Lucky

Having recently met some new SHymkent adoptive families, I have been reading a few blogs again.  Things change fast in Kaz.  According to one blog, the judge I had when I was there was replaced.  The new judge is no longer as pro adoption.  He is also anti-single mom adopting.  A lot of single moms had been adopting from Shymkent because the judge was so pro adoption.  Due to some issues with the girl's paperwork, we were worried that even the pro adoption judge would not allow the adoption.  If he had been replaced a few months earlier, I wonder what my court experience would have been like.  I am also in contact with a family who met a little boy in Taraz 6 1/2 months ago.  A new judge there has started to deny all adoptions.  After going through the whole bonding process, they were denied and so far all their appeals have also been denied. They are finally having to come home after visiting their son every day for over 6 months.   I cannot imagine what that would be like.  I guess I am just feeling very lucky to have my girls home and to not have to deal with any of the stress of the adoption prcess anymore.

I have my 1 year post placement social worker visit this Saturday.  Even though it is not due until October, it take quite a while for the report to get written, apostilled, and sent to Kaz.  Can it really be that close to one year home that I need to be writing this report already?  Time has gone by so fast.   So this is 2 reports down, 17 more to go!  Only 2 more (2 year and 3 year) need a social worker so they will get much easier after the next 2 are completed. 

On the positive side, I also found some photos of the renovated baby house.  They fixed up the outside quite a bit and added some new slides.  The gym, where we spent a lot of time, was painted and got new curtains.  A ball pit was added(I had heard they had one while I was there, but I never saw it).  I got these pictures off another blog, but I am copying them since they have no people in them.

Sadly the red swing that the girls loved so much and that we spent so much time on, seems to be gone.  Also gone are the broken walkers that the girls had so much fun pushing around.  The gym equipment seems to be in a new configuration with some additional pieces.   The carpet is the same, but it was in good shape.

The little pool has been painted and the slides added.  We never went in this area as it was just full of weeds and broken down equipment.  I am glad things were fixed up.  I remember the workers washing rugs on this driveway one day a week every week.  I am going to try to write this family when they get home and see if they have any more photos that they would be willing to share.  I would love to see if they fixed up the other playground too.

On to Milwaukee

We got up the next morning and packed the car back up and headed to Milwaukee.   I thought the girls would enjoy watching the movie Bolt since it is about a puppy.  A few minutes after I turned it on, I heard a whimper from the back seat.  I looked back to see Sasha curled up in her car seat with her hands over her eyes and Leeza with her hands over her ears.  OOPS.  Mama forgot the first part of the movie has a chase seen where they are after the puppy dog.  After that, it was the Curious George DVD over and over again.

We met Abby and Jake for lunch, but poor little Jake was sick.  I later found out he was getting in 4 teeth and had a double ear infection.  No wonder he wasn't feeling good.  After lunch, we went to the waterpark at the new hotel. 

This slide was in the kiddie pool area.  The girls liked this slide and played a lot in this pool by jumping off the side into the pool.  It was about 1 ft deep.

They had fun climbing on the turtle and playing under the waterfall.

Then we went over to the big slides.  This slide is about 12 ft tall.  They had to climb 2 sets of concrete stairs with water running over them to get to the top.  Leeza fell down them twice since they were too small to use the handrail very well, but they went on this slide repeatedly for over an hour.  Finally they were so tired they were stumbling up the stairs so we called it a day.  They really loved the water.  Leeza was able to float a little by the time we were ready to leave, but Sasha tends to sink like a rock when I tried to get her to float.  There were 2 slides bigger than this, but you had to be able to swim to use them so this was the largest slide they were allowed on. 

Later that night, we went to the first official Kazapalooza event.  It was held at a childrens museum.  They didn't have enough tables to eat on and there were way too many kids for the size of the museum(Decatur has a much better children's museum and it is 1/10 the size of Milwaukee).  Finally, Abby dragged us back to a corner the mob had not found yet and the girls were able to play and have some fun.  I also met a couple of nice families there so it was fun in the end.  Leeza loved this little lawn mower and would not let go of it.  When she wanted to go down the slide, she dragged the lawn mower up the stairs with her and took it down the slide with her. 

Sasha loved playing with the sand table and spent a lot of time here. 

I had to take a picture of them sleeping.  They were so adorable.  They did really good sleeping in the big girl bed.  No one fell out until the last night and then Leeza slept in the center of the bed so Sasha had only a little bit of bed to sleep on and she fell out 3 times.  Sasha woke up at 5am as usual, but this time she had someone next to her to try to wake up.  One morning, I woke up to see Sasha pounding on Leeza chest saying "get up Leeza" repeatedly.  Poor Leeza needs all the sleep she can get.  She slept right through the pounding and just quietly said "stop it Sasha".    I turned the TV on to some cartoon and she watched them until we all got up at 6:30am. 
There was a luncheon the next day.  We sat with another family that had adopted from Shymkent.  Hannah has just been home for a few months.

This is our Shymkent group- Abby and Jake, me and the girls, and Erin and Hannah. 

We spent the afternoon at the waterpark again and then packed up and headed home the next day.  5 1/2 hours of the same Curious George video!  The girls did good.  Leeza slept a lot. As long as I gave Sasha a new toy or a treat every half hour, she was fine.  We stopped by a McDonalds for lunch that had a play area, but it was so hot that they did not want to play on it so we packed up and drove on.  Overall, they did wonderfully and we all had a good time. 

