The workings of a "big" family

In the adoption world, 6 kids is not really a lot. I know so many families that have more than 6 kids that I sometimes forget what an oddity we are to other people we run into. And most people can't for the life of them figure out how we manage six kids. I get lots of comments about "How do you do it? I can hardly manage two!" Really, I think once you get past three or four it just doesn't matter anymore. But a little organization does help. And you definitely need to be able to count up to however many kids you have...over and over again. ;)

So how does life work with 6 kids? We're organized and follow a schedule (or at least we try really hard to be!). Every night, clothes are laid out for the next day. Each child has basically 10 days worth of clothing plus dress clothes (and school clothes as applicable). There is an under-bed drawer under each child's bed that has their clothes. School clothes are in a separate dresser with a drawer for each child. We do showers every other night and all six kids go through the shower one after the other. They brush their teeth then shower, then pajamas then stories. They all know the routine. :) In the mornings, I get the kids up and dressed and do the girls' hair. Then I send them downstairs to Mark who makes breakfast. I use my time upstairs for quiet time (praying, Bible reading, etc.) and finishing up any upstairs chores like putting away or gathering laundry. After breakfast the kids come back upstairs to brush their teeth, then it's downstairs for bathroom, shoes, and backpacks. Off to walk to school about 8am (right now that's a family affair unless Mark has to be at work early) then Mark goes to work and Bianca, Julia, and R come back home with me. When school is done I walk down with Bianca, Julia, and R to pick the other kids up. At home, the kids put their backpacks on the back of their dining room chairs and take out their papers from the day. We start homework as needed and the others go play. I finish getting dinner ready (if I've done well there's very little last-minute dinner prep) and we eat between 5 and 5:30. After dinner is playtime or showers depending on the night and we start all over again.

I have separate medical and school binders for each child. In their medical binders I keep their most recent physical and vaccination record for each child. This way I can just grab the relevant child's binder to look things up (or take with me to appointments) instead of trying to flip through information on the whole family. I have found the binders to be invaluable as we have several kids with medical needs.

We also have a big wall calendar that I use to keep track of everyone. It's particularly nice since Mark works occasional weekends plus we have lots of school functions that go on the calendar (two kids who take class snack to school at least once per month plus an amazing number of field trips). The wall calendar is also why I have been adamant that none of our kids have the same first initial. Every even put on the calendar has one or more initials in front of it designating who is participating in the event. That doesn't work well when people have the same first initial. So the kids' last dentist appointment looked like "ATDBEJ--Dr. A... 1pm". I know lots of people like colored pens or pencils for the calendar, but there's no way I'd remember who was which color, especially with eight of us in the house!

Mealtimes are pretty easy for us as we don't have any special needs regarding food. Each person has a specific spot at the table as well as a designated napkin. We had to institute that after lots of fighting over napkins. Now no one can complain that someone else got their napkin dirty. LOL

I'm sure there are other areas I'm leaving off, so feel free to ask questions in the comments!

A question

"Why do you love me, Mama?"

Asked not in simple curiousity, but out of desperation, and a true lack of understanding as to why someone could...would...love him. After all, everyone else had abandoned him.

Those who said they loved...left.

And he is left struggling to understand how it is that someone who didn't know him, now loves him.

How do I answer that question?

To some extent I understand. I have dealt with feelings of loss and abandonment for most of my life. They threatened the early years of our marriage as I could not shake the feeling that Mark would leave. Recent events in my family once again caused me to question how and why love is.

I don't know, Alex. I don't know why I love you. I don't know why others didn't love you, or why they did things that made you think they don't love you.

But here and now, I love you. You are my son. And I will choose to love you for the rest of my life.

Less than 16 hours

Today was a good day. We only had two wailing fits/temper tantrums, I think. Nevermind that one of them lasted for a hour and a half. And no, none of them were mine. ;)

I didn't go into all of the details about the little things that were derailing me a few days ago (with my rant post) but suffice it to say that we have toilet paper today and that has made a tremendous difference in my ability to stay calm during the tantrums. I really am serious about that. :) Running out of toilet paper, then buying paper towels by mistake because I was in a hurry and couldn't find any more toilet paper in the apartment (it was there), then staining the only pair of pants I have here because I only packed enough necessary items to get me to the Amstor in Mariupol which never happened...

A lot of little things piled up and I was finding it difficult to be as rational as I should be with handling two newly adopted children.

But we have toilet paper again, so I handled the 1.5 hour tantrum today calmly. The tantrum started because I asked Bianca to go to the bathroom so we could go outside. She didn't want to go and I told her we weren't going outside until she went, and she lost it. Not at all unexpected for a child in her situation. She is desperate to control anything she possibly can, because she's just lost everything, and I do mean everything.

