace was able to get my car keys. (I keep them in a dish on a table in the foyer. I didn’t think she could reach them!) Anyway, she brought the keys out into the garage and pressed the alarm button on my car. Well, the alarm went off (very loudly when inside the garage)! It scared Grace and car keys went flying through the air and landed behind a shelving unit in the garage. Grace was crying and shaking. I ran and picked her up, took her in the house and closed the door to try to deafen the sound a little bit. I was trying to calm her down. In the meantime, I’m crying because she is so upset. After calming her down a bit, I ran out to the garage to find the keys. I finally find the keys and then I realize that I don’t know how to shut the alarm off. I fumble to get the manual out of the car glove box. I brought the manual back into the house and finally figure out how to shut the alarm off. Meanwhile, Grace and I are still crying! With the alarm finally off, I just held Grace as close as I could and rocked her back and forth on the couch. When we had settled down enough, we went out to the garage to leave for my school. Grace pointed at my car and said “Beep, beep, beep! Loud!” Poor baby!

Last week we met with our social worker for our one year post-placement report. Yes, one year! Can you believe it???!!! When we look over the last year, we realize more and more how blessed we are!

I had to go to our pediatrician’s office to pick up the medical form for our post-placement report. Grace had a mosquito bite by her eye and it looked just awful. It was very red and her eye was swollen. I didn’t have an appointment, but I asked the receptionist about it. She went and got a nurse. The nurse came out to the waiting room to take a look. (I had never met this nurse before). She took a look at Grace’s mosquito bite and then she looked at me to tell me there was nothing we could do except wait it out. Then the nurse said, “Wow, she sure looks like you!” Greg and I looked at each other and started laughing. I said, “Thank you! It’s funny since Grace was adopted from Russia!” The nurse couldn’t believe it!

2009-07-23T21:01:00.009-04:00

Oh, what an amazing week! Unbelievably, it was one year ago on Tuesday (July 21) that we met Grace for the first time. What a difference a year makes!

Here is our referral photo of Grace.

Here is one of the pictures we took of her on the first day (July 23) we were allowed to take pictures. She was nine months old.

Here she is today at twenty-one months old!

We spent last weekend at our first annual Astrakhan gathering. We met with the four other families that we met during our first and second trips to Astrakhan. We had so much fun! Monica and Russ were our gracious hosts! Thank you so much! Altogether there were seven beautiful children from Astrakhan. Here are two photos. Because of the timing, we didn’t get all of them in one photo. The second photo includes all of Russ and Monica's children. What a beautiful group!

Micah and Grace were together in Astrakhan while we were waiting for their passports. Here is a picture we took of the two of them in the courtyard of the Korvet Hotel.

Here they are today! Wow!

In my last post, I forgot to tell my saga of weaning Grace from the bottle, so here it is. We arrived home with Grace just a few days short of her first birthday. Our pediatrician recommends weaning from the bottle at 12 months. However, because of all of the other adjustments Grace was going through, she told us to continue the bottle for a while longer, but to wean her off the bottle by the time we came back for her 15 month check up. Well, I couldn’t do it. She loved her bottle! I had tried to give her milk in a cup (warm and/or cold) a few times, but she wanted nothing to do with it. At her 15 month check up, our doctor said we had to get her off the bottle. She gave us three options. She said we could put some flavoring in the milk. But this was her last resort and I agreed. I certainly didn’t want to add sugar to her milk! As a second option, our doctor said to just quit ‘cold turkey’ and give her only milk in a sippy cup. Well, I tried this for the first weekend and Grace would not drink anything. Well, I couldn’t take that, so I went back to the bottle and tried the doctor’s third option, which was to gradually add the taste of milk to her water, i.e. start with one tablespoon of milk added to her water, then two tablespoons, then three tablespoons. Grace still wouldn’t drink it! She knew it wasn’t her usual water! I did get Grace down to just one bottle a day (first thing in the morning). At Grace’s 18 month check up, the doctor didn’t mention the bottle and I didn’t either. I think I was too afraid of what she was going to say to me! I’m sure she assumed that Grace had given up her bottle. Well after this, I decided that as soon as I was out of school for the summer, I would stop the bottle ‘cold turkey.’ I was so worried about how Grace was going to handle this. I didn’t sleep the whole night before worrying about it. Well, as soon as Grace woke up, I went to get her out of her crib. I picked her up and she said “bottle.” I almost started to cry. But I brought her downstairs, put milk in her sippy cup and mixed her oatmeal up with milk. I was trying to act like nothing was different! She started eating her oatmeal and then drinking her milk. Yes, I said drinking her milk! I couldn’t believe it! And that’s all there was to it. She’s been drinking milk out of a sippy cup ever since and has never asked for a bottle again! I guess when she’s ready, she’s ready!

Well, this was a longer post then I had planned on, so I’ll end for now.

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

2009-06-30T21:46:00.020-04:00

Oh, man! I need to start out again with an apology on how long it has been since we posted! It’s been over two months this time! June 19 was my last day of school, so now I’m on summer break! Grace and I have the whole summer to be together. It is absolutely wonderful to spend the entire day with her. She is such a blessing. Let me try to go back and fill everyone in on what’s been going on over the last few months.

There was no reason at all for me to be concerned over her speech and language development. This girl is talking, talking, talking! I was keeping a list of her words, but when it went over 50 words, I stopped! She is now putting words together into short sentences. She says, “I did it,” “I do it,” “Me, out, me,” “Me, go, me,” and many others! It is fascinating to watch and listen to her. There is honestly something new everyday!

My first Mother’s Day was great! We went to my parents to celebrate. Grace (and Greg) got me a bike trailer. Grace did really well on her first ride. I just went a little ways around our subdivision.

Our neighbors gave us their play stucture. Their children are now both in high school, so they really didn’t need it anymore. We were so grateful for their generosity! We bought a baby swing and replaced one of the regular swings. Other than that, it’s in perfect shape! The swing is the biggest hit with the slide as a close second place. She can’t quite climb up the ladder to the slide by herself yet, but we help her do that, then down the slide she comes. Here is a photo of Grace on the swing.
For Memorial Day, my family came over to our house to celebrate. We took Grace to a parade. She seemed to like everything, until they shot off the guns. Thank goodness Greg was holding her when that happened, because she sure hung on tight to him! After the parade, we went back to our house for a barbecue. My cousin Charity and her son Marcus were here from North Dakota. They hadn’t seen Grace since November, so they really couldn’t believe the change. Charity was pushing Grace on the swings and Grace wanted out, so she said “buckle.” Charity knew exactly what Grace wanted!

A couple of weeks ago we went over to our friend’s house for dinner and a play date. They have a son who is two years old. Grace had her first corn on the cob. She loved it! It was the funniest thing to watch!

We got Grace the best water toy ever! If you don’t have one of these, you’ve got to get one! It’s called the Fun Flow Play Sink by Step 2. I couldn’t find it in any store, but was able to order it from the Step 2 website. It was delivered to our house four days later. The first time we set it up, Grace played with it for over two hours!

We celebrated Greg’s first Father’s Day at my parents. It was a beautiful day, so we got out the sprinkler. Grace’s first time with a sprinkler! She loved going right up to the water and letting it hit her right in the face. She was just cracking up!

We took Grace to see her first Detroit Symphony Orchestra concert. The DSO plays at local Metro Parks. We packed a picnic dinner and rode our bikes to the concert. It was just a gorgeous evening. One of the songs had an oboe solo in it. I said to Grace, “Grace, that is an oboe.” She looked at me kinda funny, then pointed to and showed me her elbow. Greg and I started cracking up.

Last week was my first week of summer vacation. We spent the whole week playing outside. We played on the swing, slide, pool, and her sink. We went for walks and bike rides. We met my parents for lunch. I still have all of July and August. Yeah!

2009-04-19T14:58:00.009-04:00

Gee, I can’t believe another two months have gone by since we last posted. It’s amazing how quickly time goes by! So much has happened, but I’ll try to go back and catch up on everything. We completed our first post-placement report and everything was sent through to CHI. It was so fun to have our social worker meet Grace!

In our last post I mentioned that Grace was finally saying some real words. I was so concerned because it seemed delayed. In February, she had two words – uh, oh and bye bye. Now she tries to say almost every word that we say. Her regular words are Mama, Dada, Gama, Gapa, hi, thank you, moo, quack, yellow, purple, red, blue, ball, bubbles, and more. I was packing my lunch the other day and I was holding Grace while I was doing it. I said, “Okay, let’s pack my lunch.” She repeated the word “lunch.” She repeats a lot of the words that we say at the end of sentences. I sing a lot of songs to her. Surprise! Anyway, I have been leaving off the last word in the song that I’m singing. Grace has been singing the last word to finish the song. One of her favorites is “Do Your Ears Hang Low?” I’ll sing the song and not sing the word “low.” Grace will finish the song for me by saying ‘low.’ It is so cute!

On March 29, we celebrated our six month anniversary as a family! It’s funny, but we honestly can’t remember when Grace wasn’t a part of our lives. We look back at pictures from when we first met her and the change is unbelievable. She is so expressive now and so affectionate. She laughs all the time, especially when tickled!

I was on Spring Break last week. It snowed!!! It just wasn’t right! Grace didn’t seem to mind, especially when I got the sled out. We went sledding around the yard both Monday and Tuesday. By Wednesday, the snow was all gone, but Grace still wanted me to get the sled down. She kept pointing to the garage wall where the sled was hanging. Hopefully, we are done with the snow for awhile.

On April 8, Grace turned 18 months old. We had her 18 month check up with her pediatrician. Grace is doing well. She has continued to gain weight and has grown over an inch since her 15 month check up. She is still petite and still wears 12 month old clothes. Developmentally she is just where she’s supposed to be or a little ahead in some areas.

We took Grace to a local park that has a nice playscape. She loved the slides. We could hardly get her to leave them to try some of the other things. She wasn’t real crazy about the swings, which surprised me. However, we tried the swing over at our neighbor’s and she really seemed to like that. We’ll keep trying the park’s swings and see how it goes!

Grace made her first visit to the zoo. We bought a membership, so we can go back as often as we want. We had such a good time. I’m not sure that Grace really understood what was going on, but she was looking around and taking it all in.

We took Grace to the farm at a local Metro Park. We saw cows, horses, pigs, goats, sheep, ducks, chickens, rabbits, etc. There were absolutely darling baby goats, sheep, pigs, and a calf. Grace got to pet a two-day-old baby goat. I started to cry, because it was just so precious! Greg didn’t get it!

Easter was so special! My mom bought Grace the cutest dress. She looked absolutely gorgeous! We went to my parents for the weekend, so we went to church there. Grace was the center of attention as always! After church we had an Easter egg hunt. Grace had been on an Easter egg hunt on Saturday with a friend, so she already knew what to do. Here’s a picture of her when her basket was pretty much full!

Well, I think that catches everybody up. We are so blessed!

2009-02-18T20:21:00.005-05:00

Boy, we’re sorry it has taken so long to post an update! We have been so busy and enjoying every moment with Grace that we haven’t taken the time to write in our blog. I’ll go back in time to fill you in on some of the things that have been going on.

Thanksgiving was so much fun! We went to my parents to celebrate. Grace met my Aunt Connie and Uncle Sam and a bunch of cousins for the first time. She did so well, especially considering all the new people she was meeting and sleeping at my parent’s house. Here is a picture of Grace with some of her cousins.

Grace was baptized on December 14. We had her baptized at my church where I grew up. It was absolutely beautiful! The whole church has been so supportive of us since we began our adoption journey. It was perfect to have my church family a part of this celebration! Here is a picture that Greg took of Grace when we got back to my parent’s house after her baptism. Isn’t she beautiful!!!!

Christmas was so much fun! While she loved the presents, the bows, paper, and boxes seemed to be the biggest hits! I had two weeks off for the holidays and a bonus Snow Day gave me some extra time. Greg had the week between Christmas and New Year’s off too. It was so nice to spend all that time together. We celebrated Christmas at my parents and then Greg’s family came to our house after Christmas. We had our family photos taken for the holidays. They turned out so good. Here is one of our favorites.

One of Grace's favorite presents that she got for Christmas was the sled that Uncle Darrin got her. It's a tiny little sled with a seatbelt and wide bottom just for little ones. She absolutely loves getting pulled around in the snow. This is probably no surprise, since she liked the wagon so much. This is just like a little red wagon for the snow! She likes to scoop up snow with her mitten as she goes along, and then bring it up to her mouth and eat it! She winds up with snow all over her face and just laughs.

Our last blog entry said that Grace was starting to take a few steps by herself. It’s about two months later and she's walking everywhere now! It seems just overnight she made the decision that she would rather walk than crawl. Of course, she fell down a lot at first, but seems to get better every day. It's so much fun to see her learning so many things and trying out her new independence.

I’ve been so concerned about Grace’s language development. I’ve spoken to our speech therapist at school. She tells me not to worry. Riiiight! She told me to work on things like “Uh Oh” so we’ve been doing that. And sure enough, she’s starting to say it, or at least something pretty close. So her first word seems to be Uh Oh. She also says “num” when she likes what she is eating. I know, it may not be a real a word but it has meaning, so it’s good enough for me. She also says “bye bye” but Greg has yet to hear it so I don’t think he believes me. But her daycare provider says she heard it too, so I have a witness!

She’s still very small for her age. She’s 16 months now, but only wears 12 month clothes. But at her 15 month checkup, she was finally on the charts for both height and weight. We haven’t found much that she won’t eat, so that is helping her to gain weight. Her favorite foods seem to be peas and bananas, but she hasn’t met a fruit or vegetable that she won’t eat yet.

Sleep has been a little rough lately. Grace usually wakes up two or three times each night. Luckily, she usually goes right back to sleep, but there have been some nights where we’re up with her for two or three hours at a time. With three new molars in the last week, we think we may know why she’s restless, although they don’t seem to bother her during the day at all. Last night she slept through the whole night though, so maybe things are looking up! Yay!

