Snippets of Conversations

Daughter of Purpose is coming along quite well with her English. There are still moments that I'm still not sure exactly what transpired in our conversation, but for the most part she is doing really well. Here are a few examples of what you would hear around here.

On a regular basis, you can hear her voice bellowing out, "(Insert name here), come here, please!" I think that's pretty darn good that she would be using a full sentence already and with manners!

Yesterday she came around the corner while I was on the computer and said, "Mom, get off the computer!" I just had to laugh at that one because I honestly don't know where she picked it up from!

Earlier today I asked her to do something and she responded, "In a minute, Mom." I turned to my son that was in the kitchen with me and said, "Did she just say what I think she said?" He responded, "Yep, she just said 'In a minute, Mom' to you."

Those were the moments that I knew exactly what was being said. However, earlier today she and I had a most interesting conversation that I believe was about Spiderman. She had asked me to come upstairs because she wanted help with the costumes. She did a little charades with me and I figured out that she wanted the Spiderman costume. So I pulled it out and told her that this was her brother's costume (because now she thinks everything belongs to her unless we state otherwise). That's when it got bizarre because I think we were not fully understanding each other, but yet thought we were. I'm pretty sure her response to me was that she now thought her brother was Spiderman. She then went on to tell me that Spiderman must have to blow his nose because her brother blows his nose too. After helping her get the costume one, I asked her if she wanted to wear the Spiderman costume during nap time. She pretty much told me, "No, Spiderman doesn't need naps." When I walked away from that conversation I felt like shaking my head vigorously like a cartoon character and hoping it would clear away the weirdo conversation I had just had. Maybe it was just a figment of my imagination...

1 Samuel 1:27 "I prayed for this child, and the LORD has granted me what I asked of him."

Daughter of Purpose

I've decided that my new daughter needs a new name. You see, when I blog I try to not use my children's real names--especially when I write Mommy Map. I had been wondering what our new daughter's name was going to be because I can't keep calling my two daughters "new daughter" and "older daughter" because that's just plain boring.

So as I rushed around the house cleaning before some friends came over for dinner tonight and my new daughter followed me everywhere dying to help me, I thought up her new name. It came to me while I pondered about how she loves to help me with anything with purpose. Today it was while she was arguing me about cleaning the toilet. She was yelling at me, "Me do it!" because she wanted to participate in cleaning the toilet so badly. I was trying to explain to her that Mommy would do the yucky part and she could just do the seat and lid. She would have nothing of my ideas and wouldn't let up until I gave in and let her take the sponge and happily clean the toilet. It was in that moment that I decided that I would call her "Daughter of Purpose." She loves doing things with purpose, but I also believe that God has pulled her out of the life of an orphan and given her a life with hope for a purpose. I believe that He is going to use her in a mighty way someday. So she is now officially crowned with a special blogging name--Daughter of Purpose! May she live out her name.

1 Samuel 1:27 "I prayed for this child, and the LORD has granted me what I asked of him."

Chicken Girl

Birth Order

There have been many tough things along this journey, but those are far out-weighed by the good. As I sit here 5 weeks after our new daughter has joined our family--making it complete--and think about what some of the highlights are, I would have to most definitely say that one of the best things that has come along this journey has been seeing a side of my oldest daughter that I have never seen before.

Obviously she has always been the oldest, but maybe because all of my kids are so close in birth order she has never really been super motherly towards her brothers. She's been an awesome blessing to me at the top, but she's struggled more with being the only girl than embracing her role. She's a lot of the reason we wanted to adopt a girl--because she wanted another girl in the family. She understood that they would be "bookends" and that her relationship with her sister would not necessarily be buddy-buddy, but that of caretaker. She didn't care, she just wanted a sister.

As we got closer to picking up our new daughter, we made sure our oldest daughter understood that things would change. She would no longer be the only girl in the family. She would no longer solely own anything "girl" in the house. She would no longer have the "girl" room all to herself. The life that she had known for the last 9 years was about to change. I was a little nervous about how this would go, but my oldest daughter has risen to the occasion of "oldest sister" better than I ever imagined.

