Easter Smester, where is the candy

Firstly I want to thank those of you who caught up to me to shame me into updating and those of you who just thought that! I get the message. Spring has sprung and look, our summer is on the way!

Easter, wow, what a long time ago we landed at Baltimore-Washington Airport. We can still vividly remember the dark first days as the test of wills began. I remember sitting on the family room floor at five in the morning desperately searching the Internet for some form of support group and listening for the first sounds of movement that would mean we had very angry, frustrated and confused intruders or rather prisoners trying to escape.

Masha has come through the shock of an injury (we promise the kids were not involved in any way!) and is now working on recovery. The patience part of healing is a little harder with the kids to contend with. She has been overwhelmed by the well wishers, flowers and cards. She is a trooper and itching to get back in the game.

The week of Easter was very strange, having Friday off, in the week after break. The kids are confused enough by the pattern of a normal week and now compound that with extra off days when we both worked and Easter on top of that.

Our Church held their annual eggstravaganza event and as it turned out the light drizzle did not dampen their spirits in the least. The netted about 5 lbs of candy and goodies between them. The older and faster two made short work of the egg hunt. They all enjoyed the kiddie carnival immensely.

The world must be a very strange place here, with wonder upon wonder around each corner; dance classes, soccer, parades on Constitution Avenue with no less than Burt and Ernie compared to the seasonal monotony of their orphanage. With a steady methodical build up to each event on the calendar, carefully orchestrated to culminate in the musical play with a quarter of the 200 children performing for a smattering
of town VIPs and themselves.

The confusion is compounded since Masha is not speaking Russian to them, so explaining Easter was a little trickier. I don't know what the Orphanage interpretation of the passion was, but it was looked forward to when they understood that was ahead.

On Saturday night we took the kids to the Hanna Montana movie at a theaterplex in Crystal City. Sasha was singing along with a tune radio in English as we headed for the freeway, Tanya sitting on the edge of. Seat and Christina enthralled with what she could make of the story.

Flash! the kids ate spaghetti with sauce! I thought I was going to pass out!

Sorry for the delay in posting, but it is nice to know ya'll are stopping by to look.

Erik, Motrin is my friend

Late Updates...

"Oooops, ouch, that's gotta hurt" department:
Well my first trip the the E.R. was a good practice session. Masha had a slip on some stairs at Church and she and I spent the evening and almost into Sunday morning at the George Washington University E.R.. I think "pride" was the greatest injury, but its gonna hurt for a while. Keep her in your prayers for rapid healing and patience 'till everything works well again.

Travels:
On the way back from the educational testing for Sash and Tanya on the 13th, we stopped by Bethlehem Pennsylvania and visited Rachel and Mike (Heidi's sister's daughter and her husband) and met their new addition. We were all amazed how well the kids took to the week-old Tamsin.




As they Blogged:
"We had a nice surprise last week when Heidi and Erik stopped by with two of their kids, Tanya and Sasha. We were amazed at how they took to Tamsin. Tanya gave her a bottle, wrapped her up and rocked her like an old pro. It was really cool to meet the kids we've heard so much about." (http://www.rmiriam.blogspot.com/)

Erik

Late March

The kids are in school three whole weeks and bang-oooh, its spring break! These kids must be thinking this is a great place!

Well, not to let them backslide too much, Mama had a plan. Sasha was off to soccer day camp run by DC Parks & Recreation. The girls went off to Camp Masquerade, offered by the Girl Scouts. Here's their camp pictures:



We have been out exploring the different parks and playgrounds around town. Here they defy gravity in a kool rope jungle gym at Garfield park in S.E. DC.

Between playgrounds with their swing addiction. "Papa,Papa, one more.. one more.. one more (push)". 
Two of the upsides of orphanage life we see for these kids today:

One is a well-developed ability to share things. Conversely the concept of private property is a little underdeveloped.

Number two is, what I call the Timex effect – they take a licking and keep on ticking. I have seen Tanya fall off a swing and land flat on her back, after two and half tears she was right back in the saddle and giving her very chagrined and relieved Papa the "one more ...." routine.

