Hello Maks!
January 7, 2003 at 2:00 p.m. – Our first visit with Maks. We went to Baby
House #3 with our interpreter Janara and met with the baby house director for
about 5 or 10 minutes until they brought Maks in to see us. Awesome! I have
tried to come up with different ways to describe the first time we got to hold
our son, but nothing seems to fit as well as awesome. For those who wonder if
prayers are answered, ours were right then and there. We visited Maks at Baby
House #3 in Almaty every day from 10:30 to 12:00 and from 2:30 to 4:00. Maks
loved to play and laugh. He definitely has a mind of his own and is determined
to do what he wants, which usually involved crawling over to some chairs so he
could pull himself up. Unfortunately, he wasn't the best at staying up once he
got there, and found the floor with his head a couple of times. Normally not
that big of a deal, but we were a little nervous when he started crying in the
baby house because we were not sure what the care givers would think we were
doing to him. We loved the visits and were so glad to see how well Maks
interacted with the care givers and other staff at the Baby House. All the
stories we heard about how much the staff loves and cares for the children was
so true. Maks' face absolutely lit up every time one of the nurses or care
givers walked into the room Two of them gave us their addresses and asked that
we send pictures and updates of Maks to them. You could see in their eyes as our
court date approached that they were dearly going to miss Maks. We will always
be so grateful to the people who raised Maks the first year of his life - they
did a wonderful job!
As the visits went along, Maks got more and more comfortable with us. It was so
cool watching his face light up as the brought him into the room to us. You
could definitely tell he recognized us by the second week we were there. The
only snag we hit was Maks getting the flu while we were there. Janara called one
morning and said that we would not be able to visit Maks that day because he had
the flu, but hopefully the next day we could. We did get to see Maks the next
day, but unfortunately Kevin then came down with the flu and he had to let Tonya
go see Maks by herself the following day. Fortunately, we were all feeling much
better in a day or two and it did not slow our trip down at all.
