Responding to Comments...

...where did you get Oksana's t-shirt?! I love it!
I found it at www.cafepress.com. You can just type Ukrainian Princess in the search. It's the same place we got this shirt, which was a HUGE hit at therapy!:


How sweet! Is there any way you can keep in contact/send pictures to Ira? She seems like a very kind caregiver.
I am friends on Facebook with not only our facilitator and translator but also the doctor at Oksana's baby house. Though I'm not in direct contact with Ira she is certainly able to easily get updates about Oksana.

It sounds like there might be more adoptions in your future, and that's wonderful!! Any particular RR kiddos in mind??
Yes, but I'm keeping my lips closed on this one! I've loved and seriously considered a number of children who have thankfully found families who could get them much faster than we could! I know that when I hear that someone wants to commit to a particular child I almost feel like that child is off limits. I know it's not true but I don't want to publicly say who we are interested in yet because it might still be awhile before we can commit. I don't want to stop anyone else from considering her. Our goal is that she has a family, and while we would love for that family to be us, it would be selfish of us to claim her as our own when God might want to bless someone else with her sweet self!

I see she sits in the "W" position like our daughter does. We're working on her sitting on her behind, but her muscles are still really tight so its hard for her.
I know "w" sitting is a big no no but the poor girl can't play if she's not in that position. When she sits with her legs in front of her in any way she has to lean back on her arms because she doesn't have the strength to stay upright. This makes it rather impossible to play with anything. It will just take time.

Try washing the area with some rubbing alcohol first. It should help with the oiliness.
We tried alcohol but it still didn't work. The good news is that before we had to try many other ideas we found a solution. Her PT was taping her with a small piece of tape and no matter what we did it was off within 48 hours. Last time she taped her with a long piece that started at her lower back and came down and wrapped around her thigh. After that we had no problems!

Easter part 2

We had a great time at the Easter party yesterday. Some friends of ours put this on every year and they have egg dying, a cupcake walk, an egg hunt (complete with over 800 eggs!), and tons of games and prizes. It was a beautiful day. Oksana had a great time dying and hunting eggs.




I took these pictures to prove that my boys were there doing what they do best. Evan made friends with the neighbor's dog. Evan is a shy one and is more comfortable around dogs than people.

And Clayton hung out with his buddies. Dogs are nice but give him a friend to bum around with anyday.

After we got home we got a visit from the Urbans who were back in town for a visit to the hospital for Zoya. The Urbans were in Kiev with us and they have become dear friends. They live in OK but Zoya sees doctors at Arkansas Children's Hospital so they come here to stay the night or just to visit whenever they are in town. Zoya and Oksana had a great time together, and the boys got to play with their son Jude which is always a treat for them. The 3 of them have a blast together.
Aren't they the cutest little Ukrainians you ever saw?!

Today we gave the kids their baskets because Larry will be at church all morning. Then we did a little egg hunt in our house, and colored our eggs.
You can see that baskets were done right before dance class and the grass was her favorite part!

My boys are at that age where they don't want their picture taken and when I do get a picture I get silliness.

So we told them that whoever had the best smile got to eat their chocolate bunny which is how I got this one!

In the middle of it all we got a call to show our house and it was the third time this person has come so we are very anxious to see if we might get a contract.

Tonight is church and then we are spending the afternoon with friends tomorrow. It's been a full but very fun weekend!

Easter part 1

We are having so much fun teaching Oksana about Easter! We've been working hard to help her understand the truth about Easter. Today we did Resurrection Eggs with her. If you aren't familiar with Resurrection Eggs I highly recommend them...and not just because they are a FamilyLife product! You can go here to learn more about them.


Then we made Resurrection Rolls. This is a tradition in our family so we were all very excited to have Oksana join in on the fun. If you've never made Resurrection Rolls here is what we do:
Gather melted butter, cinnamon sugar, marshmallows, and a can of crescent rolls. Preheat your oven to 350.
The marshmallow is Jesus. After Jesus died his body was prepared with oil (roll your marshmallow in butter)

and spices (roll your marshmallow in cinnamon-sugar mixture)

Then it was wrapped in linen (wrap completely in one triangle of crescent roll sealing all edges)


We made a little assembly line

Feel free to act silly at any point during the making of your Resurrection Rolls!

Put them on a cookie sheet, put him in the tomb (Oven), and bake at 350 for 10-12 minutes (pretend its 3 days!)


While you wait you can eat a marshmallow but I don't recommend putting the whole thing in your mouth!

When your Resurrection Rolls are finished Jesus will be gone!

And you will be left with a yummy, yummy treat! Ok so Oksana doesn't look so thrilled about this treat. She loves bread and she loves sweets but she never has loved the two together. The rest of us think these are amazing!


This afternoon we are going to a party at a friend's house complete with egg hunt and cupcake walk so I'll post those pictures later!

She was Kissed Goodnight...

