Lazy Days of Summer

Long time, no post. I know it has been a long time since my last post; I keep telling myself I need to write an update. But as we sit on our deck each night, watching the boys try to catch fireflies, the last thing I want to do is come inside and sit in front of my computer. We are having a wonderful summer full of swimming, trips to the zoo, working in the garden, hanging out with cousins, and playing in the yard. We are outside by 9:00 each morning and we literally have to drag them inside each night for a quick bath and bedtime. It is positively delightful and utterly exhausting. We are having the time of our lives. I am constantly amazed at how blessed we are to have two such happy, beautiful boys. They are each others best friend (most of the time) and have such fun together. The Monkey has his big 4th birthday this week and we celebrated early last week with Stu's family. He was thrilled to receive a real guitar and a new big-boy bike. He hasn't put either of them down since. I'll include a few picture that are a better recap of the past few weeks:




I'll try to do a quick update on the Monkey's birthday before we head to the beach on Friday (yahoo!!). And we hope to have great news regarding the adoption soon after we return from vacation.

Nothing New

Nothing much to say other than this wait is horrible! We are missing our baby girl SO MUCH and can't wait to hold her again. The wait was never this hard with the boys; I'm assuming because we had definite return dates with them and the wait was only about five weeks...not several months. We are anxiously awaiting to hear when our court date will be but don't expect it to happen before the end of June at the earliest. We were fortunate enough to get some updated pictures of our little one last week. Our good friend is in the country right now visiting her soon-to-be daughter and was able to take a couple of pictures of HotDog for us. She is as cute as ever and looks to be losing a little bit of her hair. Maybe when new hair grows in it will lay down a little bit:) Thank you so much Maria! You can't imagine how much we appreciate these little glimpses of our girl as we wait.
The boys finished their school year earlier this week. Yahoo!! We are going to have such a fun summer. Of course, right now our area is being bombarded by cicadas that attack you as soon as you walk outside, so our outside time is limited. Both of our nieces (both are close in age to our boys) have spent a lot of time at our house this week which is great. They play great together (for the most part) and it gives me extra time to start working on the nursery. I have started to putting some of her clothes away in the dresser. They are so cute and teeny tiny and pink. I love to sit in the glider and just imagine what it will be like to have HotDog home. Such wishful dreaming.
Only three weeks until the Monkey's 4th birthday! Only three weeks and one day until we leave for the beach! Summer life is good.

Catch-Up

After being home for a week, we are finally back to our normal schedule and have caught up on everything we missed while we were in Kyrgyzstan (sleep, mail, laundry, etc). I was concerned that the boys would have a few adjustment problems after our absence. I thought they may be more clingy or whiny than usual, but so far no problems. For the first 24 hours after we got back, the Monkey would come up and hug me every 2 or 3 minutes, almost as if making sure that I was actually there. So cute!
They are super-excited about their baby sister and can't wait until we bring her home. They were so proud to take her picture to school to show all of their friends. Of course, most of their friends were confused as to why they just had a picture and not an actual baby sister. I'm sure both of their teachers had several adoption-related questions that day!

We are head-over-heels in love with our little girl and are constantly looking at her pictures. She is adorable and we are amazed that she is actually going to be our daughter. We are so lucky! I know many of you are anxious to hear details about her; unfortunately we can't share much until she is officially ours. If all goes well, we will go to court in early July (our coordinator does this in our place; we don't have to be present for court). After every court decision in Kyrgyzstan, there is a mandatory 30-day wait before it becomes official. It takes about a week after official court decision to get various pieces of paperwork together and then I'll be able to go back and pick her up. So if everything goes according to plan, I'll be flying over in early August to bring our little HotDog home. After a lot of discussion, we've decided that I'll make this trip alone. The trip will end up being about two weeks again and we simply don't feel comfortable leaving the boys for such a long stretch so soon after our first trip. Plus, the Chipmunk will be in Kindergarten by then and won't be able to miss school like he did during this trip. In addition, Stu doesn't really have the vacation days for another big trip like that. While I felt comfortable with this decision all along, Stu was unsure. However, after this trip he agrees that it shouldn't be a big deal. I made sure that I could do everything on my own (airport transfers, money-exchange, buying groceries, etc.). Hopefully, we'll also be traveling with other families so I should have company. Our only big concern is the trip back home with her. It ends up being around 24-hours of traveling which is a lot for one person, much less having an infant to take care of. I'm sure it won't be fun but this is the right decision for our family.

