We're Here!

We’re here! We’re here! We’re here!
The flights couldn’t have been smoother. We actually got bulkhead seating on the longest leg of the journey, so Tim was able to cross his legs. Ohhh! The luxury. And, Luftansa was fancy. Even in our econo-seats, the flight attendents kept coming around offering free wine and beer. In those moments when Calvin was happily entertained (thank you leapfrog), it was sort of like a party in the plane!

Did I mention that Calvin did great! He didn’t sleep, mind you. Let me repeat that, even without a nap, he was too excited to close his eyes on our first 12 hour flight! He finally fell asleep at the airport in Frankfurt between our two flights. It was 3:30am California time before he finally succumbed to exhaustion. Mommy, Daddy, and Nana were ready a little before then! But, all and all, he did great. He was so happy playing with his toys and watching his movies and eating snacks. He kept turning to me and saying: “Mommy, this plane is FUN!”
So, after a 12 hour flight from SFO, we laid over in Frankfurt (home of the crankiest airport staff and the most thorough security checks) for 3 hours. Then we hopped a 7 hour flight from Frankfurt to Almaty, KZ. When we got off the plane, Calvin had finally reached the end of his rope and, with baggage and snow jackets, and a thrashing 3 year-old, the passport check line was one of the more exhausting moments of my life.
We had a brief moment of panic when we didn’t see any drivers waiting in the baggage claim area. Our agency had told us that the driver would be there, but it was 1am local time and we wouldn’t even know where to begin if we had somehow been forgotten. Anyway, that worry was forgotten, when the first passenger claimed his bag and walked to the opaque sliding door at the end of the room. Even at 1am, that door opened up to reveal a veritable sea of taxi drivers… and there standing cool as a cucumber in the back of the room with a sign that said SNYDER was our Sasha.
Let me take a moment to describe Sasha to you all, because trust me, it’s worth it to get a mental picture of the guy. He’s about 32 years old, Russian features, about 6’2”, average build. In the four times that he has picked us up, so far, we have never seen him without the black leather hair scarf (think Harley Davidson) and knock-off Oakley reflective sunglasses. He’s got a shoulder length pony tail and a carefully groomed stubble beard. He is constantly talking in rapid Russian on his cell phone and he has a TV glowing in the dashboard of his car (while driving). Mostly, though, I think it’s the attitude that makes Sasha the man he is. Sasha exudes an air of barely veiled frustration with his lot in life. He has, after all, been saddled with a group of very annoying Americanskis. We are forever asking him questions about our itinerary or his hometown, when it should be very obvious that he simply wants to talk on his phone and listen to 1970s classic rock in peace. It is all the poor guy can do grunt an almost-contemptuous three word answer at us and turn up Queen’s Another One Bites the Dust in time for the chorus. Everything we do annoys Sasha, in fact, our mere presence annoys Sasha, but being the tough guy that he is, he soldiers on anyway.
Sasha attitude aside, everything has been going just perfectly. Our apartment is clean and comfortable. It even has a little playground covered in snow just outside, perfect for a very restless 3-year-old I know.

The grocery shopping is amazing! Honesty, I might just decide to live at the local Ramstore. I’ve heard about these stores on other blogs for years, but nothing quite prepared me for the wonder of the mall/high-end boutique/ arcade/costco/grocery store in one. It even has an ice-skating rink. This place has a whole wall of cheeses and strange stubby carrots as this as my wrist. I want to try it all! Tim and I, as tired as we are, were like kids in a candy store. In fact, as I type, Tim is whipping up a tasty meal in our little kitchen.

While, Nana tried to keep Calvin from eating the snow in the little playground (a definite ambition of his), Tim and I hitched a ride with Sasha to our first meeting with the famous “sisters” who run the Kazakhstan side of the adoption. Can I just say how incredibly relieved I feel after an hour with Gulzhan. We are in such good hands here! They are taking care of everything just as promised and I am utterly confident that they have got it all taken care of. After all this time of planning and pushing, I think I finally get to put myself in their capable hands and simply enjoy this amazing moment with my new little family.
Tomorrow we are back on a plane. Sasha is picking us up, one final time, at 4:00am, and putting us on a plane to Astana. Our new driver, Nursultan, will pick us up at the airport and drive us all to the babyhouse for our first really big day… when we meet our baby! After our first visit, we’ll drive the hour to our cottage in Kokshetau… where we’ll collapse.
Collapsing sounds pretty good right now! I’m beat.

Paka!
Becca

Travel Dates!

I'm almost incoherant with nerves and to-do lists because we finally have travel dates! Our letter of invitation (in Russian) came last week and two days ago we finally got our travel dates! We have booked our tickets, thanks to Barbara Walters at Go To Russia Travels (yes, that is really her name). We are leaving for Almaty on March 9th... and arriving on March 11th!!!!! I don't even want to think about how many house in the air that means... but the important thing is that we are officially going. We will be back on April 12th (a.k.a - Easter).
After two years of longing and one year of serious planning, we will actually find and meet our son in less than ten days! Unbelievable!
I'll post an itinerary once I knock down some of the millions of things I have to do before we leave.
Stay tuned, folks, we are in the final countdown!
Paka!

Making room for baby

Tim and I have just finished painting the nursery and we love it soooo much that I had to share. Take a look.

