The Perfect 10

4 flights + 3 countries + 2 parents + 1 baby boy!

Yes, we are alive and well. Sorry we didn’t post sooner, but we haven’t had much of a chance since we left Frankfurt. Plus, today was the first day we could get and Internet card and quite honestly it took us 3 hours to translate it so we knew what to do with it!

We arrived in Almaty around midnight on Sunday and had a meeting with the coordinator there. After only a few hours sleep we were up and on the go again to make a quick stop at the bank and then catch a flight to Ust-Kamenogorsk. We were met at the airport by our Ust coordinator and our driver. Both are extremely kind and have been very helpful. From there we were whisked away with our ton of luggage, which surprisingly all made it to Ust, to our first apartment. We dropped off our stuff and had a quick meeting to go over our next steps. A few minutes later we were off to the baby house. We thought it would just be to meet with the director/head doctor but to our joyful surprise, around 3:30 on Monday afternoon a wonderful caregiver came into the Head Doctor’s office with a tiny bundle in her arms – our son!

Unfortunately, we aren’t allowed to share any significant information about him until after he is officially declared ours by the courts. The bad news is that this won’t be for another 30-35 days. I know you are disappointed by this, but with the Internet being the wonderful and scary place that it can be, it is most definitely what’s best for our family. We can tell you what will generally happen for the next few weeks.

We are driven to the baby house by our wonderful (and daring) driver twice a day for “bonding time.” On Saturdays and Sundays we will only visit once per day. We have already had three days of visits. After the 15th day we will have our first court date to ask permission to adopt this child. Then there will be a 20-25 day appeal period where we will continue to visit each day and wait for the courts to finalize their decision. After our second court date we will be officially declared as parents (by the courts, our hearts are in it hook, line and sinker already!) and then he will come to live with us full time until the remainder of his paperwork allowing him to leave Kazakhstan and enter Canada is complete. Only after all of that will we be able to fly home.

Well, we'll leave it at that for now, with dial-up we aren't sure how long posts will load, so this will be our test run. Until tomorrow....