may16th....

A year ago today we landed in Magadan Russia. We had been travelling for more hours than I cared to count and were shell shocked and travel weary. We were taken to our hotel and told we could rest, that at around 3 we would be picked up to go meet our future daughter. Never mind that we had been up for 48 plus hours, who could sleep. When we got to the babyhome, we met the Director and the Doctor, they gave us some brief info on Grace and some of her likes and dislikes. We were then moving to a new room to meet her, but we ran into her in the hall as they were bringing her in to meet us. My first thought, she must be mine, she's in all pink! This is who we saw....
The girl we met that day, didn't laugh when tickled, didn't know how to be held or carried, didn't know to smile when someone smiled at her. She was a very quiet and stoic girl.

Today, she is full of life and joy and laughs all the time. She loves to be tickled and when you hold her she holds on. When we hug, she mashes her cheek to yours. This girl knows how to love and live life fully. Who knew how much she would change or how much we would love her one year later.

Happy Mother's Day and updates

Happy Mother's Day, to all those who have their children with them, but most especially to those who are waiting to bring their children home. Last year we left on Mother's Day to go meet Grace for the first time. It was a strange day to say the least. I was excited to meet Grace, but I am a notoriously bad flyer, so I was so upset to be leaving the boys on an airplane, over water. I cried a lot last year.

This year I was treated to a morning of sleeping in, okay 8am, but it's better than 7! My wonderful hubby cooked me breakfast, my kids made me beautiful presents and we ate lunch and dinner out. I have not cooked a thing today, I haven't taken a kid to the restroom, or wiped a hiney, or gotten a juice cup refill, Scott has insisted on doing it all (this could mean bad things for me come Father's day huh?)

We have been very busy in our house. the first week on May is always bad, I run a huge plant sale for our pre-school which means I am stressed and unavailable. May first was A's 8th birthday, oh more stress. We managed to survive it all but barely. The night of A's birthday (and the night before the actual big plant sale) Grace got the croup. We've had the croup here many times people, I laugh at the croup for in the past it has been no big deal, pop the kid in a steamy bathroom, problem solved until the morning when you get steroids from the Doc. Not this time Grace got the CROUP! She was up all night, we have a 75 gallon hot water tank, I emptied it twice. There were moments where I thought i should go to the ER. It. was. not. a good. night!

The next day Scott had to take her to the Pedi, because I was selling plants. Now I should mention that the day before the boys had soccer practice and M kept laying on the ground. I kept yelling at him to get up and practice, it wasn't nap time. When Scott took the kids to the Pedi, Grace had the CROUP! and M had the coup, a sinus infection and an ear infection. Yes, I am that great a mother.

Since then everyone has recovered, but J slammed his middle finger in a door, it is black and swollen and gross. And, you should see him when he shows the finger to people, he flips them off. I hide my head. It's never a dull moment here!

I am now going to take my Motherly self or as Scott calls me, Mom to 4 and Non-Mom to 1, thank you very much NBC, and watch Desperate Housewives and Brothers and Sisters.

Today, wishing me a happy day
A turns the big 8 and gets a new bike
How Grace spends part of every day, cheering on her brothers at a sporting event
The Diva at lunch, she always has on some concoction
J and Grace set the webkinz up to watch TV, the other day they lined them up on the wall in time out.

When did you first love your child?

There are many posts on FRUA and on blogs all about how people met their future child and fell instantly in love with with them. I've been doing a lot of thinking about that since the one year anniversary of meeting Grace is just around the corner.

The truth is , I didn't love Grace at first sight, I didn't love her for a long time. I'm never sure if that is because I had kids at home that I had a relationship with, and Grace was a stranger to me, or if it was fear, I think it was a bit of both.

I remember getting her referral photo and thinking she doesn't look like my daughter, and really feeling no attachment to the picture. If we had lost her I don't know how I would have felt, sad yes, but maybe not much more. I was very afraid to get my hopes up, I read the horror stories, so I spent a lot of time trying not to get attached. Meanwhile my Mom showed the picture to complete strangers she was so excited.

