Christmas Post Coming SOON

Sorry for the absence of a blog post about Caleb's first Christmas! Lil' Toshiba still has ethernet card problems. I suspect we might need to re-install the drivers for the card (?????) whatever that means or maybe just raise the white flag of surrender and replace the card all together. If I get brave today, I might spend the last day of 2008 working on my ethernet driver installation skills. If I can get the Christmas photos onto Bryan's jump drive and then put them on my work computer there might be a post with photos soon... Otherwise it might be a while!

In other news, Caleb has switched from his clicking metronome noise to a new noise. When he first started making this noise we thought he might be sick! We soon realized that this new noise was not accompanied by any other signs of illness - it was just our baby wanting to make some noise!! It's a combination cough/yell noise that he makes when he is excited about something. Most of the time it's accompanied by Caleb pumping his arms and legs as fast as he can, especially if he's on our laps. The most common reason he makes this noise is when he sees the cat or the dog, who he now loves to smile and cough/yell at whenever they walk through the room. I'll do my best to get it on video so I can post it at some point (of course this will be after my stint as a computer repair-woman working on the ethernet card......)

Merry Christmas from our Little Santa

I wanted to share our Christmas Card picture! We are so proud of how cute it turned out and glad that Caleb was in a good mood when we decided to do the photo shoot. Isn't he the cutest Santa ever?


Of course this wouldn't be a realistic representation of Christmas Card photo-taking if I didn't show you the other side of the story. We had a whole lot of toppled-over Santa shots, but luckily no crying Santa shots!


We hope you all have a blessed Christmas filled with the joy of family, friends, and knowing Christ. For all of our Kyrgyz adoption friends - especially those waiting for the day to return for your babies - you will be in our thoughts and prayers as we celebrate this year. We pray that this will be your last Christmas without your precious ones from Kyrgyzstan.

Love,
Betsy, Bryan & Caleb

Father & Son

Two weekends ago Bryan & Caleb spent some time hanging around outside. Their time outside gave me the opportunity to vacuum the house since Caleb is not a huge fan of loud mechanical noises so far! When I was done I found them lounging outside in the grass and took some pictures that I absolutely love. Enjoy!

Pictures, Pictures & More Pictures

Lil' Toshiba got out of the hospital on Thursday night and then went on a trip with Bryan to Pennsylvania for a Residency Interview. While the Trojan Horses appear to be gone, Lil' Toshiba now apparently has an Ethernet card with an attitude. It won't connect to the internet at all. I'm hoping my brother will take a look at it while we're in town for Christmas (hint hint!!!). I was able to download our pictures from my camera onto the laptop, transfer them to Bryan's jump drive and then put them on my work computer. Sigh. The things I do to keep this blog updated, all in the name of bragging on my sweet baby.... ;)

Like I said in my last post, we had a busy week last week! Our first post placement visit took place on Monday and ECI came on Tuesday. Wednesday was a day of rest! We had visits from our adoption buddies the Kahlers and from Gran Jan on Thursday & Friday and I failed to take any pictures!

We had a great time visiting with the Kahlers and pray their son Asa gets to come home from Kyrgyzstan soon. He and Caleb are from the same orphanage and will both be Texas boys. We cannot wait for them to grow up knowing one another and sharing a common beginning. Caleb and I had a great time with Gran Jan while Bryan was gone! Caleb got to spend lots of quality time with his Gran Jan playing and showing off all his new skills. I promise I will do a better job of taking pictures over Christmas!

Here's an update on Mr. Caleb over the past week or so!

Caleb with our Social Worker, Heather,

during our post placement visit.

So far Caleb does not seem to be a shy child...

Caleb's appetite has been great the past week!

He has now graduated from the Bumbo Chair to his high chair.

