May 27 update

We've been home for about two weeks now, and we're still waiting to hear when our court date is. Patience may be a virtue but it's not any fun.

I've gotten a lot of questions about how the process works from here, so I figured I would post some more information.

Two weeks ago (on May 14) we had Guardianship Council, which is basically a pre-court date. After about 20 minutes of questioning from a small panel of officials, we were given their blessing to continue with the adoption process. Now we wait for our court date.

We've been told it's usually about five weeks from Guardianship Council to the court date, which would put us over there again in about mid-June. This trip (our second) should only be about a week long.

After the court date (provided that we're approved), we have a 2-week waiting period, and then our coordinator will begin gathering and processing the necessary paperwork. We're told that from the court date it will take about 5 weeks for Symbat to be ready to come home. The third trip, only one parent needs to go. Our plan right now is that Kara will go with her mom and I'll stay here and be Mr. Mom with the kids. The third trip should be about a week long as well.

If all goes well and we get our court date on or about June 15, we should be able to bring her home around the week of July 20. Because we've been in the process long enough to "know better" now, we're figuring we'll probably be able to bring her home by early to mid-August.

All of that depends on when we get our court date, so we hope to find out about that soon!

Home from Bonding

We made it!

It was a long trip, but we're back now from bonding. We'll be sure to keep everyone up to date as we hope to hear soon about our court date.

Frankfurt

We made it Frankfurt. Now only 3 hours to wait before flights to the States.

If you're not lucky enough to get the chaise lounges you can sleep on here at the airport, there are some comfy round charis behind the McCafe on the third floor. They don't look like much but after the airplane seats they feel pretty good.

Guardianship Council

This afternoon at 4:00 we had our Guardianship Council appointment. We were there a bit early, but the translator was a bit late in showing up and didn’t get there until 4:10. We walked back and waited in line with about a dozen Kazakh people. The waiting area was basically a small and crowded hallway.

Finally we were ushered in. I turned around just in time to see our coordinator scurry out of the room and shut the door behind her, which was quite a surprise. I guess we figured she would be there too. It was us and our translator, along with one man and three women in a small office.

The man did most of the talking. At first he seemed rather stern, but then as time went on he smiled a bit more. We got asked the usual questions (we think), such as if we had a good home and sufficient income for another child, who would take care of the child, how our family felt about adoption, and why we chose Kazakhstan. We also got a lot of questions on why we wanted to adopt when we had three kids. I think they figured we should just have some more. In any case, our answers were good enough and we got approval. The interview lasted about 15 minutes. Everything we have been told is that this is the “easy” part, and that court will be more challenging. We should find out in about five weeks.

Dinner tonight was a celebration at Sakartvela. Lynda and Wayne joined us for food, wine, and fun. We will miss hanging out with them, but we’re so happy to be going home tomorrow! This will most likely be our last blog from Kazakhstan on this trip. We hope to see everyone soon!

Tuesday Morning

We visited the baby house this morning. Symbat was a bit tired and we had to work hard to keep her awake. One thing we’ve discovered for sure is that she is stubborn, and once she has her mind set on something it’s hard to get her to think about anything else. Part of that is probably a function of her age, but we think it’s part of her personality too. It’s part of her charm.

Today was a special day at Umit. The Robey’s son Anton has a best friend named Sasha, and his new parents came today to take him out of the baby house for the last time. He gets to go home to his new family in Spain! Apparently all of the nannies and his friends said goodbye to him inside the baby house and he got scared and sad. He got so nervous that he even threw up. We didn’t see him until he was outside with his parents, and he did look pretty sad. I can imagine that all he remembers is the baby house, his friends, and his nannies, so all of this must be pretty overwhelming to him. We tend to think of things from our adult perspective; that the kids are overjoyed to go home with a family and life will be so much better for them, and all of that is true. But in the moment of separation, the children must feel a ton of anxiety that we can’t begin to understand. They won’t have their friends or caretakers or routine that has been ingrained in them, and won’t understand anything that anyone is saying. It has to be overwhelming. All we can do is help them through it, give them love, and over the course of the next several hours, days, and weeks show them that things will be better with mama and papa. It won’t happen overnight and we can’t get frustrated with the children. It will just take some time and effort.

We’re not totally sure how Symbat will react when we come to pick her up the final time. In fact, we aren’t even sure she’ll remember us when we come back. We will have left pictures, but she’s so young that I am not sure she understands too much of what is going on. My guess is that she too will feel some anxiety, and it may even be more of a challenge for her because she doesn’t have the language skills to communicate her feelings. Seeing Sasha today put things into a good perspective. I’m sure that the whole of his journey will be good, but that isn’t to say there won’t be bumps in the road.

