Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Morgan gets dunked

Morgan was baptized Sunday by Rev. Dr. Laurie Kraus with help from Leah, who represented the congregation in the ceremony.

Friday, May 25, 2007

Hi to my friends in Kostanai

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Hi I just wanted to say "privet" to my friends in Kostanai at the Delphin. Mom and Dad just took me to the beach today and I had fun (that is, after I saw other kids having fun and figured out this complex concept). I've been very busy learning to crawl and learning to eat new foods. This week I also visited the Riviera Child Care Center where I'll be learning lots more with new friends starting June 3rd. -- Morgan Adams

Saturday, May 19, 2007

First week at home

Morgan has been feeling fine. Last night she slept from 8:30 pm all the way until 7 am without even asking for her pacifier once! She was out like a light. Morgan and I took Michele out to pizza at "Blu Pizzeria" in South Miami, where Morgan had pasta and sauce (a stage 3 jar) and some fruit mush.

Today (Saturday) we took her to Target and bought a new car seat because the one we had before is for children age 3 and up; it didn't fit her well at all. Now Michele has taken her to Homestead to Peggy's house, for a "ladies tea" lunch. I'm using the time to work on Knight work that has fallen behind this week. There's an important web deadline coming up and I have to finish by Monday.

Tomorrow, we'll be taking her to church with us for the first time. She'll meet some other children for the first time, who might grow up to be friends.

And Tuesday we'll be taking her back to Dr. Hector Trujillo (3rd visit), whom we like a lot so far. If her breathing has less crud in it, then he can finally make a proper physical exam of her. With that in mind, we're using the nebulizer regularly now to treat whatever virus is hiding in there.

This week she went out to Target many many times for various things - lots of food, and cute clothes. We found footy pajamas at The Children's Place that fit perfectly; thanks to Nan and her sister Florence for suggesting to shop there for such a hard to find thing.

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

We're home at last

Since the last posting, we've flown from Almaty back through Frankfurt to New York, and Morgan has become a U.S. citizen. We spent Mother's Day weekend with Uncle Doug and Aunt Alexa in their apartment near Columbia University Teacher's College, and Uncle Jon and Aunt Karen at a brunch on upper Broadway at Le Monde cafe with cousins Benjamin and Jacob. Then, we flew home to Miami (exhausted and cranky!) to a reception hosted by Nana and Lee, with Grandpa Bob, Grandpa David, Grandma Carol and Aunt Phyllis. (The chocolate ice cream cake deserves recognition too, it was so yummy.)

Fortunately Morgan adjusted to her new surroundings almost immediately, and has been sleeping well and eating well, though she's not drinking as much formula as we'd hoped she would.

Parenting is going well. Morgan will not sleep when we want her to - so we have to use tricks like sugaring her up, taking her for a walk in the stroller, and letting her have a little sugar crash when we need her to be asleep. Hopefully this will eventually result in a sleep pattern we can live with. Last night she went down at 7:30 pm and woke up at 1 am; then had trouble sleeping until 4 am when I finally got her to sleep by letting her fall asleep on me. Michele rescued me at 6 for her breakfast and walk, so that I could finally sleep a little.

Developments we've noticed in just the last few days:
  • She's making choices, such as pointing at the bottle or the yogurt cup, while eating so we know what she wants more of.

  • She's picking up Cheerios with two fingers, but it's not a pincer grip - she licks her fingers and then adheres the cereal to her hand with spit to get it to her mouth.

  • She's much more verbal every day - saying ma ma and da da, but randomly.

  • More attached than ever to the two blue Gund 'Spunky' dogs that Cousin Kristie and Uncle Blair gave her.



Morgan will have a baptism soon. It's Sunday, May 27th and if you're reading this and wish to come, it's at Riviera Presbyterian Church during regular worship at 11 am. Refreshments to follow.

Sunday, May 13, 2007

First night in her new crib

Morgan slept soundly the first night in hew new crib. (It was the second night that she got up repeatedly and we discovered she had a high fever.)

