A Car For My Boy

Denis loves the car and is positive that he should be able to drive MY car. Last week I finally bought him a car of his own, I purchased a LittleTykes Cosy Coupe. Denis loves his car.
The day we bought the car he couldn't wait for me to get it out of the box








Today I couldn't find my car keys. Look where I found them.











Look closer, they are actually in the car as if they were in the ignition. The kid doesn't miss a trick.

Yaba Daba Do

I have got to find my flip video recorder as Denis has taken to talking up a storm and I want to capture it. Since Friday he starts these long and involved monologues of gibberish. He rides his Little Tykes car over to where I sit on the couch, gets out of his car, closes the door of the car and (my favourite part) leans against the door and begins talking. I swear I've heard 'Starbucks' and 'yaba daba do' out of him quite a few times.

Today I took Denis grocery shopping and we called JB to see what he needed. I dialed home and passed the phone to Denis. After a few moments Denis began his talking. He is a delight to watch as he has these eye and body movements to go with a conversation. He talked and talked and I began to wonder if my brother was actually on the phone. JB was there, but he wasn't sure if Denis even knew it as Denis really didn't respond to anything JB said to him.

I have the box for the video recorder and the instruction manual but no camera. I think I put it in a safe spot prior to going to Kazakhstan in November, hopefully it won't be November before I find it.

Nightmares and Stuff

I had a nightmare the other night. I was on my final trip to collect my child. But this child was not Denis I will note, just the unknown child, as in how my dreams worked prior to meeting Denis. I was in line to check-in for the flight home from his/her country when I realized I didn't have his/her passport. I didn't have the child with me, there seemed to be a hurdle I had to pass where I had to get through the airline check in and then the child would magically appear. Except I didn't have the passport so I was going to fail this hurdle and then I was going to be stuck in the international adoption limbo.

I was frantically trying to call my mother (who passed away almost 7 year ago, long before I began my true adoption journey). But instead of calling my home phone number, the number that has been my home number my entire life, I was calling the house of a friend from work and getting her answering machine. Of course these calls were long distance and seemed to take forever to dial and connect. I'm not sure what I thought my mother on the other side of the world was going to do as the passport couldn't have been at home, but don't you always call Mom first when you run into trouble.

I was standing in that line slowly snaking our way up to the check in desk and frantically trying to get someone back home to look for the passport while all the time trying to appear calm as I knew all eyes were on me to see if I was good parent material.

The panic was so profound that when I woke up I found it near impossible to go back to sleep. It is hard to get past the anxiety and fear that is a part of your every day when you are in the process to adopt. You arrive home and poof, the fear that this wonderful child will be taken away from you should go away. But I've found that hasn't happened. I still find it hard to believe that Denis really is my son forever. It is a really strange feeling because at the same time Denis has so beautifully slipped into our lives that it feels like he has always been apart of our family, and not home for just over 2 months.

I mentioned to my brother just today how I can't believe that Denis is really here and that this is real life. He wondered how long the feeling will continue, or will it be just one of those things that months from now I'll suddenly realize that I haven't had that feeling for a very long time.

My brother told me how he has a hard time picturing Denis in our future. At first I wasn't sure what he meant. Then he explained how he can picture me and what I will be doing in 10 years, he has an idea of his life in those 10 years, and he can pretty well figure out how Kathryn's life will go, but he can't imagine Denis beyond how he is today. I thought a lot about what he was saying and realized I felt the same way. We really are just getting to know Denis and we can't imagine what his life or he will be like in the future. Scary and exciting at the same time.

Kathryn has been home for the Easter weekend. On Thursday my brother came home from work early so he could watch Denis I drove to her group home to pick her up. It was the first time I have been apart from Denis since I collected him from the baby house. There were tears on both are parts, and then some nakedness, but that was only with Denis, I kept my clothes on. My poor brother had to deal with trying to get a diaper back on Denis who thinks running around without a diaper to be the greatest game going.

When I have Kathryn home I feel so guilty at all times. I feel guilty for not being able to be with Kathryn the way I was prior to Denis coming into my life and I feel guilty for not being able to do things with Denis that I do when Kathryn isn't here. Guilt is so unproductive.

The plan had been for me to take Kathryn to mass this morning and then back to the group home while my brother looked after Denis, but last night Kathryn had 2 grand mal seizures. We tried to remember the last time she had seizures with us and it would have been quite a few Christmas' ago. She has been having a lot of drop seizures this winter/spring. My brother and I automatically start thinking that we did or didn't do something that caused her to have the seizures (again with that worthless guilt stuff). I'm thinking that this is just one of those years when she has a hard time with seizures.