When we were in Mariupol, one of the days we visited Julia brought out her worldly goods.

It made me want to cry. A few pieces of broken toys, a lego piece, a little doll, a coloring book...the little penguin thing she got after a visit to the hospital. Behind that is a birthday card from her caretakers this past January.

None of it came with her when she left the orphanage.

Can you imagine wanting something so badly that you would give up everything you owned, and everything you know, to obtain that? I'm not sure I could do that. But all of my kids have.

If they had told someone they didn't want to be adopted, they most likely would have been able to stop the adoption (except maybe Emily, because she had no speech and was only 3). They were old enough to make a choice. No, they probably didn't realize everything that choice entailed, but they knew they would be leaving. And they chose to leave. For us.

People they had only met a few times, but who held their hopes and dreams in our hands.

They left it all.

I think I'd be crying all day.

I feel like a crummy mom

The boys have been attending summer camp at their school. Since it's a Christian school and the camp is held at the Baptist church/school, we weren't too concerned about content. They go swimming every Monday, on a field trip ever Tuesday (today was the City Museum--lucky boys!!), to a movie every Wednesday, have stations (cooking, arts and crafts, etc.) on Thursday, and go bowling on Fridays. The boys love it and they are definitely sleeping well. :)

But we've run into a small problem with the movies.

It started the first day of camp (a Tuesday) when they came home and said they had watched The Tooth Fairy. Not only is it rated PG, but the grand total of what they got out of it was "the kid got mad and smashed his guitar!"

Not really life lessons we want our kids to be learning.

So I'm thinking it's a fluke...and then they watched Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (PG) and Alvin and the Chipmunks (PG). They are slated to watch Where the Wild Things Are (PG) today and I finally put my foot down. I don't want my kids watching that, and for more reasons than just the rating. I talked to the director of the program who said "well those are just the movies they show so that's what we go see." Really? Because I'm thinking the church would not be so happy that you're taking kids to see movies with cuss words in them (d*** and hell for the movie today...ones later on this summer are worse), not to mention the content, especially since about half the kids in the program are 7 years old and under.

So I had the fun job of telling the boys that they would not be going to the movie with all of their friends. Instead, they would be sitting outside the movie with the camp director. So now they think they have done something wrong or are in trouble. :(

As it worked out, Mark is going to take the boys to work with him this morning and drop them back off at summer camp at lunchtime. We're still looking into our options for next week...

End of school

This week is the last week of school, which means the past couple of weeks have been crammed full of field trips, meetings, homework, etc.

I am wiped out. I slept for 9 hours Friday AND Saturday night. It felt great. :)

Things are hopefully going to start winding down and settling into a summer routine after this week, but we still have: a field trip (Emily), a trip to the dentist to replace two fillings (me), kindergarten graduation (Tim), AE graduation (Danielle), speech (Emily), and Shakespeare in the Park (all of us if I can make it work!). Plus normal school and work schedules for everybody.

One of the reasons I've been lax in posting is that I've wanted to post about Alex and haven't quite known what to post. We've really struggled with whether or not to send him to second grade next year. He is failing math but that is the only subject he is failing--everything else he has As and Bs. The bigger problem is that he does not seem to want to do the work a lot of the time, so we are working on helping him through some of that. A lot of his problems right now are stemming from some issues from the orphanage, we believe, so we are working on the best way to help him grow past this. Don't get me wrong--it will always be part of him, but there are some things he needs to work through right now in order to move forward.

I think in a lot of ways he's coming to a breaking point for himself where he realizes he needs to let go of some of the "old" and he's really struggling with that. Some of his habits and survival skills he has had for a long time. He is starting to see that he needs to let go of them but I think he's very scared of doing that--of really opening up. I don't want to say this is not about attachment because I'm sure some of this affects his feelings and interactions with us as well, but this is really about Alex and his view of himself (which is quite often where attachment problems come from too). I think Alex is secure in his place in our family. He shows good attachment signs and we have no qualms about his attachment, although I personally believe it takes longer than a couple of years for a child with a background like his to be firmly and completely attached.

This really boils down to his self-esteem and self-worth.

In addition to helping him work through some of those issues, we are tackling the math too. :) I recently purchased the Alpha set of Math-U-See. Alex is a very visual learner so I'm hopeful that this may help him "get" math better than the curriculum they use at school. We will be starting this after school is out and doing a little bit each day. I'm actually going to do it with the three oldest (not sure about Emily yet) as I think it will be beneficial for all of them, too.