I think that should bring you all up to date. We’ll try not to wait so long between posts next time. Thanks again for visiting our blog. Take care.

2008-11-22T14:36:00.006-05:00

Hello, everyone! Yes, we are doing wonderfully! We apologize for taking so long to post on our blog. Believe it or not, things have been very busy. And, of course, we have wanted to spend every moment with our beautiful daughter, Grace.

Everyday, we are more and more amazed at how well she is doing. She is eating well, sleeping (pretty) well, and gaining weight. Her personality is probably the most amazing thing that we see develop everyday. She is always smiling, laughing, and talking (in her one year old language). She loves to blow kisses to everyone! She waves hello and good-bye. Most of the time, she can point to her nose and her hair if you ask her where they are. She is taking about five or six steps by herself. Greg and I sit across from each other and she walks back and forth between us! Usually, she ends up getting so excited that she is walking by herself that she falls into our arms. She loves music! Of course! I’m sure you’re not surprised to know that music is happening in our house almost 24/7. Either I’m playing the piano and singing, or her Sweet Pea 3 player is playing some of her favorite songs. She dances and moves to music every time she hears it. She has beautiful long fingers, so I just know that she’s going to be a pianist! No pressure here though!

Since we’ve been home, we’ve celebrated her first birthday. Here is a picture of her trying her cake. She was having fun, but wasn’t really into the cake.

We celebrated her first Halloween. She was the cutest ladybug ever! We didn’t go out trick or treating, but she helped pass out candy to those who were trick or treating. She also carved her first pumpkin. Here she is by a pumpkin patch, too.

She loves to take a bath! She splashes the water everywhere and practically floods the whole bathroom! My clothes end up soaking wet by the time that she is done. She touches her face to the water and thinks that it is so funny. She has some squirt toys in the tub with her and she loves to squirt herself with them. She just laughs and laughs!

My parents bought her a wagon. This has been her favorite thing to ride in so far. She hasn’t been super crazy about strollers! She has tolerated them, but not for very long. But the wagon, she can ride in forever. The weather is pretty yucky and cold here in Michigan now. But we had some beautiful days a few weeks ago. We went for 2 to 3 mile walks together with me pulling the wagon. Whenever I’d pull her up the driveway and the sidewalk to our front door, she would hang onto the sides of the wagon like she didn’t want to get out. So I’d just keep on walking!

We received her Certificate of Citizenship in the United States of America a few weeks ago! I just cried when I opened it. What an amazing thing this all is! We just received her Russian passport back with the stamp from the Russian embassy. I have ordered her Michigan birth certificate, but haven’t received it yet. Should be soon! The next steps will be to get her a Social Security number and U.S. Passport.

It’s funny that we’ve only been home seven weeks. It seems like Grace has been with us forever! We can hardly remember what our life was like without her. All that matters is our lives together now!

Happy Birthday!

2008-10-08T21:07:00.001-04:00

Wow, it’s already Wednesday and this is our first blog entry since we returned from Russia late Saturday evening. Sorry for the delay, but we’ve been trying to catch up on our sleep and get our new little girl oriented to her new life here in Michigan. Today is also our little Grace’s first birthday! We didn’t really do that much other than wish her happy birthday about fifty times today. The family is coming over on Sunday to celebrate with us, so we’re really looking forward to that.

But let’s get back to where we left off. Our flight left Moscow on Saturday at about 1:00. It went just like you would think an 11 ½ hour flight would be with a 1-year-old. She slept a couple of times for a total of about 3 hours maybe. The rest of the time, we just tried to make her as comfortable as possible, which meant walking down the aisles about 100 times, feeding her when we could, and trying everything else we could think of. Needless to say, it was a long flight.

We arrived in Atlanta on-time, went through passport control, customs, and immigration, which took about two hours. When that was all over, we still had three hours before our flight to Detroit left. So again, we walked her around the airport, fed her, and did everything we could to keep her happy. She was soooo tired. She finally fell asleep about a ½ hour before we left Atlanta, and slept the whole flight. She didn’t wake up until we got out of our seats to leave the plane!

We made the long walk to the baggage claim area. When we arrived, the new grandparents were there waiting for us! It was so good to see them after being away from home for 28 days! They helped us with our luggage and drove us home. We got home about 12:30 AM Sunday morning. We figured that we had been up for 34 hours straight. Mom and Dad spent the night, so they wouldn’t have to drive home so late, and so they could spend Sunday with us. Grace slept the entire night, until 9:00 the next morning without waking once!

Aunt Julie came to visit on Sunday afternoon while Mom and Dad were still here. Other than that, we tried to unpack a little, and start to get things organized. On Monday, I did laundry when Grace was asleep. When she was awake, I just played with her. Greg went in to work for a few hours Monday afternoon.

On Tuesday, we had our first outing with Grace to the pediatrician’s office. It went very well. She didn’t scream like she did at the doctor visit in Moscow. That is at least, until we went to the lab to have her blood drawn. She started screaming when they were just looking for a spot to put the needle. She doesn’t like having her arms held down like that. When the needle came, it was even worse. The first try, they couldn’t find her little vein, so they went to the other arm and tried there. They finally finished, but by the end, poor little Gracie was just drenched in sweat and shaking from crying so hard. We felt so bad for putting her through that. We headed home and she fell asleep on the 10 minute drive.

Today, Wednesday, we had our second excursion in the car. We went to our favorite place – Target! We had a few essentials we needed to buy. She did very well, taking in all the new sights and sounds.

We’re trying to get Gracie on a regular schedule of sleeping and eating, so that she doesn’t get overtired or too hungry. Either of those things can make her kind of cranky. Tomorrow we plan on changing it a little more. We’re experimenting to see what works best.

So our adoption journey is coming to a close, and a new chapter is starting with our life as a family. Thanks to everyone who supported us, through your kind words, prayers, thoughts, or even if you just read our blog and never commented. It all means the world to us. This doesn’t mean we’re done posting, but they’ll likely be less frequent. Having this blog has been so helpful to us in so many ways, we can’t imagine going on this journey without it. They say it takes a village to raise a child. We feel that it also takes a village to adopt a child as well. If we can help anyone with their journey, please drop us a comment. We relied on so many others before us and we’d love the chance to do the same.

Last Day in Russia!!!

2008-10-03T13:21:00.001-04:00

We had our interview at the American Embassy today. It went really well. We were there with Monica and Little M, and the family from New York. We also met some people from New Jersey, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, who were adopting with different agencies. When we first got there, we found a very long line of people, and we thought we were in for a long wait. But they let us go ahead of the line because we were there for adoptions. Those in line must have been there for other things, since they didn’t seem to have any kids with them. We had to take a number and wait for them to call us up to the window. There was a really nice man there who just described what all the documents were and what we needed to do with them, so it wasn’t much of an interview really. Then we waited again, not very long though, and they called us up to get Grace’s passport! She travels on a Russian passport with a US visa, the opposite of ours. Then as soon as we’re on US soil, she becomes a joint American/Russian citizen. Now we have everything that we need to come home! We explained it all to her and she’s really excited! Actually, her biggest interest in her passport was with how it tasted.

For dinner tonight, we went to KFC! Wow, what a way to celebrate our last night in Moscow! Grace was a little cranky. Because of our appointments, we had to wake the poor thing up early from both of her naps today. She was absolutely exhausted by dinner time, so we didn’t think she would be able to make it through dinner at a restaurant. There’s a KFC about three quarters of a mile from our hotel. We put Grace in the baby carrier and walked to KFC. (Grace isn’t real fond of the stroller, but she loves the baby carrier!) We were hoping KFC had an English menu. No such luck! But one person there spoke a little English. We were able to order chicken and fries. We brought it back to our room and ate it here. It was pretty good. Not exactly like KFC at home, but close enough.

They pick us up for the airport tomorrow morning at 8:45. Our flight leaves at 12:55 and lands in Atlanta at 4:30. That’s an 11 ½ hour flight. We have a five hour layover in Atlanta during which time we have to go through customs and immigration. Then our plane for Detroit leaves at 9:30 PM, arriving at 11:30 PM. It will be an extremely long day, especially for the little one, but we’re anxious to get it over with and start our new life together. We really need to get Grace on a regular schedule. With all these appointments and flights, she has meals and naps at different times each day so it’s been really hard on her. But we’ll be able to fix that in just a day or two now.

Monica and Little M. will be on our same flight to Atlanta so we’re really happy about that. Our new friends from New York fly out the same day, but on a different flight. We wish them safe travels back home.

So today, on our 27th day since we left home (yes, we’re counting), we are making our very last post from Russia. The next one will be from home!

Baby saw the Doctor

2008-10-02T14:19:00.000-04:00

Today is our first full day in Moscow. We arrived at the hotel last night from the airport after 11 so we didn’t post anything yesterday. Luckily, the flight was only behind schedule about 15 minutes, not 3 hours like Andy and Kathy had to endure the other day. Gracie’s first airplane ride was a little rough. It was way past her bedtime, and we had some trouble making formula for her on the plane. It seems they have bottled water at room temperature or hot water for coffee. That’s it. So now we have a better plan for the next flight. She was pretty fidgety for most of the two hour trip, but finally went to sleep for the last fifteen minutes or so. She was exhausted and quite frankly, so were Mom and Dad, but we made it. On the way from the airport to the hotel, our interpreter had me fill out forms for the embassy. It was difficult to write while riding in the van, so I’m not sure how legible things will be, but there are many forms to complete, and Monica had to do hers as well.

Today they picked us up bright and early at 8:00 AM to go to have Gracie checked out by the embassy-approved physician. We were there with Monica and Little M. and another family from New York with their new son. We had to wait quite a while before the doctor got there, so the kids were getting pretty impatient. Of the three, Gracie went last. The exam was pretty quick, the doctor was very nice, and spoke English quite well. But Gracie HATED that exam! She just screamed while we just had to sit there watching in the chairs we were told to sit in. She’s pretty uncomfortable around people she doesn’t know, especially men. And this man had a big bushy mustache, a white lab coat, and was holding on to her while looking in her ears and mouth. It was really hard to watch. When it was over, like ten minutes later, we went back to the van, and she went right to sleep on Kyley’s shoulder. She was wiped out!

We went for a couple of walks today around the hotel here. On one of them we stopped at a local supermarket and got more baby supplies and water. It’s only a few blocks from the Holiday Inn Lesnaya where we are staying. If you go out the lobby door, turn right, go down the street and take the second left, go two blocks and its on your right, on the corner. It has pictures on the side of produce and stuff, so it’s hard to miss.

We had dinner in the hotel restaurant tonight with Monica, Little M, and the family from New York. Kyley and I both had the Beef Stroganoff and it was very good! This hotel is so much nicer than the Korvet in Astrakhan. When we checked in, they gave Gracie a little stuffed animal. There was fresh fruit, a Kit Kat bar, big fluffy towels, and even a robe in our room! It’s nice to be pampered a little after spending almost a month in Astrakhan.

Tomorrow, we get picked up at 1:00 for our appointment at the U.S. Embassy which is our last thing to do before we get on the plane for Atlanta on Saturday. Can’t wait!

Our First Full Day as a Family!

2008-09-30T12:27:00.006-04:00

First things first. We promised some pictures and here they are. The first was taken in the Director’s Office yesterday, Gotcha Day, only moments after they brought our Gracie (yes, that’s her name) out to us. The second was one we took the other day that we just liked.

We had a really great day today. We put Grace to bed a little after 8:00 last night and she was asleep by 8:30. She slept all the way to about 7:00 this morning without waking up at all! First thing after changing her, we got her a bottle. She drank the whole thing without stopping! Then we all went down the hall and had our breakfast with Monica and Little M. They served these French toast-like things in the shape of small patties that were pretty good, along with the standard yogurt, cheese slices, and bread. Grace sat in her stroller while we ate but got pretty fidgety toward the end. When we got back to the room, we made her some cereal which she devoured. We were a bit worried yesterday because she didn’t seem to want the Biphodok (a thick milk product with nutrients, we think), but now we know this kid likes to eat!

Then we gave her a bath. The bathtub here is large and really deep, so we thought we’d try the bathroom sink. She had to hang on to the faucet to keep from sliding down onto her back. We were laughing our heads off and she just looked at us like we were nuts, or had no idea of what we were doing. It’s actually probably a little of both. We hope she’ll forgive us. Then we put her down for a nap and she went right to sleep. She slept for almost two hours. When she got up, we ate our lunch while she played. Actually we ended up all playing keep the bag of chips out of Grace’s reach. She was very determined to get that bag.

Then we walked down to the mall with Monica and Little M. Grace rode in the baby carrier strapped to Kyley’s shoulders. This was a test run to see how she would put up with being confined in the carrier and how the traffic and people would affect her. She did great! No crying or anything. On the walk back, she was even humming! She liked how the sound of her voice would change every time Kyley took a step. We’re planning on using the carrier for the airports. We have four of them to deal with soon and we wanted to know how she’d react. So far, so good.

When we got back to the room, it was time to eat again, of course. Grace had a jar of chicken, a jar of squash, a couple crackers, and some juice. She liked them all, especially the juice! She’s just learning to drink out of a cup. We don’t think the baby home had sippy cups, because she doesn’t seem to want to drink from one. When we use a regular cup, most of it goes down the front of her, so we just put it in a bottle. That worked much better. Then we played some more, and we put her down for a second nap. Again, she went right to sleep. We’re just waiting for her to have some kind of total meltdown since we’re in strange places, doing strange things, but so far, she’s been pretty happy and content.

At dinner time, we decided to go out to a restaurant, since Grace had been doing so well and since it is our (and Monica’s) last night in Astrakhan. Since the Chocolate Café was the only place we could think of that was non-smoking, we went there. Both Grace and Little M. were great! Grace ate a few crackers while we had our meals. She didn’t get a little antsy until the end of our dinner and wanted to grab everything on the table, but what one-year-old doesn’t do that?