So many people have asked if it was so hard to leave her. I want to say "yes, it was horrible," but it honestly wasn't too bad. Of course we would have loved to bring her home with us but we knew going into it that it wasn't a possibility. This is our third time doing this so I suppose we don't know any differently. We were so homesick and anxious to see our boys that we were happy to leave. My feeling was that we had two little boys at home that knew we were gone and missed us terribly, while HotDog is so little and has no idea what is going on. We were also thrilled with the care she is receiving at the orphanage. We know she is in good hands while we are gone. And we know several other families that will be visiting the orphanage in our absence so we hope to receive periodic updates on her too.
It has been almost a week and a half since we saw her and my arms already feel that ache to hold her again. I know it will get much harder as the summer progresses. But we have a lot of fun plans this summer (including a family trip to the beach in a month...yeah!!) so hopefully the time will fly. I also need to start working on her nursery and gathering baby items that we will be borrowing from friends/family. Plus, it's time to go clothes shopping! I've been eyeing baby girl clothes for SO LONG and now that we finally know her size there will be no holding me back now.

I'll leave you with a picture of Stu and me in front of Burana Tower. The history of Kyrgyzstan is incredible and the landscape is breakthtaking. We will be forever changed by our travels to this country.

Home Sweet Home

After an uneventful 28 hours of travel, we are home. We are still catching up on sleep and laundry. We are thrilled to be with our boys again and missing our little girl like crazy.
I'll post a detailed update soon.

Homeward Bound

We had our final visit with HotDog today. It was bittersweet. We love spending time with our little one, but we are anxious to get back home to our little boys. It has been a long two weeks and we are definitely homesick. On a positive note, Stu was able to get our first big smile out of HotDog this morning. She is so cute! It will be a long couple of months until we can come back and pick her up; I can't imagine how much she will change in the meantime. But we do feel good knowing that she will receive excellent care and attention in our absence. The caretakers really love those little children. We left a disposable camera so we hope they will take periodic pictures of her so we can have a little piece of the time we were away. And we hope to get updates/pictures from other families that will be visiting their children between our trips.
We're off to pack our bags now. Our plane leaves in exactly twelve hours (not that I'm counting or anything). If there are no delays (a big "if", I know), we should arrive home late Sunday night. I hope to post some pictures and a recap of our time here once we get settled back home.

Quick Update

It's Allison again. We were able to visit HotDog again this morning. She gets cuter every time we see her. I swear, her cheeks have gotten bigger in the week and a half we've been here and she is developing quite the little double chin. It is amazing how much she has developed since our first visit. She is so much more alert now and holding her head up better. They were just finishing giving her a bath when we arrived and let me tell you, based on her screams, that little girl does NOT like the water. But she smelled so good when they brought her in to us. I think our baby girl is starting to recognize us now too. For the past couple of visits, she cries every time we lay her back in her crib as we leave. Of course, Stu picks her back up to give her an extra hug and kiss and she immediately calms back down. We have one more visit with her on Saturday before we leave; I don't even want to think about how difficult that goodbye is going to be.
Other than that, not too much going on. Stu has been fighting some major sinus/headache stuff (which is surprising, since I'm usually the queen of sinus infections).
We were able to meet up with John Wright and his family on Monday. What an amazing bunch of people. It was one of the most incredible days of my life. We were able to visit a privately-run orphanage for older children (4-years-old and up). It was so much fun. All of the kids are beautiful and were eager for hugs and attention. We fingerpainted with them and all had such a good time. I will never take such a simple act of fingerpainting with Chipmunk and Monkey for granted again. The joy this activity brought to those children was unforgettable. We also visited the Baurana Tower. It was breathtaking. It was hard to even wrap my mind around the history of this place. Words can't even describe how life-altering this day was for me. John has a few pictures up on his blog (www.actofkindness.blogspot.com). I thank God that there are such people as John Wright and his family in this world. The work he does for those in need is simply incredible.
Other than that, not much going on here. We switched to a new apartment. After the fiasco with the electricity, the fridge, and finally losing water, we decided it was time to switch. Our new apartment is very near the center of the city so we can walk down to the main street with the big stores, more restaurants, etc. We are getting quite homesick and are counting down the days until we can go home to Chipmunk and Monkey. Only four more days!