From the very get-go my oldest daughter has embraced her sister and thought the world of her new sister. She has become a mini-mom and keeps her little sister under her wing like a mother hen keeps her baby chick under her wing. They have bonded like crazy. Without me even asking, she has taken on the job of making sure her sister gets dressed each day. She watches over her in the pool, helps her bathe, brush her teeth, and pretty much anything else she needs help with. She never minds carrying her sister up and down the stairs, keeping an eye on her for me or playing with her so that I can make dinner or get school done with the boys. She willingly gives up her toys and doesn't easily get ruffled about her sister getting into her things. I can't say she never complains, but she certainly rarely does.

The one thing that I have loved the most is hearing her words of encouragement for her new sister. I often hear her telling her what a good job she is doing and she recounts to me all of the great things she sees her sister doing each day. She also seems to have taken it on as her personal goal to know enough Russian to communicate with her sister and has succeeded. At the same time, she is also the one that takes the time to sit with her sister and talk her through each book by telling her the English word for each thing. Her new thing is to spell words out loud to me so that her new sister won't know what we're talking about. It cracks me up because it doesn't matter what she's spelling--our youngest daughter is not going to understand it--it's English! I just have a good chuckle and chalk it up to good spelling practice for my oldest daughter.

My oldest daughter has also been the one who has not minded taking her new sister alongside her and teaching her the ways of our home. Each night before dinner, the kids each have "jobs" to do. I hadn't given any to our new daughter yet because I didn't think she'd understand. I was dead wrong on that one. The thing she loves to do the most is anything with a purpose. Hence the apricot gathering, helping with meal prep, wanting to be taught how to vacuum, cleaning the table after dinner, etc.

I write all of this about my oldest daughter because I am so proud of her, but also because I miss her. She left with my parents this week to travel for two weeks. I'm not sure what that's going to do to the bond that the girls have developed, but I trust that in time it will get back to where it left off. For now, all of us really miss her. Our new daughter didn't take this leaving so well, but thankfully our Russian speaking friend was home when I called and explained to our new daughter that her sister would definitely return. I think that was our new daughter's fear--that her new sister was going on a plane to never return. I can imagine that in her little mind that planes mean never returning. So thank goodness again for someone who could explain that to her. Once she got that settled in her mind, she seems to understand as we add stickers to our chart each day that counts down when my oldest daughter will be back.

For now, our new daughter is happy as a clam to be sleeping on the extra bed in the boys room. We thought it would help with the transition and I think we were right! I'm pretty sure she's in heaven! While we await the return of our oldest daughter, my oldest son has stepped up to the plate to fill in for a bit. I think it will be good for him to have this opportunity to bond with his new sister and to take his bossiness and harness it for good. It means I certainly have to be on my toes to help him learn how to do this, but in the long run I think it will be worth the effort. He's been dying to lead, but under the shadow of his older sister for--well, his whole life--so this is his chance to shine! I'll have to keep you posted on how this goes. I think it will be interesting!

1 Samuel 1:27 "I prayed for this child, and the LORD has granted me what I asked of him."

Indiana Jones, a cheetah, & a skunk

While my mom is on vacation, she lent me her new Flip Video Camera. I am in love with this video camera. It all started back in Moscow when my friend, Tamara, showed me hers...now I'm hooked because it's so easy!

Here is my first video. I haven't used a video camera much so I'll have to learn how to get the the kids to "perform" instead of staring at it! I still have the ambition of learning how to edit the chicken costume video so you can see our new daughter peckin' popcorn in her suit. It is quite hilarious! I'll post that one as soon as I figure it out.

1,2,3 Go!

Here is where she began begging Nate to jump off the side into the deep end with her. She couldn't get enough and kept shouting, "Ee-show! Ee-show! More! More!"

She is really getting the concept of, "Ready, Set, Go!" or "1,2,3 Go!" so in these pictures you can see Nate doing this with her.

Hard to believe this natural looking fish came from a region in the Arctic Circle, huh?