So now we’re back at the hotel. Grace drank her Biphodok from a bottle tonight with no problems. She even cried a little when it was gone as if she wanted more. Now she’s sound asleep again in her crib. You know, we always hear people say how lucky the adopted children are, to come to the U.S. from an orphanage in Russia, where they’ll have more opportunities, etc. and I suppose that’s true. But we are the lucky ones. Our little daughter is just amazing.

As we mentioned, this was our last night in Astrakhan. We have mixed emotions because our little girl will be leaving her birth place and her country, but we so desperately want to come home. Our flight leaves tomorrow evening. Our next post should be from Moscow.

GOTCHA DAY!!!

2008-09-29T14:28:00.001-04:00

The day started with breakfast at 8:00 with Monica. At 9:00 they picked us up to go to the registry office for the birth certificate. We went right in, no waiting. They did some things on the computer and had us sign our names in a couple of places and that was it! They gave us a nice little folder with the Astrakhan 450th anniversary logo on the cover to put the birth certificate in. Galina hung on to the actual birth certificate along with Greg’s passport so that she could go get our little one’s passport. Then they took us back to the hotel to wait until this afternoon when it was time to go get our little one.

We were picked up at about 2:30 for our very last time at the baby home. We stopped at a grocery store to buy three cakes for the staff; one for the doctors, one for the caregivers, and one for the director. We also bought a bouquet of red roses for the director. Then we headed to the baby home. We met in the director’s office and a doctor came in to go over her medical information with us. We had a chance to ask questions and we had to sign more papers. Meanwhile, we gave her clothes to a caregiver to get her ready to go. Soon they brought her into the director’s office. They took some pictures of us with their camera and also with our camera. They escorted us to the door and all waved good-bye to us as we left. That was it, we’re parents now and she’s our little girl. All the waiting, wondering, worrying, the sleepless nights, the laughing, crying, and every other emotion culminated in that moment when we could call her ours. We can hardly believe it.

She did great on the drive back to the hotel. We went up to the room and we played with the toys. She had to walk around the room to make sure she saw and touched everything. Then we bundled up and went outside for a little walk in the stroller. We just went around the courtyard area of the hotel, just for some fresh air. We decided it was best to eat right at the hotel. We took her biscuit and Biphodok with us. She loved and practically devoured the biscuits. However, she wasn’t too fond of the Biphodok. Tomorrow we’re going to ask if there is a special way they give it to her, so that she’ll drink more of it. Then we came back to the room, washed up, put on her pajamas, put on some lullabies and she went right to sleep. We woke her up about 10:00 PM for her bottle, since the baby home schedule said that’s what she usually does. She was half asleep, but devoured the whole thing. Now she’s sound asleep again right here next to us. This is awesome!

Yesterday in our blog comments, Sara requested that we post the list of our little one’s diet that was provided by Baby Home #2. Here it is:

6:00 a.m. Nutrilon Comfort – 200

10:00 a.m. Cereal with Milk – 180
Curd
Biscuit – 10
Fruit Juice – 100

2:00 p.m. Meat Puree – 70
Vegetable Puree – 180
Crouton – 10
Yolk - .5
Fruit Juice – 100

6:00 p.m. Biphidok – 200
Biscuit – 10

10:00 p.m. Nutrilon Comfort - 200

Boy, what a special day! We’re as tired as she is, so we’re going to wait until tomorrow to post a picture. Sorry! Tomorrow, we’ll also let you know how she sleeps tonight!

Sunday - Walk Day!

2008-09-28T14:22:00.000-04:00

Well, tonight is our last night before we go to the baby home and take our little one with us forever. Yes, tomorrow is “Gotcha Day”. If you’ve been following our blog, you’re probably thinking, “yes, we know that already”, but we like to say it just the same. And we’ll say it again tomorrow, but then we’ll be able to tell you how it went. It will be a huge change for our little girl who has spent the majority of her little life in the same place, surrounded by the same few people. We’re praying that we can make this as smooth as possible for her.

Tomorrow they pick us up at 9:00 AM to go get her birth certificate. That would be the one with our names listed as her parents. Should be exciting in itself, but then in the afternoon we go pick her up and take her with us. Finally! We’ll need to bring clothes with us to dress her in for her big adventure. Kyley is working on a perfectly matching outfit right now.

As for today, we walked a lot again. (We left the hotel at 11:15 a.m. and returned at 5:15 p.m.). After breakfast at the hotel, we went back to the souvenir shop by the Kremlin where Monica got a couple more things. Then we walked over by the courthouse, looking for a museum that Vala drew us a map for. We think we found the place, but it appeared to be under construction just like most buildings in the area. A nice woman who spoke very little English tried to give us directions to where the museum was now located. We did end up finding a museum, but we’re not sure it was the one she was referring to. The one we found is right across from the park near the Kremlin. We think it was the World War II museum that Jamie mentioned in her comment on our blog. It was pretty interesting, but with everything being in Russian, it was a little difficult to tell what things were. There was a very sweet older woman there who, even though we explained that we only spoke English, followed us around and described everything in Russian for us.

After that, we were getting a little hungry so we headed to the Megastore, which is close to the Victoria Palace Hotel. Its kind of a Home Depot meets Best Buy, with several floors of merchandise. On the top floor off the lobby is a Subway where we had lunch! You know, the sandwich shop just like back home. They didn’t have an English menu, but there were numbered pictures on the wall from which we could order. The BMT is called the same thing in Russian so that helped as well.

After that we walked along the river back to the big church with the green roofs and headed to the Astor Mall to pick up a few things, and then back to the hotel for about an hour’s rest. Then we headed out again, this time to Camilla’s for dinner, because we noticed that Amy William’s blog mentioned that they had an English menu there. It’s right along the river, close to the Krem Cafe. When we got there, we asked the gentleman that met us if they did in fact, have something in English. He disappeared for a minute and came back with a menu that showed both Russian and English for each item. However, they were having some kind of private party and he apologized but we would have to come back some other time. He spoke very little English, but we somehow figured out what he was trying to tell us.

So from there we walked to the Chocolate Café, one of our standard places, and not very far away. We had a nice dinner and when we tried to look over the desserts, our waitress brought out a really nice fruit plate with chocolate fondue that she said was on the house, because we were such good customers. So if you ever want a free dessert, just visit the same restaurant every three days or so over several weeks and you just might!

Tomorrow’s blog should have all the highlights from Gotcha Day! Hopefully we’ll sleep tonight but we’re not counting on it.

Our Last Visit!

2008-09-27T13:59:00.000-04:00

Today was our last regular visit to the baby home. We stopped on the way and picked up her passport and visa photos that were taken yesterday. She has quite a worried look on her face as it was such a new (and a little scary) place for her. Our visit was in the morning this time and lasted fairly long – about an hour and a half. Time flies when we’re with her though – it always seems like less than it really is. During the week things are very strict at the baby home, with lots of rules we have to follow. But on Saturdays, things are more relaxed and we have a little more freedom to do what we want, and for her to do what she wants. Our little one was pretty good today. We played with toys mostly on a blanket laid out on the floor. At one point, there was a little crying for no apparent reason, but she got over it quickly and we went back to playing.

After our visit, we went to BananaMama, a children’s store, to get things for her that we’ll need until we get her home. Things like tights, mittens, food, diapers, etc. We found some tights, and some baby food of the meat variety there. We had to go to the big grocery store (the one like Sam’s Club – blue front, big yellow letters) to get the rest. We never did find any mittens. Shopping for food was pretty tough. The list provided by the baby home was fairly generic so we had lots of questions about exactly what foods she is used to. There are many choices on the shelf, but with our interpreter’s help, we did the best that we could. Hopefully, everything we picked up will agree with her.

Since tomorrow is Sunday, we don’t get a visit. But Monday we get picked up at 9:00 to go get her birth certificate and then in the afternoon, she becomes ours for keeps! It should be quite a day for all of us.

For dinner tonight, we walked to the Krem Café. This was our only walk for the day. We brought a taxi back to the hotel because it was dark by the time we finished our meals. Tomorrow is Sunday and we are on our own. I’m sure we’ll make up for our lack of walking. The temperature is supposed to be cooler tomorrow – high of 58 degrees. We’ll have to walk fast to keep warm!

Andy and Kathy flew to Moscow today on their way home. I know we said it yesterday, but again, we wish them safe travels and a short wait to come back and make their journey complete.

Baby Road Trip!

2008-09-26T15:17:00.000-04:00

Today our visit at the baby home was very short. We didn’t really get to spend any time with our little one there. Instead, she met us at the door with one of the psychologists, and we took her to get her picture taken for her passport and visa. The office was just a few blocks away, so we had the pictures taken and headed right back. They said that since we did this, it would take the place of our visit. We were probably only with her about 20-30 minutes. Oh well.

Overall, she did pretty well. She cried a little when we first got into the car, maybe because the driver was paying a lot of attention to her, and she had never met the driver before. But we got her calmed down in about a minute or so. Then, when the pictures were finished, a group of about five people came into the little office, all seeming to talk at once. That was a little much for her too, and she cried a little more. When we went back to the car, she was fine again. Determined to get Kyley’s sunglasses into her mouth, she forgot all about those scary people at the picture place.

And that was the end of our visit. It was in the upper 60s here today, and they had her dressed in a fleece snowsuit with a hat and a hood. Under all that, she had pants, tights, socks, and shoes. I was getting warm just looking at her! Everyone here seems to have a lower tolerance for cold than we’re used to. I noticed when we were walking today, that I was the only one around with short sleeves and the temperature was near 70! Really, there were hundreds of people on the street and we didn’t see one without long sleeves. Weird.

Tonight was Andy and Kathy’s last night here, so we let them chose the restaurant for dinner. They picked the Chocolate Café and it was again, very good. We wish them a safe journey to Moscow, and then home. And we hope they are able to hurry back to bring home their new addition to the family.

Tomorrow we get to visit in the morning. We hope it’s a long one since we don’t get to visit on Sunday. We’re supposed to get a list of her daily schedule and what she eats, etc. so our translator can take us to the store so that we can buy everything that we’ll need to get her home happily. Cross you fingers, say a prayer for that.

In less than three days, she’ll be all ours! We can’t wait!

Only Two More Visits

2008-09-25T15:02:00.000-04:00

Today’s another day in our countdown. We always post on our blog at the end of the day and it serves as a checkmark on the calendar as another day closer to our forever time. We only have two more baby home visits. After that, the next trip will be to bring her with us!

Today started with us all meeting for breakfast. After breakfast, we went across the street. There is an open market, similar to a flea market. There were definitely some interesting things there. After that, there is a store that we have walked by numerous times, but never gone in. By the pictures on the windows, we thought it might be a bookstore. We were correct. It had some nice things. We bought a couple of plastic block-like toys and a CD of Russian lullabies. Then it was time for Andy and Kathy to head for their visit.

The weather was pretty nice today. It was sunny and in the upper 60s. However, it is supposed to drop to highs in the mid-50s on Saturday, so I knew I couldn’t postpone buying a coat much longer. Monica walked with us to a store down the road. I found one coat that was in my size and that I, at least, kind of liked. If nothing else, I will be able to stay warm.

Our visit was great. It was about an hour long. It seemed very short, since we have been lucky enough to get some longer visits lately. We took the new blocks with us that we had bought at the bookstore. Mostly she enjoyed playing with these and with the stacking cups.

Dinner tonight was at San Pizza. We had a waitress that spoke English really well. Yeah!

Okay, Mom and Dad! What’s with the Internet? We had expected an email from you by today. Since calling you is so expensive, I’ve been holding off hoping that I could email you instead. You must have had a delay in your installation. Just email us when you can so that we have your address and can respond back.

She Does The Twist!

2008-09-24T14:42:00.000-04:00

Well, the good news turned out to be true! We bought our tickets today for our return flight to Moscow on October 1st, the same day as originally planned. If all goes as planned, that means that our flights back to the U.S. won’t need to be changed at all! We should be home on October 4th. We’re really happy about this because it means that we will be able to celebrate our little one’s first birthday at home, rather than on a plane or in an airport somewhere. Four weeks in Russia is long enough, we really weren’t looking forward to a fifth week.

This morning was very overcast and rainy, so we just hung out at the hotel. At 1:00 we were picked up and taken to the Aeroflot office to buy the tickets. After that, we dropped Monica back at the hotel and went right to the baby home for our visit with you-know-who. She was great today. Kyley sang “Let’s twist again” (Chubby Checker) while twisting her waist back and forth. When she would stop, our little one would bounce her knees a little like she was dancing. Too cute! Even one of the caregivers started doing the twist!

They don’t let us play with her on the floor, I think because they feel the floor is drafty and cold. So we were limited to holding her, or playing with her on a little kid-sized couch they have there. It was a bit awkward, and we could tell she wanted a little more freedom to move around. So we held her hands and had her walk around the room, like we do on most visits. She really seems to enjoy that. It’s where we get the biggest smiles. Since the cold season is coming around, they told us we might have to wear surgical masks when we visit starting tomorrow. Not sure why, as long as we’re not sick. But we’ll be happy to comply for the last few visits. The last time someone with a mask tried to pick up our little one while we were there though, she wanted nothing to do with her. It must bring back memories of immunizations or something like that. Hopefully, they won’t make us wear them.

After our visit, we met back up with Monica, Andy, and Kathy at the hotel. We all walked down by the Kremlin to the little souvenir shop again since Andy and Kathy hadn’t been there yet. We bought a cute framed picture of Astrakhan, done in sort of a cartoon style that we thought would look great in our little one’s room. When we got back to the hotel though, we realized that it is just barely too big to fit in our largest suitcase. I’m going to have to figure something out to get that home somehow.

We went to the Chocolate Café for dinner, since its right down the street from the Kremlin. The food was really good as usual. I think they may have the best food of all the restaurants we have tried here. It also seems to be completely non-smoking, which believe me, is the exception, rather than the rule. If they had wi-fi, it would be the perfect place!

