Six Months

Yes, that is how long it has been since I whisked our new little boy out of the orphanage. It is hard to believe that it has been that long already but as you look back and see all the changes that have happened, I am amazed it has not been longer. Here is a picture of M the day I picked him up:

And here he is today:

WOW! One of the most noticeable change is his speech. I mentioned in the last post he was getting evaluated by the school district for a special preschool to help with his speech delay. We thought he would get some type of assistance, BUT they said he was just below on qualifying so no assistance from them. At first I was a little frustrated because we has been waiting and doing testing to get him in this but as it sunk in, HE DOES NOT NEED IT!, I started to realize that it was a good thing. He has progressed so much that just putting him in a regular preschool will probably get him up to speed by Kindergarten. An example of how well he is doing... We were getting in Russ's SUV to go somewhere and as Russ was putting him in he said, "Papa's truck, Mama's van" point to each vehicle. Wow that just floors me when I think of how he has changed.

Other changes include not focused so much on food. I used to be able to use it to get him to do something - I know not a good idea - but now things like playing and going outside are more interesting. The one negative thing is that he is starting to have more temper tantrums - or more like crying fits. THe worst was a day he had to come in from playing outside for an hour. We needed to get dinner ready and he just kept crying about going outside. No matter what I did he kept crying. Finally after 30 minutes he calmed down. I told him after we eat, we would go outside. So after 2 bites at dinner, he was done and ready to go outside. 

The other big milestone since I last posted, was we went on out first family vacation.  It was one of those busy ones that you need a vacation when you get home but we did have fun. Our daughter had tried out for a National Youth Choir that was performing at a conference in Washington D.C. SO we decided to spend the week walking around the city. And walking we did! Little M was the luckiest because he got to ride in the stroller a lot.  He just took it all in and of course wanted to touch everything! The hardest thing was when we were in the basement at Mount Vernon on a tour. We were not suppose to touch the walls or anything - it was like trying to hold on to an octopus trying to keep him from touching anything. I know he did not appreciate where we were  ( But he sure LOVED riding the metro - a.k.a. train)but it was wonderful to know that he was visiting our National capital as an American citizen. Here are some pictures of our trip.

Before I leave, I need to ask for a prayer request.  As I mentioned earlier in the year, Russ's mom passed from cancer. His dad has also been battling cancer for awhile and unfortunately things are not looking good. So please pray for peace for his father and strength.

God bless you all

God's Promises

Ok, as I checked my blog, I realized that I only had one post in February - Oh I am such a bad blogger! So here is my March post(hopefully there will be more then just one).

Things are improving on a regular basis and if I were to type this yesterday, I would have said that things were great - but today Little M has been a testing mode - testing to see how many rules he can break before Mom explodes. So I just count it off as growing pains and make sure he gets down for a nap a little early.

But really, he is doing so much better in so many things. His speech just amazes me! He is now saying 3 word sentences! For a kid who barely said 10 words 5 month ago, I am so in awe. Yesterday we had our evaluation from the school district for speech. He will get into either just speech therapy or be entered into their special preschool program - either would be fine with me I am just anxious to get him some more help. He is speaking so much now but it is still hard to understand what he is saying - which is frustrating on everyone's part. The only concern that I have now is that they called today to get me to fill out a behavior study, so now I am wondering if they are concerned about his behavior yesterday. I know that he has some issues but overall his behavior seems pretty standard - so we will see what they say.

So what has been the highlights of the past month? First it is Micah trying to climb out of his playpen(successfully) and falling on his head. He also got his first official haircut since he was home - He did great, however the other 2 yo girl did all the screaming for the both of them. So far we have only been hit by a minor bug in our family ( only two kids down for 1.5 days), I am so thankful he has not been sick since we have been home. We are at epidemic proportions where we live right now and I am hoping that we can make it through the season with no more illnesses.

One thing that has happened that has saddened me some is an encounter we had with a lady from Russia. She is a seamstress that I use periodically and she got to meet Mfor the first time. SHe was great and so excited to meet him. The thing that was sad was that she would talk to him in Russian, and he did not understand her. It is a reality that I knew about since I have not spoken to him in Russian for 4 months, but none the less, it is his first language and now it is gone. 

However, with something being lost there is always something that is gained and the big new thing for M, is that he likes to cuddle! Now not all the time, just before nap and bed time. I started rocking him and signing to him and as the weeks would pass, the time got longer and longer. And finally, last week, he came up to me during playing and asked to be rocked! Wow! that was wonderful to hear. He has also started to day "I love you" with no prompting and out of the blue. Those are moments that just melt your heart!!!!