Husband of the Year!

The only thing I want to tell everyone is that I have the most wonderful, sweetest, cutest husband on earth. I go to bed everynight saying prayers of thanks.
Allison

Ok, she might not have said that exactly, but it was close. Since it's Mother's Day I am giving my wife the day off from blogging. This is Stuart here, wonderful father to the Chipmunk, Monkey and now HotDog.

To my boys at home, my mother, Nana, Nanny and the other approximately 12,000 family members, friends and fellow adopters, who are reading this, we miss you all very much and can't wait to get home. I hope everyone has/had a great Mother's Day. All of you guys are in our thoughts.

To all of Allison's blog friends, this will be the first time (and probably last after she reads it) you will hear from me so hello. I can't say that I've ever been on anyone's blog or traded emails with most of you, but I feel like I know you. Our nightly dinner conversation always contains the latest information of referrals, travel dates, agency compliments (and complaints) and a general update on all the wonderful kids.

So now to the details everyone is here for......We have visited HotDog the past three days (Friday to Sunday). She is doing great. It goes without saying that she is the most perfect, most beautiful, sweetest little girl on earth. It was really cool for Allison to get to spend time with her today on Mother's Day. I like to pretend that she will eventually be Daddy's little girl, but inside I know better. I can tell already by the way HotDog looks at her mother and how Allison looks at her daughter. They are a match made in Heaven.

We have been feeding her a bottle every day which takes about 45 seconds. She is like a vaccuum. It's amazing to watch. I even videotaped it today. She gets the hiccups after every feeding. At first, I thought it was something I was doing wrong, but after Allison fed her today she got them. So at least I know it's not something I'm doing. The weather this weekend has been great here. The last two days we have been allowed to take her outside out of the stuffy buildings. She really likes being walked around. I know that will come back to haunt us when she comes home, but we can't help it now.....

We bought a mobile at a kids store the other day and I installed it on her crib today (actually most of the physical work was done by our translator). She really loved watching it move and all the bright colors. She seemed to really try to hold her head up today. She seems to really be attracted to the color blue (UK FAN in the making!). We met again with the doctor yesterday and again she confirmed that she is a very healthy little girl. She seemed to have a bit of a runny nose, which will make her fit in very well with the boys and Allison.

We have seen several other children here that have already been referred and visited and others that are in the works. The caregivers are very excited to show off kids whose parents are in process of adopting them. All the kids are so cute. To you parents-in-waiting out there, please know and trust that your children are being taken care of very well. I can't tell you how much relief this gives us as we are getting closer to coming home.

Ok, enough of the sappy stuff. To close I'd like to give you the top five things to do while on a 12 hour layover in the Moscow airport......
5. Set a world record on hand-held Tetris of 357 lines.
4. Get lung cancer from second hand smoke from the 14,000 people smoking.
3. Talk with missionaries from Oklahoma for 3 hours.
2. Spend 45 mintues searching every little shop and snack cart for a "Coke Light".
1. Fall asleep in the middle of eating lunch from a combination of jetlag, overdosing on sleeping pills and general exhaustion from the entire process.

So that's it for my first and probably last blog post. I have to admit this is really harder than it looks. Again I hope everyone had a great Mother's Day and please keep saying prayers our trip continues to proceed so well. Also say an extra one for all the kids out there still waiting to meet their parents.....

Stu