7 Down, more than a few to go.

Well now that we are past the "Shock and Awe" of yesterday's announcement, I thought I would write today about our experience thus far and attempt to outline the remainder of the process.

Shymkent is an industrial city in the southern part of Kazakhstan, just north of the Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan borders.  Within Kazakhstan it has a reputation for lawlessness and seems to enjoy a sort of renegade spirit despite being the third largest population center in the country.

As it is some 600 miles south of Astana (where we had been this time of year two years ago for Tougy's adoption) it has a far more pleasant winter.  As an example, the weather calls for a high of 83 here tomorrow vs. 51 in Astana and 69 vs. 30 the next day.  It may not be ideal in the summer, but we'll take it this time of year.

The Baby House here in Shymkent is currently undergoing renovations, we have found, and over the weekend before we arrived, the whole facility moved in to a temporary building.  As this temporary facility is all we have seen, I have no idea how it compares to the original, but I can tell you it is less than ideally set up for most every purpose it is being asked to perform these days.

How long this present building will serve as the Baby House seems unknown, though it seems likely to be many months if not more than a year, and I can say without reservation that this is unfortunate for all involved.  We hear that there are but three main rooms for the nearly 100 children, and the space that they have found for family visits is nothing short of prison-like.

On the plus side, the space affords a small amount of privacy.  The negatives list includes the fact that it contains no natural light, affords no place to allow us to place Nurai down, measures 4 feet by 6 feet, and is situated at the dead end of a narrow hallway made narrower by a small bench and table.

Partly on account of this marginal arrangement, and partly as a function of the Baby House's restrictive visitation schedule of just 1 hour a day, 5 days a week, we have decided to return home after court and for just one of us to return to bring Nurai home later in December.

Our 14-day bonding period wraps up on 10 Nov, and we expect to have court on or close to the 20th, such that we anticipate being back in Maine for Thanksgiving.  If this happens, we would expect to return for Nurai somewhere in the mid to late teens of December and to arrive back in Maine before Christmas.  It looks most likely that KJ and Tougy will remain home as I come back for the second trip.

It had certainly not been our plan, but given a limited amount of time off from work, it makes the most sense to spend our time away from work at home as a family of 4 rather than use a further month of time racking up 5 hours a week in a small closet together.  It will be hard to leave Nurai, but using our time this way is what we know will be best for her.

Additionally, getting Tougy back to a normal routine and back to a social network of friends will benefit all of us.  As the days pass we can see her looking longingly at other children and wishing that she could engage with them, but of course, given the language barrier, this proves difficult.  She is such a social child that we feel that this is a real priority for her right now.

Nurai continues to look better and better with each passing day, though as I mentioned previously, our primitive bonding space coupled with the requirement that we wear masks in her presence is more than a little counterproductive to the idea of bonding.

Our time here thus far stands in stark contrast to our experience with Tougy in Astana.  There the Baby House was well appointed with a large and bright, if unbearably hot, visitation room, a fairly generous visitation schedule (2hr/day, 6 day/week), and a host of other families with which to interact.  Another key difference is the physical and emotional level of our two children at the time of their respective adoptions.

Tougy at 7 months was crawling ably, was intrigued by everything, and was a very physical child.  Nurai on the other hand is much less developed at 10 months.  Her physical and emotional needs correspond to a child significantly younger and she will require a more concerted effort to catch up, something we can better do once we get home to Maine.

I know that there is so much more to expound upon, and I will do my best as time and energy allow, but at the moment KJ and I are pretty beat and so we will procrastinate a little longer.  I cannot begin to convey how much we truly appreciate the incredible support we have enjoyed over the years here on this blog.  How very different this experience would be without you.  Our sincere thanks to you all. Take Care.

P.S.  As some of you may have noticed, we have written our daughters name two different ways, and just wanted to say that her official spelling will be Nurai. As for the rest of her name, we are still working on that and probably won't announce it until we have to present it for court later this month.  Of course with Aitugan, we primarily call her Tougy, so time will tell if we will happen upon an abbreviated or variant form of Nurai's name, or whether we will simply use Nurai.  Knowing my family's penchant for nicknames, I should suspect we will stumble upon something before too long.

What a difference a few days can make...

Meet Tougy's (future) little sister Nurai!

I bet that catches more than a few of you off guard and leaves you trying to imagine how we got from the last post to this one.  Truth is, it took a village.  We are so eternally grateful to our greater community of family, friends, and most importantly in this case, fellow Kaz adoptive families.  The perspective, reassurance, advice and counsel from so many of you kept us moving forward.

