New haircut, new words

Alex after his first haircut at home.

Alex playing outside on the blanket again.

"I get a picture too!" says little brother.

Alex finally got a much-needed haircut the other day. I went into the local chain discount hair salon with three boys and our Russian-speaking babysitter and announced that I needed someone who could work fast. Well, they delivered! I had Alex watch the other two boys get their hair cut (little brother somewhat reluctantly), and then had our teenaged translator explain encouragingly, which he seemed okay with. Then I sat down in the chair with Alex sitting on my knees, facing me. Aside from some squirming around, he did just fine. The haircut...eh, we liked his hair longer, but it needed cutting, and we were more focused on getting through the event than outcomes. Next time we'll have them keep it longer.

Meanwhile, Alex has suddenly started acquiring English words at a very rapid pace -- more new words every day than we can keep track of. His biggest new word of the past few days has been "music." He loves listening to music on CDs and asks for it constantly from morning until he goes to bed at night. When he acquires a new word, especially one that is important to him, he uses it over and over and over and over and over and really I'd have to fill a book to give a true sense of how much he repeats the new word. Last night in bed, as he was listening to some twinkly nature music on a portable CD player, he kept saying "Music!" Or "Musica!" Or "Oosik!" Then: "Yes?" Over and over for an hour.

He has also been saying done (for "all done"), take, shoes, shirt, eat, milk, car, outside, TV, go, bag, stop, cookie, cake, and a handful of other words I can't quite remember at the moment, in addition to some words we've already mentioned -- yes, no, Ben, etc. He still uses "da" for yes, but will say "yes" when prompted. Everyone here knows that "da" means yes, and Susan and the kids will even say it to him, so that may be a difficult one to shake. However, he now uses "no" exclusively -- no more "nyet," at least not regularly.

We are off on a short three day, two night family vacation this weekend, so we won't be posting until the middle of next week. As a matter of fact, I intend to begin posting more of our "regular" Alex news on our family blog, which has been completely neglected for the past few months. We'll integrate him into the rest of the family news there. We will keep this blog up for major news on Alex -- surgeries, major breakthroughs, milestones, etc., so those who want to track his progress over the coming years can do so without filtering through our home recipes and vacation pictures. You can subscribe to this blog on Facebook or by e-mail to be notified of new posts.

Before we transition, though, I hope to write a special "thank you" post to the many people who have helped us out in so many ways. Look for that in the coming week or two.

Alex's baptism

Alex getting baptized. Yes, he looks like he's about to be immersed
head-first...but while we're all for immersion, we opted for sprinkling
instead.

Alex was welcomed into life in Christ and life in the Church yesterday in a baptism outside of Mass at our parish, with a few dozen local folks attending. (Our family members either lived too far away or were otherwise occupied with trivial things like having babies.) We'd opted to do a "private" baptism (a misnomer if there ever was one) outside of Mass in the interest of not overwhelming Alex, who actually sailed through the half-hour service without any problem at all. People had been worried about the actual pouring water over the head part...would it freak him out? Turns out, no -- if anything, he was disappointed not to be getting into the "tub" for some water play!

Our good friends, Jim and Barbara Allaire, are Alex's godparents. They have been super supportive throughout this entire process, and promise to "watch over" Alex from afar (they live in Boston).

Probably the most interesting moment for me was when Father Jim asks (from the Rite): "You have asked to have your child baptized. In doing so you are accepting the responsibility of training him/her
in the practice of the faith. It will be your duty to bring him/her up to keep God’s commandments as Christ taught us, by loving God and our neighbor. Do you clearly understand what you are undertaking?" To which Susan and I just looked at each other for a second, smiled, and then said, "Yes!" -- but with a tone that implied, "That's kind of a loaded question!"

Here are some more photos, and a brief video.

"Receive the light of Christ."

The godparents.

I was instructed to photograph the cake...so here it is.

Gotcha Day

Gotcha day...waiting on the couch in the lounge.

Finally, we’re posting some pictures from Gotcha Day! There are also some videos at the end of this post...some raw footage of Alex leaving the orphanage.