Only five more days until Monday, when we leave the baby home for the last time, but as a family for the first time!

Potential Good News!

2008-09-23T13:18:00.000-04:00

Happy Tuesday to all! We had some potentially good news today. There is a big celebration coming up in honor of Astrakhan’s 450th anniversary. Apparently, Galina has been working hard to try to get all of our needed documents in order for us to leave town before the celebration. The celebration is to last about a week and a very large crowd is anticipated. Well, Vala told us today that we are going tomorrow to get our tickets to fly to Moscow. We are supposedly going to buy tickets to leave here in October 1. They are picking us up at 1:00 p.m. tomorrow to go buy them. We’ll let you know more tomorrow, but we’re thinking we’ll be flying home on our original date!!!!!! Cross your fingers!

We had an awesome visit today. We were able to spend about an hour and forty-five minutes with her. She was having a great time with the stacking cups. Not stacking them, but putting one in each hand and hitting them together to make some beautiful music. (okay, noise!) But it’s a start toward being our little musician. There was a lot going on today. They left the door to the room where we were open and there was quite a bit of traffic in the hallway. She is definitely curious. She needs to know exactly what is going on around her. She will just break her neck trying to see and make sure she’s not missing anything.

It was another windy day! We went for a walk, but we were only out for about two hours. We walked down by the Azimut and then around by the Krem Café. We headed back and stopped at the Astor mall again. We went to the children’s store there, because we wanted to get another teether. We didn’t find anything that we liked. I believe we will be taking a trip to a larger children’s store later this week, so I’m sure we’ll find something there.

Greg seems to have some problems with walking here in Russia! He has twisted his ankle on three different occasions. Of course, it was the same ankle each time. Now he’s hobbling along. The sidewalks are not exactly flat. You have to really watch for holes and uneven areas.

My parents are finally entering the 21st century, actually I should probably say the 20th century. They are supposed to get Internet on Wednesday. Mom and Dad, we had better be the first people that you send an e-mail to. That way we can e-mail you back!

Right now we are at the Krem Café. We had a nice dinner and now we’re all on our laptops. Free wi-fi! The Internet is down AGAIN at the Korvet. We’re having a bit of a celebration because Andy and Kathy had a good day today as well

Sunday and Monday

2008-09-22T15:06:00.000-04:00

Sorry for not posting yesterday (Sunday). We, along with Monica, had dinner with Andy and Kathy, who arrived here yesterday afternoon for their first trip. We talked and laughed until after 11 o’clock, so it was too late to post anything. We had a really nice time though. It’s great to share this adventure with others who are going through the same thing.

Earlier in the day we walked for about four hours with Monica. One of our stops was at the souvenir shop near the Kremlin that Jamie recommended. We bought a little Astrakhan plate and a few other little things. We also did some other shopping to look for a jacket for me, but I couldn’t find anything that I liked at a price I was willing to pay. The highs have been in the mid-60s, which doesn’t seem that cold, but it’s been much cooler in the evenings. We walk pretty much everywhere we go, so I’ve got to find some kind of jacket. In Moscow, it’s been highs in the low 50s. I’m really going to need something then. I know jackets will be much more expensive there!

Today (Monday) we all met for breakfast here at the hotel. Andy and Kathy had to leave at 10:00 a.m. for their appointment at the Ministry of Education. Monica, Greg, and I went for a walk. Surprise! We walked to the Kremlin. Monica hadn’t had a chance to go inside any of the buildings. Greg got some good pictures today, because it wasn’t cloudy like our last visit. The wind is still unbelievable! It makes walking and enjoying things almost impossible. Tomorrow is supposed to be the last day of these big winds!

We left for our visit at about 2:30 p.m. It was a little shorter today. Traffic was pretty heavy trying to get there, so it slowed us down. Our visit was great though! We took a lot more pictures. We are counting down! Since it’s 11:00 p.m. now, that means only six more days until she’s ours forever!

We all met up for dinner. We chose San Pizza. Because there are five of us now, we took two taxis to get there. We had a nice meal with a lot of chatting!

We found out about our phone bill today! Ouch! I’ve called home to my parents three times because of our paperwork dilemmas. The charge is about $2.00 a minute. So we’re going to try to buy some phone cards here to see if they will work. The ones we bought at home worked in Moscow, but are not working here at the Korvet.

That’s about all for today!

Internet’s Back!

2008-09-20T15:23:00.000-04:00

Well, it’s the weekend again. It seems difficult to keep track of what day it is here. Our Saturdays are much like our weekdays, as we get to visit the baby home. Sundays are the only days we don’t get to visit. Our CHI people need a day off after all. We should mention that our little one is at a “baby home”. We’ve incorrectly referred to it as an orphanage before, but technically the orphanages are for kids over four years old. Sorry about that.

Today we met Monica at the hotel restaurant for breakfast. There is no menu, they just serve what they have that day. Usually we get two eggs sunny side up, a juice box, yogurt, some meat, either sliced salami or a hot dog (yes I said that right), sliced cheese, bread and butter, and a dessert thing that I can’t really explain (not so good). Oh well, its included with the room and we probably wouldn’t eat breakfast otherwise, so it isn’t all that bad.

Then we went for a walk while Monica had her visit to her baby home. We tried a different direction today, going right out of the hotel instead of left where the Kremlin and downtown are. We walked about 45 minutes until we got to a bridge over one of the rivers here. This one had quite a few boats on it, something we haven’t seen much of so far. Then we walked back, for about a 1 ½ hour trip. Not all that interesting since so many of the buildings here are the same. The government must have built hundreds of apartment buildings all about the same time because they all seem to match. They’re usually five stories high and eight apartments long on each side, so it looks like about 80 units per building, and they’re everywhere.

Then we ate lunch back in our room. When Monica returned from her visit, Galina took us all to a store to get groceries and supplies. The store is kind of like a Sam’s Club or Costco. You need a membership card and its kind of warehouse-like inside. No free samples though. I found a jacket, since it’s been getting fairly chilly here in the evenings and should be worse when we get back to Moscow. We tried to find some tights for our little one, but they didn’t have much. And we bought more food to restock the room.

Our visit to the baby home was another good one. Since it was Saturday, there didn’t seem to be as many people working there, at least not management-type people, so our visit was like an hour and a half or so. Much longer than the usual 45 minutes. She was really good. There was a cute little boy in the room too, about 3 or so. She didn’t know what to make of him at first. His little choo-choo train that he pulled around made lots of noise and she didn’t seem to like that very much. We brought some of the clothes that we bought for her to check sizes. Even the 9 month stuff was a little big. We also brought some little plastic balls for her to play with. She still seems to be most interested with things she can put in her mouth, like Kyley’s necklaces and her buttons. We’re trying to redirect her to the teething toys that we have for her.

Then we went back to the hotel to meet Monica to go to dinner and found that the computer guy was finally here! Yes, we’re posting from our hotel again. Incidently, we forgot to mention yesterday that we posted from the Krem Café, since they have wi-fi. I’m not exactly sure what he did, but now it works, and we don’t have to log in anymore. Go figure.

When that was done, we walked to a restaurant with Monica that we hadn’t tried before. This one was called La Vanilla (we think) and it is right around the corner from the Chocolate Café. From the Korvet, you go straight instead of turning left to go to the Chocolate Café and its down about a block or two on the left. They didn’t have an English menu so we tried to translate some things using our Russian-English dictionaries, but didn’t get anywhere. We asked if we could take a menu with us so we could translate it and return later. They seemed to agree, so we took the menu and went to the Chocolate Café for dinner. We’ll try La Vanilla some other time if we can make any progress with the menu. I had pork with raspberry sauce and baskets with bacon (a potato side dish). Both were very good. Kyley ordered the same thing she got last time, the chicken hips, and the same potatoes I had. Monica tried the Mutton, which she said was good too!

Since it was a little chilly, we decided to try the hot chocolate for dessert. What we got was a small expresso cup filled with what I can only describe as a melted chocolate bar. It was REALLY thick, not like hot chocolate we’re used to. It was good, but after a filling dinner, was a little much. It was dark by the time we were finished, so we took a taxi back to the hotel.

And now we’re back in the room, finally with Internet access again. It means so much to have this connection with all of you and the rest of the world. What did we do before email and such?

Catch Up!

2008-09-19T13:23:00.000-04:00

Sorry, it’s been so long since we’ve posted a ‘real’ blog. The Internet service at the hotel has been down since Tuesday evening. Errrr! Every time I ask, they tell me the guy will be here today to fix it and I have asked everyday! Luckily, we were able to get our Tuesday post in before it went down. Here’s a brief synopsis of what we did each day!

On Wednesday, we went for our visit in the morning. Each one gets better! We went for a walk trying to find the toy store that Jamie commented on. We weren’t able to find it. We’ll try again another day. We did find (by accident) a pedestrian bridge over the waterway. It is a tradition here for a couple to bring a lock to the bridge on their wedding day and attach the lock to the bridge. The bridge is amazing. There must be thousands of locks. What a neat tradition! In the evening, we met up with Russ and Monica and went to San Pizza for dinner. While we were there, we noticed that a person at another table had a laptop. We decided we would bring our laptops the next time we came to see if they had Wi-Fi. We spent most of the dinner talking and worrying over our court appointment. When we got back to the hotel, Greg and I spent the evening quizzing each other for possible questions the judge might ask.

You already know the finale of Thursday, but here is a brief synopsis of how the day went. First, we met Russ and Monica for breakfast. Then they headed off to court. Their court was at 10:00 a.m. They got back to our room at about noon with huge smiles on their faces. The news was great! Everything went well at court for them! We tried to eat a bit of lunch, but didn’t have much of an appetite. We practiced some more, then it was time to change our clothes. We met Galina and off we went to our court appointment. Vala met us there. Of course, we were so nervous. We started a little bit late at about 2:10 p.m. The judge started by asking Greg a bunch of questions. Then it was my turn. He asked me a bunch of questions and the prosecutor had a few questions for me also. If you received the list of questions that CHI put out a few months ago, practice them. Almost all of the questions that we were asked were on that list. We had expected questions about our ages (I know I’m only 29, but I do realize that I have been saying that for a few too many years!). We expected more questions about our finances. Apparently, the new financial information that we had to submit sufficed, because we had few questions about finances. The Ministry of Education representative gave a positive conclusion for us to adopt. Then the prosecutor also gave a positive conclusion. The judge left the court room to finalize his decision. He returned about 15 minutes later. He announced that the adoption was approved. I, of course, broke into tears unable to contain my emotions any longer. What an unbelievable moment! We now have the 10 day wait period. It’s actually going to be 11 days because the 10th day falls on a Sunday. It was two successful court appointments for us today. Galina suggested that we all go out to dinner to celebrate. We went to San Pizza. We took our laptop with us so we could see if they had Wi-Fi. As you found out last night, they do! It was a wonderful evening of many toasts with champagne.

Today is Friday. Russ headed to the airport bright and early this morning to Moscow. We wish him a safe flight home tomorrow. Monica met us for breakfast. In the middle of breakfast, the power went out. After breakfast, we decided to go for a walk. We headed toward downtown. The power was out the whole way. The traffic was awful! There were jams at every intersection and tons of horns honking. The wind was extremely strong. Dirt and who knows what else was blowing around and getting in our eyes and mouths. It was not a very pleasant walk. Greg and I wanted to stop at the grocery store for some more lunch supplies, but it was closed because of the power outage. We decided to just head back to the hotel. It was about 1:00 p.m. and we had to leave at 2:00 p.m. for our visit. We ate a quick lunch and the power finally turned back on at about 1:30 p.m. At 2:00 p.m., Vica met us to head to the baby home. When we got there, we told our little one the news and she was so excited! (Okay, I’m sure she didn’t understand anything that we said, but we’re going with her being so excited anyway!) When we got back at the hotel, we switched. We stayed at the hotel and Monica went with Vica for her visit. Greg and I decided to try to get to the grocery store, because we were pretty much out of all lunch supplies. It started raining on the way back from the store. We walked pretty fast, so we didn’t get too wet.

I’ve got to tell you the mosquitoes are vicious here. Mosquitoes bother me at home, but it’s nothing compared to here. It started with three bites and those turned into huge welts that itched like mad for about five days, then finally started to heal. I was finally feeling better when I was attacked by more mosquitoes. I have 15 bites on my left ankle and leg. It is unbelievable how painful this is. They have swollen up to huge welts. Greg was nice enough to take a picture of them. I luckily brought hydrocortisone with me, but I’ve been using it way too many times a day and night, just to survive. I asked Vica, our translator, if she had any suggestions. Vica has a sister who is a doctor and she recommended something for me to try. When Vica brought Monica back to the hotel today, she went with me to a pharmacy to get this cream. I can’t wait to try it tonight. I hope it helps. If you’re prone to mosquito bites and are on your way to Astrakhan, make sure you bring something to prevent you from getting bitten or something to put on the bites if you get them.

Boy, this has been really long post. We are done for now. Hopefully we can post again soon!

Great News

2008-09-18T12:06:00.001-04:00

Just a very short one today since we're in a restaurant (hotel Internet still not working) but everthing went GREAT today. We're actually celebrating at San Pizza with Monica & Russ, Galina, Vala, and Vica. Russ & Monica's court went great also!

We take custody in 11 days and should be home about October 10th. We're ecstatic! Thanks again for all your kind words. Hopefully we can post again soon.

Kyley & Greg

Tuesday, September 16

2008-09-17T00:06:00.000-04:00

Good News! We found out today that one of our major obstacles is out of our way. We now just have to get though our rescheduled court hearing on Thursday and everything should be back on track. This was such a relief to us. Most of you don’t even know what we’re talking about but believe me, it was a BIG DEAL! Thanks to all of you for your prayers and kind words.

More good news is that Russ and Monica arrived safely today. We just had dinner with them here in the hotel and while tired, they were in good spirits. It was great to see them and now we have someone else here to keep us company. Another family is scheduled to arrive on Monday for their first trip, so we’ll have a whole gang here. It should make the days go by a lot faster.