I've often tried to ask Oksana about her life at the orphanage. I have to admit I am fascinated and want so badly to know more about her life before us. Unfortunately she hasn't been much help! If I ask her about the orphanage she usually only talks about the balls there. Sometimes I prompt her and she'll talk about a favorite caregiver (Ira and Luda take the cake there), or we talk about friends (Nina or Sasha). Sometimes I ask her specific questions but I learned quickly that I couldn't trust the answers. For example..."Oksana, did you eat pizza at the orphanage?"..."YES!". Yeah right!

Then the other day she came over and asked for a kiss. I scooped her up and was kissing her and I asked "Did anyone kiss you at the orphanage?" She told me that Ira did. This was no surprise to me since I had seen Ira kiss her while we were there. But then she said "Ira kiss night night, be back tomorrow." WOW! Ira kissed her good night and told her she would be back tomorrow! Not only was that a great bit of communication from Oksana but I learned that my baby got kissed goodnight! I was overcome with thankfulness for Ira at that moment!

What a wonderful blessing for this mama's heart!

Random

Life keeps us busy and the blog suffers so here is my list of random things happening here:

-Our house has been on the market for 20 days now and has had a good number of showings. We keep telling God that we are more than ready for a contract when He is! We are feeling more and more ready to move on and get home which is making us a bit impatient ;). Surprisingly, it has been easy to keep our house ready for a showing. Each person in our family (except Oksana) has a "zone". Every day at some point (usually before bed unless we have a showing) that person has to have their zone show ready. It has been a wonderful way to keep our house clean so that when we get a last minute showing all we have to do is touch up. In fact I like it so much that we may keep this system with our new house!

-On May 2 we will be spending a long day at Arkansas Children's Hospital. Oksana will have her follow up visit to evaluate her Botox treatment and she will also have a sedated MRI on the same day. We can defintely see a difference in the range of motion in her hamstrings since botox, but I can't say that we feel like it has made a difference in her walking. I'm anxious to see what they say at this appointment. Here is a picture of her getting stretched just a couple of days ago:


If you compare it to the stretch in her hamstring in this video you should be able to see that there has been improvement although the angle that the video or picture are taken at can affect how well you see the improvement.

-A couple of days ago a message came through the Reece's Rainbow yahoo group saying that an agency was looking for a homestudy ready family that has experience with special needs to adopt an infant girl with Down Syndrome here in the States. We emailed to inquire and I was SHOCKED to learn that this person had gotten 300 emails about this little girl!! 300 people willing to adopt this child but thousands of children with special needs dying in institutions overseas each year because no one will go get them. I don't for one second think that domestic or international is the right or wrong way to go. As you know, we've purused both routes and feel passionate about orphans EVERYWHERE. However, this was eye opening for us. It just confirmed 2 things. One is that we keep trying to find the way that seems easier for our family. I'll be honest, we'd love to not have to travel again. I worry about Oksana, and it's EXPENSIVE and HARD to go overseas. The other thing I learned (which is actually a lesson I have learned OVER AND OVER again but keep needing a reminder of) is that God has not asked our family to do what seems to be easier. Over and over again, in many different areas of our lives, God has asked us to do what was hard. Don't get me wrong, I am SO thankful for that. The harder road has brought us abundant blessings, but darn if I don't keep looking over into the easier road wondering if I can find a way over there. So, back I go to look at the sweet faces overseas and wonder where God might send us this time!

It sure seems like there was so much more I wanted to say but that's all that is coming to mind now. Off I go to clean my zone!

Other events from our trip...

If you didn't already, be sure to scroll down and read about Oksana's birthday party. I'm catching up on blogging today! While we were in St. Louis we did a lot of other fun stuff too. We spent a lot of time with family and friends. Larry got to play guitar at our home church. The kids got to ride 4 wheelers (even Oksana got to ride with her daddy). And we managed to squeeze in a trip to the zoo:





The other thing we did that might even be surprising to some of you that know us well is go house hunting. Those of you that get our ministry newsletter will be hearing about this again soon, but we are moving back "home" hopefully this summer. We were called almost 4 years ago to serve with FamilyLife. We LOVE FamilyLife and we still have a passion for marriages and families but our ministry is now happening right in our home. Our calling to adopt children with special needs is bringing us back home to live near our family again. Our house here is on the market and as soon as we sell it we will be heading back. It's a bittersweet move for us but one that we know is right for our family.

I think I have at least one more blog update to do so we'll see if I can squeeze it in tonight!

Birthday Party!

Last week we packed up and traveled to St. Louis to be with our family for Oksana's very first birthday party. We had such a wonderful time back "home". We got to visit the zoo, hang out with family and friends, and do house hunting (more on that in my next post).

Her party was amazing. She had been waiting for this day for months! It was only family but that quickly grew into a good size crowd. At times she seemed a bit overwhelmed, prefering to stay in a room with less people, but overall she had a blast. She wore a beautiful dress and a tiara for her special day. Some of her favorite parts of her day were opening presents, eating cake and ice cream, and releasing balloons into the sky after the party. My favorite part of the party was watching everyone sing Happy Birthday to her. We were all crammed in my mother in law's dining room and it was truly an amazing experience to see the look on her face as everyone sang to her. She was being celebrated and she knew it! It was a first for her in so many ways and it was one of those moments where I am struck by how her life has changed. Here are some pictures of her special day: