Updates

A few updates on life at our house:

-So far so good on our goals.  We've made flubber, she's been working hard on getting dressed, behaviors are coming along well, we've been counting everything in sight and she loves the book Chicka Chicka 1,2,3.  I didn't even know they had a counting version of that book until this week!  We made a trip to the Magic House which was a request of Oksana's.  She went there on a school field trip and she said it was packed so she didn't have much fun.  When you are a kid with limited mobility crowded places are not fun at all.  I took her at more of an off time and we had a BLAST!

- I had to recommend this project that I found on Pinterest.  They are sponge balls that you soak and go to war!  We have had 2 sponge ball wars so far and they are SO fun!

Clayton eventually gave up on the sponges and decided to attack dad with the bowl of water that we were using to wet our sponges!

My very wet family!

-Evan competed in his first "real" horse show against other riders in the St. Louis area and did fantastic!  He rode a pony named Reece and his best ribbon was second place!

- Our adoption paperwork is moving along.  We mailed our I-800 and are waiting on our medicals to gather together our second stage paperwork and send it off to Bulgaria.  I'm so excited and so nervous to get Anya home (see next bullet point) but we still have a very long wait ahead of us.

- I was reading my blog yesterday and had not even noticed that the last time I blogged about Oksana's behavior after coming home from Bulgaria was Monday after I sent her off to school.  At that point everything had been great.  About 2 hours after that blog I got a phone call from school and the whole week quickly went downhill after that.  It was the worst week she has ever had at school.  It was the last week of school and by Wednesday we almost just pulled her out and called it a year.  The only reason we didn't is because she really wanted to be a part of the parade on the last day of school.  Thursday and Friday she managed to pull herself together but literally made it through by the skin of her teeth.  She talked a lot about Anya that week.  Her fears, her concerns, etc.  She had held it all together SO well while we were gone and even did good while she was with us but when she went to school she literally couldn't cope with anything.  I'd be lying if I didn't say that I am very concerned about her after Anya comes home.  If this was what it was like when we didn't bring her home what will it be like when we do.  To top it all off Anya will be coming home right after Oksana starts her first grade year.  EVERYTHING will be new for her and she will be coping with that when Anya comes home.  I'm not sure how the timing could be worse.  Pray a lot...that's all I can do right now.  Here are the pictures of the end of the year parade, which she did love!  She couldn't walk the parade so we decorated her wagon and made it into a parade float!
In this picture we've spotted her but she hasn't seen us yet.

 I love this picture because this was her reaction when she saw us in the crowd!

 Oksana and her Kindergarten teacher.  She is a wonderful woman and we will miss her!

- Once she got out of school everything really settled down and she is doing great now.  It showed me what a stress school is for her (as if I didn't already know that).  So I'm working hard this summer on building our relationship and letting her have FUN.  Next week is VBS and then after that she starts summer school.  Not sure how I feel about that.  Summer school is 4 weeks total.  2 weeks then a couple of weeks of a break and then 2 more weeks. The good news is it is only 1/2 day and I recently cancelled bus service since the bus even became an issue in the last couple of weeks of school.  I figured if I can remove that stress it might help her to be more successful at summer school.

I think that just about covers it.  Now I'm off for a day of pool and sprinkler fun!

Summer Goals

I'll be honest...over the school year I do very little with Oksana as far as her education is concerned.  She leaves us at 7:30 in the morning and comes back at 3:30.  She goes to bed at 6:30.  You can certainly understand why I am not interested in being her teacher for the 3 hours I have with her.  When she comes home it is all about play, dinner, bath, and bed.  If she has homework we certainly work on that so I'm not a total delinquent parent!  However, now that it's summer it's time to kick into high gear.  She will go to 4 weeks of summer school but it's only 1/2 day and it really just gives her therapy and maintains her goals rather than helping her create new goals.  So that's what I will be doing this summer...creating new goals and I figured this was a good place to document them so that I can reference them through the summer!  So here are Oksana's summer goals:

READING:
I don't have any specific goal here except to have her reading.  We read to her ALL THE TIME but we don't push her reading to us much during the school year.  This summer I want her to keep reading and improving those skills.  This is an area of strength for her.  She has managed to keep up with some of the kids in her class in reading which really blows my mind.  I want to encourage that.

