A Necessary Appliance
Two days ago, our dishwasher started making loud noises and then the pump failed. Jonathan told me that we had been lucky it lasted twelve years before the first breakdown.
Mary: "Jon, we haven't owned it for twelve years! It was a gift to us right before the children came [in 1995]."
Jon: "I know. And we've run it three times a day since then!"
Postscript: Makes My Heart Sing
This morning, Sarah, David, and Kola performed in the end-of-year program for their Saturday Ukrainian school. They joined children from the lower classes to fête the graduating students by singing Ukraining folk songs and reciting verse. Kola, as usual when he is nervous, rocked from side to side as he sang, keeping exact time with the music.
The program lasted over two hours, and after completing his performance, Kola started flagging. He joined me in the audience and fidgeted until I started rhythmically rocking him. That settled him enough that he tried to curl up and fall asleep. Sitting on my lap, he turned his head and leaned into me, grabbing my arms and pulling them around him. I sat very quietly, hoping he would drift off.
Suddenly, he sat up, turned to me, and exclaimed:
"Mama, I can hear something inside you singing!"
Makes My Heart Sing
Our after-school and evening schedule today is pretty jammed, so we celebrated Adam's 14th birthday at breakfast this morning. Rachel helped by setting the table, and she asked me whether we would be eating cereal or toast. "Well," I replied, "we're actually having cake!" She absolutely beamed!
Yesterday, while I decided how and when to make the cake, David found out that I planned to make it at home. "Oh, good!" he said. "I like your cakes much better than the ones from the bakery." I absolutely beamed!
Differing Scenarios
Yesterday, 6:15 pmI arrived home for supper to find Kola shivering in a bathtub of cold water, with Jonathan reading the thermometer at 106 degrees. We immediately bundled him up into the car, and I drove quickly to our local ER.
Yesterday, 11:15 pmKola and I left the hospital with a scrip for antibiotics to fight his sinus infection. His temp had been 102 upon arrival and 100 when we left. I made a run to Walgreens for Advil and the scrip.
This morning, 4:00 amKola awoke Jonathan and me, telling us he had vomited in his bed. He was burning up, and we took his temp: 111!
This morning, 4:30 amJonathan returned from Walgreens with Tylenol and TWO thermometers. Kola's temp was now 102. We sure learned our lesson--keep a backup in case the first one malfunctions!
We're grateful that he's ok.
Back on Wednesday
I'm working on one of those long-term projects I mentioned in an earlier post. My drop dead due date is Tuesday, so I should be back to blogging on Wednesday.
Like Their Mother
The bus honks from the street outside. She throws the brush down, hair still tousled, and grabs her books and violin. Flying out the door, she sprints down the very long driveway toward the bus, but unfortunately, it is speeding away. Too many days of waiting, and the driver lost patience. Mom and Dad aren't too happy that yet again they are driving her to school. At least the lunch that she forgot will go with her in the car.
Now speed forward about thirty-four years . . .Sarah carries her shoes, books, and lunch, stuffing them in her backpack as she rushes out of the house. David and Kola brush their teeth in the car, since they spent too much time getting dressed and eating breakfast. Mama thinks of her own parents, remembering how much trouble she gave them!
Profanity
At McDonald's a few weeks ago, we were sitting at a table near a crowded PlayPlace:
Kola: "Mama, David said the S-word to me!!"
Mama: "Kola, I didn't actually hear David say the S-word, so you'll just have to ignore it. Don't worry."
The parent at the next table really stared at me!
For further explanation, see my post on November 12, 2008.
Who Needs to be Watched?
We supervise the younger three children closely and never leave them without a parent or adult friend. Paul, Adam, and Rachel, however, range in age from 12 to 15, so on occasion Jonathan and I allow them to be home without us.
Yesterday evening, Grace presented their elementary school musical, and we wanted Sarah to see it since she's enrolled there for school next year. The show, designed for small children, meant that we could also take David and Kola. It was a treat for Jonathan and me that we both attended the event and observed our children watching other kids perform.
Upon arriving home after the play, Paul, Adam, and Rachel excitedly told us what they had done in our absence. Their favorite hip hop artist, Solda Boy, gives out his telephone number in one of his songs. So our kids called him and left a message on his answering machine.
Jonathan and I have long-distance service only on our cell phones and not on the home telephone line. When the phone bill comes, I'll be curious to learn how much Paul, Adam, and Rachel will be paying for that phone call!
Coping
When something is lost in our house,
it's often easier just to go out
and buy a new one.
More About Fever
A conversation with my graduating eighth grader:
Mom: "Paul, are the kids in your class getting spring fever?"
