Food Discoveries

I had no idea it would be so difficult to blog during these first few weeks home! Along with discovering what it's like to be in a family and the English language, our daughter is also discovering our food. We are also learning a lot in regards to food as we go along this journey with her.

Many people and everything I read had said to do my best to prepare food for her that she was familiar with. I kept my eye on what she was eating at the orphanage, got a menu of food she ate while there and observed Russian foods that were served in the hotel & restaurants. I was prepared for basic--very brothy--soups, tomatoes, cucumbers, brown bread and tea. I wasn't exactly going to break out the Borche (is that spelled right?), but I would make an effort to make similar foods.

From the very get-go we ordered the above foods, but she wanted nothing to do with them. We found during our first week with her, while still in Russia, that we were wasting our money by ordering special food for her. We eventually resorted to giving her food off of our plate and if she was hungry she would eat it. I had also brought dried cereals like Cheerios and Kix and some Goldfish crackers for snacks. Pretty much between what she could scrounge at meals and the snacks in the hotel room she survived. However, once we arrived in Moscow and introduced yogurt to her at breakfast and picked up a banana at one of the fruit carts on the side of the road--we were on to something.

Here we are a few weeks later and I still have to say that yogurt and bananas are still at the heart of her diet. When we first got home and all she wanted all day long was yogurt, yogurt, yogurt I was wondering what we were going to do with this problem then I quickly realized what I dork I was to think it was a problem. I could have a child that wanted only junk food. Instead we have been blessed to discover her likes and dislikes as we go along. All of her choices are great! In fact when we've offered her a sip of soda, a bite of a chicken nugget or fry--she's not interested!

Here are some of the things that are a sure-fire hit with her. Yogurt, bananas, pears, hard-boiled eggs (she pounded 5 of those down at lunch today), flour tortillas, shredded beef, tomatoes, quesadillas, apricots, popcorn, chicken and some pastas. Now, of course, she'll take candy any day, but we've managed to hide that so it's not an issue! Again, I can't complain. She's choosing healthy things and when she turns up her nose at what we offer for a meal, she's generally pretty good at trying new things if we reward her with the foods she likes. That's how she discovered that she liked quesadillas! 3 of those went down the hatch that night.

Speaking of food, here are some pictures of our daughter collecting apricots from our tree in the backyard. She was so delighted to walk back and forth from the tree to the kitchen to deliver apricots to me 2 at a time. She even started at 6:30 am one morning because she was so excited about her ability to help and be a part of the family. It was even more motivating to her when she discovered that she could eat fresh fruit straight from the tree while she made her deliveries. Bet she never had that opportunity in the orphanage!

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

Dancing at Church

Since our daughter has been home for a week, she has been doing so well, and it's our first functioning Sunday we thought we would try going to church and see what would happen. I'd love to tell you how wonderful it went, but it wasn't quite a victory.

My expectations for church today were low because I wasn't really sure what our daughter would think of everything, especially all of the people, but what caused her anxiety was not what I anticipated. Our plan was to drop off all of the older kids in their Sunday School classes and then take our new daughter with us to "big church." We figured we'd have her sit with us in the back of the sanctuary or maybe even in the hallway. Before we even got to the sanctuary she began to panic. Honestly, I'm not totally positive what "set her off", but I think she either thought we were putting all of her siblings in Groupas in some sort of American orphanage or she just plain did not know what to do without her siblings. We tried having someone who speaks Russian ask her what was wrong, but she wasn't talking--that's how foul she was.

We tried the route of taking our oldest daughter out of her Sunday School and keeping her with us also, but that didn't seem to give our new daughter any comfort. Frankly, our new daughter never really relaxed in this new situation. We stayed through the singing and a little bit in the hallway through the sermon, but I could quickly see that this concept of being without her siblings was not settling with her so I decided to head home early today. I have to take her to her first doctor appointment this upcoming week and don't plan on taking her siblings so she's going to eventually have to get used to the idea of going places independent of them. I figure that maybe next week for church I'll have our Russian speaking friend explain to her about what is going to happen (maybe that was our mistake of not talking her through it previous) and try to have her stay longer than this week. My thought is that if I continue to take her each week and stay just a bit longer each week that it will eventually work out.

