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Text of the page (random words):
g to the timezone after an initial crash we played until 1 30 am saturday morning she slept too much of the day saturday but surprisingly most of the night too sunday was better though so we re slowly getting there we have such wonderful friends who have made this long 2 month journey to grace practical we want to especially thank beth and john for their help above and bey ond the call of duty while we were gone our house was robbed we ve known for a little over a week beth and john were checking on the house and discovered it they called the police and did a lot of clean up and repair for us not much was taken and the clean up was so good it looks like it never happened it would have been horrible to be surprised with this after such a long trip home thanks so much guys kathie handled our mail and bills and filled our fridge before our return which was wonderful russ gave us a ride to the airport sandy left a delicious meal in the fridge thanks guys from the moment that we were met in almaty airport on march 26th to when we were dropped off for our return to the states with grace in our arms we were in good hands with the wpa in country staff they were professional and caring and did everything in their power to ensure that the trip was enjoyable and more importantly that the adoption was successfully completed eldo at golden rule travel got us a great airfare and more importantly changed our return flights and got us bassinet seating thank you eldo so now we begin our life together as a family of three knowing that we are surrounded by friends and family who will make grace s life a happy one posted in adoption 11 comments heading home may 20 2009 by tntc since we came to almaty we ve received grace s new birth certificate with our names on it we ve also gotten grace a quick medical checkup a kazakhstani passport and a us visa we re done our return was scheduled two months ago for this saturday we ve managed to move it up a day we ll be home friday afternoon when we touch down on us soil grace becomes a citizen she ll have dual citizenship until age eighteen it has been fun but we re pretty psyched to go home today we went to the green market to get some more souvenirs and a stroller for the layover our driver translator did some great haggling for us we couldn t even have found the items we wanted without him we ate dungan an ethnic minority in china kazakhstan and kyrgyzstan food and had laghman manti and something i would describe as chicken fried eggplant which was better than it sounds almaty is very nice as long as you don t have to drive it s kazakhstan s largest and most cosmopolitan city it has tree lined streets and views of the tian shan mountains we ve wandered into random restaurants said english and gotten an english menu and a wait person with enough english to get by unfortunately we ve been taking fewer pictures since we started carrying a baby around we ll try to get some better ones for the next post wheelchair stroller access posted in adoption 7 comments long nights and hot showers may 17 2009 by tntc we moved from karaganda to almaty last night on an 11 45 pm flight there s only one flight a day and it s at 11 45 pm here are some last moments from karaganda thursday we ate with two other wpa families alison and russ and heather her daughter judy and dad don we had shashlik shish kebabs and khachapuri friday theresa burnt her foot carrying hot water from the stove to the washtub in the shower that we were using for baths she has a blister that s a good couple of square inches in size but she says it doesn t hurt any more but mom grace did not enjoy being woken up for the night flight but the city lights the airport and the plane were all too exciting for her to go back to sleep again all the passengers on the small prop driven plane got to enjoy her babbling fortunately there was no crying until the descent then she screamed bloody murder for a minute and fell asleep so suddenly it was like she was switched off finally asleep at 3 15 am checking out the almaty apartment the apartment is in a great location in almaty we went for a walk today and had thai food it was very good but very expensive oh yeah there s hot water the hot showers were wonderful grace wants to congratulate two of her big cousins on their recent accomplishments peggy graduates from the university of rhode island today and jaclyn will be graduating from ursuline later this week congrats ladies posted in adoption 6 comments good news may 13 2009 by tntc it s day nine with no hot water in karaganda city wide the bad news is that it s probably off for a month we re told this is typical in the spring the good news is that we leave for almaty saturday night hopefully we ll be home about a week later my brown eyed girl mom decided it s time for grace to start feeding herself dad wanted to wait until we got home given all of the children that had to be fed in the baby house the caregivers had a very efficient approach to mealtime which didn t allow the children to handle the food so far bananas macaroni bread and corn flakes are grace s favorite self serve food items she s better at grabbing things in her fist than she is at opening her fist in such a way that the food goes in her mouth it took a few baths before grace realized that they could be enjoyable on the move in her babylegs we ate with russ and alison again and also with our primary interpreter oksana who we hadn t seen since we stopped visiting the baby house for those who know the wpa karaganda team oksana is an occasional third interpreter not to be confused with oxana the weather s been great and we ve had grace out everyday we saw some yurts set up in central park look out she s coming right for us the picture above is very large give it time to load if you re on a slow connection posted in adoption 6 comments happy mother s day may 10 2009 by tntc grace has a special message for her бабушки babushki or grandmothers and grandmothers like pictures so she s teething a bit austin powers anyone grace has mastered peek a boo with daddy you wanna go we got out and had lunch with alison and russ who are part of the next wave from our agency they re in their 2 week bonding period and they re adopting a little girl we d been eating at home a lot the last couple of weeks so we were dying to take grace out grace s first restaurant assorti the weather s great too spring is really here have we said that before fast asleep on the walk back to apartment uh oh gang signs surrounded by toys she plays with a water bottle posted in adoption 10 comments no backsies may 7 2009 by tntc our fifteen day waiting period is up g is ours so where are we going also g is grace zhanar zhanar was her kazakh given name the zh is pronounced like the s in mea s ure we might have kept it as her first name but we didn t want her to spend her whole life spelling it for people and telling people how to pronounce it grace is now at home with us in the apartment asleep at last a few days ago we had some excitement in the apartment theresa was toasting some old bread in the oven no toaster to make breadcrumbs we were sitting in the living room with the door closed and forgot about them by the time we remembered the rest of the apartment was filled with smoke oops no alarms but no damage done nice toasty smell here are some pre grace pictures of the apartment sink on the left stove on the right entire countertop in between