NB: I've turned off comments for this post, not because I don't like you. :) :) I would love some encouragement right now but I'm not up for discourses on what we should be doing for Alex. I have not posted the full situation here nor how we are handling it and that is intentional. So please trust that we are working towards the best solutions to help Alex and please be praying for him and us that we can help him heal from his past. Thanks! :)

Overheard

"Can I put my shoes on and go outside?"
"I don't know. I'm not mama, you know."

*********

"These are our dogs. We have 1000 dogs. Can we have more dogs?"

*********

"Is bake sale tomorrow?"
"No, tomorrow is Tuesday."
"I know, but is bake sale tomorrow?"
"No, tomorrow is Tuesday."
"I know, but is bake sale tomorrow?"

I hope she's always this insightful

School really wears Danielle out and by the end of the week she's pretty much done. On Thursdays they always have homework due on Friday...find 3 pictures that start with the letter for the next week, glue them on the page, and write the words. Yesterday was the letter "V". Since Danielle's English vocabulary is still pretty limited it's hard for her to understand "find a picture that starts with the letter..." so I usually cut out several pictures for her that start with the appropriate letter. We go through them to work on vocabulary then she picks which ones she wants to use for her homework. She glues them on and then we use hand-over-hand so I can help her write her words. (If I let her write "vegetables" by herself it would cover the page!)

She had finished gluing and writing the words yesterday and needed to write her name on the bottom. She can't spell her name independently yet but she does know how to write the letters of her name, so I told her to write a letter "D".

Complete meltdown.

You would have thought I'd asked her to write out the Constitution. :)

She cried and cried, said "Mama, heellppp" (but didn't want to listen when I tried to help verbally), and just kind of made a mess of herself. She wasn't being loud or throwing a tantrum so I just let her cry it out. At one point I turned to her and said "Are you all done crying?" to which she replied while crying

"IIII neeed uhhhh NAAAPPPP...."

Truer words have never been spoken.

But it wasn't an option since it was 4:30 and we were waiting for Alex and Emily to finish speech. So once she had calmed back down and stopped crying I handed her back her pencil and she wrote a D. Then an a, n, i, E, l, l, E.

And she was fine the rest of the day.

Update on the alarm (and other random news)

Tuesday night...alarm at 5am. Mark got up with the BW and he was already headed towards the bathroom.

Wednesday night...NO ALARM!!! The BW woke up at 5:30am (he might have been woken up by my alarm, thinking it was his alarm LOL), got up and went to the bathroom, and went back to bed. I consider that progress!

In other news, we just found out that insurance decided to stop covering Alex's speech therapy.

Last NOVEMBER.

We now have a pending $3500(!!) bill for speech. I am working on getting this straightened out but I am a little irritated that it takes them 3 months to let me know that we are no longer covered.

In more other news, we got a bid for the HVAC system at the "dirty house". We had been planning on about $10K for all of it and hoping (praying!) it wouldn't be much higher than that.

$6700. Wonderful, wonderful news. Balances out that $3500 from speech. ;)

A solution for bedwetting?

I've discussed our resident bedwetter (henceforth known as BW) before on the blog, although I still won't share any details as to who it is. :) I've been praying for months that I would be able to find a used bedwetting alarm--after all, if they work so well there should be lots of used ones available, right?


A few days ago I felt a prompting to check Craigslist for the alarms again...and sure enough one was listed! It's exactly the kind I'd been wanting to get except about half the price of buying it new. We picked it up on Saturday.

My BW was super-excited to try this out. He doesn't want to wet the bed any more than we want him too, so he was excited about this thing "that would help his body learn to get up and go to the bathroom."

My biggest concern with the alarms was that they're supposed to be pretty loud. I had tested it during the day Saturday and it didn't seem terribly loud but then we weren't all sleeping at the time either. Saturday night at 2am I heard a weird buzzing and woke up enough to realize it was the alarm. I hopped out of bed and went into the boys' room, half expecting my BW to be freaked out by the buzzing and vibration of the alarm on his shoulder.

Nope. Dead to the world. I had to shake him for a good 30 seconds to get him to wake up enough to get out of bed. ;) Thankfully everyone else stayed asleep too!

Since I wasn't keen on the idea of changing bedclothes in the middle of the night, we are using regular underwear with the alarm sensor clipped to them then a pullup over that. I figured this way I would only have to change his underwear and not all of the bedclothes (I don't really function all that well in the middle of the night so this is for everyone's benefit). So after BW went to the bathroom we swapped out the wet underwear and put on clean stuff and I sent him back to bed. I'm keeping a full change of clothes for him in the bathroom to make it faster and easier to get us both back to bed (without waking anyone else up).

Sunday night...alarm at 10:30pm and he was sort of groggily awake (but completely clueless as to what was going on).

Monday night...alarm at 1am he was up and walking to the bathroom before I made it into his room. Yay!!!