To be perfectly candid, Gotcha Day turned out to be fairly stressful. We spent the morning packing and cleaning up the apartment, and went to the orphanage a little later than normal—around 10:30. The plan had been for us to meet our facilitator there, finish up some paperwork, and leave with Alex by 1 p.m.—immediately after his lunch.

That didn’t happen.

When we arrived, our facilitator wasn’t there. We called her and found out that she was running quite late (like an hour). Okay, so we went to pick up Alex, who had been crying for us (we normally picked him up at 10), and went into our normal play routine with him—except of course we hadn’t brought the bagful of toys and books and goodies that usually occupied our time. By this time the swings had lost their appeal, and the slide had kind of been off-limits since the bloody nose incident (“Too much excitement!”), and it was brutally hot, so we took refuge on the couch in one of the lounges and spent a good hour and a half entertaining him with our family photo book and a few balloons I happened to have in a pocket. Eventually our facilitator arrived. When she did, she informed us that there would be a significant delay; the orphanage didn’t have the proper release paperwork on hand (remember, this was their first adoption), so she had to get some other orphanage to fax it over, and our attorney’s mother had died unexpectedly the night before, so our driver had to make the long trip into the next town to pick up Alex’s passport.

Fun with balloons

Ha ha. Well, you can’t help any of that, can you? But here we’d been stringing Alex along with promises of leaving for his new home in the wonderful car “soon, soon”—and now, not so much. We decided to accompany Alex to lunch to see how he was fed lunch (we’d only seen his second breakfast, and that was always away from the rest of the kids). We ended up being responsible for feeding Alex: bread, soup, and very hot apple juice in a glass bottle with a large nipple on it. There were only a few staff trying to feed quite a number of kids (spread out over a few rooms, I’m not sure how many). We had a few “visitors” from other kids interested in our attention during this time. All the same, it was very interesting to see Alex try to eat soup on his own—and noticing that he really couldn’t seem to drink from a cup (his tipping and sipping weren’t coordinated).

After lunch we went back downstairs to entertain Alex in the lounge again. Once again, no toys or anything to work with; the exercise room upstairs would have been absolutely sweltering. So to mix things up, I had Alex retrieve the balloon (we’d blow it up and let it fly away) by helping him walk across the room and then helping him bend down to pick it up. Well, Alex liked that game—but not the staff! We got “reined in” within ten minutes with the lecture about too much excitement and a strong suggestion that he’d be better off napping. By this time it was two in the afternoon and we had not had lunch, and we were exhausted and sweaty, and out of ideas for continuing to entertain him, so we took them up on the offer to return to our apartment while Alex napped. Boy, was he ticked off! And sad!

We rushed back to the apartment and grabbed a bite to eat and lots of fluids from a couple of street vendors—not really a proper lunch, but all of our food was packed away, and there was no time to go to the one sit-down restaurant in town. An hour later, we got picked up by the fellow who would be driving us to Kiev, four hours away. He spoke “a little” English (he was conversational but not fluent). He took us to the orphanage, where we were going to pick up Alex.

We ended up waiting for more documents to be signed, put our own signatures on some documents, and then they brought in Alex—refreshed, and ready to go. They also brought in his purple sweater, the same one he had worn almost every day during our visit. This was very ironic, given that everyone was sweating! The orphanage director gave us a hand-embroidered banner in a traditional Ukrainian design, painstakingly created by the children over the course of a year. We gave her grocery store champagne and chocolate. Yeah, not exactly an even exchange…we were blown away by the gift, and promised to hang it up in our house. We also brought lots of special treats for the children—bananas (which are very expensive there), juice, and “healthy” cookies. We’d also turned over all of the money from Alex’s government savings fund, which the orphanage used to buy seven sturdy windows, and meat (which is also apparently a rare treat).

One of the nannies, saying goodbye.