Saturday, May 12, 2007

Arrival at JFK


Greeted by Doug and Alexa at JFK on May 12, 2007 after connecting in Frankfurt.

Friday, May 11, 2007

Morgan's very first blog entry:

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All done and ready to return to the U.S.

It’s Friday afternoon and our hotel room is darkened as Michele is catching up on sleep. She got very ill last night after eating something funny in a Korean restaurant – though I had exactly the same order as she, and didn’t get sick at all. Hopefully (likely) she’ll be feeling well enough before we have to fly early Saturday AM out of the Almaty Airport - about eight hours from now.

Morgan is lively and giggling, blowing raspberries and entertaining herself with gurgles in her crib. We haven’t quite found the right balance of fruit juice and sugary yogurt vs. starchy rice cereal and mush, so she’s either high and bouncing off the walls, or grumpy and sleepy much of the time. Naps are very hard to schedule between the important trips about town.

Yesterday, we went to the SOS Services medical clinic and Morgan got a checkup and HIV test required by the U.S. Embassy. She’s healthy of course, but it turns out that every possible medical problem on her original medical records was either self-contradictory or just fabricated (the incentive to fabricate medical problems stems from the way that baby houses are funded and the arcane rules by which babies are eligible to be put up for international adoption).

We met a couple of interesting people at breakfast in the hotel. Austin is an adoptive father and lawyer from New Orleans and will be taking home baby Merina; Grove and Jennifer are from New Mexico and are taking home baby Pavel – and like me, they work for nonprofits; and JoAnne is returning Sunday to Buffalo with new son Nicholas. We also enjoyed meeting Chan Park, a professor from Ohio doing a 2-week educational exchange on the Korean diaspora that are in Kazakhstan – over 200,000 were relocated involuntarily from Russia in the 1950s to farm wheat.

Having accomplished the last major bit of business this afternoon – a trip to the heavily fortified and guarded U.S. Embassy to pick up Morgan’s Kazakh passport with U.S. visa stamps, medical records and an “instantly valid upon arrival” U.S. citizenship document – we are now about 12 hours from departure. We thought about registering her to vote liberal, too, but she’s too young – darn!

It’s a huge relief that there have been really no surprises on this trip, and we must again thank the fine work of Libby, Dina, and Zhanat of MAPS; Oleg in Almaty and Efrat at Lifelink in Miami.

Morgan can’t wait to come drool on her new family, and in about 36 hours from now we’ll get the first chance to do that!

Wednesday, May 9, 2007

We're here. She's here too.

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IMG_0011
Originally uploaded by Robertson Adams.

Reunited

Just a note to say all has gone well, and we have Morgan sleeping in a crib in the hotel room now. Photos are on http://www.flickr.com/photos/rga.

We've arrived! Zzzzzz zzzz zzzz.


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Originally uploaded by Robertson Adams.
After arrival at 11:30 pm it took us until 1 am to get to our room and sleep finally.

We're back in Kazakhstan! ... and still waiting.

Good afternoon, it’s Wednesday here in Almaty and we’re waiting to meet the head nurse from the Delphin Baby House at the airport around 5:45. We expect to receive our beautiful new daughter and bring her back to the Kazzhol Hotel, where we’ll be changing our first diaper, preparing our first bottle of formula – lots of firsts tonight. (Hopefully first full night of sleep? Ha ha ha.)

The flight in was smooth – the Germans love their cigarettes too much so the Frankfurt Airport was a difficult place to find 4 hours of rest during a 6-hour layover. We eventually settled on some padded benches at a colossal McDonald’s food court in terminal 2. Highly recommended if you, too, wish to avoid the $240 day rate at the Sheraton.

Our flight from Frankfurt went by surprisingly quickly, and we got in at 11:30, were picked up by driver Nicholai and coordinator Oleg – and whisked to the Kazzhol Hotel (we expected to be in the Hotel Kazakhstan but this place is just fine, and cheaper). They’ve put a crib in our room and we went to a large supermarket that had everything we could possibly want – baby food and juice in all flavors and sizes.