MATH:
While reading is a strength, math is BY FAR a weakness.  Numbers just do not make sense to her in any way, shape, or form.  She doesn't even do math with her class anymore and just does it in the special ed room.  She's been home for almost 2 years now and on a good day can count to 12.  My summer goal for her is a lofty one.  I'm going to see if I can get her counting to 20 by the time she starts 1st grade.  If she can't at least she will have lots and lots of exposure to hearing the numbers by the end of summer!  I'd also like to continue to work on coin identification with her.  She had a hard time grasping that when they worked on it in school.

BEHAVIOR:
My least favorite thing to work on because I feel like I do it CONSTANTLY!  So here's the thing...we've worked a lot over the last 2 years on pretty major behaviors, and that will continue, however, in the process I feel like we have let go of working on some basic manners.  So our behavior goals are to work on areas where she is just rude, and on basic ways to treat people with respect.  So for example, when you can't find something you don't start running through the house screaming "WHERE IS MY BALL?!" at the top of your lungs and demanding that someone help you.  Instead you quietly find  mom or dad.  Walk all the way up to us and say "Mom, can you please help me find my ball?"  We are also working QUITE A BIT on who is the boss and who isn't the boss.  Oksana is not the boss in our house and she knows that in her head but her behaviors show us that she still wants to be boss in her heart.  As we had a discussion about this the other day she went off to eat dinner.  She asked for a second serving and when Larry gave it to her she said "Thanks boss!"  LOL!  Another example of an area I want to work on happened just this morning.  She wanted to play with something that belonged to Evan so we talked about asking permission and treating something that isn't yours with more respect than if it was yours.  She had to wait for Evan to get up, ask him permission (he said yes), we talked about the fact that sometimes he will say no then talked about how to treat the thing that she would be playing with.  Finally, we discussed that if she can't treat his things with respect she would not get to play with them anymore.  Get my point here?  These are just a couple of examples of things we will be working on to improve her social skills and overall treatment of other people. 

SCIENCE:
Ok I don't really need science goals but it's fun so I'm adding it.  My goal this summer is to do some fun science experiments.  We are going to make flubber, goop, volcanoes, lava lamps, etc.

DRESSING:
Oksana can completely undress undress herself but dressing is a whole other story.  We've made great strides but she is not independent yet.  I fully blame that on myself.  Oksana has to get up early enough in the morning for school.  I refuse to wake her up earlier so we can have the extra 15 minutes needed to let her dress herself.  Instead I just do it and get her out the door.  So this summer we will be working on dressing herself.  Underwear and pants are by far the hardest.  She is almost independent with her shirt.  

I think that's about it for now.   You may wonder why I don't have any writing goals.  That's because writing is another major area of struggle for her.  We can make math fun.  I have no idea how to make writing fun for her so I'm going to leave that to summer school!

God Bless America!

Sorry I dropped off the face of the earth after that last visit. Friday through Sunday were an absolute whirlwind with little time to stop and write. Friday we had our last visit with Anya. We chose to only visit an hour so we could get on the road to Sofia. I'm glad we did that because she was in rare form. She was hitting a lot, and pushing boundaries like crazy. It's good that we get to see this side of her too and not just her sweet side. Better to get it all on the table before we bring her home!

After leaving the orphanage we started the journey back to Sofia. We walked back in the doors of The Budapest, dropped our luggage and immediately went to have dinner with Toni and the other families who were in town getting ready to leave. After dinner it was time to head to bed since we had to be up at 4am to start the journey home. It was an eventful journey home. After a delay in Munich and then a very long customs process in DC we literally had to RUN through the Dulles airport to our gate. When we got there the man said "I was just re-booking you. I didn't think you were going to make it!" We jumped on the plane just in time for them to shut the doors. That was way too close for comfort! In the end we made it home a bit early. It was so good to see the kids again. Oksana did GREAT while we were gone. We anticipated behaviors after coming back but have had no problems with her at all. We were early to bed on Saturday and then Sunday morning we had Oksana dedicated at church. I know, we are crazy! We had lunch with my in laws for Mother's Day and then spent the rest of the day trying to fight jet lag and put our house back together since it looked like our luggage had exploded all over the floor! Today I got Oksana on the bus with Bulgarian chocolate bars to pass out to all of her teachers. That's very exciting for a little girl whose love language is gifts! I have a million errands and phone calls on my to do list for today. I'll post more pictures later!

