Life continues to move ahead in great strides.

For the most part, the photos on the blog depict the highlights of our lives, though behind the scenes lie all the day to day doings that are somewhat less visually enticing.

Here in Boothbay fall is settling in. The Swamp Maple's leaves have turned and the Red Oak's acorns litter the ground. The mornings are crisp and bright and the evenings assert their autumnal hegemony; reclaiming the hours graciously loaned to summer.

It is unquestionably my favorite season, for it is the time when my connection to the physical world is at its strongest. Days become filled with essential activities and rites as summer is packed away and all is made ready for winter.

Give me sunny and 65 and I'm at my happiest. Throw in the smell of wood fires wafting out of farmhouse chimneys, the absolute absence of mosquitos and other pesky bugs, and the plethora of available parking in town, and I just know I am where I am supposed to be.

That said, all is well in our microcosm right now - if only it felt that way on a national or global scale.


It has been a while since we updated our second adoption endeavors so let's do that now.

As of this week, we are fully in 'wait' mode. The last of our apostiled documents were handed over to our coordinator (Libby at MAPS), and we had our fingerprint appointment with Homeland Security to complete our I600A.

Our dossier is in the process of being translated into Russian and we hope that by the end of October our completed/translated dossier will be in the hands of the Kaz officials.

Just as it did for Tougy, the paperwork will likely spend several months flowing through the Kaz Embassy/Consulate here in the US, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Education in Kaz before we finally have a travel date. What we think that means is that we are likely to travel sometime late spring/early summer 2009.

Along the way, we should hear occasional updates letting us know when our dossier moves from one place to another, and at some point to which region within Kaz we have been assigned. As our agency(MAPS) presently works in just two areas, we know it will either be Astana or Kostanai.

Also, as it was our first time through, the Kazakhstan international adoption program is a 'blind' process meaning that until we physically walk in to the Baby House and see a child, there will be no information available to us about the child we may end up adopting. If you accept that - great let's move on. If you say "wait but I know someone who..." all I will say is that the Kaz government officially does not support the practice of distributing information about available children.

Unlike our first adoption in which we specifically requested a girl (but were shown both), this time we have not specified a gender preference. We again are hoping for a child "as young as possible" which in Kaz tend to be 7-12 months at first meeting.

As you may recall, adoptions from Kaz require quite lengthy in country stays. For Tougy we were gone roughly two months as we did it in 'one trip'. There are other options that would perhaps mean less time in country but more flying back and forth.

We will see what we do this time around. Some of it will depend upon time of year, and some of it will depend upon what timelines for that region look like as we get set to go. As a rule, it seems timelines have lengthened some since we were last there - primarily as a result of more court requirements and longer waits for hearings. We'll see. Either way, Tougy will get to return to Kaz with us.


So now let's get to the photos below. The first few are from an afternoon spent picking apples at a local orchards last Sunday, with a few shots from the Common Ground Fair Saturday and a shot or two from home over the week.




There are just certain images that exist in your head long before they become your reality, and this is such an image. Over the years I've seen the children of friends and family photographed in a sea of fabulously illuminated pumpkins, and every time, it made me long for such a day with my child. Well here it was, our moment, and of course I couldn't get Tougy to look at me.


Tougy loved the shelves of smaller pumpkins and gourds and made quite a game out of handing them to anyone who would accept them.


She was determined to lift this pumpkin and eventually succeeded. Now the question became what to do with it.


Tougy is definitely going through a 'carrying' phase. At home it is her Rottweiller stuffed animal Daouda, or her 'baby' dolls, or shoes or clothes. Here at the orchard, the convenient handles on everything made carrying easy.


Another of her loves these days is driving. She could spend hours on our laps in a parked car making the windshield wipers go back and forth, the windows go up and down, the steering wheel go left and right, and the stereo volume go up and - well it seems just up.

Here at the farm, she took immediate notice of this tractor, though had to wait for quite a while for the older kids to leave it before making her move.