1 Samuel 1:27 "I prayed for this child, and the LORD has granted me what I asked of him."

The Brave Little Swimmer

As I've written before, swimming is a "way of life" for us in the summer. Where we live it can reach up to 116 degrees during the hot parts of the year. We don't personally own a pool, but instead we choose to enjoy the hospitality of our friends who have pools. Although it takes gas to get there, it's worth every penny. The kids have such a blast swimming and our new daughter is turning out to be such a fish! Here are a few pictures of her swimming last weekend at our friend's house. Thanks Peace Family for the fun!


Swimming with Daddy and lots of practice in the bathtub makes her so brave!



Hangin' out with the boys in the boat.



1 Samuel 1:27 "I prayed for this child, and the LORD has granted me what I asked of him."

Mixed Bag

We took our new daughter to see the Orthopedic Surgeon today. It was a mixed bag. About 3/4 of the way thru the appointment, he let us know that he believes he can repair our daughter's foot, but he will not be at the hospital and is moving out of state at the end of July. So he can either work her into his surgery schedule before he leaves or we can opt to wait for her to adjust to her new home some more and have another colleague of his take over her case. We opted to wait since we'd like to think about it a bit more and we prefer that the doctor who does surgery does her post-surgery care.

Okay, so that fixes her foot, but what about the muscle weakness in her legs? He told us what she does NOT have, but since we had been told by the Russian doctors that they think it stems from her having Polio as a baby--our American doctor flat out told us that he really doesn't know how to help her since American doctors are not educated about Polio since it doesn't exist. We had to educate him (this would now be the second doctor we've had to educate about this) that only the Western Hemisphere is free of Polio. It is still around in the Eastern Hemisphere. So we now feel stuck between a rock and a hard place. How do we go about getting our daughter the help that she needs without paying a fortune for a specialized International Adoption doctor?

We still have a few more specialists for her to see, but some of them do not have any openings until September. Please pray for us to be able to get our new daughter the specialized medical care that she needs and in a timely manner.

1 Samuel 1:27 "I prayed for this child, and the LORD has granted me what I asked of him."

Silly Goose

So much has happened in the last week and so little time to tell you about it! I usually write these blogs after the kids have gone to bed at night, but lately I can't keep my eyes open after 9:00 pm to save my life! Adding this new "baby" to our family is really kicking me in the pants! Maybe it's the fact that this "baby" can walk, keeps me mentally on my toes and doesn't like to sleep for fear of missing something. If I compare that to a newborn that sleeps all of the time--I guess I have reason to be exhausted. I keep thinking that it's just like the adjustment of adding a newborn to our family. It will just take a few weeks to get adjusted.

As our daughter's English vocabulary grows by leaps and bounds each day and I hear her using more English than Russian, it creates some memories that I will cherish. One day, in my spare time, I am going to copy and paste all of these things I journal here and put them in a Word document so I don't forget.

My favorite English conversation that happened this week was while we were outside as a family after dinner. Nate and I were just sittin' around while the kids were playing on their bikes and scooters. When our new daughter got here, we got our tricycles out for her to play on. The older kids acted as if they had never seen them before (even though they were theirs in the first place) and have thought they were the greatest thing ever! This particular night, the kids were racing up and down the street on their scooters and tricycles. They were even timing each other.
While sitting there, it cracked me up when our new daughter walked up to her Daddy, planted a kiss on his check and then slyly asked for yogurt in her very sweetest voice. She hadn't eaten very much dinner and was trying to "work" her Daddy. Like a smile, smoozing can surpass language!

Shortly after the smoozing incident, Nate decided to jump in on the racing action and hopped on a tricycle himself. You can see from the picture how our daughter felt about that! What I loved during this time was how she encouraged him with her new English words. After one round on the circuit (and his legs burning like crazy), she walked up to her Daddy and said, "Good job, Daddy! Give me five!" while holding our her hand for "five."

She then spent the rest of the time using her other favorite line of mine (which she learned from me), "Silly Goose!" Whenever she would see Nate on the tricycle, she would say, "Silly Goose, Daddy!" Frankly, everyone was a "silly goose" that night.

