Appeal Period Day 14 of 15

TOMORROW IS OUR LAST DAY OF APPEALS. . . .

TOMORROW IS OUR LAST DAY OF APPEALS. . . .

Thursday we get our SON for REAL !!!

Ok so this is what is happening, tomorrow (Wednesday) our coordinators go back to the judge and tell him our appeal period is over and ask for Lincoln and Gabriel to be released from the baby house. On Thursday morning we get picked up for our morning visit. Eric and Joel will go with our translators and coordinators to the court house to sign off on the paperwork. Gen and I will go to the baby house and visit with Lincoln and Gabriel like we normally would. Once Eric and Joel have signed off on all the paperwork they will return to the baby house and the boys will be released into our custody. Once this occurs, as far as the Kazakhstan Government is concerned we are the OFFICIAL parents for Lincoln. Gen and Joel will be Gabriel’s new parents. Woo Hoo this is the day we have all been waiting for!!!

Back to today, Tuesday . . .

Our visits today were good for the most part. This morning Lincoln spent a lot of his time with Irina. She walked around with him and played with him. Boy are they going to miss each other. We will have to get her email address so we can stay in touch. Irina has a 3 year old son so she is has been very understanding on how we feel about everything. She is a very nice person. Also this morning, Lincoln played in the walker for awhile. Unless we buy one at home this is his last chance to be enjoying the freedom of having one. He was very cute he would walk away from us then I would call him back and he would walk back over with a huge smile on his face. We of course, also played on the little chairs today. Toward the end of our visit he started to get really tired, yawning and rubbing his eyes. He didn’t fall asleep for us but we are sure he probably did shortly after our visit.

In between visits today we went for a nice long walk around the city. It was very nice here this afternoon around 41 degrees Fahrenheit and sunny. 41 degrees doesn’t sound that nice but for us it was beautiful. We went to the Mosque Mall and got some pictures developed for the Nannies and others. These will be our “we will miss you but thank you” gifts from Lincoln. We ate lunch at the mall. For the two of us it was only about $3.50. How can you beat that??? Also at the mall we bought a couple books for Lincoln, they tell a story in English, Kazak, and Russian. They are really great; obviously it will be important of us to share with him his heritage as he grows up. If he shows a lot of interest in learning about his heritage we plan on the three of us learning the Cyrillic alphabet and Russian language. I doubt we will be able to find a place near our home for him to learn to speak Kazak but Russian should be a great alternative for him. We also plan to have him learn to speak Spanish as he grows up since that is a becoming mandatory in America these days. Yup by the time he is an adult he should know English, Spanish and Russian. Let’s check back 18 years from now and see how well we did with him on this.

This afternoon when we arrived they gave us Lincoln’s 3:00 bottle but it only contained 5 ½ ounces instead of 7 ½ he normally gets. Of course our translators were not with us so we were not able to ask why. We were also curious as to why he was wearing a new shirt instead of the one we put on him. We learned quickly what was going on with him. He actually vomited seven times within our two hour visit and he was pretty cranky the whole time. Clearly he is not feeling very well. This is not a very good indication of how well our transition of taking him out of the baby house will go. Almost all babies get sick within the 24 hours of leaving the baby house. What happens when you take a sick baby out of the baby house? This we are very nervous about. Obviously we have many long flights ahead of us and no experience having a sick child under our care. Hmm should be interesting….

After our visits today Gen and Joel came back to our apartment and we hung out for a bit (honestly we had a couple drinks) then we went over to the bowling alley for dinner and bowling. Eric bowled his second best game ever at a score of 171. I on the other hand think I bowled my worst game ever. I am an awful bowler but I still had fun that is what is most important, right? My score was so bad I am not even going to tell you what it was. Bowling on the Wii, I am pretty good at that. Oh the Wii one item we are really looking forward to when we get home.

Again, Woo Hoo tomorrow is our last day of appeals ! ! ! ! !

** Sorry for the lack of pictures today we were either so busy playing or then consoling a sick child. . .

We did change our second just wet diaper today!! The first wet diaper was just a couple days ago. I think we have only changed four diapers so far two of each "kind".