Jodi Speaks Her Mind

Family update 11/24/2007

I have been quite busy as may be expected, but I’m going to see what I can throw together as an update.

First of all, Sophie is doing really well. She continues to bless us with a most pleasant personality, a sweet temperament, and a love for her new life. She is eating well, sleeping okay, and exploring her new world with fervor. She smiles so often that I think we are all feeling uplifted by her presence. She isn’t perfect by any stretch and has so much to learn about life in a family, communication, and so many things. But she is taking it all in stride and seems to fit in just perfectly. She loves to get tossed into the air, swing at the park, climb, walk, play in the sand, and so many other things that kids just love to do. She loves her clothes and it is not unusual for her to change her outfit 3 or 4 times a day. This will eventually have to stop, but since she is also a terribly messy little toddler, it is often not such a big deal. And the textures and colors and patterns are all so new to her. She just wants to experience it all, and who can blame her!? So we indulge for now.

As for communication, she is definitely starting to clue in to sign language. She hasn’t completely “gotten it” yet, but she definitely understands a few signs, and there are a few she will sign when prompted or with modeling. She still doesn’t sign anything spontaneously, but we are confident that it will come.

Adelina and Sophie are starting to bond. This is a big deal because, for the most part, Adelina has been rather offended by Sophie’s presence in our house and family. For awhile, everything Sophie did was wrong including standing in the same room Adelina was in. Touching and relocating toys and other items makes her positively insane. Finally, she is beginning to learn how to play with Sophie in simple and fun ways. Their favorite “game” so far is for Adelina to play horse and for Sophie to ride on her back. This is so cute, as they are each just the right size to do their part. Sophie is definitely light enough, and Adelina is definitely strong enough.

I’m not sure what else to share. Life is full and life is fun. Sophie has an easy going personality, so that provides some balance to Adelina’s more “spirited” temperament. I’ve decided to enroll Sophie and myself in a parent-tot swimming class to allow Sophie to begin to get more comfortable in the water. She is still warming up to baths, so it may take some time. Since we’re having a pool put in soon, it makes sense to start acclimating her to swimming sooner rather than later. Also, we’ll be enrolling Adelina into gymnastics starting this coming week. She is really excited, and I think the timing is good. She has enough receptive language to follow along with the instructions, especially since they will be followed immediately by physical examples of whatever the instructions were. She has been working on cartwheels, handstands, and the like in the living room for several months now, so it will be neat to see what she is able to do. If she stays true to past trends, she will do quite well. She seems to be a born athlete.

Adelina started at her new school this past week, but it was something of a rough first week. First of all, it was a 3 day week, and she stayed home on Monday because she was sick clear up through Sunday night, and I wasn’t going to send her off the next morning even if she was fever-free because she could relapse too easily. But she seemed enough improved on Monday, so Tuesday was her official first day. The van that was supposed to pick her up ended up being two HOURS late, which is ridiculous, but evidently that had never happened before. Oh well, even with the delay, her first day seemed to go well. Then Wednesday, only her second day at her new school, and she got sick on the van ride home. She threw up twice and arrived home a most disgusting mess. I felt so bad for her. Evidently they had eaten a huge Thanksgiving feast at school, and then she and a friend were playing with toys all the way home. We are pretty sure it was just a bad case of motion sickness. Unfortunately, her stomach continued to refuse food until Thursday morning, when, thankfully, she woke up feeling fine and ready for some fun with friends.

Thanksgiving was really nice. I baked two pies - (go me!) and a big green jello salad to contribute to a multi-family Thanksgiving dinner. We had a wonderful time. Sophie seemed very relaxed and played well with one of the other kids while Adelina pretended to be a horse the whole time (shocker!). All the kids and adults had a great time. I was amazed at how easy it has been thus far with Sophie to engage in semi-normal life. When we came home with Adelina, that was definitely not the case (see paragraph six).

Well, that’s all I have time for now. Belated Happy Thanksgiving to all my readers!