We got her to bed last night around 11, fighting all the time as she just wanted to go to sleep. And then today she stayed in bed until 5 ish. It is worrisome as you can't get medicine into her and she didn't eat yesterday or today until she got up at 5. Now she is lying on the couch watching her Lawrence Welk and smiling away. She gets an extra day with us at home, and extra day to watch Lawrence and hang out with her siblings and nephew, not bad all considered.

Happy Easter by the way,

I miss my Kazakhstan Internet

Sad but true, I miss the speed of the internet that I had in Kazakhstan. From reading so many blogs I knew one of the challenges in Kaz was the speed of internet. So I decided not to upgrade to high speed here at home and we stayed with dial up (I know, I bet you didn't know anyone still used dial up, no YouTube here).

I got to Kazakhstan and Nastya arranged high speed internet for me. I had difficulty at times connecting, but once connecting I loved the speed. But now I'm home I can't stand the internet. I sometimes try to get online when Denis is napping, but I can be still waiting for a website to load and Denis is awake.

Job for this week, setting up high speed wireless internet.

Catching Up - Flying Home

Thank you to all of you who have asked for updates and for me to continue our story, I too want to record our adventure to help me remember in the years to come.

Denis and I stayed in Almaty for 3 days. They were fun and stressful days.

On Saturday, February 19th at 1 am the driver returned to the hotel to collect Denis and I. I'd put Denis down to sleep at the usual time, but I couldn't sleep as I was so anxious that I would over sleep or that the driver wouldn't come and I'd have no way to contact him. But when I was in the lobby settling my account the driver arrived, I was so happy to see him. I was also intrigued to see the couples paying for their rooms at 1 am, sort of wondered how many hours they planned to use the room (wink, wink).

We drove through the vibrant Almaty to the airport. As we drove I tried to absorb as much as possible to remember so I could tell Denis in the future .My flight wasn't until 3:40 am and I'd planned to be at the airport 2 hours early, but when we arrived we had to wait in the general area as they were not ready to take passengers. I used the money exchange in the airport to change the left over Tenge I had back into US dollars. It wouldn't have been the best rate, but it was convenient, and it isn't like I could do it once I got home.

Finally we were able to go into the check in area. There was a small problem as Denis didn't have an assigned seat for the second flight, but I knew that so they calmed down. Then it was time to go through passport control. I'd been so worried about it, but it was totally simple. A few moments and a second set of security we were in the waiting room. I spent the last of my Tenge to purchase a juice for Denis and then we had a couple of hours to wait for boarding.

In the waiting room I met a new mom from Georgia who was returning home with her infant daughter. It was nice to chat a bit and exchange stories of our experiences.

The feeling of getting on to the Lufthansa airplane for the flight for Frankfurt is hard to describe. All the fears and anxiety of the past 3 months and truly many years were relieved as we buckled in for the beginning of the journey home.

The flight was 6 and 1/2 hours long. I measured it in the things spilt on me (juice, water, tea etc). I'd brought a change of clothes for Denis, I never thought to bring a change for myself. Denis had a blast on the flight and the air crew couldn't have been nicer.

Then it was our 4 hours in Frankfurt airport. We played on the teeny tiny climber, had french fries at McD's, and tried to find as many things as we could to pass the time. Denis actually fell asleep in the airport about 40 minutes before our flight was due to board. I cried when I saw the Air Canada plane, it was so nice to see a sign of home. It actually was our plane for home.

The final flight was the hardest. Denis was tired of flying and I was plain old tired. I have few memories of that flight, only that I was working on keeping Denis quiet and happy. At one point 2 hours into the flight Denis put on his hoody and boots and said "come on" to me to leave the plane, oh how I wish we could have gotten off that plane.

We actually had great tail winds and arrived in Toronto 40 minutes early and then breezed through customs and immigration. Then we waited for friends and family to come and meet us.

Thanks to Diane, Ciera, Tienna, Loretta, Aline, Christine, Alex and my brother and sister who came out to meet us. And to Anna, Rosemary and Julia who just must have missed us.

Denis and Alex had a great time playing with toy cars that Aline bought for them, you'd never think we were in the arrivals area.

Finally it was time to go home.