The documents also arrived safely with Monica and Russ. Thanks, Mom, for the Altoids and Gummy Savers. You always know exactly what we need, even if we don’t.

Each visit with our little one gets better than the last. Today she did lots of walking again, with handholding of course. I would hold her hands and Kyley would sit across the room with her hands out, encouraging her to come to Mamma. She did it grinning the whole time. But here’s the funny part. In her concentration to keep her feet moving she had her tongue sticking out. Does that sound like RB’s great granddaughter or what? For those of you in the dark, RB was Kyley’s grandfather, and sticking his tongue out when he was concentrating on something was one of his, well, trademarks, I guess.

We brought some brightly colored stacking cups with us for the first time today, but all she was interested in was chewing on them. She has two bottom teeth now and at least one on top. It’s kind of hard to tell. Kyley put her finger in there today and got bit! It even left a mark! So we know they work, we’ll just have to count them some other time. Vica, our translator took more pictures of the three of us today. Sorry we can’t post them yet but hopefully in a couple weeks we can.

We did less walking around town today. We walked to the local mall to buy some water since we were about out. We also found a store there that sells pretty nice jackets by Columbia, Adidas, Nike, etc. at pretty normal prices, which we may need to take advantage of. The weather has turned cooler here, with highs around 70 and lows in the 50s. That’s about ten degrees colder than when we arrived. We’re told that it’s pretty cold in Moscow already. Due to luggage restrictions, Kyley only brought one light jacket and I brought two sweatshirts. We’re thinking that by the time October rolls around, we’ll need something warmer, especially for Moscow.

We also walked down one of the more major streets near the hotel, hoping to find where it crossed one of the many rivers here. Astrakhan is at the delta of the Volga where it meets the Caspian Sea, so there is the Volga, and lots of smaller rivers nearby. Anyway, we didn’t find it. That road actually takes a turn and ends up being parallel to the river. We thought it was like not being able to find Lake Michigan while already in Michigan. Sorry, Treadwell family joke that Kyley asked me to include.

It’s Tuesday evening, about 10:00 PM as I’m typing this, 2:00 in the afternoon back home. We don’t have Internet access AGAIN, so we’ll try to post this in the morning.

Monday, September 15

2008-09-15T12:38:00.000-04:00

We got a little bit of good news today regarding issue number 2. Vala called us this morning to tell us that the necessary papers were being prepared and that signatures were expected. As far as we know, there had been no signatures yet, but at least we heard they were expected. We’re praying, praying, praying! Maybe we’ll know more tomorrow.

Galina picked us up at 10:00 this morning to take us to the orphanage. We have been so lucky to have longer visits with our little one. We did a lot of walking again today. She had the squeaky shoes on, so I think she likes to walk even more. I was lifting her up over her my head. She loves that and it always makes her smile. I did it like four or five times and then I stopped. She started moving her head up and down. It looked really funny and we were wondering what she was doing. Then Greg and I figured out that she was trying to get me to lift her up overhead again. It was so cute! She played a lot with the moose today. (Thank you again, Amy, Abby, and Becky!) Since she always has to have something in her mouth, we were trying to get her to use one of the moose’s teething rings. She just didn’t want to. All she wanted was one of the soft hooves that crinkled when she chomped down on it and the tag. Yes, the tag! It is her favorite part of the moose! Too cute!

We had the rest of the day on our own. After lunch in the room, we went for a walk. We have been wanting to walk the perimeter of the Kremlin, so we could try to see what was going on with the construction. We got about half way around and there was a place where you could go inside. We had thought it was completely closed for construction. We went inside the gates and there was one building that was open. It was absolutely beautiful inside. Greg got some good pictures. We continued the walk around the outside and then took the path along the water back to the hotel. As we were walking, we saw the waitress that we had at the Krem Café. She remembered us and we remembered her. Does it mean that we’ve been here too long, if we start to pass people we know as we’re walking down the sidewalk?

Dinner tonight was San Pizza again. We had the same taxi driver as the last time we went to San Pizza. She started laughing when we got in the taxi. She said ‘San Pizza?’ She is also the one who picked us up at San Pizza to bring us back to the hotel, both times. Again, does it mean that we’ve been here too long????

Russ and Monica are scheduled to arrive tomorrow afternoon, so we’re looking forward to that! They should have taken off about a half hour ago. Safe journeys!

More tomorrow, hopefully we’ll have a connection. It’s been out a lot lately so we’ll see.

Sunday, September 14, 2008

2008-09-15T04:17:00.000-04:00

It's actually Monday morning now. We couldn't get an internet connection last night. But here is Sunday's post just the same. We'll have a new one this evening, hopefully.

Since it is Sunday, we were on our own today. We decided to skip the breakfast here at the hotel and just ate breakfast in our room. After breakfast, Greg was doing some things on the Internet. The air was on in the room and I was getting cold. Surprise! I decided to walk outside while Greg finished up. While I was sitting out there, I met a couple that was here from Germany. They spoke English! They had adopted a beautiful, 17 month old little girl. They are only in Astrakhan for three more days and then they head to Moscow to finish up at their Embassy. They were so nice. It was great to have a conversation with someone in English!

We ate lunch in the room also. Then we decided to go for a walk. We walked along the water as far as the path went. There was a pedestrian bridge that crossed the water. We crossed that and continued back along the water on the other side. As we were walking, we came across a noise that sounded like a kitten crying. We found a little white kitty with really blue eyes stuck up in a tree about 8 feet high. Greg found a branch down by the water and we propped one end on the tree and held the other end a few feet off the ground so the kitty could climb down. Yay! The kitty was saved!

Having done our good deed for the day, we continued along the water and turned down one street and after walking a few blocks, found a beautiful surprise. There was a very nice waterfront area. There was a beach where people were swimming. It was a beautiful view of the Volga. We continued walking down the riverfront to the Azimut Hotel. It has been under construction, so we weren’t able to stay there, but we’ve heard a lot about it. We went inside just to look at the lobby. It was completely under construction. We didn’t stay long because there wasn’t much to see. We’d been walking for a couple of hours now and getting a little tired. We headed back to our room for a drink of cold water!

We decided to walk to dinner. The Chocolate Café had been recommended to us, so we thought we’d give it a try. I would definitely recommend it. They have easy-to-read English menus and the food was really good! We were stuffed and didn’t have room for dessert, but the desserts looked wonderful! Not only was the food good, but no one was smoking! We didn’t even see ashtrays on the tables! It wasn’t dark yet, so we walked back to the hotel.

That’s pretty much our day! We hope to know tomorrow about issue number two. It’s all we can think about. Everything has just got to work out!!!!!!!

Saturday, September 13

2008-09-14T02:10:00.000-04:00

We are having problems with the correct date showing, so we’ll start putting it at the top of our posts.

Our day started with Vica picking us up at 10:00 a.m. We went straight to the orphanage. We got very lucky again and spent over an hour and half with our little one. She did so well with us today. Greg held her a lot and she was great with that. She did a lot of walking with each of us holding on to one of her hands. She didn’t have the squeaky shoes on today. I think she was missing them, because she kept picking up her foot and putting it back down. She did this yesterday and got the squeak, but not today. There was another mother and little boy in the room with us today. It was so funny, because our little one needed to know what they were doing the whole time. If something was in her way of seeing, she would almost fall out of our arms trying to find a place where she could see. So we walked, played with toys, read books, and danced. When our time was up, her caregiver came in the room to get her. As soon as she saw her, she started crying. I don’t know for sure, but we’re saying it’s because she didn’t want to leave us!

When we returned to the hotel, we had lunch with the things we bought at the grocery store. Then we checked and answered our e-mails. Then we headed off for a walk. We had decided to have dinner at the Krem Café, so our first stop was to see if we could find it on our walk. No problem! We walked right to it. It was too early for dinner, so we decided to walk around the perimeter of the Kremlin. We got about half way around and we found a park. It was really pretty with green grass and everything! We walked around the park. There were many wedding parties at the park. I bet we saw at least 10 different brides. There were several different things that we saw each bride and groom doing, so we’re going to ask Vala or Vica more about these traditions on Monday. At the far end of the park, there were some shops that looked really nice. We didn’t go in, but I definitely want to go back and take a look. We sat down on a shady bench and just did some people watching. We probably had more people watching us than us watching them. We just stick out like a sore thumb. There is no way that I can wear the high stiletto heels that these women wear. I don’t know how they do it! So I have to be the only woman in this whole town who wears tennis shoes. Oh, well! At least I can walk around comfortably. After awhile, we decided we should head back to the Krem Café for dinner. We had a wonderful waitress, who spoke English very well! Yeah! Since it was almost dark when we finished eating, we had to take a taxi back to the hotel. Now we’re here blogging. That’s our day in a synopsis.

Since it’s Saturday, we heard nothing new about the status of our court date. My parents are probably at Russ and Monica’s right now dropping off the documents. So we’re confident that issue has been solved. It’s the second one that is tearing us apart. Please continue to pray.

Help with Blog Date

2008-09-12T14:05:00.000-04:00

We're not really sure why, but the date doesn't seem to be showing properly for our posts. Friday's post should say 9/12/08, but comes up as 9/11. If anyone knows how to fix this, please let us know. Thanks.

No News Yet

2008-09-11T00:18:00.002-04:00

Well, it’s Friday night now, and we think we have the document situation under control. Thanks to Mom and Dad and everyone else back home, things are moving in the right direction. We should have our new paperwork here by Tuesday or Wednesday. We can’t say thank you enough to everyone who is making that happen for us.

We had hoped to get some news today about the other issue that came up in court. But there is still no word on that yet. The earliest we should know will be Monday now, so we’re in for a long weekend I’m afraid.

On a better note, we were able to spend more time with our little one today. We had about an hour and a half again, which was nice. With some hand-holding, she was able to walk about ten feet! They had these cute little shoes on her that squeaked every time she took a step. She kind of liked that she could make noises by moving her feet. We’re going to have to find a pair of those. She was also more vocal today, making little noises for who knows what. There was still a bit of crying, especially when the nurse in the white gown and the surgical mask came to take her at the end. I guess she thought that meant a doctor visit! Anyway, they had someone else come for her instead, and everything was fine. It gets harder each time we have to say “da svidanya”, which is “goodbye” in Russian.

After our visit at the orphanage, our translator, Vica, took us to a grocery store where we could stock up on food and supplies to keep in our room so we wouldn’t have to eat out as much. We had heard about Vica from Russ and Monica, but today was the first time we met. She was very friendly and helpful. We eat our breakfasts at the hotel because they’re included with the room. Lunches we try to eat in the room, and we usually go to the hotel restaurant or take a taxi to a local restaurant for dinner. Today it was San Pizza, a small pizza place that would fit just fine in any American city. It’s just more difficult to order there. At least they have an English menu. Without that, we’d be totally lost!

Our visit to the orphanage was in the afternoon. In the morning we took a long walk from our hotel, to the area where the Kremlin is. It took us probably forty minutes each way. It seems that everything in the city, especially around the Kremlin, is under construction right now. The Kremlin itself is closed and the gold leaf towers are surrounded by scaffolding. Apparently, the 450th anniversary of the founding of Astrakhan is next month so everything is being spruced up for the big celebration. By the looks of things, they’re not going to make it. Should look really nice for the 451st anniversary though.

Another Setback

2008-09-11T00:18:00.001-04:00

Well, let’s just say, that court did not go as we had hoped. Two major issues came up, which caused our court time to be canceled. We were only in there about ten minutes. They did give us a rescheduled date. We have been working all day trying to get one of these issues resolved. We want to extend a huge thank you to Jon, Mom and Dad, and Russ and Monica. Since we are here in Russia, we obviously cannot produce any new paperwork, have it notarized, and apostilled. So we have sent my poor parents on a series of wild goose chases for today and tomorrow. THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU! Hopefully, the judge will find our efforts acceptable and we can get past this one.

The second issue is completely out of our hands. We’ll just have to wait and see if it works out. Sorry for not being more specific. Prayers are all we can ask for this.

With all of this happening, we stayed by the computer all day. So we ate lunch here in the room. We just walked down the hall for dinner at the hotel restaurant. (Not so good! But close and fast). We did fit in a game of Travel Scrabble. Whoopee! That’s all for today.

Visit with our Little One

2008-09-11T00:18:00.000-04:00

We’ve been having trouble getting access to the Internet, so we have posted two times today. We were able to get on for a little bit yesterday. I went into Word to type up our blog post. When I went to sign back onto the Internet, I got nothing! Anyway, go down to the previous post for information on yesterday.

Today started with Galina and Vala picking us up at 10:00 a.m. We went straight to the orphanage, so we could see our little girl. She has grown a little bit taller, has a little more hair, and has two bottom front teeth. They look so cute! She didn’t really want to show them to us, but we sneaked a couple of peeks anyways. We don’t really think that she remembered us, but she did really well. There were a couple of tears when someone that she knew would walk in and/or out of the room. We spent about an hour and a half with her. That’s about the longest visit that we’ve had!

Galina and Vala talked to us about what to expect at our court appointment tomorrow. We were back at the hotel by 12:00 noon. That left the rest of the day on our own. We read through our home study and other documents several times. We’ve drilled each other with questions. We’re going to go through everything one more time after we finish typing this. Then we’ve probably done all that we can to prepare.

We went for several walks today. First we walked to the mall. It’s not too far – about a fifteen minute walk. We did some window shopping. On the first floor, there is a market, so we bought a few groceries. Then we came back to the hotel and ate a little lunch. After lunch, we ventured out on another walk. We walked down one road that is by the hotel. There was absolutely nothing to see, so we turned around and came back. We walked to a church that is a couple of miles away. It is a beautiful, big church. I don’t really know the significance of it, but there are several pictures posted around town of the church. It’s a bit overcast today with a few sprinkles, but Greg took a few pictures of it anyway. We’ll probably head back over there on a nicer day. We walked back to the hotel, hoping that we would have an Internet connection, but no luck. We decided we might as well as go to dinner. We went to San Pizza (our old standby). We made it there by taxi, enjoyed pizza and dessert, and made it back to the hotel safely. We were pretty proud of ourselves!