Then we went and met Grace, and I didn't feel that instant love, or love at all on the first trip. I felt protective of her, I wanted to take her with us and make her life better and I wanted to know her better, but I would not allow myself to get attached. We never called her Grace, we used her Russian name, I felt like I had to keep my distance in case we lost her. Scott was much more attached and couldn't wait to go get her. He didn't know what to do with me. I have to admit to being afraid that I wouldn't be able to love her, because I didn't feel the love for her during our wait.

Then one day in mid-June friends from our agency sent me a picture of Grace they had taken when they were in Magadan picking up their girls. When I saw this I cried, and cried and I finally felt an inkling of the love for Grace that was to come.
She looked so sad and disheveled and I could tell from the picture how much she needed us to love her, and I let myself realize how much I needed her. Now don't go thinking that from that moment on it was rainbows and butterflies, it wasn't. That was just the moment that I finally realized that I could love this child and that I in fact did have some love for her.

When Grace first came home I spent a lot of time looking at this picture to remember those feelings, because loving her while she tried so hard to push us away was HARD! I spent a lot of time wondering what we had done and if we had wrecked our family. Thankfully those days were short lived, but of those of you in process who read this, I hope that you know that if you don't have that immediate reaction of love when you first meet you child, it's okay, the love will come, I promise!

Obsessions

Grace has some new obsessions, the shoe fetish still continues, but she has now added silky pajamas and Cinderella to her repertoire.

A few weeks ago I got out some polyester Jammie's I had bought for her. All her Jammie's have been the 100% cotton Carter's ones in the past, but these new Jammie's were wide legged Capri's with a tank style top and Grace loved them. After wearing the Jammie's once Grace now will strip at any hour of the day and dig through the dirty clothes basket to find these Jammie's and change into them. It doesn't matter what time it is or what the temperature is Grace will change into the Jammie's. We've found that if we have someplace we need to be, that Grace had better be in our eyesight for the last 15 minutes to make sure she is still dressed, I've been caught off-guard a few times needing to go to the bus stop and Grace is in her Jammie's. (it snowed here last Saturday, so summer Jammie's outside aren't going to cut it) I finally found another pair of similar Jammie's, which she will wear in a pinch, but she does prefer her bug Jammie's.

Grace has also discovered Cinderella, or Rella as she is called here. It started with a Disney Princess story book and has now taken on a life of it's own. Scott brought home a pack of Rella figurines for her and they are her constant companion right now. I gave her a Rella Barbie, but there was an unfortunate incident with a glass slipper in the toilet and Grace diving in after it and getting her head in the urine filled toilet, so barbie has been banished. She will sit and watch the movie, with her figurines, and never move. She won't sit still for much else, so the movie is gold to me right now. Last week she spotted a girl with a Rella sweatshirt and I was afraid she was going to take her down and steal the sweatshirt. When she sees Rella, she screams her name so we can all see too, so I didn't miss the sweatshirt or the dragging of me to get a closer look at the sweatshirt.

I have to say, after living through the truck, train, airplane obsession four times, the lego obsession three times, the video game obsession 3 times and now the Pokemon obsession, these new obsessions are great fun and I am all about encouraging them!

Happy Birthday Scott

Last year my wonderful Hubby hit the bi 4-0. It was quite a day, but not because Scott was having a milestone birthday. On his birthday we received a wonderful gift courtesy of some great people who had just returned from Magadan. They got to see Grace and the sent us these pictures. This was the first time we had seen Grace as she was, not a picture from a year past. I remember looking at her and thinking she does not look like my daughter. Today we were at Costco and were asked if she and J were twins, so obviously she does look like our daughter. (and I can't imagine her looking any different)

