Almaty or Bust!

I’m glad to report that the three of us have made it safely to Almaty!!! We are settling into our hotel room, which is much smaller than our room at Hotel Jannat. The room is clean, seems to be safe and has a crib for Caleb so we don’t have too much to complain about.

We were picked up at 7am to leave for Almaty. Our coordinator felt that the border would be less crowded if we went earlier. We had a somewhat rough, off-schedule night with Caleb the night before and had to wake him in order to leave. I think that’s where everything started to go downhill! We prayed as a family before we left and asked for God to help the border crossing to go well.

God did answer our prayer, but He also reminded us that He has a sense of humor. God decided to use screaming as His tool of choice today. Way to go, God… not exactly what we had in mind, but whatever you say!

Almost as soon as we loaded into the mini-bus, Caleb was screaming. Bryan and I claimed the back row so we’d have room to spread out. We rolled out of the Hotel Jannat parking lot and the screaming began. It took about 45 minutes to get from our hotel to the border, screaming all the way. We tried everything but nothing would calm Caleb down.

We got out of the car at the Kyrgyz border and went into the office. Saule guided us to the border guard. She gave him our passports first and he went in a room and verified them. He then came out and asked for Caleb’s and seemed surprised to see it was a Kyrgyz passport. We later found out that he questioned Saule quite a bit about Caleb going with us and even asked Saule if she would be able to go to America to check on Caleb later! I’m not sure how Saule answered but I’m pretty sure she’ll know how he’s doing with all of the post placement reports we will do!

Thankfully, we made it across the Kyrgyz border and got back in the van to drive to the Kazakh border crossing office. By the time we reached that office Caleb was screaming bloody murder. Inside the office, Saule was helping us fill out some forms for him and making sure we had all the passports ready. We got in line behind about 10 other people, who quickly gestured to us to move to the front of the line since Caleb was so upset. We gladly obliged and were out of there in no time! THANK YOU LORD – because Bryan and I were both getting frazzled. I guess when we prayed this morning for God to take care of the border crossing he decided it would be best to have Caleb expedite the process via screaming. We were just glad that we didn’t have to use Dave’s idea of how to get Caleb across the border – hiding him under my shirt and smuggling him while playing Mission Impossible music in the background. That plan would have fallen short today as people would’ve wondered why my shirt was screaming.

Once we were back on the road, we were FINALLY able to get Caleb to take a bottle. He quickly fell asleep and slept soundly until we were about 15 minutes from the hotel in Almaty – close to 2 hours! We felt so relieved and it was nice to have a small break. We were able to enjoy the Kazakh countryside along the road to Almaty.

We are now just hanging out in our hotel room after meeting up with our in-country coordinator, Zorya. I was organizing things in our room and decided to hang a crib decoration on Caleb’s crib. It is a fabric picture frame of sorts that my Mom helped me make before our first trip. It ties to the side of the crib and has our photo on it- a genius idea I scammed from fellow Kyrgyz adoptive parent Suzanne B in California. We left the photo at Caleb’s orphanage on Trip 1 although I’m not sure it ever found its way to his crib. The hope was that he would be able to look at it and become familiar with our faces. I was so happy that the orphanage doctor gave it back to us.

Today when I tied the picture of us onto the crib Caleb took notice immediately. He began staring and studying our faces in the picture and before long was “talking” to us non-stop. He was kicking his legs and moving his arms so fast, all while cooing at the picture of his Mommy & Daddy. I thought I was going to cry watching him, just knowing that after this short period of time together – crying, screaming and all – seeing a picture of us makes him happy. What a great reward God had in store for us at the end of this long and sometimes bumpy road!!

Tomorrow we will go do some souvenir shopping with Zorya in the morning and then go to the SOS Medical Clinic in the afternoon for Caleb’s exam. Caleb will get blood work done in addition to a basic exam. We are praying it will go well although there will certainly be some tears!

We have to pay for the internet service in our Almaty hotel by the hour so our posts will be fewer. We’ll do our best to keep everyone updated, especially since we only have 4 full days left before we get on a plane to COME HOME!!!

Moms & Dads- the internet won't stay connected for longer than a few minutes at a time so I doubt we'll be able to get a good Skype connection. We'll give it a try later but don't be worried if you don't hear from us tonight :(