Adam & Crystal's Adoption Weblog

Sunday, August 29th

Just an Update


Well, not a whole lot new.

We finished our next package of paperwork and overnighted it to our agency on Thursday (So they should have received it on Friday (August 27)). Now we start the agonizing wait!! It seems most people don't know their court date until a month ahead of time, so we are expecting to hear nothing until October (YUK!) I suppose we will deal with it!

In the meantime, I guess we will work on getting things done around here and preparing her room!
Grandma Anne and Aunt Sarah are throwing a shower for us (well, me since Adam won't be in attendance--I think he'd rather play golf!) on September 18, which I am quite excited about! It's so much fun to get baby stuff!!

The other side of the family (Grandma Marsha, Aunt Roberta, Uncle Vince, and Aunt Kim) will be coming for a visit next weekend so they can see the video and the rest of the pictures! We are excited for their visit!

That is all that's new...


Crystal on 08.29.04 @ 08:50 PM CDT [link] [No Comments]


Monday, August 23rd

Finally, we are home!

mood: Relief (at being home), Sadness (at leaving her) and happiness (at the prospect of bringing her home)

After what seemed an eternity of travelling, we finally got home just before 11am. Next time, we are definately making sure there is a bigger cushion between our international flight and our next domestic flight.

At any rate, we are glad to be home, but of course we miss Lidia very much!
We crashed after we got home and made some calls to family; slept until around 5pm!! (Our bed felt SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO goood) Then I got up to run our film to get them developed quick. We got some good pictures smile I posted a few more on the gallery.

Our schedules are completely whacked now as it is 1am and neither of us are tired!!! Adam is going to work tomorrow, I took the day off because I knew I would have this problem. I will try to go to bed after I'm done with this.

Lidia is about 16 lbs now!! She is very much an average sized baby. After all the things we've read of orphanages, we really expected her to be thin. Thin, she is not! She has chubby baby hands, and baby rolls on her thighs. Totally adoreable! I tried some clothes on her on the last day. She has a bit of room to grow into a 6-9 month sleeper and she is absolutely swimming in a 12 month outfit. So I will plan to take 12 month clothes back with us. She seems to be averaging about a pound a month (for the past 2 months) so, I think 12 months will even be a little big by then. At any rate, they'll give us new measurements just before we go again, so we'll probably be able to tell if she'll need anything bigger than that.

Otherwise, I guess now we just need to finish up our paperwork for the agency, get our medicals done, and wait.
In the meantime we'll finish her room (and hopefully paint the living room and stain the deck... we shall see). Plus we'll need to start child proofing! She's an active one! I would not be surprised if she is walking when we get back, or very close to it.

Okay I'm going to try to sleep now...

~Crystal




Crystal on 08.23.04 @ 01:01 AM CDT [link] [1 Comment]


Sunday, August 22nd

Back in US (almost home)


Well after a delay of our flight from Moscow - DC we got on a later flight to chicago and have to wait till morning to catch a flight to Madison.

It's been a tough trip, long flights and sadness for having to leave Lidia behind until the next trip. It's good to be coming home (boy do we miss our bed) but it's going to be a hard wait.

We'll be posting a bunch more pictures soon, probably sunday evening (we'll be getting our 35mm pics developed sunday).

Well time to catch a few hours of sleep before our early flight into Madison.

Adam
Adam on 08.22.04 @ 12:49 AM CDT [link] [No Comments]


Wednesday, August 18th

Another visit, more pictures


Just posted 2 more pictures from our visit today. Another great visit other than a little tossup on crystal wink

We had the interview with the person from child protection and she approved us and told us to get going on the paperwork! Not that we had any doubts but still great to hear all the approvals. We also officially signed the letter of intent to adopt today and that has been turned in. Tomorrow we go to get a final notorized copy of it for the ministry of education.

It's going to be really hard to leave her behind tomorrow. Hopefully our court date doesn't take too long to get so we can get back here as soon as possible. While we are ready to be back home again we can't imagine not having her with us now.

Adam & Crystal
Adam on 08.18.04 @ 11:43 PM CDT [link] [5 Comments]


Sleep? what's that?