And speaking of melting hearts, I have to say that little M  is starting to feel more like my son now. I knew that it would come, and there was no one thing that made a difference, I think it is just time. There is still more that needs to develop but it will come too. I now can't imagine a time without him in our family. Drop down below to see the latest pictures.

With that said, however, it has been a very difficult 5 months. Just the fact that I did not have these special feelings towards M, has opened up an entire can of worms for me, issues that I have never had to deal with. It felt like everything in my life was becoming a struggle and I was having difficulties handling it all. My response to it all was to go to God, to pray and to see what His word said. However, things were no getting better, that is until this weekend. We were studying the feeding of the 5000 in John Chapter 6. Something I had read many times before and several more just in the past week, but something the writer of the study said hit me like a brick wall. After the miraculous feeding, the people are seeking Jesus the next day and find Him, His responds to them in John 6:26 is"... Truly, truly, I say to you, you seek Me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate the loves and were filled." It was obvious that they did not want Jesus but what he provided. The speaker(Kay Arthur) asked, "Are you seeking what the Lord provides or the Provider? When I thought about it I had to say that I was seeking what the Lord provided. Now, I was not seeking for Him to make food appear on my table with no work or that I would win the lottery( that I never play) but I just wanted to be more like Jesus. More loving to others, more kind, more patient, less selfish... things that He tells us to seek in the Bible. The problem is that I was still trying to do it myself. I had bible versus everywhere, trying to following them and remind myself how I was to be. I was asking for help in my prayers but not doing much praising of the Lord. I was reading everything I could on the problems I was struggling with. I was trying to work my way into being the way God wants me to be and I was not just wanting to be with Jesus - fixing my eyes on Him. I was not letting Him and Him alone be my bread of life. I know that some of you may read this and not get it - I did not get it the many times I read that verse, but it has made such a profound impact on me I just had to share it. I know there are many of you out there who are struggling now and I hope that this will help you. It may or may not but remember to stay focused on Jesus. I kept doing my bible studies and going week after week and there were so many times I just wanted to stop, because they were not addressing the problems that I was having but God used one little verse and a wonderful women to open my eyes - to point me back to Jesus. I will still be doing my bible studies and reading and learning versus but my emphasis has changed, it will no longer be on me but on Jesus.

 Loving from big sis
Big sis "girling" me up
 A FULL rainbow - Remembering God's Promises

Tummy Testing

And I am not talking about food. Sometimes you just wonder what in the world is going through their minds. As I was washing dishes the other day, this is what I saw:

 Now I was wondering what had happened? Did he fall? He is not crying. And then I watched as he got up and did this:

Instead of using his hands to feel the different temperatures of the heating vent and the cool tile, He was using his tummy. Only a toddler!

The past few weeks we have our ups and downs but things are getting better. Tonight was actually great. It was just Little M and myself and it went very well. There was a moment, when it was time to clean up for his bath, that he started pushing my buttons. Now he gets a massive amount of toys out during the day so I am usually helping him and asking him to do certain things. Well, he was not being difficult but he was being manipulative so instead of getting more frustrated, I got up, told him to clean up, and walked out of the room. Whenever he called for me, I told him to clean up and believe it or not - HE CLEANED UP THE QUICKEST I HAD EVER SEEN HIM. He was so proud of himself and came to get me to show me. He was happy that I was happy and things went great the rest of the night. I am not expecting this approach to work all the time but it is something to remember.

Unfortunately, I can't say I have much more exciting news than this. The days seem to go by so fast and I am so tired in the evenings that they all seem to be a big blur at times. However, one great thing that did happen this week. I got a call from a fellow adoptive mom that I met in Astrakhan on our final trip. It was so wonderful to hear Kathy's voice, it was like we were back in the Korvet hotel. It is amazing how you meet people on your adoption journey, if only for a few days, but because of the bond of adoption, you just feel like you have known them forever.

I love pictures and so I will leave you with a few of my favorite this past week. First is our play time in the snow and the last just cracks me up. It is morning hair for Little M( normally his hair is so fine that there really is no morning hair - but for some reason this hair would not go down) it reminds me of those penguins whose feather stand up on their head, or for us older folks, Alfalfa from the Little Rascals.

Flooding

The title has nothing to do with the weather - in fact right now we have a ton of snow - but rather with the state of Little M's pants. Take a look!

He has been wearing 12 month pants and 24 month tops since we came home but just a couple of weeks ago, I noticed that his pants were getting too short. Normally this would bring dread to a mom who either had to go out and buy more cloths or dig through the closets for the next size, but this was big news in our house, Little M is growing! We were at the doctors last week and he has gained 4 pounds and grown 0.75" since we came home, that is wonderful.