If I understand everything correctly, once he is consistently waking up to the alarm his body will start to learn to wake up before he starts peeing and he will be able to just get up and go without setting off the alarm. Right now he is still wetting a lot in the pullups, but that is supposed to decrease as we use the alarm.

Is it sad that the most exciting thing for me this weekend was buying a bedwetting alarm?? We did lots of other fun stuff, but by far I am most excited about this!

A weekend with family

Mark had to work on Friday so we drove down to my mom's house Friday night. The kids slept a bit in the car and then we put them straight to bed when we got there. They settled back in nicely and were soon asleep. They've been excited all week about going to Babushka's house. It's been part of Tim's prayers every day--"Thank you I'm so excited we're going to Babushka's house!"

Saturday was a blast. We had lots of people at my mom's house for lunch: 1 from the top generation (my granddad), 4 from my mom's generation, 10 from my generation, and 9 from our kids' generation. Total: 16 adults, 8 kids, and 7 dogs. I was so thankful it was nice outside. ;)

The kids did wonderful and played with their extended family all day. I did put Emily down for a nap in the early afternoon and she was asleep within minutes. I'm sure the other three could have slept as well but they were really doing well. I was watching for some of their typical signs of overload or exhaustion but everyone was doing great so I let them continue playing. The biggest highlight of the weekend for me was with Emily. She did not fling herself on anyone (in part because we didn't let her get to that state of exhaustion) but she did have appropriate contact with people. She was looking at pictures on my cousin's camera and Wendy was sitting down and Emily just leaned against her gently with her hand on Wendy's knee. She didn't wrap her arms around her leg or ask to sit in her lap or any of the other behaviors we have seen in the past with people she doesn't know. At the end of the day when my sister and her husband were leaving, I was holding Emily. I intentionally passed Emily to Jon for a hug, took her back, then passed her to my sister for a hug. In the past, whenever she has had physical contact with people outside of our immediate family she would wake up screaming at night.

She didn't wake up. :) She slept all night long without a problem.

I'm so excited to see Emily's emotional growth as she learns what a family and specifically what a mama and a papa are and do. I was very intentional about the way I passed her to people for hugs. I wanted her to understand that I decide who is acceptable for her to hug and that she is not allowed to just go hug whomever she wants. That was the reason behind passing her to my brother-in-law then taking her back before passing her to my sister. I don't know if it really makes a difference. But it seems to me that even if it's not a conscious difference to her that it may stick subconsciously that "mama is in control and mama lets me hug people who are safe." I'm hoping we can continue to build on her understanding of our role in her world so that she will look to us for guidance as she expands her social network.

All of the kids slept so well Saturday night. :) Sunday they played a little bit but we headed home pretty early to make sure we were home in time to get ready for the week. I really dislike getting home late after a long weekend. We end up having a miserable time at bedtime and it just feels like a bad start to the week. It was great to get home and have the afternoon to unpack and relax at home. Baths and bedtime went really smoothly and they were all asleep within 15 minutes. :)

Continual therapy

We try to incorporate a lot of therapy into the kids play in non-obtrusive ways. In fact, with pretty much everything they do I look for opportunities to tack on some therapy--my definition of therapy being structured activities to help bridge gaps or repair deficits in their knowledge or skills.

Here are some of our current "therapies":

Emily struggles with going up and down stairs and jumping. Her legs are not strong enough yet although they are amazingly stronger than when she came home. To work on her leg muscles and her jumping, we have been playing a game where she climbs onto a phone book and "jumps" off. It's not usually a jump (she usually steps off one foot at a time) but she has jumped a couple of times and I make a big deal out of it. I sit in front of her to encourage her and to catch her if she loses her balance. We also work on stepping up and down on the phone book alternating legs. I've also worked some on this with Danielle, but I usually try to keep it to one child at a time. The benefit to doing two or three at a time is we also work on taking turns. :)

All of the kids LOVE to cut. If you want to keep them busy for an hour, give them paper and scissors. :) Danielle does a great job using the scissors but struggles with being able to cut productively, so we've made a game out of me drawing lines on the paper for her to cut. First we started with straight lines which she can cut really well. Then we did zigzags which I stapled into crowns for the kids. Now we are working on circles (these are really hard for her--even big circles). Part of the problem is that she thought she was trying to save the paper on the outside of the circles so she would cut her circles apart in the process of trying to "cut out" the outside edges. Now I've given her incentive to cut out the circles. When she finishes her circles, I put a happy face on one side and a sad face on the other. Then we talk about "happy" and "sad" and the corresponding faces. This is great for language and emotional development, too. :)

We drink raw milk that we get from a local farmer. Recently, I've started skimming the cream off of the top and we've started making butter. On Saturday the kids helped me with this. We all looked at the cream as it started, then passed the container (a clear plastic container) around and took turns shaking it (which was really good for some of my coordination-challenged kids!). We practiced listening for the sound of the liquid and looking inside the container to see what was happening. They loved that we had butter at the end so we had fun and a good "lesson" at the same time.

Six months home (plus a bit)

The girls have now been home for 6 months so I thought some of you might like an update.

Danielle: She walks nearly normally now and her legs have gotten so much stronger. A month or two ago when she was walking I could tell that her ankles were turning in due to weakness--even that has now corrected itself! We are constantly getting comments from parents and teachers at school about how much her walking and balance has improved. Danielle is VERY social and all of her classmates love her (the feeling is mutual). She loves school and loves to tell me all of the things she does each day. Her English is coming along really well. We can actually have conversations now and swap questions and answers. There are still times when she says things and I say "what??" and she shrugs and smiles and says "I no know" because she's trying to tell me something but she doesn't actually know the English word for it. She is such a funny girl--her new favorite word is "yeehaw" (they just studied cowboys in school). Danielle has gained 8 lbs in 6 months and weighs nearly as much as her brothers!

Emily: Our little talker is having a language explosion! Her speech is getting much clearer with her obdurator although most people would be hard-pressed to understand much of it. She absolutely loves to sing and walks around in the afternoons asking me to sing with her. Emily wants to do everything the big kids do and they do a really good job of looking after her (and tattling when she's doing things she's not supposed to!). She showers just like the big kids and has gained at least 5 lbs since coming home. She can dress and undress herself with the occasional exception of shirts (she has a hard time getting them off by herself). Emily is our snuggler and we usually spend 15-20 minutes in the afternoon with me "slinging" her without a sling. I hold her on my hip but tuck her right arm behind me and drop her down a bit and she snuggles into my chest. I think this has been great for her bonding. I've debated actually getting a sling (baby wrap, etc.) but since she's already at 30 lbs I'm not sure how much longer we'd be able to use it. We've seen a great decrease in her attempts to hug anything in sight but we still watch her like a hawk and usually head things off before she even gets a chance to try. Oh, and Emily can now run. And I do mean run. When we first got home she could barely walk so it's great to watch her take off after her siblings (although she gets mad when she can't catch them!).

Let me know if you have any questions about where they're at developmentally and their progress since coming home. I tried to hit some of the highlights but I might have left off some things that people would like to know. :)

I should mention that I LOVE the six-month mark. It just seems to feel like things are settling down at about 6 months home. Language is no longer such a barrier and I really start feeling a connection to the kids after 6 months. I felt this same way with the boys. I'm not sure if I need 6 months to adjust to them or they need that 6 months to adjust to family life, but either way it's great to see how far we've all come!

Halloween

I must confess to not being a big fan of Halloween. I don't particularly like scary things--there are enough things to scare me in real life that I don't get any pleasure out of artificially scaring myself.

I do remember with great joy, however, my own childhood trick-or-treating--and maybe a bit beyond childhood if I'm truly honest ;). It was so much fun to go with my parents and later my friends and go door-to-door (hoping for as much chocolate as possible).

Since Mark had to work both Saturday and Sunday (yeah, 12 straight days of work for him!) we went to church on Saturday night. We picked up pizza on the way home and then I put the girls to bed while Mark took the boys trick-or-treating around our neighborhood. We'd had a long day with soccer and lots of playing outside and the girls were just wiped out. We did promise Danielle that she could go trick-or-treating next year. She really wanted to go and we simply told her she was still too little.

The boys' costumes were not elaborate to say the least. Tim wore the police coat that Alex wore last year and Alex wore his costume from school on Friday. Friday all of the kids dressed up with a theme for their class. Tim and Danielle's classes both did "community workers" so Danielle wore the police coat and Tim was a "truck workman" (his concoction, which apparently requires a hard hat and a blue shirt). Alex's class was supposed to dress up as someone from the food service industry.

I struggled with what to send him as for awhile. I wanted to make sure it was something where he would understand what his job was. I debated a waiter (using a bow tie) but he's never been to that kind of restaurant. ;) I thought about a chef because he has an apron that will fit him, but I thought it would cause restricted movement at school and be hard to play around. Finally it hit me. He could go as a nutritionist! They've been studying "good" and "bad" food at school so he could understand the basic concept that a nutritionist is someone who tells people which foods are "good" and "bad." I pinned up an old lab coat of Mark's and sewed on a name tag that read "Alexander ..., Nutritionist." I had told Alex I would put his name on it..."Alex ..., Nutritionist" and he corrected me and said no, ALEXANDER ... apparently that's his professional name. ;)

One of our biggest goals for our children is to help them be successful with where they're at. There are a lot of concepts that Alex still just doesn't get. He's been hearing and speaking English for less than 2 years and he still hasn't experienced a lot of things that kids growing up here would have experienced by age 7. By seeking things he can be successful in now, we hope to give him the confidence to continue to grow beyond his past and succeed in all areas of life.

As he was taking off his lab coat Saturday night, he turned to me and said "Mama, I really like this costume." :)

Crazy week

Alex is driving us crazy. He has basically stopped doing his work at school which means he has to do it at home. It is making my afternoons nuts to be trying to get dinner on the table, help Tim and Danielle with any homework they may have, and keep Emily entertained all while listening to the whines of "I can't do it...I can't find it...I can't...I can't" (which, by the way, he can, and when he stops talking he gets his work done very quickly).

Tuesday night I hit a wall and said no more. Yelled it is probably more like it. :)

I told Alex that because he wasn't doing his work at school that he would not be going to school.

What he didn't know is that I already had to stay home Wednesday morning to wait for the gas man (long story--huge bill in the summer--meter not working--fixed now). I took the opportunity to try to convince Alex that it would be a much better idea to do his work at school rather than at home. Part of the issue is that I think he likes the attention he gets from me (even if some or most of it is negative) when he does his work at home. No matter what, he has to have me check his work and sign off on it, and if it's wrong it gets erased and redone.

All of that changed Tuesday.

He brought home 4 papers he had not done (completely blank--all of his seatwork for the day) and another math paper that had to be corrected that he had failed. I was livid, because every piece of paper he brought home was on things that he can do without any assistance whatsoever. And because of the school district we're in, we send the kids to a small private school, so we are paying for him to go and not do any work and then make the afternoons and evenings miserable doing it all then.

So we have a new rule at home for him. Any work that does not get done at school will be done (or corrected) at home. And then it will all be erased and done again. And again.

Yesterday morning he spent at home doing his work again and again and again. He missed chapel, bake sale, recess, and lunch with his friends (and you can bet I reminded him of that several times). After the gas man had come and gone I took him to school...just in time for seatwork! What a fun day, huh?

I honestly don't know if it will help, but I'm at my wit's end trying to figure out how to get him to do his work.

Progress on many fronts

I'm excited to report that Danielle and I are starting to develop more of a relationship. This has been a lot of work on my part and I continue to struggle with it but I can see definite results. That encourages me to continue working so that she and I can have a great mother-daughter relationship throughout her life. In truth though, she's in love with her papa. :) In church on Sunday, he crossed his legs (ankle on knee) and while she normally crosses her legs like a girl as soon as she saw him do it she mimicked the exact same position. She will do anything and everything to get his attention (though her methods could stand some improvement). It's also understandable as she's never had a lot of male attention and isn't quite sure how to relate to him.

We finally seem to have found something that is of value to Dima. He loves playing soccer. So much so that when he was doing his homework the other night and started a wailing fit, I told him that if he didn't stop he would miss out on soccer practice.

He immediately stopped. Woohoo! We've been trying for a long time to find something of enough value to him that it would act as an incentive for him to change his behavior. Hopefully he continues liking soccer! Dima's also been doing really well in first grade academically. There are still a few gaps that we are addressing, but he's really doing a lot better than I had anticipated. Behaviorally he's still a bit on the young side I think, but he's making a lot of improvements and I'm really glad he has the teacher he does this year.

Emily's official insurance coverage letter for anesthesia (for her dental work) came through this week. I think they're only covering 80% but believe me I am happy they are covering any of it. She is absolutely loving preschool and they adore her. Her teacher works so hard at not being affectionate with her and I really do think it is paying off. Of course, just when I think we're making progress, she throws herself on some poor man at soccer practice. Sigh. It's a good thing she's cute!

Habits

Like many children who have been institutionalized, our girls have come with their own set of behaviors and mannerisms that they have developed over the years to help them survive. Some of those behaviors we have already seen diminish (although they do pop up every now and again) like Danielle trying to talk over everyone else and sticking her hands out for things (as in, in your face) to try to get things before someone else or instead of someone else.

But we've had a few behaviors that have hung on, in particular for Danielle. It's not surprising since she was in the orphanage for a long time and she is older than Emily (even though Emily was in the orphanage from birth). One particularly problematic habit is coughing in the night to try to wake Emily up. If Danielle wakes up in the middle of the night, instead of going back to sleep or calling out for one of us (or anyone), she starts coughing. She will cough and cough harder and louder until she gets Emily to wake up (which usually makes Emily cry) and then stops. Initially we thought perhaps it was allergies, but it's become apparent over several months that this is an intentional behavior. One of the problems with it is that it becomes very hard to know if she has a real cough--not to mention that coughing is not good for your airways and that she's waking other people in the house up. This is obviously something she was already doing before she came to live with us--she doesn't cry or cry out (although she does if she wakes up and is scared, like during a thunderstorm)--but using the coughing as a way to wake someone else up for company. I'm guessing maybe she was able to cough at the orphanage loud enough to wake other kids up but not loud enough to get in trouble for it.

