Emerson is 9 months tomorrow

First off I must apologize that I am only posting pictures from Kazakhstan. John has the camera on the river, so this past week has unfortunately gone undocumented. He will be back soon and the pictures will start coming in. As for now you just get more pictures from our time out of country.

So life as a single mother has been pretty hectic this week. It will be nice to have John home for at least part of the day for the rest of the summer. Emerson is a trooper and loving the fact that he does not just have to eat on a schedule. The boy love food and has yet to turn his noes up at anything. I even finally figured out the rice cereal.

Yesterday he got lots of little people time in John Day at Beth's house as I had many errands to run in John Day and there was no way I could do them all with him in tow. I don't think he minded one bit, because when I can to pick him up all of Beth's grand kids were on the floor with him and excited to show me all the new tricks they had taught him. It was very cute.

I also heard from his pediatrician and there are a million blood test they want to run on him to get some basic health information. Also the International Adoption Specialist in Portland wants us to see her at least once to check him over and get a good base line. The only major issue we need to get checked are his eyes because we have very limited information about his O2 intake while he was in the pre-me ward. We shall see.

First Trip to the River

Emerson took his first trip to the river. It was a bit chilly so he only put his feet in, but he seemed to like it. We went with Jim and Kerri and Asya the dog. I survived my fisrt night alone with the little guy. Granted he woke up at 3am with a dirty dipper and did not like the idea of going back to bed at all. I tried my hardest to let him cry it out, but at last he wone and I rocked him to sleep. I did dream that he might sleep in because of this, but no, he woke the regular time. Speeking of waking, he is up from his nap. Hope you like the pictures from Almaty.

Welcome to Dayville Emerson

Last night a few friends hosted a community pot luck welcoming Emerson to town. It was great to see so many people come out and just to share our adventures in Kazakhstan with them. Emerson was a trooper and loved meeting all the new people. He has taken to "standing" with us holding him and he loves this new perspective on life. Our friends also did a money tree for us at the pot luck and much to our excitment there was enough there for us to order a nice three wheel stoller. Thank you everyone!

Yes, we are back home

So I often wondered in disappointment why many blogs had a huge gap between arriving home and the next update. I no longer wonder this as it is very clear to me now. We did make it home on Monday night after a wonderful party in Seattle welcoming Emerson into the Decker family. He did a pretty good job on the long car ride home (8 hours) and only cried when wet or hungry. We must get him one of those play things that attaches to the car seat, because all toys ended up just out of his reach.

Once home we were greeted with not only the fact that we have an infant but also that we are two months behind on our chores. We were very fortunate in that the house sitters left our place looking great. That is until we entered with exploding suitcases...

On Tuesday we spent most of the day in John Day running errands dealing with overdue bills and showing off the boy. I think he is going to be the poster child for our bank. Emerson is loving all of the attention and usually puts on a good show for all that are willing to get a laugh out of him. We can not go very far in Dayville without someone stopping to say hello. Ah the joy of small town life. We definitely missed it. By yesterday afternoon exhaustion had kicked in. While at the district office getting Emerson on the health insurance plan, John rocked him to sleep, sat down and fell asleep sitting right there. Come to think of it he also fell asleep on the floor while Emerson was laying in the activity gym. Emerson was wide awake and would pinch John's nose each time he snored. Too bad the camera batteries were dead.

Well time is limited and I predict that he will wake from his nap at any moment. Currently I am on a mission to find a good stroller that is up for gravel and dirt roads. We go for his first Dr. appointment on Friday and Friday night Emerson is getting a welcome home Put luck in Dayville City park. Too bad this kid isn't loved (not.) Then on Sunday it looks like he gets a party in John Day. John also found out that he leaves for 8 days on Saturday for the river. I will miss him, but I think he will finally catch up on his sleep.

Also if anyone out there wants to baby sit for an hour on Monday let me know.