And then the rounds of good-byes began. The nannies who were present came by and said goodbye very tearfully, and the orphanage director followed us out to the road; she and one of the nannies stood in the driveway, tearfully waving goodbye as we drove away. She had made us promise to write and send pictures, which we are trying to do on a regular basis.

Susan, Alex, Luda (our facilitator), Tatiana (the director), and the orphanage doctor.

Saying goodbye to the mysterious, omni-present Andre, who helped us so much.

Outside the orphanage gate, we ran into another nanny who bid Alex a tearful
goodbye.

By the time we left, it was 4 p.m., and we had a four-hour trip ahead of us with a kid who wasn’t about to fall asleep in the car. And of course, no car seats, which meant trying to manually hold the shoulder belt away from his neck. I can summarize this trip by simply saying that we drew on all of our resources to entertain Alex during that time. Also, at one point we found ourselves on a deeply rutted country road passing chickens and pigs and cats on stone walls, driving very slowly and carefully. I turned to the driver and asked, “Um, this is the road to Kiev?” He just laughed.

On the way to Kiev, at last

By the time we reached the outskirts of the city, I had resorted to letting him pull on the seatbelt for the empty seat next to him and then letting it snap back, which he found hilarious. The driver was less amused but didn’t say anything, which is good, because Alex had started hitting for entertainment by this point.

We arrived in Kiev around 9 p.m. and got settled into a nice, but not air-conditioned, apartment on a busy street in an upscale neighborhood. I went out in search of easy food and managed to locate a McDonald’s. Our Kiev facilitator had admonished us not to settle for McD’s, but we were tired, hungry (no supper), very hot, and stressed.

Susan modified the one big bed in the apartment to be sort of safe for Alex, and tried to get him to sleep. She slept in the same bed while I took the couch. Did I mention how hot and very noisy (from cars in the busy street) this nice apartment was? Alex would not settle down, and actually began hitting Susan at one point. I think he finally fell asleep around 10:30.

The next two days were spent trying to mollify a very wigged-out kid in that hot little apartment. We did a lot of walking around Kiev trying to find a place to eat with an angry kid. (I am recalling one scene in particular where Alex started shouting, “No! No!” very angrily and very loudly at the top of his voice when I tried putting him in the stroller—in front of a sizable lunch crowd at an outdoor café. I picked him up and walked away carrying him. Nothing to see here, folks!) We did have a nice time one day at one of the rare playgrounds several miles from the apartment; we played for a while, then ate a sumptuous dinner at the pricey, pretentious restaurant on the grounds. It was very good, and Alex ate up quietly. Another time, desperate for decent food that wasn’t McDonald’s, but not willing to risk a restaurant (this was after a rough few hours), we bumbled our way through a very upscale deli—six young women behind a counter, waiting for us to choose food we didn’t recognize using our facilitator to kind of sort of translate over the phone. I finally just asked them to recommend a few things to eat, which they did. Turned out to be a very expensive meal—our most expensive of the whole trip—which we divided up over two nights. I have to say, the food was some of the best I have ever tasted.

Eating in a "Coffee House" restaurant (that's the name of the place, only in
Russian--it's part of a chain). The little tantrum incident took place on the
sidewalk right outside.

Trying to get Alex to drink something was a challenge--he had difficulty
coordinating his cup-tipping and swallowing, so we made it a priority to
find a bottle.

First bath, in Kiev...we did a lot of bathing, to calm him down.

After the bath.

Strollering for miles and miles through Kiev, during the craziness of the
Eurocup Football Tournament.

At the playground in Kiev.

A fancy restaurant in the park.

Alex loved everything we fed him...the restaurant went well!

Then there was the upscale children’s store, where we bought Alex’s sling and a few other items. The staff there was amazing in that every single woman wore a deep frown, and seemed deeply unhappy to be there, and even more annoyed to be serving us.

The night before our trip home, I managed to get Alex to sleep by walking him around in the sling—for an hour or so, both up and down the very hot twelve flights of stairs (did I mention it was hot?), and outside, and back and forth in our living room. I managed to get him to sleep in the sling, and was so proud that I actually took some pictures—which woke him up. He didn’t go back to sleep until nearly 11 p.m., spending much of the time wailing pitifully and trying to kill us. Well, as best as he could considering his size and all. He was obviously as tired, exhausted, and stressed out as us.