Here we go again...the dance steps begin. One forward and one back.

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

First Week Home

As I write, it has officially been 1 week with our daughter home. We have had an amazing week. It started off a little tough with the language difference, jet lag and all of the tasks to be done to recover from a month long foreign adventure, but we've ended well.

I'm not super great at remembering to take pictures, but I tried to capture a few of the highlights of the week. Although I do have to say that the biggest highlight of the week cannot be captured by picture. Many people have said that our daughter will catch on to English quickly, but I never imagined that she would already have some English under her belt. I have been amazed to witness how well she understands what is being said to her already. For example, she will put her hands up when asked to (like when I'm helping her get dressed). She understands that if she stays in her bed at nap I will keep the door open, but if she gets out of her bed, I will close the door. She will go get her shoes when I ask her to.

In the last 24 hours, it has gone beyond receptive language to her actually speaking some words/phrases in the appropriate context. She asks to "brush your teeth" at bedtime, knows how to tell her siblings, "Stop (insert name here)!", says "be careful" when caution is needed. We are shocked at it all!

This is what I call, "the two peanuts" playing together. My two youngest have their "moments", but for the most part enjoy playing together. My favorite moment was when I found them curled up together reading a book.

Bath time has become our daughter's favorite time of the day. I've taken to giving her a bath in the morning otherwise she will ride me all day long about taking a bath. Sometimes she even asks me later in the day about taking a bath even though she's already had one. I think she's hoping I've forgotten and will give her another one! The other kids think this is great and take turns bathing with her. Our youngest son who also loves bath time is "in heaven" at all of this tub time!
The two girls are having a fabulous time together. My oldest daughter has owned up the job of big sister more than I've ever seen her step up before. She has been such a great example and teacher to her sister and has totally humored me as I've used her to help "train" her sister as to what needs to be done. For example, when I needed to teach my youngest daughter that I wanted her to lay down in her bed and rest for a bit in the afternoon, my oldest daughter laid in her bed and showed her how it's done. It was so helpful! I don't know how people do this without other kids around to show the new child what to do!

Probably one of the sweetest memories for me of this week was during one of those nap times when I laid in my bed listening to the two girls down the hallway during nap. My oldest daughter,who has struggled with reading, was indeed reading "The Very Hungry Catepillar" to her new sister. I couldn't help but get sappy over that one!

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

Last Pictures in Russia

The pictures on my camera go back further than I thought so here are some of our last pictures before we left Russia. I will do the next post with pictures of here at home. The above photo is of the group of Americans that were staying the hotel with us. One couple traveled with us from our agency and the other we met while there and was with the other agency in the area. In this picture, two of the couples have their child (including us), but the couple on the left received their child the next day. It was great to have the fellowship!


Here is Natasha doing her "grounding" routine. Every time we would come into the room, she would want me to sit on the closed toilet and she would sit in my lap and play in the sink. For whatever reason, it was very theraputic to her. In fact, I found that if she did not get the chance to do it, she had a harder time with transition.

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

For the Love of the Internet

Well, I finally unpacked enough to find my camera cord, but then our internet went down for 2 days. It was pure torture! To be experiencing this awesome first week of our daughter in our home and I couldn't share it with anyone!

She is keeping us busy and certainly knows my name is "Mommy." Oops! She's calling me now so stay tuned until she's tucked into bed and I will update you on our week.

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

Home

We are finally home. Well, we've actually been home since about 11:00 pm on Saturday. Boy, does it ever feel good to be home in the good ol' USA! I would love to post some photos for you of the past few days back and home, but I can't find the cord for the camera to do that. I'll have to get back to you with photos when I find it in the midst of all of the unpacking.

Here's a re-cap of the last few days. We had a seamless time in the airport, processing out of Russia, and on the flight home. It was 12.5 hours from Moscow to LA and our daughter did an awesome job on the plane. She fought the good fight against sleep until the last hour of our flight which would've made it about 2:30 am to her little body, but she did finally give in! It made our flight seem longer than we had hoped, but she really didn't give us much of a problem (yet she wasn't perfect), didn't cry and we were so glad to be able to get off the plane and not feel like everyone on the plane hated us. Whew! I do have to say though that the last hour was quite a relief! God certainly knew what He was doing because her sleepiness made her "out of it" as we went through passport control and immigration which made it easier since she didn't want to get down and run around in an inappropriate situation. My arms felt like they were going to fall off after an hour of holding her, but it was worth it to not have to chase her everywhere!