Crazy chicken world 11/12/2007

Neither Adelina nor I slept well last night.  Despite being tired and sick, I just can’t seem to convince my body that nighttime in Arizona is the time to sleep.  I woke up this morning around 4-ish and kept hearing something like movement down the hallway.  I mostly ignored it figuring it was Nancy using the restroom.  Since I couldn’t sleep anyway, I got up and took a shower.  Well, I didn’t really take a shower, I cleaned the shower.  What else is there to do at 4 in the morning when you can’t sleep?  Well, okay, there’s plenty, but that’s what I did.  The steam helped my breathing not be so difficult and it cut down the coughing too.  I was feeling pretty miserable by this time as far as my nasty cold and cough.  Anyhow, after cleaning the shower I threw on some jammies and went to see who else might be up.  Sure enough, Adelina was playing under her covers with her entire collection of horses and accessories.  She thought I would be mad at her, but I explained that our bodies are confused and don’t know when is the right time to sleep.  I asked if she wanted to help me, and she said yes, so we worked on unpacking the suitcases.  We started with hers and moved on to mine.  After that, I was beginning to get tired again (unpacking with a 6 year old is a slow business) and decided to go back to sleep.  I think it was about 6-something at this time.  Unfortunately, my feet were cold so I decided to warm them first so I could sleep better.  This meant cleaning the tub first, so I did that (much quicker than cleaning the shower) and then started filing it.  Just when it was approaching bathing depth (of course by this time I had decided why not warm my whole body), Adelina came in and said she was bored and needed something to do.  I suggested she take a nice leisurely, fun bath in my bathtub.  She loved the idea!  So with my feet now warm, I crawled back into bed, while Addy had a grand time in our huge bathtub.  When she got out, she went off to get dressed, and I finally crashed out again and slept another few hours.  Oh, and sometime during this time is when I realized I had pink eye - both eyes.  Yuck.  Made a mental note to call my Doctor to see if I could get some drops to work on that.

As for more important matters, Steve and Sophie will be arriving home tomorrow.  They tried to get out of Vlad on Monday, but all the flights from Seoul to the U.S. were booked.  He tells me it is probably good because Sophie (and therefore, Steve) had a sleepless night and he thinks the extra day for them to rest before travel is probably good.

I can’t wait to see them both!  In the meantime, I managed to get in to see the doctor this morning.  In addition to confirming the pink eye, he didn’t like the sound of my cough (neither was I by this point - and it was really hurting too), and prescribed an antibiotic and a steroid for me to address it.  He said with a baby coming home, we need to treat my body like I’m about to run a big race - no kidding, this doctor must be a father!  So he is attacking whatever infection I have pretty aggressively.  After filling all the scripts and coming home and taking all the first doses, I crashed out for the afternoon and now that I’m awake again, I’m already starting to feel better.  Still can barely talk, but I have some energy again, I’m not nearly so achy, and I’m not coughing up my lungs - yippee - and the pink eye seems to be clearing already, too.  Wow, three cheers for fast medicine. Steve informed me that Sophie is also coughing.  I pray she doesn’t have what I have.  Her body is weak, and we can’t get her good medicine until she’s in the states.  They did track down some cough medicine for her.  I really hope it has helped, but Steve won’t be able to contact me until he’s home - unless he can find a kind soul in Seattle who will allow him to use their cell phone (and that’s presuming he thinks of it!).  In any case, they should be departing in a few hours and by this time tomorrow we’ll be a reunited family.  Steve’s mom was/is scheduled to fly out Tuesday morning (that’s tomorrow), and we all decided she will fly out as planned.  Nancy and Richard, thank you so much for your sacrifices to make it possible for Nancy to come along.  She was/is a blessing and a help!

As for Adelina, she is ready to go back to school tomorrow.  I gave her a present we had set aside for when we got back.  It’s a Sonic Boom alarm clock.  It will buzz really loud, it has flashing lights, and a vibrator that goes under the bed.  And if all that isn’t cool enough, it’s fuscia pink and shaped like a heart with colorful neon lights for the display.  Needless to say, she is quite excited to try it out.  Despite the excitement, though, the long day finally caught up with her (remember she woke around 4-ish) and right around 6 tonight she started saying she was really tired and wanted to go to bed.  Only jet lag does this to our girl because normally it is impossible to get her to go to bed, much less to sleep!  But sure enough, by 6:20 she was crashed out hard.  Hopefully she’ll sleep solidly through the night, since tomorrow is an early day - the first in a long time for her.

I think that about sums up our day.  No wait, there’s one more thing.  Poor Nancy was cutting an apple with our apple slicer and cut into her thumb pretty badly.  I think she debated awhile with herself about whether or not she should go in to get stitches because the bleeding wouldn’t stop.  Even now it is questionable if she perhaps should have done this.  Oh well, time will tell.