We also got our first post placement visit under our belts this past weekend - that was nice too. We are finally getting around to completing the remaining of the paperwork that we have left to do. I so dreaded the paperwork from the months prior to the adoption that it took 3 months to bring myself to working on it, and the only reason I did was because we needed to get his SSN. 

It is unbelievable how much his speech is improving! He is now using 3 word sentences that I can understand. I am just so amazed at this, I could not even come close to learning the equal amount of Russian in the same period of time.

We have our ups and downs as most do but we had a big turn for the down last week. Normally. when there is something that M is doing that he will just not stop doing, he gets taken to his time out spot. It is a spot in the kitchen, where I spend most of my time it seems. In the past, he would just cry, we would have a little talk and he would say he was sorry( in his own way) and life would go on. Well, last week, he started with what I would call little fits. There is yelling of "NO", he will not walk to the time out spot but just fall to the floor and start tossing his hands all over the place. And then then there is the all out, toss your body on the floor , literally kicking and screaming(well more like yelling) - I almost had to laugh at that one because it was typically a 2 year old. And then biting has begun to rear it's ugly head.

So there it goes,  but I do feel like we make 2 steps forward and 1 step back and not 1 step forward and 2 steps back  - so hey, there is progress. 

I have to say that all this, along with the issues of the other three kids(yes they have issues too), had me really at my wits end - feeling like I was such a failure as a mom and every other negative thought that come through my mind. But then I got to get together with my friend Phyllis and oh what a difference that made. THANKS PHYLLIS! I got out of the house, away from everyone and got to talk with an adopted mom who know all of what I was going through. I came home and felt great and was like a new person the next day. So for all you moms that are wondering how you are going to do it - take a break, get away from it all, force yourself to do it. Yes, you will be returning home to all the same problems, but with a new strength.

Packing Up Christmas

Finally we have gotten around to packing up our Christmas decorations and I had to post a few pictures of the two items that M thought were the "torture" decorations.
First is our "Singing Santa" that goes on our tree and says "HOHOHOHO". Well when introduced to this ornament this was M's reaction:

But when I began to pack things away, He had to say one last goodbye:

The other scary toy was our singing snowmen. I really thought that he would loves these since he loves music so much, but I was wrong. It took several days for him to start liking them but soon, he would be asking to turn them on.

This week was a major one for little M because we had decided that we were going to have him circumcised. Yea, I know that it was not necessary, but with two older brothers and the giggles that were already occurring, and we figured in the long run, it would be best. I have to say that he was a real trooper. After the surgery, he did cry almost constantly until I was able to get some food in his stomach, it had been 15 hours since he had eaten, and after that he was back to normal. He had a little pain medication that day but you would never know that he had been through surgery.

Right before Christmas, I mentioned that M was starting to speak in sentences, at least long strands of "M" words. Well that is about all he is doing now. In fact, after the surgery, he was talking through his version of what happened and I could actually understand him(with the help of motions). It was so cute to see his version of things. In his explanation he kept saying Ho Ho Ho, and then I finally realized that someone in the operating room must have had a beard(like santa). It was a great feeling to understand what he is saying. This week, we meet with the school system to get things moving on getting M into speech therapy. 

I will leave you with my picture of the week of M:

A Sad Beginning to 2009

I mentioned in my previous posts that things were very stressful after our return from Russia. It was not just the adjustment to having a new member of our family (which is a big stressor on its own) but the week after we got home, Russ's mom got sick. Soon we found out that she had an inoperable brain tumor that was quite large. So on Jan 2nd, after 2 months of a good fight, my sweet mother-in-law left to be with our wonderful Savior. She was no typical mother-in-law and there is nothing that I have to say about her but praise. I have learned a lot from her over the years and was always amazed at how patient she could be with others. Fortunately she was able to meet our little M and see him full of energy running around her house. We even have a picture of her smiling as little M is screaming in the background because he did not want to be held. Oh how she loved kids and Little M completed her dozen grandchildren. She will be sadly missed but I can not help but smile as I imagine her with her new body in the presence of our glorious Savior. Twice in our family we have brought a new child into our family at the same time we have mourned the passing of a sister and now a mother - it makes the new child just that much more special.

Glory be to God

What Has Been Happening

Well I am finally getting a chance to update you on how things have been going over the past few months. I am hoping to update more often now - I know I said that before but now that we are all settled and Christmas is over and I have brain dumped everything over the last few months, I think it will be easier for me to update you on the little coming and goings of our family. It is really hard to believe that today has been three months since I walked out of the orphanage with little M. It seems so long ago. Below this post is a post that will update you on what happened from our last day in Astrakhan until we got home if you are interested. It is lengthy but there are pictures.