Sometimes while he's eating Caleb will try to grab

the spoon and "help" Mommy

At the suggestion of ECI, Caleb has been
playing on his new Boppy pillow!
The Boppy has been great with helping him sit up for
longer periods of time. This gives him the opportunity to really focus on
his toys. Here is Caleb doing his serious, focused face - an
expression we see fairly often!
It's been cold, then warm, then back to freezing cold again in T-Town.
I had the dog wearing a sweater despite her built-in fur coat.
Sadly the hood on the sweater kept getting stuck on her ponytail
and I'd find her standing still outside and very confused.
I don't want to leave out our rarely mentioned feline.
Here's Ginger enjoying some time under our Christmas tree.

Home 2 Months

I can't believe that Caleb has been home for 2 months! The flight home from Almaty seems like ages ago and he seems like a different baby than the one we brought home. His personality has blossomed and he continues to grow, get stronger and do new things each day. We never cease to thank God for bringing him into our family and for protecting him until we could go back to get him.

Sometimes I still pinch myself and have to remember that this is real, that God really did this for us and that we really survived each stressful step. I am amazed at the little miracle that has joined our family and what an answered prayer he is. I am still impressed with Bryan and I - that we managed to make the journey to Kyrgyzstan twice and bring home a tiny little baby with us on the last leg. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would fly for 24+ hours with my new son as we created our family!

Like I said before, we are still seeing tons of changes and progress for our sweet little Caleb. Thinking back to 2 months ago when we picked him up from the orphanage, he was a scrawny, weak little baby who clearly did not feel well from his milk formula. There was very little fat on his body and his arms and legs were like toothpicks. He could bear no weight on his legs, would not reach out for toys and was in the midst of processing the sudden changes in his life.

Now, we are able to witness daily a little boy who learns new things each day and continues to remind us just how brave and resilient he is. I pray that God blesses him with that courage throughout his childhood and into adulthood too! We have seen Caleb learn how to sit, become so much steadier when playing in his Exersaucer and come to love his jumper. His appetite is so much better, he grows steadily and he is becoming more and more expressive. Most of all, we can clearly see that he has bonded to us as Mommy and Daddy and that is the greatest reward of all.

Nevertheless, he still has milestones to reach. We had Early Childhood Intervention (ECI) come out to evaluate Caleb yesterday at our home. An Early Childhood specialist and an Occupational Therapist both came and asked me a ton of very specific questions about how Caleb eats, sleeps, plays, and acts in different situations. They played with him on the floor and observed him in our home. While they were very impressed with many of the things he is doing, they still rated him as being a couple months behind in most areas.

They also felt strongly that given his low birth weight of 3.5 lbs plus his delays that it was highly unlikely he was only 3 weeks early, which is what we were told in his medical records from Kyrgyzstan. Bryan and I have long suspected that was the case, as in the US most 3.5 lb babies are born 7-8 weeks early. When we take that into consideration as well as the typical orphanage delays and the weakness he had as a result of his milk allergy, we see the delays as being totally understandable.

The fact that Caleb has some delays is truly no surprise to us. Bryan and I realized that by pursuing international adoption we would need to be prepared to face those delays head-on, which is why we had ECI come out in the first place! There are parts of me that feel so sad for Caleb that the early parts of his life were difficult and contributed to these delays. The biggest part of me feels ready to tackle this challenge and do everything we can to help Caleb catch up.

I continue to remind myself at how many times we have marveled at his resiliency, and rememebr that the same will be true here! Bryan and I are looking forward to working with our sweet Caleb and being able to brag to all of you about all his progress. :)

PS Our computer is still infected with the Trojan Horses. Hopefully it will recover soon and I can share some pictures with you!

Photo Hiatus

Sadly, this little blog of ours will be on a photo hiatus until our personal computer has made a full recovery. Lil' Toshiba is still at the hospital (literally) where she has been diagnosed with at least 2 Trojan horse viruses, whatever that means. I suspect Lil' Toshiba might be in the ICU of the hospital's computer department. Nevertheless, I can't download pictures onto my work computer since it's just not that fancy. My work computer specializes in spreadsheets, not in FUN.

Once Lil' Toshiba has recovered I'll be happy to share photos of Caleb, aka Baby Bird, demonstrating his strong, new-found interest in eating solids at a rapid pace. His current pattern is to keep his mouth open like a baby bird, lunge at the spoon and fuss at his Mommy if she doesn't feed him fast enough! He also likes to try to grab the spoon (with his left hand, I might add) and try to help me get the spoon into his mouth! Although it's messy, I figure it's a step in the right direction for his development!