An update to my speech post. Grace is seeing a speech therapist, through Early Intervention. We don't care for the gal who is Grace's therapist, but after all we had to go through to get the thing started and the then adding the fact that her services end in June we're sticking with who we have. I'm not saying we completely disagree with her, we don't, but we are trying to take what she has said with a grain of salt. We've been doing a lot of research since Tuesday and while Grace does meet some of the criteria for CAS, she definitely doesn't meet about half. It will be interesting to see where this all takes us. Our current plan is to send Grace to our Church's pre-school as scheduled, then she will have speech through the school district. We will then be able to get her additional speech therapy through a private practitioner using our insurance. She is being tested for developmental pre-school, but at this point Scott and I would rather not go that route, 10 hours a week gone from home seems like too much for a 3 year old, and they have told us she will get the same amount of speech there that she would if we just took her in to the school, so if she qualifies at four we'll see. So for now that is the plan. I'm still sad about her diagnosis, and still trying to figure out if it is correct, she seems to be making such huge progress right now, to have the therapist tell me this, just sucked the joy right of me.

I know that Scott and I will advocate for all the best help for Grace and that, that will help her have the best outcome she can, but it is taking me awhile to shake off the sadness because just like all Mom's everywhere, we just don't want our babies to have to struggle.

Childhood Speech Apraxia

That is the diagnosis they have pinned on Grace. I had an entry all planned out about Grace's speech and how much she had been improving lately and how thrilled we were. I was also going to mention that whenever she made a great stride in language we were treated to a few days of horrid behavior as she made her developmental leap. I was also going to mention that although I had once longed for a label to explain why she wasn't talking like I thought she should be, I was okay with it because she was making such progress and I was confident that she would be caught up in a year or so.

Now, she has the label I once longed for and I have a deep sadness. When I read about CAS, as it called by those in the know, the picture isn't always that grand, it can mean that Grace will always struggle with language based activities, like reading and writing. My heart breaks with the strong possibility that she will struggle in school. Partly because she is one sharp cookie and I would hate to see anything dampen her spark, and partly because reading is one of my great passions in life and the thought that she may not love it like I do ( and the brothers that can read do) is really heartbreaking.

I am also struggling because yesterday we had an academic plan in place that I was quite comfortable with, today I don't know for sure what to do or what is best for her.

As a teacher I have always hated labels on kids, I've always felt like it limited them, and I avoided labels as often as I could. When I was dying to have a label for Grace's speech delay Scott was laughing at me, he couldn't figure out why I needed that so badly. I thought that if I had a label that there would be some mythical exact plan in place to FIX the problem. HA, turns out I am much happier without the label, we'll still be doing all the same things for Grace that we currently are, but now I have this looming concern for the future that wasn't there yesterday.

I'm just going to try and concentrate on how I felt yesterday, Grace will talk and she will be fine, and we will do all that we can to help her get to the top of her potential in life, just like we do for her brothers.

But just for today I am sad, so I'll go eat some cookies!

A year ago today.....

I woke up and got four kids ready for the day. I dropped two off at the bus and one off at pre-school and then I took the last one with me to Bible Study. I didn't tell anyone that the day held the promise of being a very special day. I just sat and prayed for peace. When Bible Study was over I had to wait 30 minutes before I could pick up boy #3 from pre-school, I doubt anyone knew how anxious I was to get home. After we left pre-school I must have driven the 20 minutes home like a mad woman, but I can't recall that part of the day at all. Once home I had to feed the two boys lunch in a hurry, we had to be at the elementary school for a play and we were meeting Daddy. I got the boys all settled and raced to the computer. There sitting in my in box was a line that said RE:referral. My heart stopped and I was honestly a bit afraid to open the email. When I did, I was greeted with this


Truth be told I'd seen this face many times, as I been perusing the data bank wondering who would be our little girl, and from day one I knew that this one would be ours. A year later she is ours, ours in ways we could never have imagined. She has worked her way into the fabric of our hearts and family as though she has been here always. We love her more than I might have thought possible (I thought it might take a year or more for her to feel like ours). Today Grace is one of the gang, she fits us like a glove, and we are so blessed that she is part of our family. I look at the picture we received a year ago and I don't recognize that girl, I didn't know her. But when I look at her eyes I see a familiar sparkle and hint of her piss and vinegar and then I see our girl.

Today I woke up and this is what I saw

Grace, we are so happy that we listened to our hearts and went to get you, our family is richer because you joined it.