Finally, keep my grandmother in your prayers.  We call her Nanny, and she is my last remaining grandparent.  She is ailing in her health and had some surgery today.  Evidently she made it through and is recovering, but it is a difficult time for everyone, especially her children, all of whom are with her.  She said it was like Christmas to have everyone there all together!  Merry Christmas, Nanny.

P.S. Bonus points for the first person to comment with the source of my subject line.  It’s a movie quote.  Steve can’t participate!

Back on U.S. Soil - some of us anyway 11/10/2007

I’m writing this blog post from the Sea-Tac airport in Seattle.  It is Saturday November 10, and has been for quite some time now.  We left Vlad on Saturday afternoon at 3:00 pm and it is now 12:15 pm Saturday in Seattle.  After many hours of flying, in the end we arrive in Phoenix just a couple hours after we departed Vlad.  But I guess it’s only fair, since we completely lost a day on our way there, so we’ve now regained it on the return trip.

The sad news is that Steve and Sophie are not with us.  We finally had a glitch in our adoption and it was a doozie.  Our courier who was returning to Vlad with Sophie’s Passport, Visa, and all other of her important original documents, got delayed when her plane had a mechanical problem.  In the end, the courier flight, which was due in at 11:00 am from Moscow, was 4 hours delayed and didn’t come in until 3:00 pm.  Our flight out of Vlad was scheduled to depart right at 3:00 pm and they would not budge as far as waiting for the other flight for our sakes.  We had decided earlier in the day that Steve would stay with Sophie and bring her home in the event that this happened.  We were sad that it ended up actually happening, but we are trusting that God has some purpose in it or that He will somehow use it for His glory.  Still, it was so hard to be sitting on the plane and see the Moscow plane pull in while we’re on the tarmac and know that the documents we so desperately needed were on that plane just meters away.

As a result of the delay, Steve and Sophie will come home either Monday - if space can be found on some flight going to LA from Seoul - or Tuesday (pretty much guaranteed).  It’s kind of ironic because it would mean rescheduling her ENT appointment which was one of the main reasons we got the ten-day waiting period waived.  At this point, we’re not stressing the details and are just looking forward to all being together as a family in Arizona!

On top of the frustration of the delays, I have come down with a nasty cough and have completely lost my voice.  Thankfully, we can sign with one another, but it is still an inconvenience and painful, too.  I think the reason for the loss of voice can be traced back to our outing into Vlad on Friday.  We finally ventured out of the cozy hotel suite and dared to take the commuter train into the city.  We ended up doing a LOT of walking and it was much colder than we had expected.  Hopefully, Sophie hasn’t also caught something nasty.

Okay, so now that I’ve told you where we all are now, I can back up and share more about our week together and about this new little person who is joining our family.  Sophie is really just a sweetheart of a girl.  She is very easy going and doesn’t fuss over much at all.  She is beginning to learn a few signs, mostly signs that get her more of something she wants, so she is learning cookie, more, please, and candy.  I think those are the motivating ones for the moment.  Once we get home, we trust her vocabulary will begin to expand.  She is quite a busy little girl and runs about putting things away, or just moving things about.  If she doesn’t know where something goes, she will often just give it to a person or she will pick a new location and she has been observed relocating entire collections just for the sake of moving them about.  She learned whose shoes were whose and was often seen delivering shoes at odd moments, but she always makes her deliveries with a smile, so you just can’t help but give her a big smile and a “thank you!”

Sophie is a good eater!  She loves to eat and she seems to eat pretty well.  She likes oatmeal or rice for breakfast, and can eat an adult sized portion.  She likes soup a lot, and we ate soup just about every day for lunch.  She likes crackers and cookies, too, but doesn’t seem very fond of vegetables, though we really only offered her cucumbers and tomatoes, which they have in abundance there, so perhaps she is just tired of them.  We don’t know.  She also drinks a lot, even water, which is good.  Oh, and she seems to like spaghetti.  Hopefully, she won’t have too many adjustment difficulties with regard to foods, but only time will tell, and also an opportunity for her to discover her own likes and dislikes.