We met Nurai last Wednesday and visited her again both Thursday and Friday of last week, though only felt truly confident in our path this afternoon during our visit.  She is impacted by both her premature birth and her institutional delays and it took a lot for us to begin to see past the fact that this 10 month old girl was really more of a 5 month old developmentally.  That said, we now feel as confident as we can that these delays are surmountable and should present few, if any, lasting effects.

Her name is pronounced Nur-eye, and it means "light of the moon" or Moonlight, so once again we have a 'moon' baby.  She was born on 28 December 2008 and we expect to be back in Maine in time for her birthday.  Oddly, even though we are just announcing her today, tomorrow marks day 7 of the 14 day bonding period after which we petition the court to officially adopt Nurai.  Before we know it, we will be a forever family.

Tougy has really done exceptionally well.  She is so excited about being a big sister, and now we can proudly say she will have a little sister.  Tougy has been remarkably tender and understanding throughout our visits and gleefully talks about Nurai in her absence.  What more could we ask for at this point.

Interestingly, when we asked Tougy if Nurai was Bobek, she said no, though when we asked Tougy if Nurai was her little sister she said yes.  So there you have it, Nurai is not Bobek, but she is Tougy's little sister.  Probably best for all of us that way.

We'll give you all some time to catch your breath and jump onboard with us.  Again, we are so grateful to be loved and supported by so many fantastic people all over the world and look forward to introducing the newest member of our family to her greater community.

So, deep breath in and deep breath out... we now have TWO daughters!  Take Care.

-KJ, Steve, Tougy and Nurai

P.S. - Sorry Christopher, looks like you are on your own to carry on the Morrison name, as Nurai will soon have a big sister, 5 girl cousins, 1 boy cousin, 4 aunts, 3 uncles, and 5 grandparents.

P.S.S. - For whatever reason, we have been unable to view our blog with our internet connection here in Shymkent.  I hope that everything formats well.  Thankfully all of your comments come straight to our email and so we are able to enjoy and appreciate them all even if we can't log on to the blog.  If things look out of sorts, or are not loading correctly, please let us know.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN FROM TOUGENSTEIN!

If you’ve wondered if it were possible for lightning to strike the same place twice… it looks as if we may actually be coming home empty handed once again.

We are awaiting further guidance from our agency, but at this point it seems clear that Bobek is not in Shymkent, and may not even be Kazakh. Who knew.

No immediate plans to return home though it seems most probable within the week.

Just wanted to make contact with everyone to say that we arrived well and are now safely in Shymkent. As you might imagine given the unusually long silence, the path to Bobek has not been a clearly defined one. We are working through some things and hope to be able to come to you all soon with more information, though that still may be a day or more away. Know that we are thinking of you all and greatly appreciate all of your love and support. Take Care.

Love,
Tougy, Kjersten, and Steve

"Signs point to yes" - or at least so says my Magic 8-Ball.

We have word that the number is in the system, the visas are being processed, my brother is en route to the Consulate, and KJ and I are making final preparations while Tougy is in school for the morning. The plan calls for us to leave home around 1pm to give us time for a relaxed drive down to Boston and hopefully set up a tone of calm anticipation for Tougy. As always it is so hard to leave the boys (our dogs) here at home though I know that they will be well loved in our absence.

Waking up this morning, we began to think about the 'lasts'. The last morning to wake in this house with only one child, the last diaper free time for a while...

Tougy is so excited to be a big sister, and we are equally excited to see what Wednesday has in store for us. Adoption can be such a strange and seemingly random undertaking. To imagine that there is a child living in a government run Baby House in Shymkent, Kazakhstan right now, and that within a matter of weeks, that child will be our child, and that child will come be a part of our family in Boothbay, Maine - what are the odds?

Perhaps they are no greater than for any other child. Of all the children born the day I was born, what were the odds that I would be who I am. Did I have an equal shot at being born to a family in France, or Niger, or Kazakhstan?

I need to remind myself that this is not the time for such thinking, I need to keep packing. We'll talk again soon. Take Care.

Oops, did I say a week from tomorrow, I meant the day after tomorrow!

To no one's great surprise, things have again changed. We received a call from our agency yesterday (friday) morning saying that our in-country(Kaz) person recommends coming as soon as possible. Hooray, we'll be on the next plane out, except, wait... we still don't have our visas/passports back from NY.

Oh yeah, that! Well it seems that they cannot be processed just yet because the LOI confirmation number is still not in the system. They have the number, and New York knows what that number is, it just hasn't shown up 'in the system' and therefor our visas cannot be processed Friday. Of course weekends being what they are, the next possible chance for that number to show up in the system is Monday.