Tanya and our intrepid friend Clinton, in a timed heat as Sasha cheers them on:
The day at the races. We took all three to a little 1/8 of a mile track at the Rec center to break in their new-to-the-kids bikes and training wheels. It was like an hour-and-a-half of amateur night at the NASCAR track. More spills and thrills than the Wide World of Sports opening credits. Each time Christina crashed, she would quickly remount while crying for another 20 meters of progress. After I adjusted the training wheels her success rate began to improve. At the end, Sasha is about to move on to unassisted crashing and I think the girls are well on their way to control peddling and braking (two out of three at a time).

Masha helped Tanya with this banana, raisin and pretzel caterpillar thing, that was made from a kids cook book Heidi brought home. The kids are getting more and more adventurous in dining, but they are a long way from curry and jalapeños. Most recently they made the jump, a blind leap of faith you might say, and tried a hot fudge Sunday. Wow, what a bunch of risk takers! 

They have all been making steady progress on schedules and rituals. Every night used to be a test of wills, and now it is mostly organized and peaceful(er). At first we had been trying to get them all in bed at the same time. This turned into a double bunk bed jungle gym time for three hours until we went to bed in disgust.

Older and wiser:
Our first trick was to stagger them into bed at 30-minute intervals and now add in picture books to let them unwind. This is the 80% solution but a whole lot better than where we started.

We had been warned that the kids will cycle into and out of moods. Yesterday, the girls came out of day camp in a rare mood. They drove Masha and I out of the library because of their active resistance. Because we could feel an ugly mood coming on, we headed for the car. Then last night, Christina and I had a little face-off over bedtime. The other kids stayed in bed (another big improvement over past chaos) as she and I went down stairs to settle it.

She is a very strong and persistent adversary, but with calm restraint we sat on the couch. She would try to get up, or bite or twist away and I would hold on. At a point we had a break through, but it made for a very long evening. It is really evident to us that she is carrying a tremendous amount of rage and frustration in that little brain of hers. Today she was off to camp for the last day festivities.

This weekend is the kite festival, the opening event of the cherry blossom festival. Two play dates, church, and of course two soccer practices for the girls to go to.

Jerry reports that Maxim is doing great, reporting 1 1/2's and 10 lbs. We look forward to his testing and lab results.

Thank you all for the kind words and deeds of support. All I can say that opening our heats and home to these kids has changed us in ways we could never have imagined.

As always, in his name,

Papa Dog

Brains of the Issue

While we are still collecting the information from the medical screening, we have moved onto the brains of the issue.

Christina has been evaluated by Dr Federici, a Russian-speaking American, who by the grace of god works about half-an-hour from our home (http://www.drfederici.com). He has been working with these kind of children for over twenty years and has been giving us some great advice on how to approach them in a consistent and effective manner.

Getting your head around the world these kids have come from is a bit challenging. I have taken to calling it, "doing time in kiddie prison." While other kids my have been watching Barney the singing dinosaur, Christina was suffering collective punishment in a class full of children the same age. She developed no skills of decision making, since she had no decisions to make. She would change her underwear and clothes once a week on wash day, the same day she would bathe and wash her clothes.

Then we had Sasha and Tanya evaluated by Dr Boris Gindis, an American-speaking Russian, at the BG Center (http://www.bgcenter.com) in Nanuet New York. Each evaluation is a very detailed assessment of each of the children, administered in their native language to give the best picture of their strengths and weaknesses before the switch to English makes this almost impossible to determine.

We havehad the good fortune to havethe University of Minnesota international adoption clinic take on Maxim for a visit next month. These visits are building the book we will use to chart their educational and treatment plans.

Now a funny one from the past:
During the poopka patrol in service of our medico's work ups. So Heidi had just gotten our smallest one to provide her first sample and was being very proud of her produced sample. But then, as Heidi was distracted for a moment, the sample waiting by the front door for an unguarded moment;

"Ajo! (The dog) get out of that!" ...and with a bark, a hustle by mom and a wail of dismay from the proud sample provider, the evening just got a little more exciting.

Well, when the dust settled and the sample viles where filled, all was mostly good with the world. But Tanya will not look at Ajo ever quite the same.

Now, with both Heidi and I on the sick list today, Masha herded the kids to the car this morning, but only after the cossacks extracted a blood promise to make the big jump tomorrow.

Drum roll please... 3 bikes from the thrift store - $30. Helmets, safety checks and training wheels - $300;  dora the explora Band aids and bactine, priceless. Our buddy Clinton is heading over ready to give the Lance Armstrong school of hard knocks to these little hard heads on the two wheel (plus two) training ground tomorrow.

