Sunday, February 17, 2008

See how he has cups on his hands. He is always crawling around with toys in his hands. We find them all over the room when we clean up after our visits. Here he is racing over to knock down the cups.






This was so cute, to me. He was sitting in the walker and just got done having his morning yogurt. I had just cleaned him up and as I was cleaning his spoon off he got himself in this position. We has his elbow resting on the back of the walker seat, hand on his cheek. He is watching Joel and Gabe play the piano. He is like, I'm cool, nice and relaxed, my belly is full and I am now just chilling to the music. He is so darn cute!!!



This was first thing in the morning. Just chilling out eating his fish toy that he brought up from his crib. Every once in awhile he shows up with toy in hand.

Bonding day 12 of 15

Today we had a really fun visit with Lincoln. He sure keeps us busy chasing after him. He was practicing his walking more today. We each did a few laps around the playroom with him holding our hands. Then we tried to get him to walk a couple steps in between us. He laughed when we did this but he really does not have any where near enough balance yet to actual step all on his own. He is getting really good at just standing in one place for 20 or 30 seconds or longer sometimes. Usually he does this when someone is distracting him. He loves to watch what others are doing. We are pretty sure he does know his name now. He definitely knows our voices and Gen & Joel’s voices. When any of us talk to him he looks right at us. We are still trying to teach him how to say Mama and Dada but he isn’t getting it yet. He is starting to make more crazy noises and he will repeat Mmmm when I say it to him. I taught him how to do a raspberry. Which is pretty funny but I know I won’t think it is funny when he decides to do it while eating. Smacking his lips is still his favorite. He does it randomly but he also now does it pretty much every time you kiss him. I think he just thinks he is kissing us back. Eric was playing airplane with him today. He would hold him straight out belly down and “fly” him around the room. He really liked this. He was smiling the whole time and drooling on what ever or who ever he “flew” over. Eric said he would make his body stiff in that position. He didn’t seem to be scared since he was smiling the whole time. He also loves it when you swing him in your arms. He just likes to be moving all the time. Our visit today and most all visits now just go be too quickly.

After our visit Biyanna took us out to the new mall. Wow this mall was just like walking into any mall at home. It was bright and cheerful and had a good variety of stores. There were some good sales going on in the stores but we don’t have any extra money to be spending nor do we have any extra room in our luggage. I am still searching for a couple decent size drool bibs. The search continues. I guess parents here don’t use them. We shopped for a couple hours. I finally found a hair dryer to buy. Picked it up for about $15 US dollars, I was hoping for cheaper but this price was decent. We bought our groceries for the week and we picked up another bath towel. The apartment came with just one. The towel we bought is super nice, big and very soft. I really wanted to buy two but it was $18 and we couldn’t justify buying two of them. Mainly because we really don’t know if we will have room in our luggage to bring it back with us. Biyanna loves to shop and I think she is very disappointed that none of us are really into the whole shopping thing. I do love to shop myself but we just don’t have the extra money on this trip. Plus everything here is pretty expensive. At the mall today we got hamburgers for lunch. The burgers were very good but they came with tons of mayo on them. We completely forget to order them without mayo. I am not exaggerating this sandwich probably had at least a half cup of mayo spread out on it. Oh it was so disgusting to me. I ended up taking the burgers off the buns and wiping off the mayo so I could eat the burger. Biyanna was asking “What are you doing?” I just said, “I’m sorry, I just can’t stomach all this mayo.” The sandwich was $8, I was not about to throw away an $8 sandwich so I made the best of the situation. The mall has an ice skating rink in it and we were really looking forward to doing that but unfortunately it was not operating today. We might go back another Sunday to do it.

This evening we are just hanging out. Sundays seem to last forever since we only visit Lincoln once. We have finally caught up on all our laundry. I spoke to my parents today that was really nice to hear their voices. They reassured me that our fur babies are doing great. I miss those boys of ours so much! We also finished our homework of making two memory albums of our bonding days. We have to give one to the judge and one to the Dept. of Education. It was fun to reminisce about visits so far and write it all down on paper. Wednesday is our last bonding day, I can’t believe it. The time here is really just flying bye. This is good since we have many more weeks to go.

This Thursday the 21^st all our paperwork will be turned over to the courts and we will request a court date. We have been warned that it can take up to 10 days to actually get our court date. I believe it is the day after court that the appeal period starts. The appeal period is either 15 days or 15 business days. It is up to the judge to decide if it will be 15 straight days or business days. We are praying for the 15 straight days. The appeal period is the last final days when the birth mom or another blood relative can come forward and say they have decided to raise the baby. It is a very scary thought to think this could still happen. We have been told for this region that this has not happened in the last three years. The day after the appeal period is over we will gain full custody of Lincoln. In the eyes of the Kazakhstan government we will be Lincoln’s legal parents at that point. This day is known as the “Gotcha Day” in the adoption world. We will most likely have to stay in Aktobe for one more week while the next sets of documents are getting prepared. After this we will fly back to Almaty and spend probably five more days there finishing up all the paperwork before we are able to come home. Right now we have a return flight scheduled for March 31^st. Our visas expire on April 3^rd so worst case scenario this would be the day we would have to leave by. Hopefully everything will go smoothly and we get out of here and back to the states sooner than later. We are so ready to show our little man off to everyone!