Lunch today was at Aral; nothing special to report there. We will leave in about an hour to head to Guardianship Council. We’ve been told that this isn’t as serious as court, so we’re not too nervous. Still, we want things to go well, and we’ll be relieved when it’s over. I think we’re going to dinner tonight at Sakartvela to celebrate. More to come later!

May 11

Our visit with Symbat was in the morning today. We like the mornings better from a schedule standpoint, but we did notice that Symbat seems to be more full of energy in the afternoons. Today was beautiful outside so we took her out. Of course we had to put her snowsuit on, which was her fourth layer of clothing. Never mind that it was in the mid-70s… we wanted to make sure she was bundled up enough that we didn’t get chewed out.

After lunch we went with Zema to get our pictures developed for Guardianship Council tomorrow. We had been told that we needed three pictures per day for each day of bonding, but today we were told that we just needed one per day, but three copies of each. Minor miscommunication. We got the right number (we think, we’ll find out for sure tomorrow) and went on our way to lunch.

Bosfor was our choice, as it has pretty good food and was close to the photo shop. Waitresses in Kazakhstan will stand there impatiently at your table until you order, so we were somewhat rushed in the process. Their English menu was of little help as all of the descriptions were still in Russian. I tried to order Adana Kebab, which I’ve had before, but was told there was no kebab today. After fumbling through the menu while the others ordered their pizzas, the waitress helpfully suggested Shashlik. I was happy to hear that, and pointed to the lamb shashlik in the menu.

She followed with “skolka,” which I know means, “how many”? Thinking that I was fairly hungry and that we usually don’t eat dinner, I replied with “tree,” meaning three. All of this made sense to me, as shashlik is generally served on the skewer and I can put down three with no problem, unless they’re the monster kebabs at Antalya. My food took a lot longer than the pizzas. When she finally brought out my lunch, she has three plates of shashlik, each complete with garnit (fries, rice, onions, and carrot salad). I was officially an American Idiot.

I decided that since I had paid for them, I was going to do my best to eat them. Wayne had a few pieces of lamb, and Kara ate one of the sides of rice and fries, but other than that I polished it all off. In hindsight, as I sit here on the couch three hours later still stuffed to the gills, perhaps that wasn’t the brightest idea. I went from the “American Idiot who Ordered Three Meals” to the “Prideful American Idiot who Decided to Eat the Three Meals Because He Ordered Them.” It’s okay though. It lets Kara tell me “I told you so,” which she likes to do periodically. I did it for the harmony of our marriage. (Well, that and because I am an idiot.)

Advice: I’d love to be able to give you some tips on how to avoid ordering three meals, but I still have no idea where I went wrong. She asked me how many and I answered. The best advice I can give is learn a bit more Russian than I did before you come over here. You might also want to learn how to say “give us five minutes” or “come back in five minutes” to give yourself a bit of time to study the menu and translate as needed.

We went back to Tsum for one final round of souvenirs. We picked up some kids music and popular music on CDs and some more stuff for the girls. Now, we just need to prepare our pictures for Guardianship Council tomorrow. Kara is armed with her glue stick, so I think we’re ready to go. Two more days and we head home!

Happy Mother's Day!

We’d like to wish all of our mothers (and grandmothers!) a Happy Mother’s Day. We may be on the other side of the world, but we’re still thinking of you. A special HMD to my sister Olivia, who just had her second baby a few days ago. We hope you and Claire are doing well!

Today was a quiet Sunday. We went to lunch at the fast food place again. Kara got a hamburger that pretty much tasted like a hamburger, except that it had a few French fries on it. There was a sauce kind of like a fry sauce on it too, but she says it was pretty good. One thing about Kazakhstan is that they tend to undercook their fries. Kara and Lynda had ice cream sundaes (Kara had chocolate, Lynda cappuccino), and they said that the ice cream is really good and rich like a Haagen Daas.

Our other excitement today was doing laundry for the last time in the sink (woo hoo!) and me coming from behind to beat Kara in cribbage.

We went to the baby house at 3:00 again. We’re getting used to the afternoon visits but we still prefer the mornings. Just as we got Symbat it started to pour outside, so we stayed in the small bonding room. She was happy to play with her toys as usual. Today she also made a lot more noise than normal, saying several different syllables like “da” and “ta” over and over. It was pretty cute.

When we got back to the hotel, Kara bought a piece of cake (we’re calling it her Mother’s Day cake) from the bar at the hotel. It was a lot like a Boston Crème Pie, with layers of pie crust and crème in the cake. It was really yummy.

Tomorrow looks to be a busy day for us. We’re going to the baby house in the morning (yay!) and then going to get our pictures developed for Guardianship Council. It’s only two days away and we’re very excited to get it done.