Our daughter in her new found love--a chicken costume. She discovered the costume box this week and has spent more time in this suit than out. In fact, one particular day we had to go "head to head" over the chicken suit. She did not want to take it off when we went out in public. Honestly, I really didn't care if she went out in the costume, but it's been 95-100 degrees here so I knew she would overheat in it. I finally won and got her out of the suit while we went out, but as soon as we returned home, she was back in it. Her favorite thing to do in the suit is to peck at a bowl of popcorn. She is such a character!

1 Samuel 1:27 "I prayed for this child, and the LORD has granted me what I asked of him."

American Girl

Two quick things for today.

My favorite thing I love to hear our daughter say is, "Good job, Natasha!" I love hearing her sweet little voice that is obviously very proud of her accomplishment.

On another note, we are very excited that we received our daughter's Certificate of Citizenship from USCIS a few days ago. Along with it was a letter from President George W. Bush welcoming her as a new citizen of the United States of America. I shed a little tear over that one. If feels good to finally have the official document in our hands that proves our daughter is now an American citizen. Yippee!

Little did you know that Elasta-Girl is living in America. Her legs are like rubber and she can get herself into some very interesting positions. We visit the Orthopedic Surgeon about her legs next week so we are very curious about what he has to say about her elastic abilities.

1 Samuel 1:27 "I prayed for this child, and the LORD has granted me what I asked of him."

Surreal

Here is one of my favorite pictures. It was taken when our daughter went swimming for the first time ever. We went from about 30 degrees in Murmansk to 100 degrees when we arrived home. However, the weather was nice enough to cool down a bit for us shortly after our arrival. Despite the cool down, we couldn't help but introduce our "way of life during the summer" to our new daughter right away. She absolutely loves to bathe so it was no surprise when her face lit up when she saw my friend's pool and realized she was going to get to go in that big huge thing of water!

In this picture is my closest friend's little girl from China. It is priceless to see her sitting with my daughter from Russia. Two little peanuts from the other side of the world sittin' together and enjoying the water together. It was slightly surreal because we began the process of adopting our daughter before my friend began hers. When our adoption began to look hopeless because of all of the re-accreditations in Russia and my friend's adoption was moving along smoothly and was even completed before ours, I don't think either of us thought we'd ever see this day--our two girls together sitting by the poolside. But God used that circumstance.

When we began our adoption, we were looking for a girl that was "healthy with normal institutional delays." When we began, we could've never guessed that God would bless our family with a little girl with special needs. Had my friend not adopted a little girl with special needs, I'm not sure that we would've been open to God's leading down the "special needs" path. Good thing God knows what He's doing or we would've missed out on the gift of our new daughter. I just look at her and think, "It's hard to imagine that our daughter would've been (or was) passed over simply because one of her legs is shorter than the other. Whoever passed her over sure is missing out! To think that had we not chosen her, such a smart girl with such delight in her eyes would've probably been left to live in an institution for children with special needs for the rest of her life--basically with no future. Such a simple thing and yet she was viewed as not perfect."

Well, we think she's just perfect and know that God definitely has a future in mind for her. I just can't wait to find out what He has in mind for her! Here is a prayer lifted off for these two special little girls. May God, who lifted them out of a hopeless situation and gave them hope, use these two to bring Him glory and hope to others!

1 Samuel 1:27 "I prayed for this child, and the LORD has granted me what I asked of him."

For more info on children that need to be adopted, but have "special needs", please see: www.untilallhavehomes.org

First Haircut

This was our daughter's first haircut. We have a friend who comes to our home and cuts everyone's hair. Literally only days after arriving home, we had her come to tame our wild hair. We thought that maybe our new daughter would just watch this time and we'd get her hair trimmed later. Apparently she had other ideas because as soon as the first child was done, she hopped right up on the chair like she was ready for her turn. Not really being sure that she even needed a haircut, we obliged her and had her bangs trimmed and the back evened up.

1 Samuel 1:27 "I prayed for this child, and the LORD has granted me what I asked of him."

Happy Birthday!

Today was our new daughter's 4th birthday. We purposefully kept the celebration small so that she didn't become overwhelmed with all of the new people. Just our immediate family and both sets of grandmas and grandpas came for some cake and ice cream. We also figured that just being in America with her new family was celebration enough in itself! Here are a few pictures from our celebration.

