Thurday
The passport didn't come...but it's been confirmed that it's on a train to Pavlodar right now and will be here at 7:00AM tomorrow morning. We will see!! This *shouldn't* hold us up any and it looks like we will leave Pavlodar on Sunday and head to Almaty.
To kill some time this afternoon we took another trip to the beach. Ry had fun and wanted to swim today. Swimming consisted of one of us holding him in the water and him moving his arms around in every single direction! Pretty cute. He took the big plunge and put his whole head under 3 times and is verrrrrrrry excited that he has a swimming pool at home and can swim all the time. Swimming Lessons...here we come!
Day 3 of no hot water in the apartment... I hate it! Showers & washing dishes is just miserable without hot water. Please come back...we miss you. Ry's bath time takes 3 times as long because I have to continually boil pots of water.
We went to dinner with our translator & coordinator tonight and had a really good time. Excellent food and great conversation. I am going to miss our "family" over here in Kazakhstan so much. Everyone that we've worked with has been absolutely amazing and I consider each one of them good friends of ours.
Ryland's English and the communication within the Stone household has been amazing. It's been 2 weeks since we were able to pick-up Ry and we haven't had to call a translator once to assist with conversation. I am just astonished and am so very proud of Ry, Dust & myself. It's like we just sync and we "get it". There is often a lot of communication to explain a simple thing, but that's working just fine for us!
The behavioral issues that we've had with him so far seem to just be a "kids his age thing". He's energetic, but what kid isn't. I'm not sure if any of these are adoption related or not and am interested to discuss with the professionals back home. We've had a couple of times where he's lied to us about something small. He cannot stand for Dustin and I to show any affection and if we do, he withdraws and pouts. We've started doing a lot of family hugs.
Hope you are all having a great week!
Signing off for the night,
Cortney
posted by The Stone's @ 12:20 PM
5 Comments
5 Comments:
The energy you see could be that he is hypervigilent. Kids who have experienced trauma react this way. He will calm down over time, Nicholas sure has. He still goes 'crazy' in new situations, crowded and loud places. It's not bad, just like he doesn't seem to know what to do with himself. I'm so glad you have resources you can tap into back home. It's so important to be pro active.
I know he will love your pool. Nicholas' swim teacher says he is half fish..lol! He swims really well and really loves it. Ryland will be swimming like a fish in no time, too! It is a big motivator for him too for when he gets into trouble.
I hope your time in Almaty is short, but enjoy it while you are there. He would probably like Kok Tobe or if you have a driver, going up to the mountain is nice in the summer. The water there is freezing though!
Sounds like you are living much of the traditional Kazakh adoption experience. Keep up with the postive attitude (always) and enjoy every moment of it - that is not said sarcastically, by the way, maintaining a sense of humour is the only way that one can survive and retain one's sanity. And good luck with the passport's "arrival".
Hopefully you will be able to also enjoy your upcoming Almaty period (our daughter's home town, so we are biased). We were in Almaty from February to April 2008. We constructed a top 10 list of 12 or so things to do while there if you are interested (http://yeomans2kaz.blogspot.com/2008/06/almaty-top-12.html). Just in case you want some recommendations... And if you want one additional "favourite" of ours to add to that list - we both loved Govindra's, a vegetarian Hare Krishna restaurant with service entirely in Russian - where else in the World could you ever possibly have such a ridiculously surreal outing.
Anyhow, we are absolutely delighted to hear of your experience so far and are impressed by your overwhelming positivity in the face of all the accompanying turmoil.
Best of luck with the remainder of your processing.
Hi guys,
I had to smile when I read that Ry is not too keen about you being affectionate. Anna did that at first.. she would actually push Sven away from me if he kissed me in front of her or immediately come to kiss me. She was very possessive of her mom.... and understable. Good news for you is that she is now encouraging us!!! She loves it when Sven hugs me and claps her hands... guess she has figured out that we ALL love each other and that there is plenty of love to go around ;0) Have fun in Almaty... Once we left Petro and were truly on our own...it finally hit me. We were finally "living" again...not merely waiting for processing, notarization, etc... a little family vacation in Kaz! Jocelyne
Life is going to be so darn easy once you get home you won't know what to do with your selves. Be sure to keep in touch with your friends over there when you come home. I love that we have a connection with Emerson's home city so that if in the event he wants to go back we will have friends to welcome him to his home city.
Not sure about where you are .. but when we were in Karaganda last May we dealt with over a week of no hot water & were told that normally it is off (city wide) for ~ a month in the spring & fall to "clean the pipes".
Its just part of the Kaz experience....
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