Jet Lag

For those of you following along who have had the joy of experiencing jet lag before, you might have a small amount of appreciation for our recuperation time from a 14 hour schedule difference. Those of us who are able to do our research know that there are certain things one can do to shorten the process, and while the recovery time is less, it is really not that fun to endure. Unfortunately we have a very daring little boy who is really not so interested in making a speedy recovery from his trip half way across the world. How do I know this you might ask? Lets just say that he decided to start fathers day off at midnight, first demanding food. We tried to hold off thinking this will help the transition and we broke around 4am. Now he has been bright eyed ever since. Mind you the sun is now rising in Seattle and the three of us are all wide awake.
Wait wait, John has just informed me that now that it is time for us all to get up, he is Finlay down for the "night." Well that is right because it is almost 8 pm in Almaty Kazakhstan. Looks like we will be napping this fathers day morning in hopes that we will able be bright eyed again for Emerson's coming home party. I think we might just have to turn into night owls. OK off to the hot tub and then to bed. Have a great day or night...

Is it the end or the begining???

OK, I am pretty sure that reality has sunk in. We have now been parents for almost two weeks. Our little guy has been to three continents, three countries, and traveled across 14 time zones and is doing great. There has been so much that has happened since we were last able to update. We spent about a week and a half in Almaty. This was an interesting time for us. We attempted to explore and learn about a very large city with a baby and very little instruction, we really missed our friends from Uralsk. Fortunately Emerson loves exploring and actually does so much better when he is out and about. Right now Almaty still seems like one big blur.

As far as traveling over half way around the world, I am very happy to say that Emerson handled it very well. We had a bassinet seat for both international flights and it was wonderful. It was probably a blessing in disguise that we had to fly all the way to LA, because they don't have them on domestic flights. We were also lucky because the service on Lufthansa was the best care we have ever received flying economy on any airline. Anything we needed they had. Every time I walked around with Emerson they would give him a toy, and me a chocolate bar and a drink. He has a blast flirting with all of the flight attendents. I don't think he is used to being smiled at by so many. The world was definitely his stage yesterday.

LA was crazy and we were super tired. When we got to customs we went into the citizen line (which is what we were told to do.) We waiting in line for 30-45 minutes (after an 11 hour flight) only to be told to go to another line, that we had to wait in for 45 min. Then we gave the man his "do not open" packet of immigration paperwork. He unceremoniously took it and told us to take a seat. At this point the cranky, wet, and hungry baby decided he had enough of the process. Well good old bureaucracy as usually was deaf to his VERY loud screams so we waited another hour until we were finally called up. He handed us back his passport with a piece of paper stating that he was now a US citizen. That's it? No hand shake, congratulations, just a stamp and NEXT... Needless to say it was a bit anti-climatically. Oh well. Then we got to go on a wild scavenger hunt to find our next flight. I sure am glad that we did not have to figure it our in Russian because I don' think it would have happened. We then found the United ticket counter and I was able to get my boarding pass for the last leg. We managed to find some Mexican food in the airport which was very good, or at least I think it was, but were were pretty numb by that point.
Finaly after the 4 hours of layover we were all set to go on our last flight. Unfortunately we got the "welcome" home with no priority seating for infants, but he did fall asleep while waiting in line to get on the plane. I sat next to a wonderfully friendly woman and Emerson slept all but the last thirty minutes. We fed him on the dessent and he never made a peep. As soon as we got off the plane, he decided to make us a present so we were off to the bathroom. When we started digging for his changing pad and diapers we realized that we had left it on the plane. John ran back to get it, only to find out that the flight attendant had given it to someone else:( So here we are about to introduce our new son to the Seattle family and we don't have any diapers with us. So we quickly rigged up something with a cloth diaper and a bandana and headed to baggage claim.
When we got there Grandmom and Grandpop were waiting with Uncle Jeff and Aunt Christie. He handled all of the love and kisses with stunned amazement and confusion. Overall not too bad. Once we got our luggage John grabbed a real diaper out of the luggage and we headed off for "home." We all played for a while and ate really good Thai food. He did great until it was time for bed. He had a bit of a melt down, but finally calmed down after thirty minutes. He did pretty well until he woke up from what he considered to be his nap. John played with him for a couple hours then he slept the rest of the night. The rest of today should be pretty mellow then tomorrow we have our first baby shower.

We made it!!!

While there are many things I would like to share about the last two days, the most important thing I would like to tell everyone is that we have made it to Seattle. Emerson did great on all of the flights, and I must say that I need to take back anything bad I said about Luftansa. They we wonderful for the flight and we had exclent service and a bassinet which was a life saver. There are many more things I will share later, for now the exaustion of 38 hours of moving is setting in. I feel a bit like one feels after playing all day in the ocean. My body does not belive that we have stoped for a while.

