Are they Sisters?

YES, they are sisters.

Why Russia?

The biggest question we have heard about our family is “Why Russia?” I have started to explain in this blog how we came to adopt and also here. When I first started reading about adoption shortly after we got married, I came across advice with regard to choosing a country to adopt from. It said something like “which country do you feel an affinity toward?” My answer was “Jamaica” and my husband’s answer was “Tibet“. Some might think that the first 2 countries that would have come to mind were “United States” or “England” (since I am American and hubs is English). However, our idealistic World view does not have man-made borders…sure, maps have lines that divide, but planet Earth does not. We feel part of a global community and we were already an international family, so the nationality of our children was somewhat insignificant. It has been suggested to us several times that “there are plenty of kids right here in America” and to those people I say “feel free to foster or adopt an American child.” We think domestic adoption is wonderful, although we do not feel that American children are any more deserving of parents than African children, Asian children or European children. ALL children deserve to know the love of a family.

First, we researched adopting from Jamaica and found that it can be a very time-consuming and discouraging process and many families drop out and switch countries after a year or more of paperchasing. Some do make it happen, but I was seeing a lot of discouragement and heartbreak so we decided against it. Tibet does not legally exist as a country from which to adopt so I then briefly started researching adopting from (Xizang) China or (Dharamsala) India where many Tibetans live. We contacted the office of the Tibetan leader for feedback regarding this possibility and got a clear response that it was not the right path.

At that point we started researched adopting from the United States. It would have been great if this option could have worked out for us because my father was a foster-kid and also because it’s free. We went to an orientation meeting and we found that the vast majority of the children in the US who were in immediate need of parents were older than our 0-39 month age range and the younger children had disabilities we did not feel like we could handle (which is saying a lot since we were open to a fairly wide range of medical needs). I know that older child adoption is right for a lot of families, but we were first-time parents without any experience, so we felt most comfortable with a younger age range. Fortunately, there are no orphanages full of young children in the US  We never considered going on a waiting list to adopt a young/healthy child because there are already many thousands of children in the world who are in urgent need of parents. We do not have infertility issues and we want to parent children who would otherwise not have the chance of a family. Next we researched England and we basically found the same exact situation as with United States. There are no children that met our parameters who were in urgent need of families and we were not going to go on a wait list.

My research indicated that some of the post-Soviet countries have orphanages that are full of precious young children in the age range we were considering with manageable health issues we feel comfortable with.  Birth-parents sometimes leave newborns at the maternity hospital if the baby is ‘different’ from the acceptable societal norms. Maybe the child has a cleft lip or crossed eyes or Down Syndrome – those are all reasons for abandonment in Eastern Europe, whereas that is quite rare in the West. This is not a judgement statement. I have no idea what it would have been like to live without freedom behind the iron curtain. I have no idea what it’s like to be pregnant and living in abject poverty with no social support network. I should mention that the foster-care systems in the Eastern European countries are getting more well established now so there is not an abundance of healthy babies as they mostly stay with biological families or go to foster-families. (There are many American families who are on waiting lists to adopt young healthy children from Eastern Europe). However, we found that the number of children that met our criteria who were in desperate need for parents was mind-boggling. I wish I could say that we “chose Russia” because of its fascinating architecture, interesting history or rich culture, but the fact is that we didn’t really “choose Russia”, we were led there because of the enormous need and because that’s where our children were.

Ali Has Been Home 6 Months!

Six months ago we were flying home with our precious new arrival.

Ali is courageous, joyful, adventurous, affectionate, helpful, loving, smart, beautiful and kind. We are so thrilled she is our daughter!

First Family Holiday Season ~ 2011

Baking her first batch of Christmas cookies at the neighbors' house. This was the day after Thanksgiving and our friends/neighbors invited a bunch of people over to decorate the tree and bake cookies.

They played Charlie BrownZen had only been home 2 weeks so we kept her very close and brought her home early while Ali stayed to decorate cookies (and her face apparently).

Home 5 weeks!