That’s about it for today! Tomorrow is the big day. Please pray that we can answer the questions to meet the judge’s needs.

Greetings from Astrakhan!

2008-09-11T00:17:00.000-04:00

Well, now we’re in Astrakhan.

When we woke up this morning, it was raining pretty hard in Moscow. So we just hung out at the hotel. We ate breakfast in the hotel restaurant. A bit expensive, but it was good and we didn’t have to go outside in the rain. Mia (our translator) and the driver picked us up at about noon. Traffic was pretty heavy, so it took us a little longer than usual to get to the airport. When we did get there, Mia found that our flight had been delayed. We had to wait around a bit before they would let us through security and in to the check-in area. We only waited about 20 minutes or so. Once we got through security, we headed to check-in. This is where they weigh your luggage. Uh, oh!!!! We were about 30 kg over our limit. It cost us over 4000 rubles for the extra weight!!!!!! Woah!!!! I thought that was pretty steep! Especially since one whole suitcase is just for our little girl. We’re hoping that on the way back we won’t have this charge, since she will be with us. Anyway, we paid the fee and headed up the stairs to wait by the gate. We took the tram to the airplane and it looked like we’d be about 30 minutes late. Then security pulled up to the plane. Two security people came on the plane. I don’t really know what was going on, but there were a lot of loud voices! After a while, the security people left the plane and we were able to take off. All in all, we ended up being about an hour late. On the plane, we sat next to a man who was from Arkansas. Go figure! We were probably the only people on the whole plane who spoke English and we ended up sitting next to each other. He and his family recently moved to Moscow. He is here on a 3 year work visa. He works for Wal-Mart and he is coordinating the opening of Wal-Mart stores in Russia. (Sorry, Bridget! I know you’re not going to like that). Anyway, it was nice to talk to someone who was also from the States.

We ended up not getting to our hotel here in Astrakhan until about 7:00 p.m. By the time we got settled in, it was getting pretty late to go out to dinner. So we just ate here at the hotel.

Of course, you know the main positive reason of being here in Russia – our little girl. But as we were watching TV (all in Russia, so we have no idea what they are saying), we thought of another positive reason for being here. We get to go a whole month without hearing all about Kwame Kilpatrick’s woes. That’s quite a positive too.

Tomorrow we get picked up at 10:00 a.m. to go to the orphanage. We can’t wait to see her! We’re hoping that she somehow remembers us! That’s all for now.

Back in Moscow!

2008-09-08T11:20:00.000-04:00

Well, we left our home at 7:00 a.m. Sunday morning. Thank you again, Sean, for taking us to the airport. Our plane landed in Moscow at 10:00 a.m. on Monday. It’s now 7:30 in the evening. We went for a late lunch and a short walk. Now, we’re ready for bed! Neither of us could sleep on the plane, so we’ve been up for over 30 hours straight! I don’t want to go to sleep now, because I’m afraid I’ll wake up at midnight and be up the rest of the night. (Greg is snoring away!) So I thought I’d catch up on the blog. Let me go back a few weeks, since I haven’t had a chance to post since we received our court date.

Life has been hectic! My school is going through many construction renovations this year. My classroom was completed gutted and started over. At the end of the last school year, I packed up my classroom and most of it was moved out to pods in the parking lot. So on August 22, we were allowed back in our classrooms to unpack and get ready for the school year. Teachers started back to school on August 26 and there are weekends in there, so that really didn’t allow much time to unpack and get organized. For most, it was a real hurry, but a lot of boxes could be put in a closet and slowly unpacked as the school year began. BUT I wanted my room all unpacked, so that it would be easier for my guest teacher (God Bless You, Megan!) to find things! Needless to say, I’ve been working in my classroom from the time the building opened in the morning until they kicked me out at the end of the day. I was able to get all of the boxes emptied, but I can’t promise that I’ll remember where I put everything! Anyway, I have a relatively organized classroom and I had four great days with my first grade students.

Thank goodness that we had all of our documents completed for this trip. With all of the time that I was spending at school, I never would have had time to complete all of the running around it takes to gather documents.

On Saturday, August 30, Greg’s sisters had a shower for us. And on Saturday, September 6, my aunt Janice had a shower for us. Thanks again, Julie, Diane, and Janice! It was so much fun to get together with friends and family. As my aunt Janice said, it truly takes a village to raise a child and the support of our family and friends makes a beautiful village for our little girl to come home to.

We have also been working really hard getting her room ready. My friend, Jacqueline, painted my childhood rocking chair and a bookshelf to match. They look so cute. We have the crib (thanks to my parents) and matching changing table all set. For our anniversary, my parents bought us a rocking chair to rock our little girl in. And, of course, there are all of the bunnies. We're up to 50 something! There are still some details to add to the room, but it's pretty close to done.

So now we’re in Moscow and staying at the Holiday Inn Lesnaya. It’s not as new as the Holiday Inn Sokolniki that we stayed in last time, but it is fine. We’re too tired to do too much sightseeing, but it seems to be a lot closer to the heart of Moscow. When we return to Moscow at the end of September, I’m sure we’ll spend more time looking around.

Our flight to Astrakhan leaves tomorrow (Tuesday) at 3:15 p.m. We’re waiting to hear what time the translator and driver will be picking us up to take us to the airport.

I think that pretty much brings us up to date. Next post will be from Astrakhan!

We have a court date!

2008-08-18T08:05:00.000-04:00

It’s been a couple of weeks since we have posted anything. We have been busy making the court photo album, registering for our upcoming showers, and finishing up our little girl’s bedroom. We luckily had all of our documents already completed, so I haven’t had to worry about running around collecting documents. My mom and I went to Wisconsin to visit my cousin, who just moved there. We left last Wednesday. On Thursday, Greg called me to let me know that WE HAD OUR COURT DATE! We just couldn’t believe it! It happened so fast, (but really, of course, not fast enough). Since I was in Wisconsin without all of my paperwork in front me, there wasn’t too much I could do there. I got home Sunday night, so here I am Monday morning ready to go!!!!

We leave for Moscow on September 7. Our court date is September 11, which is my grandpa’s birthday! I’ll post later as I find out more information.

Home Safe and Sound

2008-07-30T11:20:00.000-04:00

We’re home! We pulled in our driveway at about 11:00 p.m. on Sunday. It felt so good to sleep in our own beds and wake up to taking a shower in our own shower! Our flights were all on time and pretty smooth rides. On the flight from Moscow to Chicago, we did have a group of loud, rowdy, drunk individuals who were causing a bit of raucous for the flight attendants. Once we landed, one of them was personally escorted off by Customs Officials. He didn’t have to wait in the long lines of Passport Control and Customs, but I’m guessing those lines were much more pleasant than where he went! I guess it all just added to the adventure of the flight!

I was not really affected by the time difference or jetlag. I bounced right back into returning everything to order from being away for ten days. Now, Greg is another story. He has really had a difficult time. He has not been feeling well since Saturday, so has not had a chance to recuperate from the lack of sleep. Each day he feels a little better though!

I can’t even explain how much we miss our little girl! There’s not even a moment that she’s not in my thoughts. I wonder what she’s doing, what she’s eating, who’s holding her, who’s playing with her… I made a slide show of all the photos that we took of her and I keep playing it over and over again! It helps, but it’s certainly not the same as being there. Each day that goes by, I just remember that it’s one less day until we can be back in Astrakhan to bring her home forever.

I’m heading off to the store to get some supplies to make our photo album for Court. I’ve never done much scrapbooking, but I think this will be fun!

Hello from Moscow again!

2008-07-26T13:57:00.001-04:00

We made it safely to Moscow this morning. Galina dropped us off at the Astrakhan airport. The flight was good. No problems, except it took forever to get our luggage. Another plane landed after us and they got all their luggage before ours even started to come out. But it finally did. Mia picked us up at the Moscow airport and the driver took us to the Holiday Inn Sokolniki. This is the same hotel we stayed in last weekend when we were in Moscow.

Greg was happy for the change of Moscow climate. It was a beautiful, sunny day with the high of about 80 degrees. Everyday that we were in Astrakhan it was at least 100 degrees or more! He thought this was too hot! I kept wanting to go for a walk, but he didn’t really want to go. So I would just walk down to the courtyard of the hotel and stand in the sun to warm up. 100 degrees is perfect weather for me and we don’t get it too often in Michigan.

After we settled into the hotel, we decided to take the Metro (subway) back to Red Square. We’re getting pretty good at the Metro! By our next trip, we’ll be old pros. We walked to Arbat Street. This is such a neat place. Some great shops, restaurants, street musicians, etc. We stopped at the Hard Rock Café just to get something to drink. We had been walking for a long time and needed to sit down. We did some shopping and then walked back down by the Kremlin to Red Square. We had lunch at one of the outdoor cafes along Red Square. Greg had the beef stroganoff. Finally, a true Russian meal! I had a bite and it was really good. Different from when I’ve made beef stroganoff. Then we walked through the mall that’s next to Red Square. I don’t know what the name of it is, but it has some pricey stores in it. But I still wanted to just window shop. We went in this one store because I saw a t-shirt that said Russia on the front and I liked it. It was 4,650 rubles!!!!! For a t-shirt!!!!! That’s over $200.00!!!!! It was nice, thick t-shirt material, but still!!!!! Needless to say, I didn’t buy it. After that experience, we headed for the Metro to come back to the hotel.

Greg had a funny experience before we left the mall though. I’m going to let him tell it.
Okay, we’re walking through the mall, looking at $200 tee shirts and such, and I said to Kyley, “We should start heading back soon, because after walking all day, I really need to use the facilities”. She said “Well there’s a restroom right over there”. “But they told us to use the facilities in the plane before we landed because the airport ones are not very desirable. What if these were the same?” Oh well, I figured, it’s an upscale mall, they’re bound to have upscale facilities as well, so what the heck. So I followed the arrow that Kyley had so keenly pointed out. Three corridors and three stairways later I was there, and came upon a room with two doors inside, a men’s and a women’s, with a woman sitting at a nearby table. Seemed a little weird, but hey, we’re not Kansas anymore. As I went to go toward the door she says “eight rubles”. I paused. She repeated herself. Seriously? I have to pay eight rubles (about 35 cents) to use the john? So I paid, but that was only the beginning. I went in and saw a row of stalls on one wall. The doors were a little smaller than ours, the tops only coming to about chest height. No big deal. I opened the stall door and looked in. Then I looked around the room a bit, and looked in again. Um, there’s no toilet in here! There was a stainless steel pan built into the floor, with two places to put your feet and, well, a hole in the middle. That’s it! No tissue, no nothing. So I’m thinking that I’ll have to disrobe from the waist down to make this work, and well, I just might need to buy some $600 shoes if I have to leave mine here. Given the risk, I calmly left and we went back to the hotel as planned. I really miss Michigan!

I’m back! That was a story only he could tell! Russ and Monica, we hope you made it safely home! Rai-Lynn, have a safe trip tomorrow! Donnie, enjoy your visit!

By the way, for those of you who are traveling to Astrakhan and staying at the Korvet Hotel, our Internet and telephone bill was only 1250 rubles. I didn’t think this was too bad for a week. I had called my mom once and we talked for about 20 minutes. That was the only phone call. We were careful about the Internet time. We would type everything in Word to have it ready to just cut and paste into our blog or e-mails. We also didn’t put a lot of pictures on our blog for this reason. So if you’re careful, you should be fine!

Mia is picking us up at 10:40 a.m. to take us to the airport. Our flight leaves at 2:40 p.m. We will eventually end up at Detroit Metro at 9:10 p.m. It’s going to be a long day!

I typed this blog in Word and then we headed over to McDonald’s because they supposedly have free Wi-Fi. And the network said it was free when we tried to connect. And we connected, but it wouldn’t give us internet access. So we’re back at the hotel using a ½ hour internet card that we had to purchase from their business center. Our next blog posting will be from home!

Our last day in Astrakhan

2008-07-25T13:53:00.000-04:00

Well, here we are in our hotel room on Friday, our last night here in Astrakhan. We just got back from dinner with Donnie and Rai-Lynn. We went to San Pizza again tonight. You really can’t go wrong there. The pizza is just like home and it’s pretty inexpensive. It’s about 9:30 PM here, and according to the clock on the computer, which we never changed to “Moscow time”, it’s 1:30 PM back in Michigan. Russ and Monica flew off safely to Moscow this morning. Their plane left very early this morning. Ours is at the same time tomorrow, so we’ll need to be up at about 4:30 to get ready to go to the airport on time. It’s okay, it’s not like we sleep that much anyway here. We’re really looking forward to being home again.

But of course, there’s a problem with that too. We got to see our little girl twice today, for about an hour each time. The second time was very emotional as we knew that we wouldn’t see her again for at least six weeks or so. Will she remember us when we come back to get her? Everyone says yes, but with her being so young, we’re just not sure. She had more mosquito bites today, and her rashes seemed to be acting up more. It appears she has Kyley’s skin, if that’s at all possible. But she seemed very happy anyway, probably the happiest we’ve seen her so far. There was no crying and she had lots of smiles for us as we played with her, more than any other visit. We managed to capture a couple of them with the camera this time, too. We do know that she’ll still be happy while we’re gone because she has an obvious bond with her caregivers there. Her eyes light up when she sees them, so we know she gets lots of attention and is loved. We just can’t wait until that’s our job to do full time. It seems like an eternity right now, but I’m sure time will fly by as we go back to our normal routines and start the task of getting things ready for her arrival in September or October. Let’s just say September. PLEASE!