Today was our first post placement visit with our social worker. It was her first time to meet Caleb so that was really fun! Tomorrow we have Early Childhood Intervention coming to our house to evaluate Baby Bird to see how he's doing on his development. I'm looking forward to hearing what they have to say!

He-Man

Can you believe this is the same skinny, scrawny little baby we brought home two months ago??? In this photo Caleb is doing his He-Man pose and showing off all his muscles! He's turning into quite the bruiser, as his Granny would say.

We are having a busy but still relaxing weekend with our little family of 3. We've been doing things around the house, and as I type this Drill Sargent Daddy is in the living room with Caleb working on perfecting his rolling techniques.

Next week is busy with our Post Placement Report visit from our social worker on Monday, an evaluation by Early Childhood Intervention on Tuesday, a visit from the Kahlers on Thursday and GranJan coming to visit on Friday & Saturday! Throw 2 residency interviews for Bryan into that week as well! Hopefully I can get some Christmas shopping done too!

Hope everyone is having a wonderful weekend!

8 Months Old!

Yesterday little Caleb turned 8 months old! It is hard to believe that we carried him out of the orphanage two months ago. In many ways it feels like he has always been with us, yet he seems to change every day!

We have seen so many changes in Caleb over the past two months. He has made huge strides in his attachment and bonding to us. We are able to clearly see on a daily basis that he prefers us and finds happiness and comfort in us as his parents. This has been the biggest reward of being new parents. One of my favorite things about our sweet baby boy is when I am cradling him and either rocking him to sleep or giving him a bottle. Caleb likes to take his little hands and gently play with my hair or touch my cheek. He really melts my heart!

Caleb still has 5 teeth but #6 and #7 are clearly about to make their debut. He has teeth coming in on both the top and the bottom so he'll be ready for a steak in no time! We have been so impressed by how good natured he is despite the teething. I can't imagine how painful that must be to have all those teeth coming in at once, and he continues to be a smiley, playful baby as long as he's getting his Tylenol on schedule! :)

As a result of the teething, Caleb is making a lot of new funny little noises with his mouth. My favorite one is a little clicking noise especially since he seems to do it with a beat! He sounds like a little human metronome.

Caleb is getting to be a big boy! He is still not a roly poly baby, but he definitely has some meat on his bones now! When I am holding him and looking down at his face, he looks like a different baby than the one I cradled in Kyrgyzstan two months ago. He has fullness in his cheeks and we can see little rolls in his legs and pudginess in his fingers. We are so glad to see him gaining weight and doing well! As of today when I took him in for another round of vaccines (poor baby!) he was 15 pounds 7 ounces and nearly 28 inches long. So overall that means he's gained 4.5 pounds and grown three inches in 2 months! Holy Cow!

Sadly this post will not have any pictures as our laptop is 'at the doctor'. It must have a virus or something so Bryan took it up to the hospital where the medical school computer peeps will take a look. It kind of cracks me up that our sick computer is literally at the hospital to get better!

As soon as our laptop is feeling better I'll be sure to post Caleb's Christmas card picture and some more photos of our little 8 month old!

An Interesting Day

"Interesting" is a nice, optimistic, cheerful way to describe today. There were other moments in the day when other not-so-nice words would have come to mind first.

The day started off rough with me waking up to 2 piles of dog vomit on the upholstered chair in the office. Awesome. Thanks dog. Sadly, Bryan sat in the cleaned up (but still damp) spots on the chair when he came home for lunch. I had the honor of smelling his dress pants to make sure he didn't go back to the hospital reeking of dog puke. Clearly, parenthood has taken away some reservations I once had about smelling things.

This afternoon I had to go retreive Caleb's Kyrgyz passport from the post office. It had been sent via certified mail by our agency after they registered him with the Kyrgyz Embassy in DC. I wasn't home when the mailman tried to deliver it Friday so I had the joy of going to the post office in holiday season and stand in line with a teething baby! I decided I might as well go to the local social security office to apply for Caleb's social security card since it was right around the corner. How genius of me.