By the way, I wasn't sure what our new daughter's history was with birthdays so I had our friend talk with her on the phone and explain it to her. Who knows if they did anything for her in the orphanage or if she even knew what a birthday was before today, but her face certainly lit up when he explained to her that it was her birthday today and what we'd be doing to celebrate!

She certainly knew what to do when we finished singing...blow those candles out, girlfriend!

My friend who makes the most incredible cakes for all of my kid's birthdays was ready with ideas for our daughter's birthday. She was practically ready on our court day! She was so excited for our daughter to have her first birthday with her new family that she made an individual "first birthday" cake for our daughter and a big one for the rest of us to share. Our daughter's eyes were so wide with excitement that all of this cake was just for her! Below is the bigger "main" cake--a crown cake for the new Russian princess.

Finally! A picture of all five kids. I'll keep trying for a better one, but this will have to do for now!

Opening presents for the first time. She kept questioning, "For me?"

1 Samuel 1:27 "I prayed for this child, and the LORD has granted me what I asked of him."

Laughing Instead of Crying

So I've decided to laugh at the things that keep happening to me and my ability to blog. You see, if I don't laugh, I'm might begin to cry in frustration! First, I came home with jet lag. No problem--I expected that. What I didn't expect was that during my first 2 weeks home, my internet would go down and then once it got back up--my computer would die. I've had my computer for a really long time--long enough that any new computer games my children get won't play on my computer. I had a feeling that as it became more apparent that my computer was being outmoded that it was going to eventually give out on me. I just kept praying that it would hold out until after the adoption since it held everything we needed for our dossier. Well that prayer was answered, but on Friday my computer began spontaneously shutting off. That was interesting. By Saturday, it wouldn't even turn on. So here I am--blogging from Nate's computer while he sets me up on a new one. Didn't really want to fork out the money for a new one, but I am pretty computer dependent and I just keep reminding myself of how many miles I get out of a computer. It helps me feel better about it by thinking about it this way!

Okay, so onto our new daughter. I have so many "firsts" to share with you, but I will have to post those once I have access again to my pictures, etc. She's gone swimming for the first time, had her first haircut, been to the pediatrician...on and on. I'm also still so amazed at her ability to pick up English. She now says, "Good night, Mama" and gives me a kiss on the cheek and a hug before bed. She even said to herself today, "Good job, Natasha." Isn't that sweet?

We tackled church again today and I have to say that we had a victory! I explained to her before we left the house (the best I could in my limited Russian) where we were going and what was going to happen. She wasn't very happy about it and started to cry when I picked her up to carry her to the car, but once we were on our way, she was fine.

Once we arrived at church she was distracted by the new golf carts that are transporting people around during our parking lot renovation and the fact that her Daddy was driving one of them. To the delight of our children, he gave them a ride around the parking lot. I'm pretty sure he was high up on the "Daddy pedestal" this morning for that one! Once we were done with that, she did well until I started dropping off the kids in their Sunday School classes. She was begging for each one as I dropped them off, but thankfully for me, I learned the Russian for "later" this week. I was able to tell her that "No, they would not be with us, but we would pick them up later." Although she didn't like it, she seemed to accept it eventually. We ended up being able to make it through 1 whole hour of the service this time too. Again, to my advantage, this week I learned the Russian for "quiet." This helped her to understand that she needed to be quiet in there. She covered herself in stickers while she sat there, but at least she was quiet! After an hour in the service and she claimed to need to go to the bathroom, I let her escape with a likely excuse because I was so proud of her and wanted to leave on a good note. By the time she finished washing her hands in every one of the 5 sinks in the bathroom, church was done. Woo hoo! I'd call that a victory--especially compared to last week! You should've seen her face light up when she realized she had succeeded at what we had asked and now she was able to get her siblings back!

As I reply to everyone who asks how it is going, "Every day gets easier." Today we were fortunate enough to take some good steps forward. Now to keep stepping forward...

1 Samuel 1:27 "I prayed for this child, and the LORD has granted me what I asked of him."