Of course changing your tickets is not something airlines take lightly, nor do free of charge, and so, taking a few leaps of faith, we have changed our tickets and put a somewhat tenuous plan into play that looks something like this:

We pack and plan as if we are flying out of Boston Monday evening. Monday morning we wake up, take Tougy to school as usual, then wait until the NY Consulate opens to see if the number is now in the system. If it is, my older brother(who lives outside of NYC) goes into the city and picks up our passports and visas then goes to Kennedy Airport to fly to Boston.

On our side, we will finish packing, and have KJ's parents drive us to pick up Tougy, then drive the 3.5 hours to Boston to meet my brother and get on our flights.

If the number is not in the system, then we drop back and punt and accept that we may in fact have to pay change of ticket fees all over again and hope that our old itinerary is still available.

Yeah, it has been a hectic 24 hours here, made no better by the fact that KJ is working all day today and I am here with Tougy as I try and make all of these plans and changes. Thankfully Tougy's two new friends Nemo and Shreck stopped by on this cold rainy Saturday.

Was it all worth it, time will tell.

Take Care.

A week from tomorrow we will all be on the first of our three flights en route to Shymkent. Around the house it certainly feels as if we are preparing for the holidays as the UPS truck comes almost daily now delivering the latest finds from Amazon and every corner of the house has some sort of specific pile or another. As Tougy heads off to school or to sleep, we elves get down to the business of planning, procuring, sorting, and stuffing.

Like so many other things, the amount of time required to get ready is just greater the amount of time you have, regardless of how much time you have. In this case we have two weeks, and while we certainly are not running around half crazed yet, we know that that moment will hit us.

The new money is ordered, the visa applications sent off, the tickets purchased, and the dog/house sitters arranged. That is the easy part.

Somewhere after the mind frees of all the factual and concrete things we can check off, comes a flood of emotional and non-tangible things to ponder, reflect upon, consider and 'prepare' for, and this is the hard part. Packing a bag is easy. Getting through that first 24 hours in country takes more than having selected the right book or having brought the perfect jacket.

I know from our first adoption that sitting in that first plane seat and putting on that seat belt in preparation for take off is a real moment of truth. At that point, the physical part of getting ready is in the past and what lies ahead are all the emotional roller-coasters that are part of that special package known as adoption.

It is not a complete surprise (after all you got in line for this a year or so ago), it is just that there is no norm in terms of what you will experience. There is no one way of describing what it means to adopt or how it will alter your reality. No amount of reading, discussing, or anything else you can do ahead of time will adequately prepare you for what lies ahead in those first hours and days.

Just as I can't truly imagine what it must feel like to step upon the moon, so too can I not imagine holding another child as my own. That Tougy will soon be a big sister will affect all of our lives in ways we cannot predict, and while we are all talking excitedly about it now, we realize that the reality will involve both laughter and tears.

Will Bobek be a boy or a girl? WIll Bobek look more like Tougy or more like KJ? Where upon the 6-18 month-old timeframe written into our homestudy will Bobek fall when we meet? What history and background might we have about Bobek's beginnings? Where will Bobek be developmentally? These are all questions that we will walk into the Baby House in Shymkent, Kazakhstan on Monday 02 November wondering. Hopefully by the end of that day, we will know most of the answers.

We are set to fly out the evening of the 30th from Boston bound for Amsterdam, then Almaty on KLM. This will make the 3rd such trip we have made. The first saw us return a few days later without a child in July 2007, The second time we flew home with Tougy on Christmas Day 2007. As for the third, we will just have to hold our breath and see. At this point, we have tickets to fly home Christmas Day 2009. Let's hope that we don't have to change that too dramatically.

Take Care.

So it is a grey and overcast day here in Boothbay and we have just put Tougy down for her nap. Of course she is not sleeping yet. She is in her bed with her doll Bobek whom she has lavished her attention upon for weeks now.

At the moment she has just finished pretending to feed it a bottle of milk and is along side it as it lies face down on a pillow with Tougy rubbing its back and singing quietly to it. She has been incredibly motherly these last few months, changing Bobek, going to Bobek when she says he is crying, feeding Bobek and rocking Bobek.

It will be so nice to finally have a name and a gender to replace the fruitless attempts all of us have been making to not ascribe a pronoun to the idea of Bobek. Bobek the doll is most frequently a boy, but if you ask Tougy what the real Bobek will be, she mostly says a girl. Either way, Tougy is very excited about her perceived role as a big sister. Of course when reality hits the road, we anticipate a somewhat less warm and fuzzy reception.

For all that our adoption process with Tougy in 2007 was great in that it allowed us to adjust slowly to the concept of becoming a family, that Tougy will get to slowly transition to a new reality of Bobek an hour a day will be most helpful. Certainly the Kazakh adoption process has its frustrations, but the two months of in-county time has always had great appeal to us.