Paul: "I've had spring fever since the day I started school!"
99.9 or 100?
Kola has been coughing and blowing for several days now. Yesterday, when his ear started to hurt, my husband took him to the pediatrician. After learning that Kola has a sinus infection, Jonathan filled his amoxycillin prescription and returned him to school. Within an hour, we received a telephone call that Kola needed to go home due to a low-grade fever.
As Jonathan prepared to leave work again, one of his colleagues warned him, "You better hurry before the nurse takes his temperature again." Due to the H1N1 flu epidemic, schools are now sending children home for SEVEN full days if they cough and have a temp of 100 or more.
It's one thing to do childcare for seven days if he really has H1N1. It's quite another thing if he doesn't!
Thank You
To all who supported us in our adoptions
through prayer, encouragement, donations, and in-kind gifts--
I am grateful on this Mother's Day
for your assistance in bringing
Paul, Adam, Rachel, Sarah, David, and Peter Mikola
into my life.
He's a Big Kid Now
Some of you have asked about the current state of Kola’s English. Around the time of his birthday (March 29), he told both Jonathan and me: “I’m six now. Talk English to me.” We hear Ukrainian spoken only on occasion now, except for Saturdays when the three youngest children attend Ukrainian school.
Besides learning English at a younger age than our other children, Kola has also experienced more of an immersion experience. When the older five arrived, our household functioned in Ukrainian for about nine months, although I did switch to English in January when the children’s English became better than my Ukrainian. Jonathan hung on until June, when the kids started speaking English even with each other. Kola’s situation was completely different—he was surrounded by English unless one of us addressed him directly, which had to be in Ukrainian.
Kola's initial lack of communication ability caused him to act out in school, especially when he didn’t know what activity was coming next. His teachers developed visual cues for him, like a pictorial time line of the school day. I also picked him up early from school until after Christmas, which pulled him out of the end-of-school rush and a difficult transition to home. In addition, the school district hired an aide just for him during the three weeks right before Christmas. He’s now been mainstreamed and on most days is behaving pretty well.
Peeling an Onion, Part III
Once we made the decision to adopt, the next big discussion was domestic versus international adoption. Our situation was circumscribed by our desire for a large sibling group, which luckily narrowed our options. Three of the major issues in our decision were 1)the length of time until the adoption is finalized, 2) the future siutation of contact with the birth family, and 3) the subsidization of medical costs after the adoption.
When we were adopting in Illinois, adoptions were not truly finalized until six months after the parents received custody of the children. International adoptions, on the other hand, are finalized in the foreign country before you travel home. I was concerned about the impact on bonding if we had to wait six months for the adoption to be final.
Secondly, many adoptions in the U.S. are now required to be "open," meaning that the child maintains some type of contact with the birth family. This can vary from letters once a year to personal visits on a regular basis. International adoptions have traditionally been closed, due to the physical distance, adoption law in most countries, and the circumstances surrounding the child's availability for adoption (e.g., abandonment). Jonathan and I know how much time it takes to keep up with our extended family, and the thought of adding a number of other families to this circle was daunting. Considering that children in sibling groups often have different fathers, the exponential nature of birth family contact seemed more overwhelming than we wanted to handle. (Interestingly, we have heard more recently that some international adoptions are becoming open. In almost all cases of adoption, birth parents are still living.)
If we adopted a sibling group in the U.S. through DCFS, the children's health care would be covered by Medicaid until they reached eighteen years of age. Even with good private health insurance, using Medicaid for a large family for many years would be a huge monetary savings. Many adoptees require more extensive medical care and therapy than the average child, which adds to their health care costs.
Many adoptive parents have never traveled internationally, and the prospect of the trip abroad is stressful for them. Agencies counter these fears by offering a wide range of services to help you, mostly at a very high cost. Jonathan and I had the advantage of extensive international experience in our backgrounds, and we actually viewed many of these services as intrusive. (Later, while we stayed in Kyiv and Kirovohrad, Masha worked faster on our legal issues because she could leave us unattended.)
We also hit a blank wall with DCFS in Illinois. There are very few large sibling groups available for adoption in Illinois, but we had heard that many such groups are available in Texas and California. These children usually speak Spanish, and since Jonathan grew up as a missionary kid in Guatemala and Mexico, he is totally fluent in Spanish. But we were required to work through DCFS in Illinois, and their mandate is to get Illinois children adopted. We received very little assistance from them, even in the initial information-gathering stage and before we had signed on. It became clear that for a domestic adoption of a sibling group, we'd have to find the group ourselves, work through another state where we weren't residents, and then hope that DCFS in Illinois would process the adoption in a timely manner (even though they felt no mandate to do so).
