World, Meet “Scruffy”

We just had to give this little mutt some blog space. She meets us everyday when we get to the Baby House and she hangs out around the grounds there all day. You know you’ve been away from home for awhile when you wonder where a scruffy little mutt like this one is if she doesn’t appear on schedule.

We still don’t have hot water, but so long as we have running water, it’s all good. As we have mentioned, we only have one visit on Saturday and Sunday, so these are the days we venture out and explore the city. Yesterday’s adventure took us down some new streets, where we first happened upon this…

… a little taste of home? We think not. We then carried a little farther until we arrived at the zoo to meet the other family from Canada who is here. The zoo isn’t exactly like any zoo we’d see at home, but we did see a few interesting animals before we headed off for home.

At first we thought there was a pen of white tailed deer, but when we saw this buck in velvet, we also saw that it still has its spots, but we couldn't remember what type of deer it might be.

This little camel can't be too terribly old, as it is still a little wobbly on its legs. They are quite cute when they are young, but don't seem to age very well.

Today we spent a bit of time just walking along the river with another adoptive parent from Britain that we’ve gotten to know during our stay. Here is a view of the Altai Mountains from the other side of the bridge, about a 15 minute walk from our apartment. We walked to the other side of the bridge where we could then walk along the river. We took our shoes off and enjoyed the coolness of the water, but unfortunately couldn’t stay long because of an incessant swarm of small flies that were rather troublesome.

Tomorrow we head off to file our court papers, and then on Tuesday we will be given the date of our first court hearing where we will present to the judge our request to adopt our son. We will both speak a little bit about who we are, why we want to adopt, and why we choose Kazakhstan. It sounds difficult, but we are allowed to read from a prepared speech, so it shouldn’t be too bad. There will also be representatives from the Baby House and a variety of other officials who will speak to the judge about their opinion on the matter. After that, there is a 15 day appeal period and then a final hearing where we will hear the judge’s final ruling. So, we have our fingers crossed that our son will be allowed to come home with us in about 3 weeks. Until then, we will continue to have our daily visits to the Baby House.

It’s hard to bring variety to our explanations of our visits, especially when we can’t give you any specifics about what M is doing. He continues to bond well with both of us and we are enjoying seeing his personality emerge. He’s a bit of a comedian and loves to get his hands on anything he can toss down, especially the stack of clothes on the change table when his caregivers try to change his clothes. We’re excited that the best solution seems to be handing him off to us to change his clothes in the children’s locker room. The more we can do with and for him, the more he will come to understand that we aren’t just his personal daily entertainment. We’ve even had to practice a little bit of saying “no” as M has discovered our watches and jewellery and would love to yank them off. He keeps trying to chew on Tammy’s necklace, so this gives us some time to practice a new English word which we expect will become a regular part of our vocabulary if this little guy lives up to the twinkle in his eye and offset grin he gets when he’s up to something.

Other than that, we seem to have settled into quite a routine here. It’s definitely not anything overly exciting or anything. With approximately six weeks to go, we’re trying to pace ourselves and spread the adventure out, especially over the next few weeks until M comes home.

On another note, we’re finding that some of you who have phoned are having quite a lot of trouble getting through or when you do, get a terrible connection. It seems that if you go through the operator to make the call, that you get a much better connection with hardly any delay, if any. So if you’re one of those folks who are having phone troubles, maybe give that a try, we’d love to hear from you.