Supposedly asleep in the baby sling. Ha!

We took another few hours to pack, then caught a few hours’ sleep before being awakened at 3 a.m. by our driver (“Wakey wakey,” he says over the cell phone—ha ha) to begin a grueling 24-hour journey back to the U.S.

I should say, we spent a good part of that last night on Facebook, frantically asking our Reece’s Rainbow adoption friends for advice and prayers. Boy, did they come through, offering great advice (“Crush the melatonin tablets into some food”) and tons of prayers and supportive comments. The flight home was stressful, but manageable—Alex did okay the entire time, other than a five-minute screaming fit on the first flight that woke half the plane with a start.

Home stretch...the last flight, from Chicago to Minneapolis. At this point we'd
been traveling 24 hours. Alex managed to sleep for about three or four hours.

Looking at a magazine. Alex probably spent five or six hours flipping through
magazines on these flights. Notice how Susan has to hold his feet in place
to keep him from sliding down.

People ask whether we had fun in Ukraine. I am sure over time we will forget the stressful parts and remember some of the funny moments, the wonderful, wonderful people, and some of the beautiful aspects of the trip. But writing this reminds me of why this has been one of the hardest few months of my life—and why I am so glad to be home, and so glad things are going so well with Alex.

Home one month

That smile just wins people over, every time.

With his younger brother (age two, left) and older sister (age seven, middle).

Alex has started eating on his own this week. Note the cloth pull-over bib --
after asking around for where we could find these, several people just gave
us some. One family even had this type of bib made to order!

It’s been a few days since we updated…largely because our evenings (when we update) have been filled with miniature child-based dramas or boring paperwork and research. I have been trying to figure out the mystery of the missing certificate of citizenship, and we have been researching Gillette Children’s Hospital, which apparently has one of the best cerebral palsy centers in the nation. Parents we know locally rave about it in all-capital letters.

Alex is doing very well. He seems to relax more every day, and he is picking up new words all the time. So far he knows ball, bye-bye, book, done (as in “all done”), stop, yes, no, and poopy. (This last word used anytime he soils or wets his diaper, even a little bit, which is heartening, since it implies bowel awareness—and the possibility that he will be using a toilet sometime in the coming year.) We’ve heard him clearly imitate, but not repeat, a few other words (like napkin). He demonstrates that he understands a lot of the practical things we say to him, answering appropriately to simple questions or directions. Surely he’s picking up on the sense of what we’re saying based in part on context, but it’s a start.

He has had his first few physical therapy sessions, mostly focused on stretching those very tight muscles. At home, he loves to bounce on Rodey, the inflatable bouncy horse that my uncle and aunt sent us for him. He spent several hours on this thing yesterday. We have to support him as he rocks or bounces. It helps him stretch the muscles in his inner thighs (I will learn the names of all these muscles before long), and it helps him develop trunk strength, which is necessary for sitting unsupported, not to mention crawling and walking.

We’ve been keeping things as “boring” and routine as possible, given the number of appointments we’ve had and given that we have four other kids, and that has been paying off in terms of his emotional stability. We’ve seen more calmness, and fewer breakdowns. On the other hand, he will come and find us wherever we are in the house (stopping at the bottom of the steps if we are upstairs) if we aren’t around. He is still very needy, which can be a little exhausting.

Among the many appointments we had this past week (at least one a day!) was one with the special ed coordinator at our school, as well as the head of school. Based on the advice of every expert we’ve met with, but most convincingly the psychologist from the International Adoption Clinic, we’ve decided to keep Alex home from school, probably for the year. It’s possible that he could start going part-time in the spring, depending on where he is at with his physical and emotional development. The good news is that the school is very willing to work closely with us on setting up some sort of services (mainly PT and OT) for Alex, either at home or in the special needs preschool. They will also hold a spot for him, in case we decide to enroll him partway through the year. He will definitely attend school the following year.