I won't go into how Jonathan and I weighed all these options. The final summation of our discussion: while adopting a U.S. sibiling group had some positive aspects, it was much easier for us to adopt internationally, both from a legal angle and also due to our background experience. In addition, we gained the advantage of a closed adoption that finalized quickly.
First Mother's Days
Kola ran to me me after school with a wrapped package. The shape of the present looked just like the gift plate that David gave me three years ago on my first Mother's Day. I knelt down to talk to Kola, who was bubbling over about his first Mother's Day:
Mama: "Kola, what's this?"
Kola: "Mama, it's your Mother's Day present! I made it at school. You put food on it, you can cut things on it, and you can eat from it."
Mom: "Do I open it on Sunday?
Kola: "Yes!"
He leaned over and, for the first time, kissed me.
Patience with Myself
I get frustrated at certain long-term projects for which I'm very, very late. Jonathan reminds me that we're still in Year 1 of Kola's adoption, and that life is not yet back to normal (whatever THAT is). But after adopting five kids at once without previous parental experience, I thought that bringing back one child to join our family would be easier than it's been.
"Remember!
Year 1
Year 1
Year 1 . . ."
Definitely a Crockpot Day
2:45 I pick up David and Kola at Garfield
3:00 Jonathan picks up Adam at Grace
3:40 Jonathan goes with Adam to a medical appointment
3:45 I pick up Paul at Grace from track practice
4:00 I pick up Sarah at Garfield from tutoring
5:00 I take Kola to T-ball practice
5:15 I take Sarah to the warmup for her 5:45 softball game
6:00 Jonathan picks up Kola from T-ball while I cook supper
We are fortunate that David's cub scout meeting was postponed
and that Rachel's afterschool tutor drives her home.
Peeling an Onion, Part II
Once we halted our attempts at a pregnancy, it was time for decision #2--whether or not to adopt. Many people think mistakenly that stopping infertility treatments and deciding to adopt are always linked. But forming one's family through biology and adoption are very different, and some couples choose the third option of being childfree. (On the web, "childfree" is the new term being used instead of "childless." But I don't like the term childfree, either, to describe adults who choose not to parent. Our children know many adults who are not parents but find wonderful ways to be part of their lives. These adults are very involved with children, just not as parents.)
From early on in our marriage, Jonathan and I had always talked about the possibility of adopting a sibling group. For us, that's the kind of adoption we wanted from the very beginning. So while the adoption of a single child or a group is a separate decision for most adoptive parents, we intuitively agreed on this issue. It's probably the only part of our decision process that didn't require a ton of discussion!
Among our friends and relatives who had adopted biological siblings, we had seen the very close bonds of the children to each other. That appealed to us, especially since Jonathan and I place a high value on the relationships we have with our own siblings. We wanted our adoptive children to continue living with their siblings instead of being split between different families. That way, even if most of their life was changing in unimaginable ways, they could continue living with the siblings they already knew. I've often read that sibling relationships are among the longest-lasting ones in a person's life, and it's important to preserve them as much as possible.
Great Ideas
Thank you to all who have written with info on stopping thumb-sucking. Collective wisdom is always more fruitful.
Kola had a difficult week in school--no surprise considering how underslept he's been. We are encouraging him to swing in the backyard, and about two weeks ago he learned how to pump and therefore swing himself. I'm also trying to rock him as much as possible, although not in bed. Last night as he fell asleep, he cuddled up to me and didn't rock at all. We'll see if it lasts . . .
Peeling an Onion, Part I
The decision-making process in adoption is endless. Once you make one difficult choice, the next one presents itself. I finally resigned myself to working through it methodically and not dreaming too much about the final outcome.
The first big decision for an infertile couple is whether to stop medical treatments. Most adoption agencies will not allow you to proceed unless you have completed all assisted attempts at a pregnancy. Some agencies even make you sign an agreement to this effect.
It's a huge step to close the door on having biological children. We found a book by Patricia Johnston to be especially helpful--
Adopting After Infertility. It outlines the various losses that a couple faces when they decide not to try anymore for a pregnancy. Adopting children to form your family only assuages one of those losses. In addition, a husband and wife usually face infertility very differently, depending on personality, gender, which partner is infertile, the cause of the infertility, and other factors. Johnston's book has an exercise where each spouse rates the various losses, which makes for meaningful discussion about what each partner is going through.
I could write about our infertility and treatment, but this blog is focused on adoption instead. The length of time for the first stage of our journey: over ten years.