I took the colors right from his quilt. I painted the branch and bird freehand and then stenciled the birch leaves across two walls. Isn't it awesome! Now all I have to do is finish the quilt ( I'm having a hard time letting go of it long enough to send it to the long arm quilter) and make some crib sheets. I'll keep you posted.

Paka!

Becca

Garrett's Christmas Present

I just finished the quilt top for Garrett's quilt. Here is a picture.

Now I just have to get a snuggly backing material and send it off to the long arm quilter.

Merry Christmas, baby, wherever you are. Mama loves you.

Psychology of a Quilt

My floors need to be swept and there are dishes in the sink. Anyone familiar with my housekeeping habits would know that this can only mean one of two things... either I just picked up a great new book or I've started a new quilt. Happily, in this case, it means that Garrett's baby quilt is out of storage and back on my ironing board, albeit in pieces.

Each quilt I've had the pleasure of sewing is a one of a kind creation. I've never repeated a pattern, because a quilt, to me, is like a letter. It's a love note from me to the recepient and I could never simply make duplicates any more than I could photocopy a note to one friend and send it to another.

When Tim and I were dating, I made him a velvet polar bear quilt set against a satinly midnight sky. When I was expecting Calvin, I made a "Wind in the Willows" themed quilt that invited him to adventure down a river past a castle to the purple mountains in the distance. One Christmas, I made Caroline a "flying geese" star quilt using a wedgewood blue bird pattern that I still love. When we were waiting for Carson, I made her a modern twist on the 'log cabin' quilt with playful blues and pinks and warm creams. (All of the rectangles wrapping around squares made it look like a hug to me.) When we found out that Avery was on the way, I made a quilt so pink that my long-arm quilter nicknamed it the "cotton candy quilt." It took me forever to finish a "Paris in springtime" quilt I made for the kids at the Ronald McDonald house who needed to be able to imagine themselves somewhere else.

It usually takes me as long to design a quilt as it does to make it, because I need to find a pattern and palate that feel just right. Not that I'm always successful. As I've never had a formal lesson, some quilts just don't turn out as I intended and I when I step back from them I can't shake feeling of the frustration. I want to stamp my foot and say, "that is not what I meant at all!" Still other quilts never get finished because I forget what it was I was trying to say and I can see no point in working on them if I can't remember why it was the pattern inspired me in the first place.

Garrett's quilt has been no exception. I puzzled over patterns and toyed with themes. I felt vaguely terrified at the prospect of making a quilt for someone who I loved so much but who had a story the beginning of which I knew nothing about. What if I got it all wrong? I spent hours scanning images of the Tien Shen Mountains in Kazakhstan looking for a vista that might inspire Garrett's quilt. But only when I looked at the other end of the quilting spectrum did I find my hook. In direct contrast to Calvin's quilt, Garrett's is one of the most traditional quilts I've ever made. I chose a pattern that mothers and grandmothers have been sewing for a century. The only modern twist comes from my palate, a lovely grouping of baby blue, celery, white, and coral, nearly all designed by my favorite fabric designer Anna Griffin. But, even though I knew I had found the right quilt for my baby, until now I couldn't articulate why Garrett's quilt had to be so traditional, while his brother's quilt is the ulitmate in free form. But now I figured it out.

When I sewed Calvin's "Wind in the Willows" quilt I was wishing him among, other things, a life in which he felt secure enough to seek adventure. Calvin would never doubt that he had a home behind him, so I sewed him a view from that home out into the wonders of the world that awaited him. Garrett, however, has started his life so far from home that I am stitching him a view back into the hearth. I'm sewing my far-born child a past. I'm telling him that all of those most basic pleasures of having a loving family and a stable home are his just as much as any child who received his family in a more traditional manner. When I give it to him, I will be saying "You are mine now and you always will be."

Ridiculously introspective but absolutely true.

I may never be able to make my kids understand how deeply and fiercely I love them, but I will wrap them up every night in blanket created just for that purpose.

Anyway, I love, love, love, how this quilt is coming along. Although I'm still working on it, here is a sneak peak. Just imagine it with a couple of borders and satin binding. Paka!

Green Light!

Huge News!
Less than two weeks after reconciling ourselves to the reality that our dossier wasn't going to be released from the MFA (Ministry of Foreign Affairs) for 2-6 months, we found out that our dossier had, in fact, already been released from the MFA! What?!?!?!
So, what exactly does that mean, you ask?
Well, it means that within the next couple of weeks, the hard working people of the Kazakhstani Ministry of Education (where they sent our dossier next) will assign us a region. Then we will know where in Kazakhstan, our little one is living!!! Then we will just wait for our invitation to travel!
Wow!
We're getting really close now guys!
Wow!

No Early Christmas

Although we still have so much to be thankful for, there is no longer any chance that we will be spending the holidays in Kazakhstan with our new little love. We've just been notified that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) is now taking a minimum of at least four months to process dossiers and sometimes as much as six to eight months. This is up from an average of four to six weeks, when our dossier arrived in Kaz. Oh, the wild world of international adoption! The upside is that our dossier has been in Kazakhstan for almost three months already, so we have at least one more month (probably closer to two or three months) to wait before we hear any word on when we might travel. So I'm putting my gorgeous new stroller safely in the garage, because it looks like I won't be using it for a while and I'm off to tell Calvin, who only wants to talk about being a "big brother" to "baby Garrett," that we'll have to wait a while more. I know that we'll bring our baby home when the time is right, but this does feel like a punch in the gut. Love to you all. Paka. Becca