Let me just say hanging out at the social security office all afternoon is a BLAST. I was there for 2 hours and about 12 minutes of that was actually spent applying for Caleb's social security number. The place just smelled dirty or stale or something... I can't quite describe it, but it was not pleasant.

When I arrived the security officer asked what I was there for. When I told him, he said, "Oh, the baby didn't get a social security number when he was born?". I told him no, that he was adopted internationally. You'd think the guy would say something sweet or congratulatory or something but instead he replied with "What's his disability?". HUH? I told him he doesn't have any, and the guy then explained that he thought all internationally adopted kids had lots of disabilities and 'problems'. For the record, I was really super nice to this guy and just said that we were blessed that Caleb was healthy.

Needless to say that really got my time at Social Security off to a good start! When our number finally got called, Caleb was on the verge of starving/sleepy/I've got 2 teeth cutting right this second meltdown. I turned in his paperwork to the employee who either said he was from Russia or "Cry-GEEE-stun" (her interpretation of "Kyrgyzstan") and also struggled with why I didn't have his Russian adoption documents certified by someone in the US. Sigh. In the spirit of Christmas, I was a real sweetheart to Ms. CryGEEEstun and managed to get this lady to finally accept all of Caleb's paperwork. Hopefully his Social Security number will show up in about two weeks.

To my Kyrgyz adoptive parent buddies - please tell me I don't have to deal with our government again now that he's home and I've finished the Social Security step. I'm crossing my fingers that our post placement reports don't involve the US government and instead are just social worker visits where we talk about how great our baby is and turn in adorable pictures of him. Oh and of course we'll have to mention in there that he gets cuter every day :)

Mr. Cool Guy

Not to much to report here from the land of adorable baby Caleb! We are having a relaxing and fun weekend, just enjoying our baby boy and our time together. Bryan has been busy with school and residency interviews so we are really appreciating our quiet time at home as a family!

Caleb has slept through the night the past 3 nights for a total of 8-10 hours each night! We are amazed at this recent change in his sleeping. He'll whimper a few times in the night but quickly fall back asleep. This means less nap time during the day but we are more than happy to make the trade off between napping and nighttime sleep.

Here is a picture of "Mr. Cool Guy" from this weekend. It's been fairly cool here and very windy so in true Kyrgyz fashion we are keeping Caleb's bald head bundled and covered! He doesn't like the sun in his eyes so the sunglasses seemed like an appropriate touch!

Happy December!

As we enter this holiday season, we are so ecstatic to be celebrating with our new son. When we look back on last Christmas, we enjoyed the season but were still longing to be three instead of two. What a difference a year makes! Everything feels a little more special this year knowing that there are so many 'firsts' for little Caleb.

Earlier today I took Caleb in to get the second round of his flu shot. They weighed him and his new weight is 14 lbs 10 ounces! He has had a great appetite recently and is doing much better on solids too. On average he is gaining half a pound per week. We are thrilled to see him catching up and having such consistent weight gain.

Tonight we put up our Christmas tree although it is not decorated yet. Caleb was semi-interested in the tree and took notice of it... but mostly he was interested in playing in his Exersaucer. We now refer to his Exersaucer as his "office" because he is so focused when he plays in it! He works and works on each activity, sometimes getting very frustrated that the pieces don't come off (they aren't supposed to!).

After putting up our own tree we went to the tree lighting ceremony at the hospital where Bryan is a medical student. Several local choirs performed Christmas carols and then Santa rode into the hospital's circle drive before he turned the lights on surrounding the hospital. Caleb was very observant and sometimes bewildered, but overall he did great at the event. It was nice to get out of the house and do something festive with him and to enjoy the small town feel of Temple.

Here are some pictures to enjoy from our day!

With Mommy in one of my Christmas shirts

Posing in front of the undecorated tree...

This photo shows Caleb's 5 teeth!!

He has three on top and 2 on the bottom!

With Daddy at the tree lighting