The 38 hour day to be...

Well we are heading out in a few hours for home. As much as we are ready to get back there are many things we will miss about living in Central Asia. We have been so fortunate to make new friends, learn a new language (and even some Kazak), see many wonderful places, survive with city life and how to bargan with taxi drivers. We are so thankful as well for all of our readers and those who have followed along with us. We will be sure to write from Seattle once we recoupe from the up and comming 33 hour adventure of traveling through 14 time zones. While it took us two days to get here it will only take one to get back because we are flying with the sun. Our friday will in fact last for 38 hours. It is going to be a day to remeber. Yes, Grant county folks we should be back on Monday as John needs to get to work ASAP. For the Seattle folks we have been getting Emerson geared up for some new family members. Please remember though that he might be a little nervouse at first as he is not used to so many people loving on him. He also could very well be one cranky baby after being cooped on a plane and in airports for 33 hours. Don't worry too much he should recover pretty quickly.

We look forward to seeing you all very soon.

We are OK to Go!!!

We have jumped through the last flaming hoop of adoption processing while here in Kazakhstan. We just finished up at the US embassy and we now have all of his paperwork for Emerson to be a US citizen. Oh Heidi, by the way the Embassy official would love a job at the BLM:) We barely made it there as a result of not having an availible driver. As a result our translator called us and said we needed to figure out a way to get there asap. What a fun adventure that was, but we made it just in time. We have also delt with paying even more money to the airlines right now, which they are on my "I don't like you" list right now. They are having the audacity of charging us $800 for a lap ticket for Emerson and $500 to chage our tickets even though we bought tickets that were changable with out penalty. We know what Emerson's first word will be and it starts with an E........n. At least I have many hours to write a letter expressing my dissapointment on the plane.

On a good note we have finaly had a good day in Almaty. We found several helpful and even frienly people. By no means are we in Uralsk anymore but there are a few good apples here, but they are harder to find. As for the Seattle Family, we will see you on Friday night and we can't wait for the Prineville on Monday.

OK I must leave this smoky internet cafe now. We are almost there. And Jeff thanks for the serinity prayer, we chant this along with sharron disco song a lot;)

Home of Wild Apples

Well, it looks like Karon, John, and Emerson are hanging out in a place that is the home of wild apples. . .

Some of you may remember their earlier post about their friend Larry and his orchard, and the link with Kazakhstan's apples. Well, check out this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almaty to learn more about Almaty and also to see pictures of those huge mountains.

My question is this: have they been to the wild apple forests?

Love,
Aunt Sharron

Step by step, one step closer to home

Mornin, everyone,

Aunt Sharron here with news from Almaty. Karon, John, and Emerson are hanging out getting to know each other better in an apartment next door to Aunt Stephie's friend's daughter Kate and her family. They are learning the ins and outs of feeding, changing, and sleeping, all punctuated by various giggles from Emerson, who seems to delight in everything.

This weekend, they got to see mountains that are higher than anything we have in the US - 22,000 feet! Plus a river, over there on the other side of the world.

As you've already read, due to various delays, they are now hoping to be in Seattle by 7 pm Friday. Of course, everything is subject to change. Stay tuned for details on the revised date and time for the coming home party!

They are very grateful for everyone's words of encouragement as they make their way through this last frustrating, and expensive, part of their journey.

Until next time, be well,

Sharron

Doing Buisness Halfway Around the World

First off thank you all so much for your words of encoragment. It definately helps us to keep things in perspective and realize that a few more days won't do us too much harm in the long run. At least we have a wonderful place to stay and we have made many good choices that have prevented us from running out of money a long time ago.

As far as what is happening, here is what I found out. The judge in Uralsk stamped the official adoption papers without enough ink to please the officials in Astan (the capitol.) As a result this information had to be resent to the capitol causing the delay. We also know that the soonest we can have a garenteed fligh (for a hefty fair difference) is on Friday moring (2:40 am). We are going to do our best this morning to get to the Luftansa office to see if we can get on the wait list for the THursday flight but I don't know yet what we will find out. One of the crazy things about doing buisness here and in the US is that you can not talk to both sides of the world during working hours so the communication tag team usualy has a 12-14 hour delay in responce. Not the greatest way to accopmplish things quickly, but hey as we are learning, there is nothing quick about this process. I will do my best to check up on the computer again tonight, but no garentees. My Aunt Stephie's friends have been very kind to let me use their computer when ever they are home.