Okay so i have been awake since 3am Khabarovsk time. That was 4 hours ago. I can't figure out if I couldn't go back to sleep because my body wants to be on a different schedule than I'm trying to put it on, or if i just had too much to think about!!!!

I still can't believe we held her yesterday (and will again today). We've already got some good video and hopefully some good pictures on the 35mm.
I don't konw how we're going to last the time between trips!
She's going to grow up so much.
She's already crawling and they tell us she's pulling up in the crib. (she just hasn't figured out how to sit back down yet, so she gets frusrated and cries--typical 8 month old smile )
She is big! So much bigger than most of the other kids there. That is a good sign. You can tell she is a favorite in her group!
Ugh. I am probably going to cry all the way home!!!!

I need to go shower now, so we can get some breakfast...

~Crystal
Crystal on 08.18.04 @ 03:03 PM CDT [link] [1 Comment]


Happiness is meeting your daughter for the first time


smile

I guess the subject says most of it, we met her for the first time today, our little lidia. She is everything we hoped for and probably more. We just posted 3 pictures of her in the picture gallery.

We are a little speechless right now and i'm sure we'll have more to say later smile

We can say we will be accepting her for certain though smile The time between trips which we knew was going to be hard is quickly becoming a reality of just how hard it is going to be.

At least we have 2 more visits to look forward to first smile

More to come.

Adam
Adam on 08.18.04 @ 12:07 AM CDT [link] [4 Comments]


Tuesday, August 17th

Pictures (not of her yet)


Just posted 2 pictures in the gallery of our hotel and one of us. We are about to head out to meet our new daughter for the first time and just wanted to put up some pics quick before we go.

Look for more pictures tomorrow morning for you guys (or really late if you are up smile ) It's wednesday afternoon for us right now smile

Adam
Adam on 08.17.04 @ 07:41 PM CDT [link] [No Comments]


We made it!!

mood: very very very tired

Well we've made it to Khabarovsk!! We are checked into our hotel room and about to crash for the night. Hard to believe we left saturday at 6am and just got here tuesday at 3pm local time!! We've been up for a little over a day because of the flight timing, but I think overall our bodies are adjusting because of when and how we are sleeping.

We found out we will be making our first visit to the orphanage tomorrow at about 1:00pm!! We can't wait for that! It sounds like we we will only get to see her once a day because she is in the younger group and the schedule they are on has to be kept. So 3 days probably about 2 hours a time, we were hoping for more but this will have to do.

If i'm up later I might post some pictures we took in moscow, otherwise look for them tomorrow (which might really be today for you guys back home smile

We are 16 hours ahead of central time for those that are confused smile

Well off to check the email, make some calls and then call it a day.

I'm sure we'll have A LOT more to say tomorrow smile

Adam & Crystal
Adam on 08.17.04 @ 01:01 AM CDT [link] [4 Comments]


Friday, August 6th

Almost time for the trip


Well just over 1 week from now we'll be heading to russia (wow!). We've been getting stuff together for the trip. We just picked up a converter and a few adapters for power over there (They run 220V vs the 110V we run here). We've got our hotels booked and the flights all set so we are all set travel wise.

Crystal is still figuring out what to wear but I'm pretty much all set. We've been talking to a lot more people who have traveled lately or will be traveling soon with everyone exchanging tips/thoughts. It's great to be able to talk to people who have already done this.

We get to fly right out of madison which is a great thing, we were dreading a 2hour drive back from chicago after a 2 day flight. The trip from the madison airport to our house is only about 20 minutes so much easier to handle with jetlag.

Next week then we'll start getting everything together and start some of the packing, our flight is a 6am flight out of madison so we'll have to be there very very early. Of course we'll see how much we sleep the night before! Might be easier to stay up smile

We are so anxious to meet our daughter, we've been watching the video and the pictures we have of her. But actually being able to hold her and play with here is going to be so great!

We should have internet access while we are there so we'll probably be posting pictures in the gallery on this site and checking mail/forums. Khabarovsk is 16 hours ahead of the central time in the US so expect us at odd hours smile

Adam
Adam on 08.06.04 @ 10:00 AM CDT [link] [18 Comments]




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