Day 6 - Same pictures...same outfit!!!

Today we got to see Anya's room! They brought her to us and then we had to wait for them to make sure the room was clean before we could come look at it :). I told our facilitator that if they were worried they should come see my house! We were finally told that we could go in. Anya was NOT happy! She had just been brought out and now we were all going back in! She threw a nice little fit about it but we laughed because her version of "very, very, angry" is Oksana's "slightly frustrated"! She has a very small room. It's just a rectangular area with 3 cribs and then a square room attached to it that has some toys. The first picture is standing in the "toy room" looking in the "crib room", then Anya's crib with her name above it, then a shot in the toy room, and finally Anya mad at us for going in there :). She is raised with 2 other kids...one of them is "Kody" on RR.

After that we played outside. For about 45 minutes of our visit she was very mellow which is a side of her we haven't seen yet. She sat on our laps and let us bounce her for quite awhile. She would go to my lap and then switch to Larry's over and over again. Then she got on the swing and let us just swing her for the longest time while she just looked around.

When it was time to go in we had to wait for a care giver to come get her so we got to play in a big room with lots of riding toys, indoor swings, a slide, etc. for indoor play. She loved swinging and riding on the "roller coaster" which you will see in the video. When the care giver came back to get her she covered her eyes so she wouldn't see her! We are going to miss her so much tomorrow! One last visit in the morning and then we are back on the road to Sofia. OHHH...one last thing and then I'll post the video too. We went to lunch and ordered a HUGE pizza! Last time we had this pizza we loved it and we shared a "medium". Larry said it didn't fill him so he wanted the next size up. Well the next size up was GIGANTIC! We laughed and laughed! Here is the pizza and a video from our visit with Anya: One slice covered the whole plate!

Our driver...he cracks us up!

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Day 5 - Same pictures, different outfit!

I remember this point with Oksana when we were just doing the same things each day and at some point we said "Oh we should take a couple of pictures!" So this one won't be picture heavy. We only did 2 hours today and it was a much more reasonable amount of time. I'm glad she gave us day 1 to enjoy her sitting still because now we run the whole time ;)! I'd lie if I didn't worry about the energy it is going to take to parent these 4 kids! I don't have a mellow one in the bunch! This is where I see God's sense of humor! Today we finally got to meet the director. She was very nice. She again reminded us that Anya is naughty! Yes, we get it now!! She did say though that she is a very sweet girl, she is happy, and that the orphanage can not do anymore for her so she will thrive in a family. She told us that she sleeps well once she is down but that she causes trouble when she goes to sleep so they have to separate her and another boy from the rest of the kids to go to bed! We are seriously considering finding a way to add another bedroom to our house now. Not kidding...I really don't know how that is going to fly with Oksana. The director asked us a lot of questions about Oksana. She was surprised that she walks and she asked a lot of questions about the Ukrainian adoption process. We got to share our family photo album with her and just overall enjoyed our time with her! We also got to meet 3 other kids. 2 are waiting for families and needed updated pictures and 1 already has a family who wanted an update on her. All 3 were precious! We found out that tomorrow we will get to see her room. I'm very excited about that. More to come tomorrow!

Day 4 - A very long visit!