Little M is doing so amazingly well! I think that he has adjusted so well. He gets along with the kids very well. He loves his big sis and she loves to baby him. He runs around the house following his big brothers as they burn off energy – At first, there was some jealousy from little M when one of the other kids would sit on my lap, he would want to push them off and get on my lap Now he just climbs up besides me and wants me to hug him too.

The dog issue is much better. Poor Rocky was very jumpy for awhile but us better now. He still keeps his eye out for M but now it seems that he only gets stepped on by accident.

SLEEPING has been going great since about week three home. At first, I would try to rock him to sleep but since he would not stay in my lap when I sat down, I would have to rock him standing, I also had to make sure that we were in a dark room or else he would spend all his time looking around at things. After about a week of doing that twice a day for 10-15 mintues both my feet and back where killing me. So I started just putting him in his crib and let him cry for about 5 minutes(checking in on him every minute to ensure that I was there). After a few days, I then felt bad, so I would lay in the bed in his room until he fell asleep. One night, I could not lay down and he was fine and has been great ever since. He sleeps through the night for about 11.5 hours and 1.5 to 2 hours in the afternoon. He is in a room by himself because when he was in with one of his brothers, it messed up everyones sleep schedule. He does so much better in a room by himself – I guess each child is just different.

EATING started out great and now, even though it is difficult, it is typical of a two year old. He eats most things now except tomatoe sauce. Somedays he is more picky then others but he has gained about 3 pounds since we have been home so I think he is doing good.

HEATHWISE he is also doing great. No concerns with any of the doctors we have seen. We have had difficultly getting a good hearing check because he always seems to have fluid behind his eardrum. It is no infected but the doctor recently put him on antibiotic to see if we can get it cleared up. He has also had a horrible runny nose since I picked him up from the orphanage so the meds seem to be helping with that too. He still had not grown any heightwise and I am hoping that will kick in soon. He wears a 24 month top and 12 month pants. We joke and say that he is part Corgy because his legs are so short.

SPEECH: The only big concern we are dealing with is his speech. He was very dealyed in speech only speaking a few words( that we knew of) in Russian, so after about a month of talking to him in Russian and English, we slowly cut out the Russian and only now use English. He has picked up english so well and you can see how eager he is to learn know words. He often brings things to me so I can tell him what they are. But there are several sounds that he simply can not make so some words are just not recognizable and many sound the same. But each week he is making progress. A few weeks ago he started saying his first phrase on his own “I'm coming!” And last week he started with the toddler babbling. Before he would just say words in response to seeing things but now he will play and just babble on and on. We are on a waiting list for a speech therapist and will get him in the school system once he turns three. But we are going to more forward with our own speech therapist at the beginning of the year.

EMOTIONS: He has also really advanced with being affectionate. At first, he really never hugged and we had to teach him how to kiss. He never really liked being held either ( that is still the case but then he just does not sit still very long either – He's two). Fast forward three months, he is a very caring person. If one of the kids is crying he will go over and hug them. He loves to come over and rub my back and arm and even after he gets out of a time out – he immediately comes over to give me a hug( like is is telling me that he is sorry).

CONCERNS: The only issue that is a little concern to me is that he doesn't really know a stranger. We will be standing in line, and he just has to go up and touch people. I also have to be careful because he will let others pick him up. Most of the time, though, he will immediately turn away and want to come to me – which is good. There are a few people that he feels very comfortable with, my Mom and his Sunday school teachers. It is really hard after you have read all the attachement books on what you should and should not allow. It comes down to the child and the family and you just have to go with your gut.

I have to say that even though things are going well with M. It has been hard. I knew it would be hard but it still doesn't make things more palatable when you are going thorugh it. The things that took me the most by surprise was my feelings. I knew that it would not be love at first sight but with all our visits at the orphanage, he would just melt my heart. However, we never had a honeymoon period as others have mentioned because he started testing me during the last visits in the orphanage. So when we got back to a normal life, I have to be honest, he did not “feel” like my son. There is just something missing with him that I have with my other kids. Others say that it will come and I know that it will but I wanted to let others out there know that things are not perfect and that is ok too. However I feel at times, I am glad that we have M in our lives and that all the frustration of the paperwork, the wait and the adjustment will result in many blessings from God for both M and us.

Not to end a post on a downer – I will leave you with some pictures over the past few months :

My little Bumble Bee
My favorite present

You are saying that I CAN rip this paper?