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| Hanging out outside |
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| Drawing |
Alex has been in a doctor's office or away from home every day for the past week except Sunday, and he has held up remarkably well, considering. Today he had casts made of his feet, for orthotics to help straighten his feet out. Yesterday he had his first physical therapy appointment, as well as another appointment in La Crosse. He has to go in for a chest x-ray sometime this week (checking for TB, very unlikely he has it, just being safe). I'm sure he is beginning to associate th4e car with doctor's offices!
When he is not at the doctor's, we have been trying to follow the advice from our International Adoption Center psychologist: keep it boring and routine. That means lots of living room floor play. Alex prefer being outside (sun-deprived, kid?), but it is too hot and sunny in the middle of the day, so we do outdoor time in the morning and evening. Today we tried to get him to draw again, offering him a crayon, then markers. He prefers the markers (easier to leave a mark), but was puzzled by how they left his hands all colored. He likes clean hands! He tried putting it in his mouth -- once. Yuck. He scribbled for about ten minutes. He may be more interested when he sees his siblings drawing.
As for us...we are still exhausted at the end of each day. The house is a mess and routine chores like grocery shopping are difficult to get to. The kids are definitely winning! But...we are also beginning to see little hints of a "new normal" emerge, bit by bit.
Unfortunately, our transition has been seriously hampered by the fact that someone in our lovely immigration bureaucracy apparently lost Alex's paperwork, 'cause we don't have a social security card for him, or a certificate of citizenship, and when we call, they haven't heard of him. We've been given an e-mail address but haven't heard back yet. So the past three days have been spent running around like crazy trying to re-start his application for a social security card. The social security office here in Winona told us to go to vital records; after standing in line at vital records, the bored clerk there gave us a phone number to call at the Minnesota Department of Health (talk about passing the buck), which turned out to be wrong; several hours later, I finally managed to find out that we have to file a petition with our local District Court to issue a U.S. birth certificate, which in turn will allow us to get a social security number. The court expects to take a week or two, the Minnesota Department of Health says they will take 4-6 weeks, and who knows how long the social security people will take. Translation: We could be looking at months here, and that says nothing about his citizenship papers. This is all relevant because a social security number is key to getting a wide variety of support services...which will come in handy when I am taking care of him and our toddler in the fall.
Which reminds me...I had both of them in slings at the same time at one point this afternoon!
We adopted our Russian daughter, who has fetal alcohol syndrome, shortly after her first family brought her from Russia. It was amazing to me that even though she was chronologically 4, she had to go through all the stages my other kids went through. Her "terrible twos" only lasted for a couple of months.
ReplyDeleteOur son from Kazakhstan came home at age eleven, after his first adoption failed. His emotional age was about 3. He too had to go through the developmental stages he missed. He has been home for six months. The first three months were the most exhausting months of our lives. Someday, he will catch up to his chronological age.
We homeschool all five of our kids, and having our special ones at home has been very integral to their healing process.