This is another holiday party - the day before Christmas Eve. This was their first time ever opening a Christmas present! Zen didn't really understand the concept at first. I used to design children's special occasion dresses and thankfully saved a few when I sold the business.

All of our neighbors had presents for the girls. They are the only kids on the block, so everyone doted on them - adorable.

We could only decorate the top 1/3 of our Christmas tree since Zen pulled down all the ornaments within her reach I wish I had taken close-up pictures of the ornaments we bought for them in Russia. We also got engraved ornaments to commemorate their first Christmases as babies before we met them (a rocking horse for Ali and a silver baby cup for Zen).

One of the traditions we'd like to start is making ornaments every year. The girls did hand print ornaments this year and they came out beautiful!

We went to see fake snow (and Santa was 'sold out'). The girls loved it. Didn't they see plenty of the real stuff in Russia?!

There are more holiday pictures here of decorating the tree, baking gingerbread men, wrapping presents, building a gingerbread house and holiday boat parades.

On Christmas Eve morning, I made an orange coffee cake (Paula Deen recipe). It was pretty good and easy, so I would consider making this again, but I'm really looking for something GREAT to make every year as an annual tradition, so let me know if you have a good recipe.

On Christmas Eve we baked a huge batch (7 tins) of cinnamon rolls to give away as gifts to our friends and neighbors. This picture was taken just as they were about to go into the oven. We used the Pioneer Woman's recipe. Unfortunately we messed it up, but I am definitely planning to do this again next year since I know where we went wrong.

We had 5 friends over for a Christmas Eve ham dinner and the girls got to open more presents. This is one of the first years we have spent without our parents and/or siblings and they were missed very much, but we decided not to travel for the sake of our girls' stability. Well, that and we've traveled to Russia 4 times this year and were happy to relax at home.

Apparently Santa doesn't care for cookies and milk - he prefers Boddington's and chocolate cake. I don't get the whole Santa thing, but my husband thinks it's fun. Ali asked me several times "where is Santa's sleigh?" and I told her "Some people believe it's in the North Pole", so that's what I'm going to continue with...some (small) people do believe in it and the girls can decide for themselves if they want to believe in it or not.

ChristmasMorning

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We couldn't believe how many presents were sent to our girls! Ali tried on every outfit as she opened it. They both played with every toy one at a time. I think they were a little overwhelmed and had an early nap.

Hopefully we'll laugh about this picture someday. Christmas Lunch/Dinner was ready while the girls were napping - how did I get the timing so wrong? We didn't want them to miss it and we didn't want to wait until they woke up (and eat a cold dinner). So we woke them up (hence the messy hair and tears). Otherwise, the dinner was excellent!

One of the bonuses in being married to a Brit is an extra holiday! Not only do we celebrate Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, but we also celebrate Boxing Day (December 26th). We had some English friends to the house for drinks and munchies such as pork pies, prawns, English toffee, Christmas pudding and other English junk food delicacies. Our girls we happy to finally be around another child. Everyone had a blast – sorry no pictures.

After a 1 day breather, the festivities continued! We had some out-of-town friends stay with us: 4 kids, 4 adults and 2 dogs in a 2 bedroom apartment for 4 days - such fun!

We got to celebrate our little friend's 4th birthday with her at an amusement park. I was a bit concerned all of this would be too much for Zen (who had only been here 6 weeks) but she was golden. Ali had a few overwhelmed moments with tears, but she did great overall. No regrets.

We spent the New Year celebration with 4 Brits + wives and 6 kids. Sublime. My mother in law sent party dresses for the girls from England.

Ali and friends spent the evening jumping over the couch, climbing trees and other rough and tumble fun in her party dress.

We brought in the New Year under the stars with good friends, then we all tucked the little ones into bed and got in the hot tub for a celebratory glass of champagne.

Post Adoption ~ Developmental Evaluation & Other News

Zen was 21 months when she arrived in the States. I have *heard* that children lose 1 month of development for every 3 months in an institutional environment which would have put her at about 14 months developmentally. We had her development tested less than 2 weeks after her arrival. She tested at 21 months for social development, 14 months for self-help skills, 17 months for gross motor development, 18 months for fine motor, 11 months for expressive language, 13 months for language comprehension and 16 months for general development (whatever that is).