Now that we have a date, we have begun to turn our attention towards the necessity of keeping Tougy engaged and busy during our life in Shymkent. Packing this time around is sure different. Legos, books, craft projects, and personal comforts for Tougy such as blankets, pillows, and stuffed animals seem to be filling our bags fast.

Though we have talked about it as much as we can, the fact that Tougy will have very few people to talk to during our time in Kaz cannot be well conveyed. It will be interesting to see how this affects her. I anticipate that it will decrease her sense of independence and increase her reliance upon us as well as bring out a shyer side to her. We will see.

Of course the topic of Bobek has been fairly all consuming of late. Several times over the last few days as KJ and I have been talking, Tougy has said to us "Excuse me mommy, are you talking about adoption?" To which we usually respond, "Do you want to talk about adoption?" which invariably leads to a "Yes!"

At this point, we usually just wait to see where her thoughts are going. Sometimes she will begin to talk about how we adopted her and how we came to the Astana Baby House for her. Other times she talks about how Bobek is in the Shymkent Baby House waiting for his mommy and daddy and big sister to come. And still other times she will begin to list off all her friends who have been adopted - Rylie, Charles, Aila, Jude, Rafa, Rhodie, Zoe, Leeza, and the list goes on.

As she lists off the names of friends she has who are adopted, it reminds us how much the world of adoption figures into our lives these days. Do we even know any kids who were not adopted. Surely there must be some out there.

Over the past few days Tougy has taken to calling Bobek on her cell phone. Remarkably she carries out long and thought out conversations telling him about the long flights we will be making and how we will be coming soon to hold him and to make him smile. She tells him that she will hold him when he cries and tickle him and explains that his room is next to hers and that he will use her old crib.

Man is it difficult to maintain a narrative without pronouns. We most often say 'he' out of convenience and to avoid confusion about whether 'she' refers to Bobek or Tougy, though we truthfully have no idea. The only thing we feel confident with is that we will know our child when the time comes, and we hope that it comes November 2nd.

Presently, that moment is just more than two weeks away. Incredible to contemplate that all of this speculation and uncertainty may well be replaced with a loving face around the time most of our kids are fighting off sleep in a sugar-induced post-Halloween coma late Sunday night.

Our plan, at least at the moment, is to leave Tougy with someone our agency has found in Shymkent for the few hours that KJ and I initially go to the baby house and meet children. It is my hope that Tougy is still so wiped out from the travel and time changes that she never knows we were gone, but in the back of my mind I know it will not be so easy. All other times we anticipate having Tougy with us.

That we will be the three of us together so intensely for the next couple of months will also require some adjustments. There will be no work, no school, no dogs, no friends, no familiar sights and places. It will be very intense, and I imagine will impact our relationships in formidable ways.

It will be interesting to see exactly how Tougy transitions going from two months of intensified attention, to a new era of divided attention and distraction. Like so many other areas of parenthood, and indeed life itself, ours are not the first lives to make this transition. It is a journey of discovery after all.

So that wraps up a few thoughts and stories I wanted to share and want to end by saying thanks to all of you who so supportingly have followed us over the years. My memory is not such where I can keep all the names straight, but I want to let you know that we appreciate the love and support we have received through our journey, both from those known to us and from those known to us simply as Layla, Kathy, mcMary, Thad and Ann, Quaintance, Kari J, Andrea, makandaddie, Winde, Rob and Donalee, Abby, Pat and Alli... the list goes on. Unfortunately, for many of you we have no way of getting back to you as your profile often does not have an email or your blog is private and so we are left looking ungrateful. Know that is is meaningful to us and that we would love to share more, so leave an email address or contact us at steve.morrison@mac.com.

Take Care.

P.S. Just checked the weather forecast for Shymkent and am happy to report that the next 4 days call for nothing but sun and highs of 75, 76, 77, and 76. Watching it snow in Boston during the Patriots game, I will gladly trade.

We have a date!

We will be heading back to Kazakhstan on October 30th - two weeks from today.

Remarkably, we met Tougy on 01 Nov 2007, and we will meet the second child on 02 Nov 2009. With Tougy, we came back home Christmas Day and so have made that our return target for this journey as well.

We have known for a few days now that our LOI was being processed but did not know when we would be expected to arrive. As of yesterday it was narrowed to somewhere in the last week of October, and this afternoon it became known that we should travel on the 30th to arrive Sunday 01 Nov, which I assume means that we will see children Monday morning.

So now the zany fun begins. The emotions kick up a notch, and the reality of the adoption begins to sink in. I promise to be better about maintaining the blog while we are away. I should think that we will be daily again at the end of the month through the end of the year. Take Care.