Once we finished up at LAX, we hopped into a rental car and made the 4 hour drive home. Again, our daughter slept--all the way home. It was kind of nice to turn off my brain for a bit. Of course, where do you think our first stop on the way home was? In-n-Out Burger! Once Nate's belly was full of his favorite meal the hardest part of the last leg our our journey was trying to keep him awake! At that point, we had not slept for the whole flight and it was getting to be over 24 hours without sleep, but we did manage to make it home.

We arrived home about 11:00 pm with my parents and Nate's parents there waiting. When we pulled up into the driveway of our house and got out, we pulled out our daughter's "Family Book" and showed her the picture of our house and then showed her how it matched the house we stood in front of. There seemed to be a light that came on because her eyes sparkled a smile broke out on her face.

Once inside, we introduced her to her Grandmas and Grandpas and showed her their matching pictures in her book and she seemed to know exactly who they were. It was so neat. It made the work I put into her "Family Book" totally worth it. After the grandparents, we woke up each of the kids one by one and introduced her to them. The kids were each so excited once they woke up and realized that we were finally home after 25 days and we had brought their sister with us. This was the sister they had prayed for over the last 2.5 years and she was no longer just a picture, but the real thing right in their home. It such a sweet moment in time! I hope I never forget it.

After a few hours of mid-night bonding, we all headed off to bed until the morning came and we could spend more time together. I'd like to say that the first night went well, but it was rough for our daughter. The second night was better.

We had a great day together yesterday as a new family and even ventured out to Costco to re-stock our food. It was probably crazy, but necessary. We had really scaled ourselves down to nothing so that no food was left to spoil while we were gone. I do have to say that it was weird to keep track of 5 instead of 4, but I will quickly get used to it--I have to--don't want to having anyone go missing on me.

Well that sums it up for now. I will keep you posted as we get adjusted to our new family life. For now, we just try to recover from jet lag, get through the mountain of laundry, put things away and give ourselves plenty of time to bond and give our daughter time to acclimate to her new home. Thanks for coming along on the journey...yet the journey has just begun!

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

The Embassy

This morning we had pancakes....pancakes! With real syrup! Aeniah-Natasha had two helpings of yogurt...she really loves yogurt and was very excited about getting that. Then we went for a small walk and took in some sights.

This afternoon we went to the US Embassy here in Moscow. Again, with American passports, you get to just walk to the front of the line. Fortunately, the immigration portion for adoptions was not super busy. We walked in and sat in a room with a bunch of other adoptive parents and their children and while we waited Brandy and I met a new single mom who is adopting her first child. She got delayed in her region for 7 weeks! We became very thankful for our 3 weeks at that point. It felt really good to just sit and talk with other Americans and to deal directly with American officials. They had a little play area for the kids while we waited and the Director of Immigration just wandered around and talked with couples and chatted...it was really cool. When our number was called, we went to the counter, made an oath that everything in our packet was acurate and true and a few minutes later we were waltzing out the door again with our daughter's entrance visa. The whole process only took an hour and a half.

Aeniah-Natasha will indeed hold dual citizenship with both the United States and with Russia. We originally had the understanding that she would lose her Russian citizenship, but this is not the case. So after we land in America and go through passport control and immigration, she'll officially be an American (and a Russian). How fun is that?

After the Embassy visit, we went walking again and went to buy Aeniah-Natasha a traditional Russian dress and headress. She will look so cute in it! Along the way, we bought her a banana and discovered she can really pound those down...she'll fit right in with our other kids at home! Here's a picture with both cheeks full and wearing her Russian headress upside down. She liked wearing it like a visor instead of a crown.


Tomorrow we board a plane...Aeroflot has a direct flight from Moscow to LAX and is only 12 hours...awesome. Then a short drive home. Please pray for safety and for Aeniah-Natasha to be patient as we wait for our plane, enjoy the ride, be calm, to sleep a bit and to just have fun. Oh, and you can pray for patience, sanity and creativity for me and Bran as well.

See you when we get back!

Love, Nate and Bran