That does present a challenge for me as the stay-at-home parent, because our two-year-old is a major handful at the moment. He will be three in October, and he is into everything, wanting to be independent, and constantly in trouble. Translation: I will need to have an eye on him constantly, which makes me wonder how that is going to work when Alex is so very dependent on me physically and emotionally.

For that matter, our toddler is also very dependent on me emotionally. It is increasingly clear just how traumatic this month-long separation was—remember that I have been caring for him night and day, every day, since he was born. He is very, very angry—and also very, very sad, crying at the least little slight and constantly saying, “I need mommy” or “I need daddy” or “I need a hug.” Today his older brother found him in the middle of the street outside our house; he said “I need daddy” and started crying. (I was away at a physical therapy appointment with Alex.) Our other kids have been having their own transition difficulties, especially our youngest daughter (age seven).

Perhaps somewhat recklessly, we have scheduled a very small (two nights) family vacation for the end of next week. We’re going a couple hours down the river to Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin. Our youngest girl is thrilled about staying in a hotel with a pool. We shall see how this washes with Alex, but we need some “normalcy” (a family getaway) for the rest of the family, too.

Tomorrow will be a big day: It will be the one-month anniversary of our arrival in the United States with Alex, and he will be getting baptized in the morning at our parish. In the afternoon and evening, we will attempt to attend the twenty-year anniversary of the Winona Catholic Worker community, in which I was a volunteer for several years in the 1990s. (This is a community that runs two houses of hospitality for those in need of friendship, food, and shelter.) In a way, our welcoming Alex into our home and our community is an extension of that work, isn’t it? So it will be an appropriate celebration.

As for us—the parents—we continue to slowly re-assemble our lives, but as I said at the beginning of this post, right now we’re very focused on Alex from the moment we wake up until the moment we go to sleep, and sometimes the hours in between. It is simply stunning the amount of paperwork and bureaucracy you have to deal with just to give a little kid a home. And then there's getting educated on the many medical challenges Alex faces. On Wednesday I met with two local moms who have special needs kids (both with mobility issues). We met for about two hours...I left the restaurant with a notebook full of contact information and a spinning head. Parents of disabled children clearly move in a parallel world, often hidden out of sight from mainstream society. These parents learn to be real fighters, real advocates for their kids--or they get run over.

Finally, we continue to be awed by the generosity of our friends and neighbors. I think we're looking at several hundred people at this point who have done something specific for us. Tomorrow will be the last day of our Meal Train -- several dozen people brought meals for just about two months. Wow! And we've had people dropping off clothes and equipment, too -- we're expecting a donation of a wheel chair, special needs swing, and a bath chair in the next few days. We are very, very blessed, in so many ways!

Sweet story alert

Today, I was playing with Alex in the (thank goodness) air-conditioned living room when Julia came up to me, weepy and frustrated.  When I put Alex on the couch and sat and listened to Julia, I mentioned to Alex with concern: "Look.  Julia's sad.  Julia's crying."  (Trying to get him to recognize emotions properly, plus the English words).  I immediately noticed Alex pulling her shirt.  Then he made his kissing sound to the air. When I realized he was trying to kiss her, I explained that to the still weepy Julia and she bent her face down for a kiss, which he gave her.  Then, since she was closer to him, he began gently patting her shirt. 

Oh. My. Gosh.  I teared up.  And praised Alex and told Julia what a great gift she received--I do believe she is the first person he has tried to comfort.

Later tonight, I was putting him to bed, and he wanted kisses--me to kiss him.  It was so sweet.  And a first.  We've kissed him goodnight but it hasn't usually seemed to click.  I'm not saying it seems to click all the time now, but he seems to have crossed a hurdle that way.