Our First Family Vacation- Day One

We had a very good first family vacation.  Two kids take so much more luggage than one adult.  I had the car packed full.  I have no idea of how I would ever travel by plane.  The girls need so many things to be comfortable at this age.  The back of the car was full and so was the passenger seat.  We left Thursday morning and stopped by Aunt Shirley and Unle Kenny's place.  The girls had a good time and didn't do too much damage to their house.  Uncle Kenny and Sasha played with a shape sorting ball and he made a friend in Sasha.

 After our visit, we went to Grizzle Jacks Grand Bear Lodge in Utica. 

The girls loved the lodge and we surprisingly confortable with the hotel room.  I thought they might be a little confused about being away from home, but they took everything in stride.  They really liked looking at the bear that was above the fireplace.  It tells a story at 7:30 each night, but we didn't make it.  Maybe next time.

They spent a lot of time looking around the hotel lobby.

They also like the big snowman.  Sometimes I forget how little they still are, but then I see a picture of them and realize they are still just tiny little things. 

Once we got our suitcases in the room, we hit the waterpark.  Once they got in the water, they took off and loved it.  The waterpark was not huge, but perfect size of them.  IT had a wave pool, but it was not on the day we went so they just splashed around the pool and then we went to the slides.

Pink Dora swimsuits are a requirement.

THey went down this slide dozens and dozens of times.  They look so little on it, but they slid down and then ran back around and did it again.

Neither can swim or even float, but that didn't stop them at all. 

The lodge also had a small indoor amusement park. If you look close, you can see a small train parked by the building, that drives you from the lodge to the amusement park. This was by far the girls favorite ride!  They love love love trains.  Since Sasha was so short, there were only 3 rides she could go on.  Aliens(little spaceships going in a circle), a carousel and the Tilt-A-WHirl.  Since Sasha was not 36"(only 34 1/4") , she couldn't ride without an adult.  I foolishly went on with them.  I forgot the I can NOT do spinning rides.  We took the train back to the lodge where I layed down to try to recover from the Tilt-A-Whirl. There were not many people there so they let the rides go a really long time!  Sasha and Leeza kept asking me if Mommy was sick.  Then I heard some russling and Sasha getting something out of the garbage.  She came back to me.  She asked me if Mommy was sick and did Mommy want something to eat and stuck her cold half eaten hamburger under my nose.  Not exactly what I needed at the time as that was the final straw and Mommy got sick in the bathroom with 2 little girls watching and giggling the whole time.  After that, we all got into one bed and went to sleep.  I got up and went to the other bed after they fell asleep.  They did very good sleeping in a big girl bed that night. 

Quick Update

We are home from our weekend- exhausted, but happy.  The girls had a great time and were very very good travelers.  Not perfect, but for how many hours in a car and all the new things they did, they were wonderful.
A few firsts:
First car ride of over 1 hour(not counting the homecoming trip from the airport when they were out of it the whole time)
FIrst visit to a relatives home(Aunt Sirley and Uncle Kenny)
First visit to Wisconsin
First visit to any state other than Illinois
First stay in a hotel

First room service meal

First trip up an escalator

First time in a big swimming pool

First time down a pool slide

First carnival ride-Aliens at Grizzly Jacks

First big girl carnival ride- Tilt-a-Whirl

First time with a DVD player in a car(they loved it)

I'll post more later, but the pictures say a thousand words.  The girls had a great time!

Swim Time

It rained hard both Saturday and Sunday afternoon with lots of thunder and lightning. Frosty decided she did not like it and came into the living room to sit with me. Sasha took advantage of this to try to be Frosty's buddy.

Frosty tolerated her petting. She is still a little shy around the girls.

As you can see, eventually, they mobbed her and started to squish her so she ran off. She is down there underneath both girls.

Sunday morning, we went out and played in our new pool. IT was very humid and very sunny so the humidity fogged up the camera lens and I did not notice it until later. Water can spray out of the dolphin although we only used the spray for a few minutes.The girls had a good time swimming and splashing in the pool. The pool has one shallow area where you can slide down a whale and then a slightly deeper area for splashing. The girls loved to jump between the 2 pools.

Zoo Picnic

I will try to post some pictures later this weekend.

Tonight was the local zoo members picnic. We went to the zoo after I picked the girls up from daycare. We went and rode the carousel. Think Christmas photo with Santa but on a carousel monkey and hippo. BOth girls were crying LOUDLY the first half of the ride. The second half of the ride, they stopped crying, but did not smile. We went to get something to eat and then went back and no one wanted to ride again. On the way out, we rode it one more time and this time both girls had fun.
We also got to pet 2 snakes. I think both were boas-one was an albino snake about 12 feet long and the other was regular color and a lot smaller. Sasha loved it. Leeza was ok with the snakes. She did point out that one had some dirt on it(that is Leeza for sure). Then we got to feed the camels some leaves and go right up to the fence of the cheetah exhibit. We had to go see the guinea pigs twice as they are still a favorite exhibit(along with the monkeys). Then we got to feed a pelican really smelly fish. We carefully avoided the chance to watch them feed the snakes frozen rats and feed the alligator(not sure what they were feeding it). The girls got to bed late so I HOPE they sleep late tomorrow, but I know that won't happen.

How much does a pound weigh?

Lately, it seems like Leeza weighs about 100 pounds when I try to pick her up. I weighed her tonight and she now weighs 34 pounds which is only one more pound than a few weeks ago, but it seems like so much more. Sasha gained a pound also and is now at 30 pounds, but she feels so much lighter than Leeza when I pick her up. Why????