Zen’s height was 85.4 cm (74th %), weight 11.5 kg (48th %) and head circumference 47 cm (48th %).

Our plan is get her started with a Russian language speech pathologist and English language speech pathologist in the new year. After trying both, we will decide which of those 2 routes seems to be better for her. We’re also going to have her evaluated at our regional center for (free) early intervention services (if she qualifies). We’ll also be doing a hearing evaluation and visual evaluation soon. We wanted to give her a few weeks to get settled into family life before too many appointments. She is doing extremely well in terms of adapting to her new life with us.

Zen is a little ham, a bit of a rebel, happy as a clam and very giving.

We feel like we had a bit of a breakthrough on December 18th (5 weeks post placement). She looked different and my husband and I both noticed that day. We’ve been very diligent in her first few weeks home to get as much fruit and vegetables in her as possible since she didn’t have either in RU. (Basically she gets bananas or dried wild blueberries every morning mixed with organic vanilla yogurt and I use the food chopper to disguise lots of spinach or broccoli with other vegetables into whatever I’m making for dinner. Snacks are usually carrots and hummus). We’ve also been trying to get her out in the fresh air and sunshine. It’s working! The gray skin hue is gone and she has a normal pink color in her cheeks. The dark circles under her eyes seem to be looking a little better. Her hair was so thin and dull before but is now looking shiny and healthier. She’s not covered in bruises because she’s getting more coordinated physically. She looks happy and expressive and radiant. Five weeks!

The interesting thing (to me) about that timeline has to do with deschooling philosophy. I’ve *heard* that it takes a person about 1 month to recover from every 1 year of institutionalization (the term refers to school, although I personally think this theory also transfers to other institutions such as orphanages). I thought maybe the recovery process would take longer since school is part time whereas an orphanage is full time institutionalization, but that timeline has been exactly correct for both of our girls. Zen was in an institution for 1.75 years and it took her almost 1.25 months to come into her natural state. Most of her post-institutional issues (such as rocking) have dissipated and the only remaining issues we are seeing: 1.) she still runs away from us and only sometimes looks back & 2.) she is not ready to be left with Ali’s (Russian speaking) babysitter yet because she sometimes shows a preference for the babysitter. We believe she’ll get over these two issues in the coming weeks. Ali was in an institution for 3 years & 1 month and it took her 3 months and 1 week to get over an eating issue (her other post-institutional issues had dissipated earlier).

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

Our Baby Girl Has Been Home One Month

Zen has adjusted so seamlessly to our family. She is such a precious baby girl!

Zen's first day home was rainy so we stayed in. She was trying to make sense of everything, so she mostly sat on the couch and observed that day. The only time she fussed is if she didn't have either Mark or me in sight. By the end of the first day, she was settled! It's truly amazing - within 24 hours of arriving home, she was golden. We went for a walk and to the beach and out to brunch her second day home and she was comfortable.

Her first week home was incredibly smooth. It took her a little while to adjust to a few things, such as the bath and the dog, but otherwise her transition could not be any better.

This was Zen's third day home. We are so lucky they like playing together.

This was Zen's first time at the playground. Poor darling was so uncoordinated. She is still a bit clumsy (for lack of a better word) and she falls a lot, cannot walk down stairs, gets lots of bumps/bruises. Going to the indoor and outdoor playgrounds is helping so much! Her balance seems to be getting better and we think she'll catch up on physical development without intervention services.

Her first doctor appointment was awful for her. Poor baby!

We got into the holiday spirit early this year. I started holiday shopping when M* was in Russia picking Zen up. Here they are "helping" me wrap presents.

We've been living here 6 years and this is our first Christmas tree! In the past, we had always traveled to see family for the holidays but we wanted to stay local this year, now that we have our little ones home.

We had a wreath on the door the day after Thanksgiving and the tree went up December 1st. Zen removed all of the decorations within her reach, so now only the top 1/3 of the tree is decorated

The girls love baking. We did gingerbread men out of sugar cookie dough.