--Susan

Some good developments today

We sat down after the kids went to bed and listed some new good developments we noticed today:

• Alex has been "kissing" people...we think our toddler initiated this cute little ritual. They were kissing each other (at different times) and laughing...and Alex kissed our younger daughter, which delighted her. (We still spend a huge part of the day keeping the toddler from stomping, scratching, biting, pinching, hitting, or otherwise hurting Alex, but kissing is moving in the right direction!)
• We ALL went to church TOGETHER this morning, and it was NOT A DISASTER!
• Alex is recognizing more English words every day. Today Susan asked him if he wanted the blanket, and he said "Da!" and pointed to it (elsewhere in the room). He also said "hot" today.
• He wanted to feed himself and attempted to do so, somewhat semi-successfully...with beets!
• I spent about an hour roughhousing with the three youngest kids (with our oldest daughter joining in on the side)...everyone had lots of fun, and it was a good way to connect with Alex and the other kids simultaneously. Plus I snuck some stretches in there with Alex.
• When he was beginning to lose it around noon, we popped him in the bathtub and that calmed him right down.
• No stimming for at least a week! (=hitting his head purposely)
• No purposeful hitting or biting or scratching in days, even when he is very upset.
• We've been able to get his five different medications/supplements into him on schedule so far.
• We had another wonderful meal delivered by our wonderful neighbors.
• We managed to have a lengthy Sunday family prayer time (about 40 minutes) with Alex and the toddler both present, which is a small miracle.

Sometime this week I would like to post pics and a bit of a narrative from Gotcha Day. Right now, gotta get to bed!

Crying

Things have been going relatively smoothly for the past two days, but then tonight Alex just lost it for no apparent reason. He had enjoyed a quiet day with only a brief doctor visit (for an x-ray) and had been really enjoying listening to one particular children's CD ("Standing on the Rock")--particularly a song that has "la la la" in it. He asks for it by that--"La la la?" He has started to call his older brother by name. We also spent a happy half-hour playing peek-a-boo with the bathroom door, and sliding junk mail under the door to him when he had it closed. (He can open and close it with his fingers from the floor.)

But then after supper he just didn't want to do anything. Whatever we presented to him he refused vehemently, and then he just started that sad, sad sobbing again, which lasted about an hour. On the upside, he let Susan console him, and he didn't try lashing out at her. Then our two-year-old lost it, too -- and no, I don't think it was copycat crying because there was a real trigger (hair washing) -- he just couldn't seem to stop. I think both boys are emotionally overwhelmed by all the changes in their lives, and sometimes it just all comes out in a torrent of sadness.

On the up side, the parents weren't crying! Tonight, out of the blue, our youngest daughter (age seven) said to me: "Dad, you and mom have to trust Jesus more." Why? "You just do!" Okay...seems like we're getting that message a lot lately!

The days are just packed

Hanging out outside

Drawing

Calvin and Hobbes fans will recognize the title of this post as ripped from one of the Calvin and Hobbes collections. It fits Alex because he has a bit of a mischievous streak in him, like Calvin. It also fits because, well, the days are packed.

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!

Our International Adoption Clinic appointment

Trying out a slide.

I wish I had video of Alex’s blood draw at the International Adoption Clinic at the University of Minnesota on Friday, but I had my hands full of kid at the time. They run a very slick operation up there—very professional and service-oriented. Anyway, they smartly put off the needles until the end of the appointment; as it was, Alex was already telling all the nurses and doctors, “Bye! Bye!” (His latest English word.) For the blood draw and TB poke, Alex sat in my lap. They had put numbing cream on both of his arms where they thought they might poke him, but for some reason the technician decided to take the blood from a spot on his wrist. He sat in my lap, the tech did his thing with assistance from a couple of nurses; Susan helped to hold one arm and reassure him, and another staff member was there solely to distract him with an iPad and various light-up toys. So here we have maybe six adults hovering over him, and this big scary needle coming at him, and my role is to hug him and offer reassuring words in my bad Russian, to wit: “This will hurt you a little bit.” Ha ha, I’m amazed he believed me with all the fuss, but aside from flinching and briefly crying out, he did just fine on both pokes.