Sleeping is a whole different matter.  She does not like to go to sleep.  She doesn’t scream or cry or fuss really, but she just doesn’t allow herself to fall asleep.  We finally got to where we weren’t worrying about it so much and just let her stay up late and play and then try to put her down when it was more likely she would actually go to sleep.  That did seem to help, and it didn’t hurt that she was able to sleep in.  Also, she likes to play with her hands during this time, so we started fingerspelling the alphabet for her.  You can’t start too young, right?  Hopefully, once we get home and she is more settled, we can find a sleep routine that works for her.  Supposedly they had naps in the baby house, but she fought the naps so hard, we pretty much stopped trying.  If a kid who didn’t have a nap is still awake at 11:00 at night, how late would she stay up if she did have a nap?!  Anyhow, the other good thing about her sleep is that most nights, once she got to sleep, she stayed that way.  She only had a couple of times she woke up and cried and had to be helped back to sleep.  Being able to sleep through the nights will be a huge help for us if it continues once home.  It might not, though, and we are prepared for that.  When Adelina came home it was like having a newborn in the house because she did not go to sleep easily or sleep soundly.  Many adoptive parents would say that adopting is no different than birthing a child regarding of the age of the child being adopted.  Sleep deprivation is just part of being new parents.

As for play, she is so playful.  She likes toys, she looks at books, though not “properly” yet, but we are glad she has an interest in them.  She absolutely loves to hang upside down and flop about on the bed.  She does forward rolls even.  She does a lot of up and down, and when she walks she is rather uncoordinated, so she falls all the time.  We’ve heard her knock her head on the floor and the tables, but she always just smiles and keeps going.  I think she must be so used to it.

Well, our final flight to Phoenix is going to be boarding soon, so I’d better sign off.  I’m sorry I didn’t blog more in Vlad, there were 3 of us sharing one computer, and with two kids to care for, it was hard to find time.  See you on the other side!

Newsy bits 11/5/2007

We have now been together as a new family for 4 days and they have been sweet days.  Not entirely easy, but overall quite pleasant and fun.  Sophie did fight a bit of a cold for awhile, but she seems to be feeling a bit better.  Adelina and Sophie continue to play fairly well together, though Adelina is already experiencing some serious sibling difficulties.  She has such a strong personality and we tried to prepare her for both the positive and negative aspects of having a younger sister, but she opted to focus in on the positive, which is not surprising.  Sharing Sophie with us and having to share us with Sophie are real challenges for her, and she has had more than her fair share of disappointments thus far.  Hopefully, she will begin to ease into her sisterly role as she gets more accustomed to it.

In other news, our process continues to move forward.  Tomorrow we pick up Sophie’s passport, then we go somewhere for her medical examination required by the US embassy as part of her immigration requirements.  Then we have an appointment at the consulate for an interview, which is another part of the same requirements.  Then on Wednesday the courier will leave for Moscow to complete the requirements.  She will return to Vlad on Saturday just in time to hand us Sophie’s passport with her Immigrant Visa intact as we head to the airport to fly home.

We are in awe at how gracious God has been to us during this adoption.  Between trips 1 and 2 we will have been in Russia for a total of 16 days, which is pretty well unheard of these days.  We have met other families here who had court well before ours but who will be leaving a few days after us.  It mostly depends on the ten-day waiting period, but even if it is waived, it is rare to get in and out in 11 days, like we will be doing.  I guess it is only fair, since Adelina’s adoption was record-long at 14 weeks in-country.  God has such a sense of humor!

The Weekend is Here 11/2/2007

We are actually very glad to be starting our days with Sophie over a long weekend.  Monday is a holiday, and thus far we have only one outing planned over the next 3 days and that is to go to church with Elena  on Sunday afternoon.  So this morning we all slept as long as was needed, which was quite a bit longer than usual because we were up so late trying to help Sophie get to sleep.  Adelina and Nancy slept fairly late, too, I’m guessing just because yesterday was such a big day for everyone.  We all woke up at least contented and not fussy, had a leisurely breakfast, and eventually got showers (those who wanted them).

After a quiet morning inside, everyone bundled up for some outside time.  Adelina especially enjoyed this time, where she and Steve and Nancy played for a long time on the teeter-totter.  Sophie and I swung gently on the wooden swing and then just walked about.  She is much more timid about thrills than Adelina, but she thoroughly enjoyed watching Adelina jumping from the swings, walking and balancing across the teeter-totter, and other displays of her athletic prowess.  After play-time we all came inside for a delicious lunch of soup, bread, and fruit salad.  Sophie ate well again and this time didn’t keep food in her mouth, though she did cling tightly to a cookie clear until she fell asleep for her nap.  She did better this time with going to sleep.  I snuggled with her on the sitting chair in the crib room until she eventually fell asleep.  Once she was soundly enough asleep I moved her into the crib.  She awoke briefly but just adjusted her positioning and then went right back to sleep.  We were all very relieved, since we weren’t sure how well she would cooperate with this new plan.  We’ll try this method again at bedtime tonight and hopefully have similar success.