The Journey that never ends

I remeber when I learned to swim that my father and sister would have their arms out for me as they moved further and further back. Eventualy the frustration lead to me take the risk and swim the extra distance. I would like to belive that this applies to our current situation as our confidence as new parents grows. Unfortunately the finish line mover does not have a loving face or even a name except buracracy. We were informed tonight that Emerson's passport has been held up in Astana and will not arive in Almaty until tomorrow night. Unfortunately we needed it by 3pm for the Embassy visit. What we are faced with is hoping that we are able to get seats for Thursday morning and that all will go well at the US Embassy on Wednesday Afternoon. TO say that we are ready to be home is an understatment, yet as with most things in this process we don't have a whole lot of control. I will do my best to keep you udated of the progress.

Only a few more days until he is home

Hello everyone,
Well we have finished the medical exam and he was very good, even when they drew blood. They cheked him out and he is doing pretty well. He does have one hernia that will need to be looked at right away and he needs to grow a lot, but hey he has come a long way from the 800g he weighed at birth! Melissa, thanks for letting me know about Mrs. Garry's baby. I love the name Ava. I have a new neice named this.

Emerson is handling the traveling like a true champ, and Jean his is a lot like Zack. He loves to be outside. So once we have failed to stop his crying, we take him for a walk outside and he calmes right down. He also loves mirrors and laughes when every he sees him self.

As for adaoption business, we have found out that somehow the Department of Homeland security did not send over our paperwork to the us Embassy so we are trying to contact them to get our paperwork faxed here. We have our Embassy appointment on Tuesday at 3pm, then we just wait for our red eye flight that leaves a 2:30am.

We also have found a great place to stay in Almaty. My Aunt Stephies friends that live here aranged a house for us to stay in next to them. It is very nice, and much more comfortable than the apartment we were in. The best part is it is free and we should be able to make some international calls from there. OK I think I hear the little man stiring.

We made it to Almaty

We are here in Almaty and Emerson did great on the plane. He slept the whole way! I am going to have to keep this very short as I am almost out of time. To all of those of you who are trying to reach us here, we unfortunately do not have a working phone. We are doing our best to get this taken care of ASAP through e-mail but we will just have to wait and see how it works out. In the mean time we have a mellow day today of playing with our beautiful baby boy, and resting up. Tomorrow we will get his medical exam, then on the weekend we are hoping to go to the open market and the Mountains! Monday and Tuesday we will be doing all of the nessesary paperwork at the Embassy to get his US citizenship documents. Keep those comments coming as they are the highlight of our day.

To all of my students, Have a Great Summer!!!!

We are heading to Almaty!!!

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Thank you all for your comments and congratulations. Yesterday was our first full day with him and it was a busy day. We have always said that we expected him to have a hard time adjusting and well yesterday was a bit much for him. He woke up amazed to see us and it a great mood and he even went down for his first nap without a problem. Then came the 10:00 feeding of semolina that was not so effective. Mind you that the directions for mixing are in Russian and well I got it wrong and I think this made him a wee bit mad. Needless to say he slept 30 min for the next 2 hour nap, then the last one he proceeded to cry for two hours instead of sleep. Ah the learning curve is steep but hey he is still as adorable as ever. Hopefully we figured out a few of the kinks and we will do better today. Jean, John was pretty close to calling you yesterday for words of advice. I think you will be hearing from him much more often once I go back to work.

Well today is a big day for the Decker family. We are going to leave Uralsk today and head to Almaty. The best part (not) is that we get to take the red eye flight with a baby. This should be interesting. With that said, I will do my best to find a computer while in Almaty but there are no guarantees. If I can not I will update my sister by phone so that she can share our news with all of you. Also we will be on our way home this time next week.