So I mentioned before that we would go to the orphanage from 9-12 and then feed her lunch. Well that has turned out to be way too long. We were at the orphanage for 4 hours today and we had a ton of fun for about 2 hours and then she quickly became tired, hungry, thirsty, and hot....and so were we. We finally got to see that naughty we were told about :)! Really it wasn't even bad. Just what we would expect from a little girl testing her boundaries with some new grown ups who follow her around all day! We fed her lunch and then the caregivers forgot about us! Finally around 1 our facilitator said "I think they forgot about us, lets just take her back!" So after talking it over with our lawyer and facilitator we've decided to limit our visits to 2 hours. I told them that now that I have seen her eat and seen what she eats I don't feel it is necessary for us to feed her anymore so we are going to just play from about 10-12. We still didn't get to see the director today. Our facilitator said that tomorrow we will ask the social worker whatever we need to ask and not worry about the director. Our days here go by so fast! By the time we are finished with our visits we get lunch, explore a bit, call our kids, download pictures, etc, get dinner, and go to bed! It's so hard to believe we only have about 4 more days here. One more quick thing and then I'll post pictures and video...I posted video from yesterday this morning so be sure and check that out if you missed it.

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Answering questions and videos

We are getting ready for our second visit but I thought I'd take a moment to answer a few questions and then I forgot to post videos too! As you can see my blogger still does not recognize my spaces so good luck deciphering this! how is the water temperature this time of year over there? The days are in the 70s and the nights are cool so it isn't a swimming temperature but it also isn't freezing. Nice little lunch there - what is in her food? Can she chew that bread? Her lunch was beans (mostly liquified and I'm not sure why...I'm assuming they did that for all of the kids) and bread with some liquid added to make it a mush (gross) and then a slice of bread (which she can chew) and some juice that looked like chicken broth. She also drinks well out of an open cup. my husband says that he's astonished you didn't get any tomatoes with breakfast. They're his favorite part. :-) We are NOT tomato fans. I've heard they are great here. I'll have to trust that :)! The woman at our hotel probably thinks we are crazy Americans because we don't drink coffee or eat tomatoes! Here are a couple of videos for anyone who didn't see them on Facebook:

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Day 3 - Meeting the Bulgarian Beauty!

So much to tell so here we go. When we got to the orphanage we were informed that the director was not there which was kind of a bummer since we were anxious to ask questions, learn more about Anya, and meet some other kids who are being adopted or are listed and need updated pictures. They said that we will see her tomorrow so in the meantime they brought us in to see the social worker. The first thing she said is "You have kind of a naughty one. She runs and she probably won't listen to you." Ummmm....that makes her naughty? We were kind of expecting that. Still, we braced ourselves. Next thing we know she came bursting through the door. She wasn't sure what was going on, just checking things out. She gave us 5 and then proceeded to slap Larry across the face! Never fear, this is just her way of interacting with people so we taught her her first English word...gentle...and within 15 minutes she knew what we meant and was doing fantastic! They told us that we could go outside to play with her so we found a spot to play where there were no other kids and just tried to slowly interact with her. She was a joy! Sweet, sweet, sweet and happy. I'm so impressed with her. She is engaging and smart as a whip. We couldn't believe the things she was doing and picking up from us. She is a sensory seeker big time. She loves for toys to give her sensory input and she is very oral. We learned this the hard way with the bubble wand! By the end we just had to dump the bubble liquid so she could "dip" the stick and mouth it! She sat by her daddy with me across from her and played for quite awhile and then she spent the rest of the time on my lap letting me tickle her, play, and kiss on her. And oh...this little girl is the SPITTING IMAGE of me as a child! I was amazed! She is not verbal at all from what we could tell and we expected that. She did imitate the word "Boo" during peek-a-boo but did not produce any words of her own. She does make noises and still does a good job of communicating her needs. After our time outside was up we got to feed her lunch. I was thrilled to see this since the report had indicated some feeding problems. We saw none. She was a great eater and again used it as a sensory experience by tapping her spoon on anything that would make noise! When it was time to leave she covered her head so they wouldn't see her because she didn't want to go! So I'll shut up now and let you see pictures. If you are my friend on Facebook you've seen these.

We will meet with her now Tuesday through Friday from about 9am to 12 then at 12 we will get to feed her lunch and she will be off for a nap. Tomorrow we will also meet with the director. I'm looking forward to that. I'll update again tomorrow!