The rest of the IAC appointment was extremely informative. We saw a pediatrician who specializes in seeing adopted children from Eastern Europe, and a physical therapist, and a psychologist—again, specializing in international adoptions from orphanages. The psychologist spoke Russian (she is from there), and we had an interpreter as well.

I think for the most part I will draw the veil of privacy across the details of the visit—feel free to ask if you see us, but we’ll keep most of it offline. The summarized version is that we learned a lot more about his cerebral palsy, as well as some home therapy options and possible medical interventions. We also learned a lot more about his medical condition, including a couple major pieces we didn’t know before. One sad piece was that one rib cage is somewhat deformed from him lying on that side of his body so much—another testament to a life spent largely in cribs. On the other hand, a good piece of news is that he has gained more than a pound in the couple weeks since his arrival home...not too bad, considering his starting weight of 25 pounds.

One significant piece of news to come out of our meeting with the psychologist was that she strongly recommends that Alex not begin school this year. We will be consulting with the relevant people at Alex’s school to see what they think about that, but she had three main reasons for her recommendation, all of which make sense to me. First, Alex needs more time to attach and to psychologically adjust to his new situation—being active most of the day, as opposed to mostly passive. Second, he needs to concentrate heavily on physical and occupational therapy. The physical therapist said there is lots of room for him to improve, but it’s going to take some work, and that will be his main task in the coming months. (We are already seeing significant improvement in his ability to support his head—he has been getting lots of exercise in holding his head up.) Third, he is so developmentally delayed that there’s not much that he would learn at school that he wouldn’t learn at home. He should be capable of reading and writing but his pre-literacy skills are virtually nonexistent, even such basics as recognizing that printed words correspond to spoken words.

Keeping him home was not in the master plan around here. He was supposed to go to school while his toddler brother stayed home. How exactly I am going to manage care for Alex and his brother on my own is frankly beyond me. We’re frantically doing paperwork to try to get support services in place, but bureaucracies grind slowly, so getting things in place by the beginning of the school year is probably unrealistic. Between now and September, it looks like our summer will be filled with paperwork and medical appointments.

Here are some more pictures of Alex:

Hanging out with grandma.

On the merry-go-round.

Yet another swing!

With our friend and Russian teacher. Notice he's got a water bottle--he can drink
from that just fine, and is getting better with a cup.

Learning new thngs every day

Learning how to work Legos.

Learning how to drink from a cup.

It is past bedtime, so short post today. I wish I had more videos to show you; back in Znam’yanka, we didn’t have water service part of the day and we didn’t have an oven or air conditioning, but we had blazing fast Internet. Now that I’m home it takes forever to upload videos again. I promise to upload some cute Alex videos when I have a few hours to sit on the upload process!

Alex seems to hit new milestones every day. Today the big one I noticed is that he actually tried to stick the Lego blocks on his Lego table, instead of just removing them or taking them apart and putting them in the bins. (He used to throw them until we took away the table several times.) It was weird to watch a kid his age struggle with something so basic, but he eventually managed to make three different blocks stick. He had to experiment to see which side would stick to the table. I don’t think he quite realizes intuitively that they have to be at right angles to the pattern of dots on the table, but he managed to make them stick accidentally anyway. We cheered and cheered! He is still more interested in taking them apart…we will see whether he tires of that developmental task and moves on to the more complex building process.

He is also learning how to use a cup. There is lots of spilling and choking involved, but he is getting better; he practices with a bit of water in the cup, and he practices in the tub and the pool.

He has also mastered the word “no,” thanks to his younger brother, but still uses the Russian variant when speaking to us.

We are off to the Twin Cities tomorrow to visit the International Adoption Clinic with Alex Friday morning. Extra prayers are appreciated. We will not be able to post until we return, probably Sunday.

Before I go, I’d like to plug another adopting family. They are trying to adopt two more girls; they have already adopted this little girl….

…and now they are trying to adopt her sister and another girl. You should see the before/after pics of their daughter! What a difference! My own sister has been advocating for this family for some time now, and has asked us to put a call out for some extra help for them to get them over the hump on their matching grant; if you’re able to pitch in, please do.