We went to 2 boat parades. We carry Zen in the baby carrier a whole lot, even around the house (she loves it!) but for long walks we take the double pram. This was Zen's first fireworks display - she had fun and wasn't scared at all. Ali was a little disappointed that Santa was on a boat and not flying through the sky on a sleigh.

Dancing to Beethoven with Papa

Walking to the other boat parade. Love this little hat by Minimink. A lot of their clothes are second-hand...this coat is Catimini (scored on eBay) and has somebody else's name in it.

Hubs is working long hours right now on a huge project with a February deadline. It's so hard not having him around but fortunately he is able to take one day off per week. We went to have lunch with him at the workshop this past weekend.

Ali and the aliens at the workshop

Here are the girls making icing for a gingerbread house. Everything they make gets sampled many times throughout the cooking process.

The girls loved assembling and decorating the gingerbread house. Zen could not comprehend the concept of putting perfectly good candy on a house, so it has much less candy decor than Ali and I would have decked it out with.

Adoption Announcement & Holiday Card Photo Shoot

Adoption announcement photo

Holiday Card Photo

Getting To Know ‘Zen’

• She is happy and content most of the time
• She is also not afraid to express her discontent
• She adores her Papa and squeals with delight when he walks in the door
• She doesn’t take any sh*t from Ali and stands her ground
• She is adjusting to family life really well
• She has accepted us all and is fully attached to us
• She has not accepted that she has a dog and has not attached to him quite as well
• She is still very much a baby. I have ‘heard’ that children lose 1 month of development for every 3 months in an institution, which would put her at a 14 month level (she’s 21 months). We are going to have her development evaluated and hope that she is there or higher.
• She’s a great traveler
• She came home dehydrated and is still catching up and consuming loads of liquids.
• She has a good appetite and eating is going very well. She lets us know when her belly is full and she tries new things. One of our main goals right now is to get as much fruit and vegetables in her as possible and she was seriously deficient.
• She can really go through a lot of diapers
• She wears a size 18 month clothes and 6.5W shoe. She is 23.5 lb
• Her language is seriously delayed. We plan to enroll her in all early intervention services necessary.
• She does not like having her diaper or clothes changed
• She did not like the bath at all the first few days, but does like water play, so we started by sitting her on the edge of the sink to play and get as wet as she wanted, then she started playing with the bath water while standing outside the tub, and it took a few days before she would get in the bathtub.
• She likes to be carried
• She’s like her Momma and takes a while to get going after she wakes up
• She’s not crazy about bed-times, and we’ve made ourselves (and her) crazy trying to get her to sleep at a regular nap-time and regular evening-time, so now we just put her to bed whenever we see the signs. (For Ali that means obstinate and/or hitting and for Zen that means clingy/whiny/cranky).
• Jet-lag has not affected her much at all
• She is teething
• She’s affectionate and a total love! Such a sweet cherub.
• So far no signs of sensory integration issues. She does walk on her toes, but no problems with food textures, clothing tags, lights, sounds, etc.
• Her first word (that we know of) was ‘Papa’. She also says ‘hi’ now.
• She’s starting to wave goodbye and blow kisses
• I can’t stop looking at her when she’s sleeping and telling her how loved and wanted she is when I’m holding her and rocking her. She is really soaking in all the parent time that she missed out on.
• She has to be closely supervised with solid foods which is hard because Ali likes sharing food with her. She can’t have a banana or cheese stick (for example) without help because she jams too much of it in her mouth.
• She likes pulling all the books off the shelf and emptying the kitchen drawers and cabinets. She’s also a typical baby exploring gravity by throwing toys and whatever else onto the floor without actually playing with it. This wouldn’t bother me so much, but we have a ‘monkey-see / monkey-do’ situation going on over here, so Ali is quick to copy.
• The sisters both copy each other. I would have thought that Zen would be doing most of the copying, but it’s equal, so it’s a bit like having 2 one year olds right now.
• Have I mentioned what a happy, joyful girl she is? She is smiling most of the time and is actually quite an ‘easy’ baby. She goes with the flow a lot of the time and she is adjusting so well. I am so proud of her!