I had never before seen Indian corn on the stalk and plump like this. The colors were amazing. I think I always assumed that what you see as dried Indian corn had somehow been dyed or altered to create the brilliant color variation, but this would seem to suggest that that is not the case.


My mom, Nonna to Tougy, went to the orchard with us, and Tougy had a great time sitting beneath the apple trees playing with her.


Apple picking as a family activity has changed quite a bit since I was child. Back then, the orchard was littered with rickety wooden ladders that you moved from place to place trying to grab that prized apple that was just out of reach for someone else.

Now, thanks to dwarf tree species and litigation, the ladders are gone and the action is all close to ground level which even meant that Tougy could participate without constant supervision - a small parental vacation of its own(hey you take them whenever you can get them).


Of course the absence of ladders also meant that a great number of apples remained in plain sight though just out of reach. I don't ever remember so great a number of apples growing so close together in the trees of my childhood. Maybe they did and I just forget, or maybe the trees have become so modified and 'enhanced' so as to produce quantities of fruit that in the past would have been unimaginable.


There is just something about biting into a freshly picked apple that makes it taste better. Tougy wanted to bite every apple, usually just the once, then move on to a new one.


It is impossible to tell just yet whether she understands what it means to 'smell' something, but she certainly goes through the motions predictably. She walks right up to flowers, grabs them in both hands and presses her face right up. Very endearing.


Back at the farm store, they were grilling up corn on the cob and giving it away for free. The corn was easily the best of the summer, and tougy enjoyed the challenge of eating it, or at least, licking the butter off of it.


The day before going to the orchard, KJ, Tougy and I went up to the Common Ground Fair put together annually by the Maine Organic Farmer's and Growers Association(MOFGA). While by no means the largest fair of the summer season here in Maine, it does have a different and enjoyable tone to it. I think that if it hadn't taken two hours and ten minutes to get out of the parking lot at the end of the day, we would certainly be looking forward to doing it again next year.

While a good bit of the fairgrounds were set up with informative booths about 'green' practices, products, and services, there were also the more traditional livestock barns and pens that made for a nice opportunity for Tougy to get close to and touch a number of different animals.

Here she gives a kiss to her first 'up close and personal' horse.


While I don't think Tougy understood what we were asking her to do, she did willingly put her head through the hole.


Reaching through the fencing to touch the goat.


Waving Bye-Bye to the sheep.


Lamb Kebobs for lunch. While not as good as they are in the Uzbek restaurants in Astana, they were still tasty.


One of the newest toys, the Learning Tower allows Tougy to be with us in the kitchen and to wash her hands in the sink. She can climb in and out by herself and it is stable enough and safe enough to allow her to play with little supervision (a new focus for us).

Give her a plastic bowl and a few spoons, scrapers, or whisks. and she can stay happy for a while. Put a few snacks in the bowl and she enjoys it even more.


As she moves closer to the 18 month mark, she is really becoming a little girl. While still a fairly robust body type, she is beginning to get some definition in her legs and arms. In certain lighting you would even swear she had calves.


Potty training! Sort of.

She loves to sit on her potty, and we have several kids books about using the potty that she likes to have read to her while on her potty. She has used it successfully once, came close once, and at other times just sits upon it with brief intermissions to stand up and look back into the bowl. Does this mean we've started potty training already? We will see where it goes. It would sure be nice to begin to move away from diapers even if only at selected times.

So that's about it. Here at the house things are fairly quiet. Tougy is getting over a cold she kindly handed off to me, and so we are all a little subdued. KJ is on call this weekend and it is expected to rain much of the next 4-5 days. Sounds like some good quiet time for Tougy and Daddy this weekend.

If all goes well, we hope to get out to the Fryeburg Fair either Tuesday or Saturday of next week. This is Maine's largest agricultural fair and is minutes from our old house in Western Maine. If we make it out there, we should have some good photos to put up in the next week or so.

Thanks for checking in on Tougy and the rest of us. We appreciate your interest. Take Care.