We've now taken a more proactive approach to dealing with this since we can't have Danielle waking everyone else up just because she's awake. So now if she starts coughing in the middle of the night we move her to a separate room. It's not intended to be a punishment, and we have told her (and she understands) that she goes in the other room so that she doesn't wake Emily up. But she doesn't like sleeping by herself and we are seeing less and less of the coughing at night. Last night she woke up, coughed once, then stopped and went back to sleep (I give her one or two tries to get the coughing under control before I move her to the other bedroom--sometimes you just need to cough!). I know it will take some time for her to stop this since it has become such an ingrained behavior, but we really want to encourage her to stop for her sake and the rest of the family.

Danielle also has another habit which is pretty typical for kids her age and probably even more so for kids who have been institutionalized--especially ones with special needs who got little to no stimulation or activities.

Danielle likes to pick at things. She specifically likes to pick at scabs, but if she doesn't have a scab she will pick at her cuticles or anything else handy until she strikes blood. Then she comes running asking for medicine. :) I certainly don't have a problem putting medicine on her cuts and scrapes, but we want to discourage her from self-inflicted wounds so I have finally told her that I will not put medicine on things she has picked at (that's not entirely true but she doesn't know that--I'm certainly not going to let something get infected even if it was self-inflicted). It seems to be decreasing the amount of picking. Part of the picking is attention-seeking, but I think part of it too is boredom. While her English is coming along great (way better than the boys at the same amount of time home), I think it's still hard for her to understand everything and she gets bored of trying to pay attention and understand all of the time. It's much more entertaining to pick at scabs. :) :)

I'd like a hole in my head, please

Emily had a cold over the weekend. Literally...over the weekend. She started sneezing on Friday, sneezed all day Saturday and was really congested, didn't sneeze much on Sunday (but had a cough) and was fine yesterday. Of course, now I've got it. I never thought I'd be thankful for Emily's cleft palate, but now I wish I had a hole in my head that would let my sinuses drain!

Last night Danielle woke up crying in the middle of the night. She either had a bad dream or fell asleep on her arm funny, because she woke up crying that her arm hurt. As soon as I had calmed her down, the first thing out of her mouth was "Go school today?" Ummm, yes, but not at 1am.

Dima's still struggling with controlling his emotions in the late afternoon/evening. As far as we can tell, he's doing great at school so I think he's mainly just worn out from working so hard at school. If we have to have behavior problems I'd much prefer we have them at home than at school. And still, the behavior problems we have are so minor I really can't complain. I wish he'd just figure out that the wailing doesn't work. And since I know he can control himself it's almost more of a matter of waiting it out until he works all of this out of his system (while being consistent in our response to it, of course). The other day he literally wailed for an hour then came in and said very matter of factly "Mama, can you help me find this picture on my puzzle?" He can turn the wailing on and off at will which is what makes it so irritating that he doesn't just stop doing it. His hands continue to heal and a couple of his fingers look almost normal now. He seems to be doing okay about not picking on them or chewing on them (at least not much) at school. At home we keep the gloves on quite a bit with ointment on underneath. It's not so much that he chews on his hands more at home as it is that it's easier to keep the medicine on and not have it smeared all over the house with his gloves on.

One of Zhenya's favorite things to do is sing. He loves music and making up his own songs. We were at church on Sunday and during worship he complained to Mark that he couldn't see. Mark told him to look over to the side and he'd be able to see the words on the screens over there (as opposed to the big screen in the middle). Zhenya looked around and then turned around and said "No, I can't see the guitar!"

I'm debating the logistics of starting music lessons with each of them (maybe not Emily just yet) one night a week for 15-20 minutes. Now that Mark will be home in the evenings, I could take one of them into the office and do some intro piano so they can start learning to read music. It may just depend on whether or not they're interested, but I have a feeling the answer would be a resounding yes for all of them!

Dima's very bad day

It's been a while since anyone's had a bad day, so I guess we're about due. :)

Yesterday, Dima had a really bad day. Now, I need to qualify that by saying that for some parents, when their child has a really bad day it involves hitting or screaming or running away. Thankfully, we have experienced none of those behaviors with any of our children. Dima's bad day consisted of a bizarre amount of regression. He spent pretty much the whole day in his old wailing fits, more or less one after the other. What was even more bizarre is that it carried over into speech therapy yesterday afternoon.