She is now awake from her nap and playing once again with Adelina.  More tomorrow!

Sophie’s Gotcha Day!

Today began with a nice, relatively relaxing morning. We weren’t scheduled to drive to Ussuriysk to pick up Sophie until 12:30. Steve needed to be ready by 8:50 to go take care of the adoption decree, the birth certificate, and the application for her passport. We all had a leisurely breakfast of eggs and sausage prepared by Steve just before he left. The rest of us remained behind and worked on readying the hotel room (more like an apartment) for our new arrival. Steve returned just in time and we packed up and headed out.

Before picking up Sophie we had a couple of errands to run. First off, we had to drop off the social worker, who had been brought to town again for another family’s court hearing. Next, we hit the grocery store for more food, especially keeping Sophie in mind, and then the toy store for a couple of items for the kids. Finally, we went to the baby home and collected our special bundle of joy. We got to dress her and such and then ask some final questions. Finally, we presented gifts to the caregivers, then we got in the car and began our new life as a family of four (currently five since Steve’s Mom is with us).

Sophie did quite well on the car ride and Adelina also did well, though it was hard for her to not try to be in charge of Sophie. We arrived at the hotel and settled in by having dinner, which I cooked. I cooked cutlets (which are kind of like giant meatballs), vereniki with potatoes inside, and cucumber and tomato salad. All in all, it should have been foods that are more or less familiar to Sophie. She ate really well, as did everyone else.

Next was bedtime preparations, which went fairly well. The only thing that was strange is that Sophie has this thing about keeping food in her mouth when she thinks a meal is over. She wouldn’t chew it or swallow it. She just kept it there. I had heard of institutionalized children hoarding food, but hadn’t heard of any doing so in their mouths. So she had a piece of dinner food in her mouth and of course this made brushing her teeth impossible. But we let Adelina demonstrate and let Sophie hold the toothbrush and she half-pretended to brush, but it was hard since she wouldn’t open her mouth. Sophie did go potty in the potty seat before bed, which was a nice surprise.

As mentioned by the caregivers, Sophie had a very hard time going to sleep. She fought it for hours - literally. We think she finally went to sleep sometime after midnight…poor girl. Thankfully she slept fairly well into the morning, so at least she did sleep once she got around to it. Oh, and as if all the expected stuff with the adjustment isn’t enough, she seems to be coming down with a cold or some kind of pre-winter illness. Our apartment is equipped with a small room complete with a crib and sitting chair. We felt that Sophie would be more comfortable sleeping near us, though, so we placed the mattress on the floor right next to our bed. We also tried her in the bed with us, but that didn’t seem to work very well. She was too restless and she kept wiggling her way on top of one of us or too close to the edge. Anyhow, it appears she likes to nuzzle up against the edges of her crib and she kept trying to do that but since she wasn’t IN a crib, she just kept wiggling and wiggling and wiggled her way right off of the mattress! Needless to say, we will try something new next time.

Other highlights of her first day at home include lots of good playtime with Adelina. They really do have fun together. They especially love to play fetch and they will take turns throwing things and running to get them. It sounds rather dull, but they both just love it. We also brought them a little doctor kit and they seem to be having fun with that. Adelina will actually “play doctor” while Sophie just collects the pieces and carries them around, but she seems to have some kind of ownership over them, which is cute.

Also, we have all been signing a lot and Sophie has started to pay more attention to us when we do it. She doesn’t yet seem to “get it” but she has tried to mimic a couple of times. Once it was even appropriate as she signed MORE when wanting more of something. But I wouldn’t go so far as to say she knows the sign for MORE, but she will get there. It certainly helps to have a child who understands deafness and knows sign language! Nancy is also doing quite well with her sign language, and it’s a good thing she knows it because she started to lose her voice a couple of days ago and now she can’t talk at all. So we have all kinds of good reasons to sign to each other!

All in all I’d say our first day with Sophie was quite good. She didn’t have any tantrums, she ate well, and she eventually went to sleep. You can’t hope for much more than that.