sometimes at lunch theresa and i eat lunch off the same plate we re sitting that close together anyway the sheet outside is to try to stop the morning sun from piercing my brain it doesn t work we use the inside clothes lines seen in the two pictures above for drying things we ve been without hot water for the last three days this morning theresa used a bucket of stove heated water for a sponge bath in the very narrow shower not up for such contortions i went for the he man very very cold shower that was a mistake a really big mistake can i get a membership in a polar bear club for that note the top loading horizontal axis washing machine that holds less than half of what our washer at home holds and takes up to 3 hours depending on the settings you use fortunately the controls are in italian and we could make them out it was slightly intimidating that the washer has temperature settings in degrees we re used to setting hot warm or cold we never had to decide how warm on the other hand the tiny oven has settings 1 through 5 no cake baking outside our apartment door posted in adoption 12 comments ch ch changes may 3 2009 by tntc we ve been with g long enough to see cause some personality changes she s grown used to our constant attention the biggest change is when it s time to go to bed initially putting her down and putting the heavy baby house blanket on her got the biggest smile she could give it was as if going to bed was her favorite game ever now it usually produces much wailing i don t want to go to sleep she wakes up and plays by herself before we see her but if we re too slow getting to her look out also g was quite the lump when we met her now she s in constant motion we drop toys in a circle and she crawls all over we put her in a walker when we re too tired to walk her ourselves and she goes and goes we re not encouraging the raspberries anymore it s too easy to get a face full when handling her it s her favorite form of communication well ahead of the many forms of aahb aahb i tell you aaaaahhb the last two days we had high s in the 70 s today we had snow around lunch here are some pictures of the baby house botakoz baby house 14 cribs in room 4 g s has the blue sheet baby house playground private kindergarten next door posted in adoption 8 comments steam heat april 27 2009 by tntc we ve got a definite crawler now 10 feet in a line commando style not the most efficient crawling there s some flapping and some knee slippage we ve also have a talker we usually encourage every peep eh with an echo eh now there are times you could wish she d be quiet mostly it s ba baba ab abba as in what s your favorite band abba abba abba we ve also seen the sick cranky g nothing serious she had a bit of a fever for about a day and a half but the personality change was remarkable now we see her nefarious plan be a perfect baby until after we go to court and promise to take care of her then spring cranky g on us we got out and saw the park again quite a difference in the last 3 or 4 weeks karaganda pruning oh yeah the heat s off not in our apartment not in our building the heat s off in karaganda saturday our coordinator asked us if we still had heat because the heat had been turned off on her side of town we knew we had radiators which we could not control but we assumed there was a boiler in the basement wrong hot water heat is centrally provided later saturday night we realized that the heat was off in our apartment we ve had a lot of highs in the 50 s recently but the lows are still in the low 20 s we even had snow saturday morning but it s not bad in the apartment i guess it s the three foot thick walls actually it s nice compared to being overly hot why would you have centrally provided hot water heat we have a gas stove my only guess is to take advantage of the coal in the area maybe there s a large coal fired plant nearby hot water pipes around the edge of central park also as of sunday night we have no cold water a translator said oh i forgot to tell you they do that when they turn off the heat something about cleaning the pipes how long will it be off nobody knows but the consensus is more than a day less than a week so karaganda has centrally provided hot and cold water lines and hot water heat weird our cold water and our heat are still off it s monday night here the hot water is way too hot to take a shower in without some cold and the washing machine doesn t seem to work without cold water can you work out what that means all part of the adventure posted in adoption 8 comments crawling and walking april 23 2009 by tntc yesterday we got some crawling not far but definite crawling i don t wanna sit down the baby house doctor has been seeing us there every day coughing and blowing our noses after court she encouraged us to take a couple days off from visiting the baby house so we could get healthy so we took the last two mornings off but we couldn t miss whole days we slept a little late and spent some time walking through the neighborhood two separate people asked us something in russian so i guess we blend a little better without the backpack baby bag we saw a celebration yesterday outside what i think is the some famous guy kazakh drama theater maybe they re celebrating the opening of theater season there were large groups of school children watching but none of the teachers could speak english currently we re in a 15 day waiting period followed by maybe 10 days of paperwork here in karaganda this is when many adoptive parents on a two trip program go home our travel partners gene and jill started home tuesday after court wpa usually sends two families at a time we re here til the end i found this poem in another blog and made theresa cry with it so it must be good once there were two women once there were two women who never knew each other one you do not remember the other you call mother two different lives shaped to make you one one became your guiding star the other became your sun the first one gave you life and the second taught you to live it the first gave you a need for love the second was there to give it one gave you a nationality the other gave you a name one gave you a talent the other gave you aim one gave you emotions the other calmed your fears one saw your first sweet smile the other dried your tears one sought for you a home that she could not provide the other prayed for a child and her hope was not denied and now you ask me through your tears the age old question unanswered through the years heredity or environment which are you a product of neither my darling neither just two different kinds of love unknown posted in adoption 5 comments older posts about the site troy and theresa s excellent adventure a site for keeping friends and family up to date pages kazakhstan info our adoption timeline links world partners adoption dr jane aronson jcca now in kaz adoption blogs completed adoption blogs by city get email im twitter alerts archives july 2009 1 may 2009 7 april 2009 13 march 2009 8 february 2009 1 january 2009 3 december 2008 1 october 2008 1 june 2008 1 may 2008 1 april 2008 2 march 2008 2 february 2008 5 meta create account log in entries feed comments feed wordpress com blog stats 32 841 hits create a free website or blog at wordpress com wpthemes an adoption journey blog at wordpress com subscribe subscribed an adoption journey sign me up have a wordpress com account log in now privacy an adoption journey view site in reader 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