We’ll be in Moscow again for one night and we now know that we can get free Internet access at McDonalds there. Which is great because the hotel charges extra for it and McD’s is right across the street. We’re a little worried about what the Internet charge will be here at the Korvet Hotel in Astrakhan. They keep track of how many megabytes we send and receive, and charge us by that. It’s 5 rubles (about 22 cents) per megabyte I think. We really have no idea how much we’ve sent and received, but for those of you frustrated by the lack of pictures on our blog and in our emails, that would be the reason. When we get home, we’ll post more, though we are still not allowed to post pictures of her online until the adoption is completely final.

So long from Astrakhan! Honey, we’ll be back just as soon as we can! Next post will be from Moscow again so stay tuned.

Mom and Dad, we’ll try to call you from Moscow, since our calling card should work there.

She finally smiled at us!

2008-07-24T14:39:00.000-04:00

Congratulations to Donnie and Rai-Lynn! They had their court date today and everything went great! Russ and Monica leave bright and early tomorrow morning. They’ll go back to Moscow and then on home Saturday. We all went out to dinner tonight to the Krem Café to celebrate. Here is a picture of us.

Today we visited the Baby Home two times. And she SMILED at us two times!!!! We were so happy! We have tried so hard to find something that would make her smile. She did great today. We read the photo book that we made for her a couple of times. We are going to leave it with her, so she can have pictures of us while we’re gone. We also gave her a little doll that we are going to be leaving with her. We brought a disposable camera with us and are hoping to leave that as well, so that her caregivers can take pictures of her between now and when we return to take her home. We took a lot of pictures today and Greg took some video also. Unfortunately, we didn’t get the smile part on the video. But there will be lots more smiles to come.

Tomorrow is our last day to visit with her, since we leave first thing Saturday morning. This is going to be so hard, leaving her, but we know she’ll be in good hands and we’ll get back here as soon as we can to bring her home forever.

Signed the papers!

2008-07-23T13:05:00.000-04:00

Today was the day! We signed the documents to officially adopt our daughter. She is a beautiful, nine month old little girl. She has blond hair and big, blue eyes! Now begins the hard part of waiting until we can bring her home. We get to visit her two times tomorrow and we’re hoping we get to see her on Friday, too. This has been such an emotional week, but now we know it was all worth it!

By the way, we received information from our international adoption doctor. She had some concerns as we did too. She had some things for us to try to get more information on. Some of the things we were able to get answers on and some not. While our little girl is very small for her age and behind in her development, she doesn’t seem to have any health issues that can’t be taken care of when we get home.

Today we got to visit with her outside. This was nice to have the fresh air, although it was about 100 degrees today. We stayed in the shade under a gazebo-like covering. We were allowed to take pictures for the first time today, so we took lots of them. We hope to take more tomorrow and some video as well. She did much better today. There were no tears. A couple of sad faces that looked like tears were about to come, but we were able to divert her attention to something else before the tears came out. Greg held her for quite awhile today and she was fine! Everyday that we have been there, she has been very interested in the jewelry that I was wearing. She just loved the necklace today and didn’t want to give it up. I told Greg this is only the beginning. Now he has two females who are “in need” of lots of jewelry. I’m assuming this love of jewelry will extend to other accessories and footwear, of course!

Another couple arrived last night, so now there are three couples here. They are on their second trip and have their court date tomorrow. Good luck! We all went out to dinner and just got back. We went to San Pizza. They have an English-translated menu and some employees who speak English. Although they can give you an English menu, the prices on it are not current ones. They give you their regular menu, so you know what the new prices are. However, the regular menu is in Russian, so you have no idea what Russian items go with the English items. This is the second time we have been there. Prices are also pretty reasonable. We would definitely recommend it!

Third Day in Astrakhan

2008-07-22T14:56:00.000-04:00

It’s Tuesday, our third day in Astrakhan. It seems like much longer. We haven’t spoken much about the city here. It’s very different than what we’re used to. Most of the buildings here seem to be very old, and many have had little updates over the years. There are wood sided structures that look like they have never had paint on them. There are wires and pipes running everywhere on all the buildings, and from building to building. Many roofs are of plain corrugated metal with makeshift downspouts. There are many sheds made of heavy gauge plate steel everywhere that look like they can be lifted into place with a crane. We’re told that these are mostly garages, (they’re about the size of a parking space) but some people use them for storage or even to live in!

There really doesn’t seem to be any concept of landscaping here. The ground is either covered by buildings, paving, or just left to be whatever grows there, so it’s a combination of bare dirt and weeds. There are many trees but they don’t seem to get trimmed, so many buildings have a kind of overgrown look to them. We’ve seen a few places that have flowers planted, but they’re usually just mixed in with all the other vegetation.

They have central heating plants so there are above-ground heating pipes that run everywhere, mostly along roadsides. There are usually at least one pair of roughly 16” diameter pipes, crudely wrapped with insulation, held on with ropes, along every street. And the pipes extend to every building in the city it seems. Not sure why they don’t put these underground.

The main roads are mostly asphalt while the minor roads are just dirt. There are no lines on the roads anywhere. They just use the right half (roughly) to drive on. If there is no oncoming traffic, the street just kind of becomes one-way. Scary. Without lanes, the cars just go kind of go everywhere and are literally inches from each other most of the time. Cars and small vans cut in and out of traffic with no apparent rules at all. Surprisingly though, we haven’t seen many accidents. We both decided that we would never want to attempt driving here. We have a driver that takes us to the orphanage and anywhere else we need to go that is adoption-related. Otherwise, we’re pretty much on our own.

There are LOTS of stray dogs and cats roaming around. Apparently, not many Russians keep pets like we do, so they treat them more like just wildlife, kind of like we would treat squirrels.

We visited with our child twice today, first in the morning for about 40 minutes. It went reasonably well. There was some crying, not at first, but after about 20 minutes. We think it’s just because we’re strangers and she’s not used to us. She especially doesn’t like it when I (Greg) hold her, probably because there is only one male at the orphanage, a doctor who only works the night shift. Kyley has been holding her and I have been holding the toys or books, etc. And most of the time, she seems content with that. After our visit, they took us to a store to buy a few toys for the child and things to keep in our refrigerator for our lunches. It reminded us a little of a Sam’s Club. Except for the restaurant in the hotel (it’s kind of like a restaurant, anyway) there really are none nearby. They’ve told us we probably shouldn’t venture out on foot after dark so we’ve been somewhat confined to the hotel in the evenings.

Our second visit with the child seemed slightly better than the morning visit. It’s hard to tell, but she seems to be warming up to us a little. She seems to really like it when Kyley sings to her. She liked the little musical lion we bought for her at the store. We almost got her to smile today, but it’s not quite there yet. Toward the end of our visit, she seemed very tired (rubbing the eyes) and cried quite a bit. That signaled the caregiver to come take her and end our visit. We only get to see her in a meeting room. They don’t let us see where she sleeps, probably for the privacy of the other kids.

We’re waiting for our pediatrician to email us back her comments from the medical information we sent her yesterday. They tell us that we should make a decision on whether we want to adopt her by tomorrow which includes selecting a name for her. We don’t want to make our decision until we hear from the doctor though. Wow, this is a lot to process all at once.

A tough day!

2008-07-22T09:48:00.000-04:00

Sorry for the delay in posting. We have been having difficulties getting Internet service here. We finally got the hotel’s computer guy to help us set it up today. They don’t have wireless, so when we asked at the desk about Internet access, they just handed us a cord! Well, as it turns out, we needed to set up some sort of “proxy server” for the cord to work, and now it does. The computer guy didn’t speak English so he couldn’t tell us what he did. So it may not work when we get home, but that’s OK, we’ll worry about that later. Anyway, we just posted yesterday’s entry (see below) now that we have everything working. So here is today’s (Monday’s) posting:

What a day! We had no idea what we were in for. We went to the Ministry of Education first thing this morning, along with Russ and Monica, another couple that are here, to get some information about the child that was referred to us. They went in first, when they were done, it was our turn. We need to stop for a second here and say how lucky we are to have them here with us. This is their second “first trip” and they have been so helpful since they’ve been through this before. Thanks again to them.

The brief description of the child given to us by the officials there seemed to indicate only some minor health issues. Then they asked if we wanted to see the child. We said “yes”, of course. So we signed some documents that expressed our interest in traveling to the orphanage to visit the director, doctor, and finally, see the child. Then they drove us to an office where the document was notarized. Then back to the MOE for more paperwork, and finally to the orphanage! Whew. All the while it’s like 90 some degrees and there is NO air conditioning anywhere here, including the van we were riding around in all day. Oh and did we mention, men don’t wear shorts in Russia?

We met with the director, doctor, and some of the caregivers first, and later they brought the child into the room as well. Our adoption consultant and translator were of course with us too. Unfortunately, the health issues of this child turned out to be much greater than expected, and we ended up turning down the referral and heading back to the MOE, more or less devastated. We can’t even explain how difficult this was, and we had literally minutes to make the decision.

When we returned to the MOE we had to explain why we turned down the referral and they were able to find another one for us. We had to go through all the same things; MOE, Notarize, MOE again, then off to a different orphanage! Our new referral was much younger than we expected. (We’re not allowed to give any specific information). We’ve sent the health information, which was better this time, to our international adoption physician in Ann Arbor. She will review it and send us back her evaluation, based on the information we provided.

So we return to the orphanage tomorrow (Tues) to spend more time with the child. We’ll let you know how that goes. We need to try to get some sleep tonight. It hasn’t been that good so far, especially for one of us. Guess who!

In Astrakhan now

2008-07-21T13:35:00.000-04:00

Let me start off by saying Happy Birthday to my cousin, Charity! We’ll celebrate when we get home. Have a great one!

Boy, did we sleep last night! I went to bed at 10:30 p.m. and woke up once during the night at about midnight, but went back to sleep. That’s great for me! The day started with a really nice breakfast at the hotel. It was free! Well, it was included in our room rate, but it was still good. We didn’t need to leave for the airport until 2:30 p.m., which only gave us a few hours, but we decided to be adventurous. We asked for specific directions for taking the Metro (the subway system) to go to the Kremlin and Red Square. We found the Metro station, got on the correct train, and made it off at the right stop. Yeah! We walked all around the Red Square and saw Lenin’s Masoleum and St. Basil’s Cathedral. We didn’t have time to go in the Cathedral, so we’ll have to save that for the next trip. We walked around the outside of the Kremlin and then down part of Tverskaya Road. Everything was very fascinating to see! The architecture of the buildings is just unbelievable. We (Greg) took a lot of pictures. It started to rain, so we went inside the mall and grabbed a bite to eat. We did a little window-shopping, but that’s all we had time for. Then we made it back on the correct train and got off at the correct stop. Yeah!

By the time we got back to the hotel, we only had a few minutes before it was time to leave for the airport to go to Astrakhan. On the way to the airport, our driver picked up another couple, also with CHI, that would be traveling with us. They have been here before, so they have been a wealth of information! Thank you! I’ve got to tell you about this plane ride. First, they shuttled us to the plane in a tram. Then we get on the plane. No kidding, it must have been at least 100 degrees inside that plane! I can tolerate heat very well, but this was too much for me. We sat in the plane for about 25 minutes before it took off and some cool air started coming in. Greg had sweat just dripping down his face. His hair was all wet. The rows in the plane were very close together, to squeeze as many in as possible. When Greg sat in his seat, there wasn’t enough room for his knees! The tray tables would hardly fold down all the way because we were so close to them. So we’re in this very HOT plane and also in very close quarters with each other. Are you getting a picture of this? Luckily, at least the heat did get better and made the close quarters more bearable! The flight was good. No problems. When we got off the plane though, they made us board a bus to get to the terminal. It was all of a 100 ft. ride. We didn’t really get that one. It would have been quicker to walk!

We were met at the airport and brought to our hotel. We didn’t get here until about 8:30 p.m., so we’ve been hanging out in our room and typing this blog post. We have a 9:00 a.m. appointment at the Ministry of Education tomorrow. We’ll be leaving here at 8:30 a.m. Wish us luck!

We made it!

2008-07-19T13:22:00.000-04:00

We’re here in Moscow! Safe and sound! We are absolutely exhausted. We have been up for about 30 hours straight. Neither one of us could sleep on the plane. Both of our flights were good! Pretty smooth take-offs and landings! Only minor turbulence. The flight from Chicago to Moscow went through Newfoundland, past the south tip of Greenland, direcly over Iceland, and through the Scandinavian countries, north of Oslo. The plane had TV sets on the back of each seat that would show the progress of the flight graphically on a map, along with data like the time left to go and the current time in both cities. Greg thought that was pretty cool!

Our interpreter and driver picked us up at the airport and brought us to the hotel. Above is a picture. It’s about 85 degrees here today and cloudy. Moscow is a very busy city with lots of cars and people out walking around. And this is Saturday! We’re wondering what the work week is like.

After we arrived at the hotel, our interpreter helped me exchange our money. Greg waited in the hotel lobby with the luggage while we walked across the street. We went into this teeny, tiny place about the size of a phone booth. Both of us squeezed in. It was dark inside with just one person sitting behind a bulletproof glass wall. They exchanged my money, so I guess it was alright. It was just the strangest place to hand over a bunch of money. Then Greg and I were on our own. We really don’t know where in Moscow we are and we’re both so tired that we didn’t venture too far. We had lunch at McDonald’s. It’s right across the street from our hotel. It was pretty much the same as our McDonald’s, only everything was in, you guessed it, Russian! A Big Mac is still called a “something Mac” so that’s what we ordered. The person that took our order even spoke English somewhat. Then we walked down a brick paver plaza. It ended at some kind of amusement park. There was an admission charge to get in, so we just peeked through the gates. Then we walked around a bit. Greg was taking a bunch of pictures the whole time. I don’t know of what.

Our first interpreter left us the number of another interpreter that will help us with our trip to Astrakhan tomorrow. I just called her to find out the specifics of the next leg of our journey. She said that our flight doesn’t leave until 5PM so hopefully we’ll have a chance to see a little more of Moscow before we head out.

Stay tuned, the next post will hopefully be from Astrakhan! It’s about 85 degrees here today and cloudy. Moscow is a very busy city with lots of cars and people out walking around. And this is Saturday! We’re wondering what the work week is like.