Zen’s Journey Home!

My dear husband went to Russia on his own for this final trip for about 12 days to pick up our baby girl ‘Zen’ and finalize the adoption process and bring her home. We prefer to travel together, but thought it would be best for Ali to stay home this time. We all missed each other so much! Hubs was there over a long holiday weekend, so the time went by slowly and he wasn’t able to visit Zen as much as he would have liked to (unlike Ali’s orphanage which let us visit twice per day including weekends). Poor baby Zen cried through every orphanage visit. We don’t think she had been around men much at all. However, she stopped crying when he got her out of the orphanage and she traveled really well with him!

This was the first time M* had taken Zen from the orphanage - to get her passport photos done. This is her with one of her caregivers.

There were some orphanage visits that she just cried for the whole hour and M* didn't bother taking any photos, but during this visit she only cried about half the time.

M* begged to be able to photograph her in her group environment so that she would have some pictures later in life to see where she resided. They did not allow him to enter the group setting, but they took the camera and photographed her in the play room.

You'll recognize this room from a previous post.

Notice how empty the room is? They said she was in a group of 16 although we think it's possible she was in isolation with this one other child. If that is the case, this other little one is now alone.

We got video of the nanny talking about Zen on one of the visits.

I think this is the day before he picked her up.

M* says he “filled a van” with donations for the orphanage and gifts for the nannies. The orphanage got many disposable diapers, clothes, a digital camera, 12 baby walkers, etc. The children can’t leave with any any of the orphanage clothing so he brought an outfit and they bundled her up in the tights, long sleeve onesie, corduroy pants, a sweater, socks, boots, winter coat, hat & mittens. It’s a cultural thing in Russia that the children are overly bundled, and I feel it’s important for adoptive parents to take the children out of the orphanage dressed according to the cultural norms so that people over there feel that we know what we are doing taking care of these precious Russian children. This is serious! I think there is some sort of superstition that children get sick if their heads are exposed (or something like that?)

Zen with a caregiver, doctor and the director just before leaving.

Z with 2 of her caregivers, getting ready to say final goodbyes

She's a family girl now! Here she is with her Papa driving away from the orphanage. He says that she cried in the taxi for about 1 minute and has been golden ever since. I'm SO happy he did as many visits as they allowed, because she finally felt comfortable with him just as they were leaving.

Her passport took 4 business days (Leningrad region). He couldn’t get a last-minute train, so he picked her up and went straight to the airport and they flew to Moscow on November 8.

The taxi took them directly to the airport and they flew to Moscow to get her immigration visa.

Getting on her first ever airplane. She did great on the quick flight to Moscow.

They ate pasta every day in Moscow because she loved it so much. She did great at the restaurant.

They were at an apartment in Moscow for 3 nights and she did really well. She had one major outburst expressing some anger and we are very happy that she is comfortable enough so early on to do so. Otherwise, she was very content.

Ready for her Embassy appointment. It was below freezing the entire time (November) and we were well prepared, but he still got lectured by several women for not having her bundled well enough.

Eating grapes with Papa. She is starting to smile and get more comfortable.

Got my visa! Headed to the airport for the international flight home.

They stayed at an apartment booked on Peace Travel Services which was in walking distance to the Embassy.  She had a medical exam done early November 9 and dropped off the visa application at the Embassy the same day. He picked up her US visa on November 10 and they flew home on a direct flight November 11th.

Zen is a great little traveler! She slept one hour on the 17 hour journey. They got through immigration in about an hour or so at our home airport. Ali and I were so happy to see them at the airport! When we got home, our neighbors were all outside our door to greet her. She looked positively delirious after the long day traveling and we put her straight to bed. She slept so well and woke up at a normal hour and has not suffered any jet lag (lucky girl!) One thing that has helped is waking her up after she’s been napping for 3.5 hours to make sure she’s going to sleep through the night.

Sisters!