First visit....

We have made it to Uralsk!! After a three hour plane ride in business class, which was absolute heaven, we climbed down the stairs from the plane and walked to the Uralsk airport. There was one baggage chute which was in a tiny room where everyone basically crowded their way into. This was a crazy experience. We have four large suitcases and two heavy carryon bags. You are not allowed to leave the luggage room without showing your luggage ticket, so we basically had to be able to move all of our luggage at the same time. Thankfully just as I had everything strapped to my back to attempt to pull half the luggage, our drivers and interpreter showed up and helped. Between us and our travel partners, we filled three cars with luggage! Thankfully about half our luggage is baby clothing and gifts we will be leaving in Uralsk, so it won't be such an affair on the way back.

We were then taken to our apartment, which is really something! We will post some pictures so you can see what I mean. Right now we have only a drip of hot water, no cold, and the toilet can't flush because there is no water. We are waiting to see if this can be fixed or not, so we might be moving to a hotel. We just had lunch at the Chagala Hotel where we ran into a couple from North Carolina who are staying here- they showed us their room and it looked like heaven to me! If the plumbing can be fixed we will try to stay in the apartment though since it is much cheaper. We will see....

After putting away our luggage and a quick trip to the grocery store, we were told that we would have just a 10 minute visit with the kids, then off to a meeting with officials. When we got to the babyhouse, the director asked us a few questions about what type of child we were looking for (even though it was known which children we were there for), then we were taken into the "music room" along with our travel partners who are also adopting a 9 month old boy. We were just standing there waiting and then they carried in Jackson -- he had the exact same grin as on his referral pictures. He was just smiling at everyone! Then came Madden-- so, she is definitely not very small as the measurments we were given indicated. She is a solid girl and is bigger than her brother! She has also sprouted some enormous cheeks! Neither of them had any problem coming to us at all- they were both just happy as could be. As soon as we sat Jackson down, he was crawling like a wild thing! Our travel partners nicknamed him "action Jackson" and it is true! He can sit up on his knees and stand with help, so he's fairly on target. Madden does not crawl yet, though when we sat a toy out of her reach, she made it there so we think she just needs some encouragement. She also can't really sit up on her own, but again, we're thinking she just needs to be encouraged to exert herself.

We'll be having visits with them every day from 8:30 to 9:30 and then 4:30 to 5:30. They were again very happy at our morning visit, and don't seem to have any issue they strangers sticking toys in their face. The first thing the baby house director said was that Jackson wakes up very early...... woe is me! Anyhow, we are really enjoying our visits and have yet to see either of them be unhappy. We have a few pictures we will post separately as we're not completely sure it will work on this set up. We'll try to write again soon!