After we arrived at the hotel, our interpreter helped me exchange our money. Greg waited in the hotel lobby with the luggage while we walked across the street. We went into this teeny, tiny place about the size of a phone booth. Both of us squeezed in. It was dark inside with just one person sitting behind a bulletproof glass wall. They exchanged my money, so I guess it was alright. It was just the strangest place to hand over a bunch of money. Then Greg and I were on our own. We really don’t know where in Moscow we are and we’re both so tired that we didn’t venture too far. We had lunch at McDonald’s. It’s right across the street from our hotel. It was pretty much the same as our McDonald’s, only everything was in, you guessed it, Russian! A Big Mac is still called a “something Mak” so that’s what we ordered. The person that took our order even spoke English somewhat. Then we walked down a brick paver plaza. It ended at some kind of amusement park. There was an admission charge to get in, so we just peeked through the gates. Then we walked around a bit. Greg was taking a bunch of pictures the whole time. I don’t know of what.

Our first interpreter left us the number of another interpreter that will help us with our trip to Astrakhan tomorrow. I just called her to find out the specifics of the next leg of our journey. She said that our flight doesn’t leave until 5PM so hopefully we’ll have a chance to see a little more of Moscow before we head out.

Stay tuned, the next post will hopefully be from Astrakhan!

This is it!

2008-07-17T23:25:00.000-04:00

Oh, my gosh! Can you believe we leave tomorrow? I think we’re ready. At least, we’re as ready as we’re going to be.

Yesterday we finished up the last two documents that we were waiting on. We needed a few documents notarized, so Greg and I had to meet to have that done. Then I headed to the Office of the Great Seal to them apostilled. I only had fifteen documents and the line wasn’t too bad, so that went pretty fast.

I started putting things in suitcases today. I’d put something inside and then I’d go weigh it. I can tell you I will be using every ounce of the 40 pounds of luggage that I am allotted. I’m hoping Greg can use a little less. That way, I can put some of my things into his suitcase!!!

Thank you for all of the calls and e-mails today! It means a lot to know we have so many friends and family praying for us! Our next blog entry will be from Russia. Yeah!

Only three days away!

2008-07-15T20:38:00.000-04:00

It’s been another busy, hectic week!

But let me start out with something fun! My mom and I went to Chicago on July 9th and 10th. We took the train. We went to see ‘Jersey Boys.’ It was phenomenal! The music was unbelievable. We would have sworn it was Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons actually performing. Of course, we covered every inch of Magnificent Mile. We had a nice relaxing trip. I almost cancelled because of everything that needed to be done for our Russia trip. I am soooooo glad that I didn’t! It was just what I needed.

Back to the rest of the week… As of right now, we have gathered all of the documents that we need to take with us, except for two. I have been promised by Greg’s doctor that I can pick up his medical report and doctor’s license tomorrow. The other is our Home Study Addendum for the child’s age range. This has been just awful! It’s really hard to do something that you don’t really want to do and, on top of it, not knowing the reason that you have to do it. God bless, Alanna and Hands Across the Water. They have bent over backwards to help us through this. If you’re ever looking for a Home Study Agency, I would highly recommend them. If you ever have to go through something like this, please feel free to e-mail us and we’ll be happy to share our experience.

I’ve been holding off getting the documents apostilled until I have all of them. That way I can do it all in one trip. My hopes are to finish up these two documents tomorrow morning, then I can head to get them apostilled tomorrow afternoon. Cross your fingers!

The extension approval of our I-171H form arrived today! Yeah! We are so lucky to have friends! (You know who you are). This never would have happened without you! FYI to those of you who someday have to do this – Be very careful with the expiration dates on all of your documents. Double check all of the dates yourself! DO NOT rely on the expiration dates that someone else gives you. Of course, I should have known this, but I don’t want anyone else to have this same problem. USCIS requires three months processing time for an extension of the I-171H form. Check that date!

Our VISA arrived yesterday. Yeah!
Our FBI Fingerprint Clearance reports arrived yesterday. Yeah!

Thanks to my Mom and Dad for picking up the copy of our CPA’s license for us. Then they also took me out to lunch at the Common Grill in Chelsea. One of my favorite restaurants! Mom and Dad, you’re the best!

We’ve packed some toys and books to play with when we get to meet her. We’re bringing a few snacks to have during our time together. We’ve packed a couple of outfits in different sizes so that we can know what size of clothing to have ready for when she comes home.

Everyone keeps telling me to pack light! For those of you who know me, this is VERY difficult! I don’t wear the same outfits in a month, let alone in ten days!

This is continuing to be such a wonderful journey. Thank you for being a part of it!

Week-at-a-Glance

2008-07-08T11:00:00.000-04:00

We have been so busy that I haven’t had a chance to post everyday. So here is the week-at-a-glance.

On Wednesday, we found out that we had an extremely important document that was expiring on July 8. I spent most of the day getting everything together for this. After many phone calls and computer searches, I had everything ready. Greg had to sign it, so I drove up to his work. He signed it and then we sent it off overnight mail. After that, we went to the police department to be fingerprinted for our FBI Clearance Check. These two things took the whole day!

On Thursday, I filled out all of the paperwork for the FBI Check and overnight mailed that along with the fingerprints to the FBI office. I contacted the Go To Russia Travel Agency. They e-mailed us some possible flights. I sent them on to CHI to make sure they were okay before I booked them. I spoke to another person at the travel agency about our travel visas. I filled out those applications on-line and overnight mailed all of the necessary information to Go To Russia Travel Agency. I had to drive to HATW (our home study agency) in Ann Arbor with the forms for our state police clearance reports. I contacted both my doctor and Greg’s doctor for appointments for our medical reports. Finally by 8:30 p.m., we were ready to drive to my parents’ house for the holiday weekend.

What a beautiful 4th of July! The weather was gorgeous. My family took our 1911 Ford Model T in the Eaton Rapids parade. Then we went back to my parents’ and had a family barbeque. In the evening, we went to the parade in Mason. We were just spectators for this parade!

We came home late on Saturday. We ended up going to dinner with some friends. I happened to mention that we had some problems with the expiration of one of our documents. Luckily, our friend works for a U.S. Senator. She said she would check on the status of our documents for us on Monday.

Sunday was a day with no plans! Yeah! We ended up finishing up some home projects that needed to be done and went grocery shopping. On Sunday evening, I started going through our dossier documents to double-check expiration dates, updated forms, etc.

Monday was back to the hecticness! (Is that a word?) I started with a phone call with our friend at the U.S. Senator’s office. After I faxed her some information, she was able to make some phone calls. She’s going to do some follow-up in a couple of days, but it looks like we might be okay on this. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! I spoke with Marilyn at CHI and found out that we also need chest x-rays. So I contacted our doctors’ offices and made those arrangements. Marilyn also gave us some disturbing news about the child’s age range of our documents. Nothing is final right now, so I’m trying not to fret about it. If you know me, then you know that I always fret over the details. So even though I say I’m not going to fret, I REALLY AM FRETTING!

Picture This!!!!

2008-07-01T22:07:00.000-04:00

First of all, notice that this is the first blog entry that we’ve had in months. That’s because we’ve had nothing to say. We’ve just been waiting and waiting and waiting!!!

Okay, now…. picture this! Today, I’m at the salon getting my hair colored. My stylist and friend, Lindy, has just finished globbing my hair and he sent me over to have a seat while I wait my 20 minutes. Not a pretty picture! I left my purse, which has my phone in it, over at his station. All of a sudden I hear my cell phone ring. How I heard it I really don’t know with all the hair dryers and talking, etc. I hurried across the room to get my phone and it’s Marilyn from CHI with THE CALL!!! So here I am with the call I’ve been waiting for with a bunch of hair dye on my head. Once I hung up the phone, I had to tell Lindy. He was so excited for us that he announced it to the whole salon. He told everyone that he felt like he had just delivered a baby! So a whole salon of people that I don’t even know found out that we’re going to Russia before Greg even knew!!!!

We’ve been waiting so long that this is almost hard to believe! We are so excited that I can’t even explain. Now we have a whole bunch of things to get done in 17 days. This will keep me busy! We’ll keep you posted. Thank you so much to all of our family and friends for your prayers and support. Keep them coming!

Documents Updated!

2008-04-20T20:52:00.000-04:00

This week we finished updating the last of our documents and sent them off to CHI. They were the last two documents. I spoke with Rebecca at CHI on Thursday and she said the documents were ready to be sent to Russia with the weekly shipment of documents. It feels so good to have finished that step. We will have a few more documents that we will need, but not until we travel to Russia for our first trip. We have moved up on the referral list. We are the next family at CHI for a girl, up-to-and-including 18 months of age, in the Astrakhan region of Russia. Boy, that's a lot of qualifiers!!! But at least we're next with something. Things have really slowed down, so it's getting very frustrating. We are doing our best to stay optimistic. We are praying that it will be soon! Please keep us in your prayers!

WAITING!!!!!

2008-03-30T13:47:00.000-04:00

The waiting has been very hard! As of this posting, we have been waiting over a year since our dossier was submitted. We've tried to keep busy and do little things in preparation of our daughter's arrival.

In February 2007, during my mid-winter break from school, I painted the bedroom that will be the nursery. It is a beautiful bluish-greenish color that is officially called Forest Glen. (Sorry, couldn't do the traditional "pretty pink" for a girl's room). Forest Glen is a very calming color that I loved the moment that I started painting it on the walls. We decided to make the room at least a little more girlie by decorating it with white bunnies. As of this date, she has almost 40 bunnies! Greg thinks this is probably enough, but I keep finding them on sale. And, you know, I can't pass up a good sale!

My mom gave us my rocking chair from when I was a little girl. My friend, Jacqueline, is using her artistic talents to paint it for us. All we gave her was color ideas. She's taking it from there. We can't wait to see it. We'll post a picture when it's done.

Since we started with CHI, we knew that a reaccreditation process had begun for all adoption agencies working with Russia. It seemed that every month, we heard that it should be happening any day now. Luckily, even without being fully accredited (temporary), adoptions were still happening. In fact, in April, we received information from CHI that Astrakhan was one of the few regions that were moving along well. At this point, we were third in line for a girl, up-to-and-including 18 months old. We continued to be optimistic that our wait wouldn't be too long.

Summer came and went with no news!

In December of 2007, we got some good news! CHI was fully accredited for Russian adoptions! We were so happy. This certainly brought hope from all that things would start speeding up.

Soon after the accreditation came through, we found out that our documents were all expiring. (Most are only good for one year). We started gathering all of our documents again.

On January 26, 2008, we found out that not only were our documents expiring, but we were no longer registered in Astrakhan because of this. That meant that other families could move ahead of us in line since our original dossier basically was lifeless! We were not on the list to receive a referral for a child!

Well, that was all I needed to hear! We contacted HATW to update our home study. Another huge thank you to HATW for everything!!! Our home study was the big thing to update, but we also had other documents in order to get us registered. We gathered all of those. On February 7, we sent our updated home study brief and all of the other registration documents to CHI. Yeah, everything was back on track. We were back on the list for a referral!

We had some other documents to be updated, but they didn't need as big of a rush as the registration documents. We gathered some documents and sent a package to CHI on March 3, 2008.

On March 21, we had to go back to the USCIS office in Detroit to be re-fingerprinted. (Because apparently your fingerprints can change over the course of 15 months). I was on spring break for the whole next week, so I spent it getting the remaining documents ready. Those were sent to CHI on March 28. We're just waiting for the results of our fingerprinting and then everything should be updated!

Well, we think we're all caught up on what has been happening during our long wait! Now that we have this blog up and running, we will try to keep it updated!

The Process So Far

2008-03-30T13:05:00.000-04:00

Since we are starting this blog late in our adoption process, we have to go back to get this up-to-date. Before we even filled out our application with CHI, we had done a lot of research to ensure we were choosing the "right" adoption agency for us. We spent hours on different websites in order to find the one that met our needs. In addition, we also talked to many of our friends who have adopted to get some pointers from them. We deeply appreciate all of the help that our friends and family gave us through the very early stages.

Once we completed the application and acceptance with CHI, we were ready to start the home study process. Again, through the help of some friends, we found Hands Across the Water. We can't say enough about how wonderful Alanna (our social worker), Jane, and the rest of the staff at HATW have been to us. We submitted our application with HATW on October 7, 2006. We had our completed home study on November 16, 2006.

After all of the paperwork necessary for our home study was completed, we started right in on all of the paperwork for our dossier. Boy, oh, boy, do we mean paperwork!!!! Pam (CHI-Chicago) helped us compile everything and was ready to answer every silly question that we had. If you know me (Kyley) well, then you know that I had to have it done right the first time and it had to be done NOW!!!!

Karen (CHI-St. Louis) e-mailed us on January 24, 2007 to let us know that our dossier had been received in their office. She began the process of checking it all over. On January 31, we found out that there were a few additional documents that we needed from HATW. HATW completed these right away and off those went to CHI.

On February 2, 2007, we were given three regions in Russia to choose from. They were Astrakhan, Vladivostok, and Tver. We looked at several factors in determining a region. We looked at the number of families in line ahead of us. We looked at the location of the region to Moscow. (We have to fly into Moscow first and then on to our region. Given Greg's not-so-great-ability to fly, this was important to us). There were other factors that we looked at too. We chose Astrakhan! So off our dossier went to Astrakhan.

On February 9, our dossier was sent to Astrakhan to be registered. Astrakhan had a few documents that were required for that specific region. So we had some more paperwork to do! On February 23, 2007, we sent CHI-St. Louis the final documents. Now the waiting began!

Beginning Our Adoption Journey

2008-03-23T20:56:00.000-04:00

Officially, our adoption journey began on September 14, 2006. This was the day that we signed our application with Children's Hope International. We say "officially" because adoption has been on our minds for a long time, but it took us awhile to get around to doing something about it.