Erik, the much harassed.... Papa

Coming and Going

Well, well... the week's thoughts focus on the ins and outs of our life these days.

First the Ins:
When the kids came to us, they had a very "institutional taste buds" at the dining table. They turned down almost all sauces and melted cheese concoctions. Of course Christina led the "turn it down before you taste it" charge. Bare noodles, rice or potatoes went down well, but au gratin, lasagna or (very yummy) spaghetti, PB and J all met resistance, more or less.

The added bonus to blessings of the delivered dinners so many wonderful folks from our church brought over, they reflected many approaches to cooking and styles of preparation. We have also developed our skills of presenting and incentive-ising new tastes and textures. It is now a bit of a game to get them to try a small piece.

With time, we have been able to split up the "Nyet block" a bit at a time. Sasha and Tanya have been crossing the picket line more and more often.

So on Thursday, we had a bit of an Americana break-through in the junk food department. Masha and I took the three of them to Jimmy T's, a Capitol Hill favorite diner.

So we ordered open-faced peanut butter & jelly sandwiches and french fries for them. We actually convinced them to try a sample sandwich or two. They worked over the fries, with Sasha even trying ketchup (what a wild boy he is). Then they surprised us by digging into the onion-rings the grown ups had ordered. Then, the moment of truth, the corn dog came.

They passed it around and discussed what it may be made of, how, and where to bite it to find out. Wow, another success! These darn American swine make some things that are a tad better than porridge. 

And now for the outs.
We have been doing a complete work-up on the kids these last few weeks. The labs have been keeping us in constant contact with doctors. Intestinal parasites and other issues with inoculations and other tests pop-up routinely with these kids. So, as brand new parents we have a little kid medicine to catch up on. The favorite, so far, is the stool-sample regime. We have to collect three samples from each brave kinder and place them in a separate set of tubes, each. For those weak in math, that is nine samples loaded into 18 separate vials.

We had to get a score card going to keep track of the hero's work. Tanya is the bashful one coming in last and Sasha was the trooper, delivering the goods right up front. After the consultation Thursday with the Doc, it looks like the gang is due for another blood draw for a titers work-up to fill in some of the holes in the first screening. Good thing they like stickers, cuz they are collecting a bunch of them (that is the prize when they complete the shots and blood draws).

Erik and Heidi

First Corndog

The first corn dog, at Jimmy T's

(ain't cellphone cameras fun?)

4th Weekend of the American Family

This week's wrap-up is a confusing hustle of activity to a novice parent. It includes haircuts, doctor visits, blood draws, cartoon band-aids, and lots of stickers.

Our second trip to the family pool in near by Maryland. My family had a tradition of "Swim Night" on Fridays, started as a special schedule to get the kids to the University of Michigan's pool for a family swim time. In my recollection, years later in southern California, it was a first-come first-serve meal time. Our own swim night ritual of going to this wonderful facility with the three kids.

Our church has been incredible! Since we have been home, we have been assisted by so many wonderful people who have brought wonderful dinners by for us. In the bleak hours of the first weekend, Pastor Heather asked us how she could help us, Heidi and I are not too good at asking for help you see. She suggested meals as a service that people could help us with.

What a wonderful blessing, as we struggled those first days to stabilize the chaos. And as things calmed down, not having the time or mental energy to plan and prepare our dinner meals. Time and again, friendly faces at the door would bring in not only the food to nourish us but their concern and compassion. Just being able to share our story and in many cases give weekly updates as they returned with new labors of love for us.

The most picturesque effort was a carefully-crafted rendition of the United States and the Ukraine in Pizza! There where so many wonderful and nutritious meals all crafted and delivered with love and kindness. This has been such a blessing, since these meals have given us more time to focus on getting the children through all the hoops of school entry. Most nights we have just been able to collapse at the end of a full day.

Some of the weeks highlights in pictures:

The Ukraine Pizza!

Getting Go-to-school haircuts.

Our new school uniforms. 1&2

The new look.

Dance Concert in the Kitchen - and the dog gets in it too!

With a new-found respect for love,

Erik & Heidi

Note: These photos, along with all others posted in this blog, are also available for viewing HERE, and for print orders at Costco. Please comment with your photo request and we'll send you the Costco link.