Those Eyes...

August 24
Hello! Not much new to report here in Kazakhstan. We enjoyed our evening out to dinner with friends at the Rainbow Café. Ethan had pork kabobs and I had chicken and mushrooms. The food was very tasty, but best of all good times with new friends. It is so helpful on this long trip to have the companionship of others who are going through the same process. Tonight there is a group of ten of us going out to the Boulevard, where we went Tuesday night. My thoughts are that we should enjoy going out now, because once we got custody, I really do not think we will be taking Caleb out for nice dinners. I do not see that going well. Speaking of Caleb, he was in a much better mood today. We entered his room and for the fourth morning in a row he was asleep. Ethan and I decided just to let him sleep. He awoke about 30 minutes later and was a new little man today compared with yesterday. He really is doing great; there is just not much else to say. He is eating well, interacting with us, smiling, and becoming stronger every day. We love him deeply.
Well, it is about 5:30 pm here and the horns are getting started, the weddings are in full swing. Ethan and I are preparing ourselves for some sleepless nights this weekend as the parties get cranked up. Oh well. Tomorrow we are going on a driving tour of the city. I look forward to that as the more we can learn about our son’s birthplace the better.
Happy Weekend!
Mary

Caleb's Feeling Better

August 14, 2007
Hello to all!
Caleb is doing better, recovering from his cold. He was much less congested today and more playful. He did have a big first today, formula. We were able to find the Nestle brand and he loved it. He drank so fast that I don’t think he breathed for 5 minutes, just gulped. Needless to say, we as new parents learned a lesson: What goes in fast comes out fast. He spat up on Ethan five times and me once. Overall, Ethan is definitely winning the contest for number of spit up episodes. I am sure this is in part because, as father, he is throwing him in the air a lot more than I am. Oh well. We have not been able to take him outside anymore because it has been too cold. The temperature was around 65 or 70 today. We make the best out of the little room he is in, doing different activities, but a walk outside would be a welcome change of scenery for the parents.

We had a nice evening last night. We had dinner with the two families that I spoke of yesterday. What a great time we had! Both families are from the DC area and incredibly kind and hospitable to us. They invited us over to the “cottage” where they are staying and cooked us a great meal, a chicken dish and salad. For dessert, a cake and French press coffee. Both families will be here until 8/31 and so we look forward to more times with them. Also, I was able to get a massage here at the hotel yesterday. Thirty minutes for seven dollars. There was an extra charge for honey instead of lotion, 50 cents?? I declined . That is about all to report here. Tonight we are planning to walk to the local grocery store, the Tsum store to buy a bar of soap. I know, I know it is a big outing…We will try not to let things get out of control. Take care everyone! Mary

Caleb's Going Outside!!!

August 12, 2007

This is the first time in many years for Ethan and me when it made absolutely no difference to us that it is a Saturday, everyday is the same here! We visited with Caleb at the usual 10am. He was feeling a little less playful today than yesterday. All he really wanted to do was snuggle, we were certainly accommodating to his wishes. He slept for about 20 minutes in my arms which was incredible. He took his bottle with cereal in it without a second thought. It is interesting because his eyes go from mine to Ethan¡¦s all the time. It is like he is studying us with great interest. Rarely does he look at anything but us or his toys. His favorite toy is the one we got from Aunt Cathy. It is a large plastic key ring that has our pictures in it, but most importantly it makes music. We push the button and immediately when the music starts his little legs start kicking, the music stops, he stops. Oh yeah, he got his picture taken by a photographer for his passport. I am not sure if it is for the Kazakh or US passport (he will have both). Anyway, tomorrow he gets to go outside for the first time in his little life. WE bought him a little snow suit to wear per the request of the Children¡¦s Hospital where he is staying. Also, we are going to introduce some Willy Nelson music to him. Sunday will be a big day for him! Ethan and I did not end up going out with the gentleman I spoke of yesterday; we are going to go tonight instead. We stayed in and ate some sort of canned fish on a sandwich. We don¡¦t know what kind of fish it was as the writing was in Russian. It did have the skin and some bones still on it. I tried to be a trooper and eat my sandwich, but my determination only got me about 2/3 of the way through it. We went to the store this afternoon with our interpreter to have her help us find some foods that can be prepared with hot water only, as that is all we have to cook with (a tea kettle that we plug into the wall). We were able to get some Ramen noodles Kaz style and other items that should be okay. She did find us some canned beef, I just couldn't do it. We have been also dealing with some computer glitches, but thankfully Ethan worked all afternoon and got his computer going again. Well, that is all for the day. Thank you for all your support! Mary

Can You Believe Your Eyes

August 10, 2007

Greetings to all!

We had another great visit with Caleb today. Ethan was the first one into his room, he looked down at him and Caleb smiled and reached his arms up to Ethan, immediately he was of course picked up. The morning hugs and kisses started. We first changed him into his outfit for the day and then were able to give him his first bottle with rice cereal. Initially he was a little hesitant to drink it. I think the texture change surprised him. After about 5 minutes of coaxing him, he finally realized it was good and drank the rest of the bottle down with no problems. They are going to start adding rice cereal to his bottle twice a day. He also got his first dose of vitamins that his mama nurse brought him ļ. The rest of the time was spent listening to music (Baby Mozart) and playtime. He was able to crawl the length of the mattress on the floor twice; he was thrown up in the air by Ethan about 30 times, which he loved. Caleb realized that if he laughed for Ethan, he would get thrown up in the air again. He was given his first pacifier, which he took to immediately. The last 20 minutes of the time together we could tell he starting to get sleepy. We tried to get him to fall asleep so leaving would be easier, but he would not shut his eyes. Ethan was rocking him and his eyes were glued to me. So, when it came time to leave the nurse had to come in and hold him, he still cried and reached his little arms out to us. Needless to say it was difficult to say the least to leave him. It is amazing how fast the bond occurs. But he is being loved there as well by the caretakers, they have done a great job with him. I just wish it was Ethan and I taking care of him full time, I asked the translator if we could visit twice a day and she said we could not because the facility is actually a hospital, so they have set visiting hours. Oh well, worth a try.