It’s a national holiday – I think it’s Victory Day – so many people are wearing green military hats with red stars on them and there are many icons of national and civic pride around. In Almaty (Alma Ata) this includes apples, because it’s the home of the world’s first wild apples. (Benjamin and Jacob, that’s for show and tell on Monday

For the last 4 weeks in Miami, I have had to pinch myself to believe that we ever left town and spent more than a month in Kostanai, or that we spoke Russian, or saw tractors and belly dancers. But today it feels oddly natural to be speaking Russian again, and reading Kazakh signs. It means I wasn't hallucinating about the first trip, and it seems we're actually in a far-away land doing fun things like adopting a princess.

The city is beautiful with lots of trees and parks (as leafy as Gainesville, Fla. perhaps) – I would be eager to spend a month here. But compared with Kostanai, it’s very urban. Many more cars. More vendors on the street. Expensive prices for things. Fancy international designer perfume and clothing shops. And a few times people in the grocery store seemed to intentionally shove or at least bump me in a hurry to pass by (the aisle was plenty wide, but they needed my space). Our hotel TV gets both CNN Europe and BBC World channels and the buffet for breakfast had coffee, omelets and sausage included in the price of stay, so we’ll not lose weight as we did on the first trip May 3-April 8.

After walking around Almaty for just an hour this morning and getting some groceries, we’ve taken a long nap and are just in waiting mode now. Sleep was much needed but we have a new family member to go look after.

Back in Kazakhstan!

Good afternoon, it’s Wednesday here in Almaty and we’re waiting to meet the head nurse from the Delphin Baby House at the airport around 5:45. We expect to receive our beautiful new daughter and bring her back to the Kazzhol Hotel, where we’ll be changing our first diaper, preparing our first bottle of formula – lots of firsts tonight. (Hopefully first full night of sleep? Ha ha ha.)

The flight in was smooth – the Germans love their cigarettes too much so the Frankfurt Airport was a difficult place to find 4 hours of rest during a 6-hour layover. We eventually settled on some padded benches at a colossal McDonald’s food court in terminal 2. Highly recommended if you, too, wish to avoid the $240 day rate at the Sheraton.

Our flight from Frankfurt went by surprisingly quickly, and we got in at 11:30, were picked up by driver Nicholai and coordinator Oleg – and whisked to the Kazzhol Hotel (we expected to be in the Hotel Kazakhstan but this place is just fine, and cheaper). They’ve put a crib in our room and we went to a large supermarket that had everything we could possibly want – baby food and juice in all flavors and sizes.

It’s a national holiday – I think it’s Victory Day – so many people are wearing green military hats with red stars on them and there are many icons of national and civic pride around. In Almaty (Alma Ata) this includes apples, because it’s the home of the world’s first wild apples. (Benjamin and Jacob, that’s for show and tell on Monday

For the last 4 weeks in Miami, I have had to pinch myself to believe that we ever left town and spent more than a month in Kostanai, or that we spoke Russian, or saw tractors and belly dancers. But today it feels oddly natural to be speaking Russian again, and reading Kazakh signs. It means I wasn't hallucinating about the first trip, and it seems we're actually in a far-away land doing fun things like adopting a princess.

The city is beautiful with lots of trees and parks (as leafy as Gainesville, Fla. perhaps) – I would be eager to spend a month here. But compared with Kostanai, it’s very urban. Many more cars. More vendors on the street. Expensive prices for things. Fancy international designer perfume and clothing shops. And a few times people in the grocery store seemed to intentionally shove or at least bump me in a hurry to pass by (the aisle was plenty wide, but they needed my space). Our hotel TV gets both CNN Europe and BBC World channels and the buffet for breakfast had coffee, omelets and sausage included in the price of stay, so we’ll not lose weight as we did on the first trip May 3-April 8.

After walking around Almaty for just an hour this morning and getting some groceries, we’ve taken a long nap and are just in waiting mode now. Sleep was much needed but we have a new family member to go look after.