Day 14 of Bonding

It’s been a few days since we’ve updated. We’re almost finished with our required 14 day bonding period. We’ve signed some papers at a notary’s office and typed the petition for the court. We don’t know our court date and the Almaty judges now want up to 30-60 days to review each petition for adoption. We think we will make 3 trips to complete our adoption. Our agency had let us know this would be a very real possibility before we left.

There are several families in the bonding or waiting period at the same baby house where we are bonding with Andrew. We are the only the Americans. There are 3 couples from Spain, 2 Canadian (French speaking), 3 Korean, and 2 Kazakh families all adopting. We spoke with one of the Spanish mom’s yesterday and she gave us the scoop. She knows everyone at the baby house because she has been visiting her son there since May 19th. She decided to make one long trip and she still does not have a court date. We are all outside in the play area during visits. None of us are allowed to be in the building during the bonding time. They want the children to have outside time with us. It’s starting to get crowded in the play area.

We are looking into coming back earlier since we probably won’t get a court date any time soon. Our current tickets have us here for 3.5 weeks, through 7/16. We checked with our travel agent at Golden Rule and she said there are no available seats between 7/9-7/15 on KLM. She couldn’t even wait list us because the standby list is already so long during those dates. It’s a problem that several couples are having. We are considering trying to get a flight on British Airways but then what do we do with the 2nd half of our KLM tickets? We’re not sure if we can apply it to our next trip. We’re probably just going to stay through the 16th.

For some happy news, our visits are going really well with Andrew. He even tried walking between us yesterday. Mark and I sat down on the ground a few feet apart and he would walk to each of us. He would take a couple of steps and then give us a big hug when we picked him up. He is such a fun little boy. He is very happy and he laughs and smiles a lot. First, we have to give him a couple of cookies when we arrive and he then perks up and we play. We have yet to see him really cry.

One more thing to talk about – the weather! Bring a sweater to Almaty, even in July. We get several rain showers a week, because we are so close to the mountains the rain really cools things down. We are glad that our friend Gretchen reminded us to bring our umbrellas and Mark suggested the sweaters. I wasn’t sure why at the time but I’m glad he did (and that I actually listened).

One other thing for those families coming to Kazakhstan – buy the Central Asia Lonely Planet book. There’s lots of information about many cities in Kazakhstan. It has a map of Almaty that we copied so that we wouldn’t have to carry the whole book all of the time. We blew it up because the print is so small. The map has been very useful to us. We ask our coordinator to mark different things for us on the map so that we can get around easier. Although you can get by with charades, I also recommend a small Russian phrase book.

We continue to pray for the process, the judges, and all of those involved. We appreciate all of the prayers from our families and friends from home. Our Sunday School class has been so faithful to pray for us over the past 16 months. I sometimes felt bad asking over and over for prayer - like we were in constant need. Believe me, in this process, that's the way I've felt. We're very thankful.