Otherwise we are holding our own, we had cheese and crackers for dinner last night, watched King of Queens and fell asleep. Each night our sleep pattern is adjusting more and more. My parents called this morning which was a treat! I think I talked their ears off. We had breakfast at the hotel and met a very nice Italian man from Minnesota. He comes here a couple of times a year for business. He teaches people how to repair John Deere farm equipment. Very kind gentleman, I think we are going to have dinner with him tonight. A kind person who speaks English is a huge treat at this point. The daily work outs continue. Life is good. By the way, we have attached a video; in there I am calling Caleb ¡§Sasha¡¨. This is the name that his care givers have called him since he was born, so he responds to it. Anyway, for now we call him both Caleb and Sasha.

***Disclaimer: I (Cathy Collier) am still working on getting that video Mary is speaking of uploaded and displayed as apart of the blog. I also wanted to let you know that the photographs that Mary and Ethan are taking, are small because they are uploading with DSL. As many of you know that is a very slow process and the bigger the photos the longer it would take for them to send us their visual experience. I appreciate and am honored to be the catalyst for this blog and thank God for all of your sharing the grand adventure with us. Your prayers, thoughts of love, and encouragement are from God. They bear His Name and I am forever grateful and humbled. Thank you.

Meeting Our Baby Boy

Hi! I hope you rec'd my entry from 8/7 while in almaty. Here goes.. Today was the day, we finally met our baby boy. I will get to the details of the travel later, most importantly, Caleb. We were led down a long aisle in a old, concrete Baby Hospital to a back room by his doctor, Dr. Victoria, the translator and a lady from the Ministry of Education. There in a room was a crib with this smiling little boy lying on his belly looking at us.

I immediately picked him up and he was all smiles. He grabbed my hair and looked me straight in the eyes and had a big grin, like he had known me for months. Ethan held him and the first thing Caleb did was put his little hands on Ethans face. We only had 15 minutes with him today, so the entire time Ethan and I passed him back and forth and talked to him. He seemed perfectly happy with us, looking at us, out the window and all around. We shot some video footage as well as pictures which we will try to get out tomorrow as we need to go to an internet cafe to do that. After 15 minutes, the "people" came back and they asked us if we wanted to adopt him, we of course said YES, and then we signed some papers and were instructed to be back in the morning at 10 am for a 2 hour visit. Bring clothes, light weight jacket to go outside in, and 8 diapers. Now, as to how he looked since I don't have pictures, he is not as big (tall) as I expected, about the weight I expected, and he has dirty blond hair with a tint of red, and hazel eyes. They are brown on the inside near the pupil and blue all around, I was surprised, I thought they were going to be deep brown. He has about 1/2 inch of hair. He rolled over, no problem today and was able to sit up with no assistance and put pressure on his legs firmly while standing. I asked the caregivers to tell me about him, they said that he is very loved. He likes to be held, loves people, laughs a lot, makes funny noises, BUT has a little temper if he gets upset. They told me he had a nice bath today in anticipation of meeting his mama and daddy. It was hard to say the least to leave him. But as Ethan said, this is only temporary, he will be going home with us soon. Sorry there are no pictures, we will try our best to get them tomorrow.

As to the other details of our day, we flew on the Yak 70-40 from Almaty to Kokshetau. I am glad I was mentally prepared for this. There are really no words to describe the plane, we took video footage b/c of this. It was loud, crammed with people, our luggage was in the back of the airplane, there were fleece blankets laying randomly around b/c it gets so cold in there when it has been in flight for a while. It was really just "gross" but we survived it, I read and prayed a little. By then I was getting so excited about meeting him that I didn't care if I had to ride to Kokshetau in a hanglider. We were picked up by our translator Inna and our driver. We were taken to the hotel were it looks like we will be staying. It is very nice, a big 2 room suite, clean and DSL internet accesss. We paid for 2 weeks, we may move to an apartment after court, but I doubt it. Breakfast here is free, and there is a lady who does your laundry for 2 USD per lb. Plus you can get an hour massage here for 15 USD. We ate dinner here at the Hotel Kokshetau restaurant. Ethan had a lovely soup that was chopped up spam, cucumbers, tofu and potatoes in a cold milk substance. His main course was mixed meat steak looking thing (likely horse). I had ravioli soup, which was basically little bitty ravioli in a big huge bowl of broth. I was scared to eat it after I realized that the ravioli may have little pieces of horse mixed in, so I mostly just had the bread. I don't think we will be cooking any Kaz meals for you guys when we come home. Oh and also we met with the Minister of Education prior to meeting Caleb. He just asked us a bunch of questions like why we wanted to adopt, how much money we make, how old our parents are?? He was nice and ended up telling us he was going to have a horse milk party so we (Ethan and I) could try it. I hope that is not true. Alright, we are off to try to get some sleep after a long fun day.