To answer some questions from you comments: One, to all of my students and fellow teachers, I hope that you have a good last couple days of call. I miss you and I look forward to seeing you next year. To all of the substitute Grandmas we will have to get together once the jet lag wears off. Linda G. Yes we did leave the caregivers with a picture of Emerson and his new parents. We must send pictures every year until he is 18, so they will get to see how he is doing.

Ok, it will soon be time for the little boy to wake up so I am going to go and work a little harder at translating the directions for his second breakfast. If anyone has a baby instruction manual, our baby’s has been lost and we could sure use one.

What a good day

We were told that he would sleep through the night, and it was true. He is doing well concidering the changes that he has gone through in the last day. Thank you all so much for the well wishes. It is always nice to know that people are still following along. For the Grant County folks we should be home on the 16th or 17th if all goes well in Almaty and Seattle.

I thought I would post more pictures since I know this has been what you have all wanted for a long time.

It is Official

We would like to introduce you to the newest member of our family: Johnathan Emerson Decker! As of Today, Monday June 4th, 2007 we are the proud parents of Emerson and we could not be happier.

I only have a little time to post but I am sure that many of you are planning on waking up this morning and finding out how today went. John and I were very nervous this morning and John has been practicing his lines all day. Our Coordinator, Translator and “the paperwork lady” all came to pick us up at 1:35 from the Pushkin (yes we are back here in room 307.) We all went to the court house where we met up with the social worker, the baby house director, the registrar, and the prosecutor. Did I mention we were very nervous. Our translator kept telling us that there was no reason to be, but hey the stakes were very high.

The judge asked many questions, yet they were all expected. The only mistake made was that John said we had been visiting him since last year. While it feels like this, the mistake was overlooked. After we stated our part, the baby house director spoke about Emerson and us. Then the social worker reviewed our home study as well as our bond with him. The registrar showed the judge all of his paperwork. The prosecutor then said that he agreed with ALL of our request including the immediate execution of the adoption. The judge then granted all of our request. We were so excited it was hard to maintain composure.

So now tonight we will be going to the baby house for the last time to give our gifts to Emerson’s caregivers and to take our boy with us.

Thank you all so much for your love and support. This has been a long and hard journey and with out many of you this would not have become a reality. Not only does it take a village to raise a child, but this little boy who’s life started alone has had a whole village and then some share their love and support with him to give him a loving family and community.

The Final Kick

We are getting very close and it is starting to feel like this is finaly going to happen. I appoligize for not updating yesterday, but we decided to pretty much have a mellow day. We figured that the days of lounging around are pretty much over for the next 10 years so we took the chance when we had it.

Today as most of our days here has been busy. We got up early today because we needed to be at the baby house earlier than expected. Today was Children’s Day so the older children at the baby house were putting on a program for many of the supporters of the baby house. There were many goverment officials there as well as oil executives and other childrens services professionals in attendance. We were very honored to have been invited as we were the only adoptive family there. The kids did a very cute performance, and we were even able to see Ann, Matt and Betsy’s daughter. Out son was not in the program as he is too little and it was his nap time. Our translator was there with us most of the time so she explained who many of the people were. A few minutes before it ended our translator had to leave so when it was over we were just standing around wondering what to do. Then the Director of the Baby House came over and ivited us to have chi with her in her office. This was a very nice invitation as it seemed only tbe big wigs were going in there. So at 10 in the morning we had not only hot tea (it is 95 out) and Caviar, but also toasting with wine. The adventures of this place never cease to amaze me.

Today we had two great visits with our son despite all of the destractions from the activites of the day. We also picked up formula, a bigger bottle, and some baby food for our up and comming parental responcibilities. The reality is starting to sink in. We still have not been prepared for court, but Yulia assures us that she will and that it will all be fine. Today we also had a great BBQ lunch at a place called I-Luna wich means Moom (Kazakh), Moon (Russian.) We highly recommend you ask about it if you are comming here. It is very close to Baby House 2.

After our visits we went to the Pushkin to drop off some things for Betsy and visitied with her. She is doing well concidering the Jet lag. We will visit with her more tomorrow. Well I must go now. As usualy I will probably not be able to get to a computer over the weekend. The next time I write will probably be after court on Monday from the Pushkin. We could really use all of your prayers right now for court to go smothly. Also we are moving back to the Pushkin on Sunday.