When his speech therapist came out to get him, I didn't mention anything about his bad day. I was hoping that he would behave differently for her (as has happened in the past) and I didn't want to bias her in expectation of poor behavior.

Apparently, I should have warned her.

She kept him the whole hour, but afterwards she said she basically spent the last half-hour redirecting him. He chewed on his hands/fingers until they bled, couldn't focus, and whined enough to drive her to distraction. She said she's never seen him act so much like a baby (her words). And from what Mark described of Dima's behavior yesterday at home, what the speech therapist saw was just a continuation.

What's frustrating to me is that I can't figure out the trigger. I have three guesses--a new stuffed animal he's been playing with (that he's had for a long time but just started playing with), the concert the kids went to yesterday with Mark, or school starting in a few weeks.

OR--maybe it was just a bad day.

That's the hard part about having children with an unknown history. I'm always second-guessing, trying to make sure we're doing everything we can to help our children heal. But it's really hard to help them heal when you don't know what hurts! And how do I know that he wasn't just having an out-of-sorts day...one of those days where everything just feels wrong (heck, I have those days too)...and he just doesn't have the language to help him talk about it and process it?

Last night at dinner I asked him a few leading questions about the concert on Wednesday. I got normal responses and nothing that would indicate that that was a trigger for his behavior. I've pretty much ruled that one out. I'm leaning towards school starting as the trigger, but it's just puzzling. He says he's excited to go to first grade (and he really is--you should she his eyes light up when he talks about it!). He knows his teacher's name, he knows other kids in his class...so maybe it's just that he's anticipating the change in routine.

So...we'll keep plugging along, being consistent, and trying to get to the bottom of the problem if there seems to be one. In the meantime, I hope he has a better day today!

No puking

Hooray! Our pediatrician was able to find a one-dose treatment for the giardia and the girls had no side effects from it. They took mebendazole, which is normally used to treat pinworms. I could not find good info online that it can also be used to treat giardia in one-dose, but I know our pediatrician did a lot of research as well and I trust her research options better than mine. No puking this time around and I am so glad I spoke up and asked for a different medicine!

No one has been waking up at night since we took out the nightlights (or at least not waking up upset!). The girls are sleeping soundly enough that I can go in their room at night. When all of the kids first came home, they did not sleep soundly at all. Dima and Danielle would both startle awake at the slightest noise or touch. Now everyone sleeps soundly, telling me they are comfortable and feel secure in their beds and that we are there with and for them (that, and they're exhausted from playing all day! :)).

It has been so much fun to watch Dima's progress this summer. He is really started to gain some maturity. He is not "over" all of the survival behaviors that he learned in the orphanage, but he is making tremendous progress. I think it has helped him to have the girls at home, as he gets to be the big brother now. He always was before, but since he and Zhenya are so close in age I think they always felt more like twins than big brother-little brother.

The boys have decided that they want to be called Alex and Tim for school this year. We have been spending time with all of their names this summer, and they have requested to be called Alex and Tim (or sometimes Timmy). I'm trying to get in the habit of using their first names by calling them Alex Dima and Timmy Zhenya, but it's hard! LOL Every time I remember and say "Alex Dima" he always turns around and says "Thank you Mama for calling me Alex Dima" so I think it's something I need to work on more diligently. Please forgive me if I mix up names in the blog--this is going to be a harder transition for me than the boys! :)

The end of the nightlight saga

Thursday night, I woke up at 4 in the morning to very loud crying. Assuming it was Emily, I had the girls' door halfway open before I realized that the crying wasn't coming from their room. I hurried down to the boys room to find Zhenya standing in the middle of his room, crying. Once I got him calmed down enough that I could understand what he was saying, I figured out that apparently he had woken up and thought that the shadows in the wrinkles in his sheets were something in his bed. Once I showed him it was just his sheets, he was fine and went back to bed. As I left the room, I pulled out their nightlight.

The next morning, I pulled out the girls' nightlight too. We needed to return them anyway since they wouldn't turn off (they were supposed to automatically turn on and off) and I've decided if the kids are comfortable sleeping in the dark then we'll just go with that. The nightlights were for Mark and I, not them, anyway, so that we could see when we went in their rooms at night.

I found your comment interesting, BT. But I'm gauging their response more on how they go to sleep at night than what happens when the wake up in the middle of the night (since then they're usually disoriented and possibly scared). When the kids first came home, all of them had a hard time going to sleep at night. It was completely understandable, as they were in a new place with new people and everything was different. Now all of our kids go to sleep easily at night, without fuss, and fall asleep quickly, telling me that they feel safe and secure in their beds and knowing that we are here. (It's also still light here when they go to bed, so we'll see if anything changes when it's winter! :))