Last couple weeks

This is a rambling post, read at your own risk...

So two weeks ago Tanya decided that she would try and learn English! Yeah! She did great and the other two followed suit. A couple times we even caught Tanya answering Ana in English (yes and no), a huge leap forward. It turned out to be a great week, they even had lots of field trips at school and almost admitted to liking school... well, Tanya and Victor. Ana still claims to hate school. Funny thing is that Ana's teacher said she uses a few English words during the day at school, like: please, thank you, help me. Where as Victor and Tanya's teachers said they won't say anything in English other than their names. Which seems backwards to me because those two know a lot of words... from flash cards and vocabulary we practice every day and from Elizabeth working with them. I was really surprised they don't use any English at school.

Then, maybe because I had my hopes up, this week just got worse and worse and worse. Finally Thursday I started to wonder if it was because school was getting out on Friday. Tanya wouldn't talk about school all week and got moodier and angrier as the week progressed. When asked she said school was good or ok. So I do believe that it's the up coming change that has thrown her into a tail spin. Not knowing what life will be like without school. We knew she had some anxiety and I think it's kicked in again. She wouldn't use hardly any English this week and was really hard on Ana, making her do homework when I said Thursday and Friday we didn't have to do any homework. I finally had to say, "stop" and take Ana away from her. She reverted to similar times at the orphanage and in Kiev where she would zone out and not understand us talking to her or remember things. She slowly started to come out of it about 5 hours later. Tomorrow brings more change as we start English classes (two hours a day). She is very nervous and has been up and down all day, but not as bad as Friday. Hopefully by the end of the week we'll have our happy smiling Tanya back....

A plug for multivitamins...
For those going to the Ukraine, if you think you will be staying at an orphanage in the middle of the forest for a couple weeks, I recommend you take a multivitamin with you. I came home pretty sick with what I thought was a UTI and sinus infection. I went on the antibiotics and never got totally over it, so returned to the doctor. I would be so exhausted some days and my legs would ache, I'd get dizzy and had this horrible itchy, burning mouth (all this started started while at the orphanage). Headaches and funny aches and pains led me and the doctor to think it was infection. So when that didn't work we tried some anti fungal meds that didn't clear anything up in fact the burning in my mouth was so bad it got difficult to eat. I went to my dentist who said skin was sloughing off all over my mouth and had me change toothpastes. It sort of seemed to help for a couple days. So again I returned to the doctor a week ago to find I'm super low on vitamins/minerals and borderline anemic. So my doctor told me to start taking a multivitamin for a couple weeks, she thinks I got some type of malnutrition while living over there. After a week I'm finally feeling better and haven't had any dizziness for three days!!! I only have burning around left around the edges of my tongue now too and can eat about anything again, yeah. There is something called burning mouth and my doctor thinks it is caused by damage to nerves in the jaw or face... we were both going to learn more about that in case it doesn't go away or returns, but so far so good. It's just good to feel healthy, but it also has made me so sad for the kids in the orphanages. We saw bananas one day in the 16 days we lived at the orphanage, the only fruit we ever saw while we were there (we didn't get any, they were for the kids, which is good). We did buy apples and oranges that we ate every day. But how do these kids survive on cracked wheat with mashed peas or potatoes for three meals a day, week in and week out? I'm amazed that they aren't all sick all of the time. So everyone here is now on multi vitamins. I'm really big on fruits and vegetables and we go through a lot, but I'm becoming a believer of a little extra help in the vitamin department.

So with all the ups and downs I found I was continually comparing the kids we hosted with the children we have adopted. My goal this week was to not compare, I'm doing better. But I still have this love and sadness for Marina, Ivan and Anya. They were so easy to love and so bright and talented. Marina would sit with me every night to learn English word and to read with me. She has favorite authors and poets and had brought a couple books with her that when I looked up were written by famous Russian writers. Ivan fixed all sorts of stuff and took Ethan in as his buddy the second day they were here. Anya and Morgan had a rough start but by the second week were sharing clothes. Anya always had something or someway to make you laugh. We did have a couple hard days, but I do miss their smiles. I hope one day they will be able to know that. If Kremenchuk ever opens up to adoptions again I'll do my dangdest to find someone to adopt them. Marina will be 16 next year and could be out of the orphanage. For anyone out there hosting from Kremenchuk, know that there have been NO international adoptions for over two years there. They scare the children into saying no. It was heart breaking for me, especially to see them scared of us... they hadn't even been that scared walking of the airplane into a strange country going to live in a strangers home.

Anyway, that is why the transition with Victor, Ana and Tanya has been a little more difficult than I thought it would be and has been hard for me to post about. When they would be moody, be mean to our biological kids (was getting better, but was really bad this week), make gagging sounds and spit out food at the dinner table, make faces to scare the kids at the bus stop, smell/sniff me and all the food in the kitchen and say yucky or make gagging sounds, say they weren't going to speak/learn English, throw little tantrums and roll around on the floor.... I had experienced none of this with the kids we hosted. I was at the other end of the spectrum wondering what planet I ended up on. So this week I was able to focus on positive things about Tanya, Victor and Ana. They no longer sniff every person that comes into the house (and say yuck or hold their nose), they no longer sniff everything I cut or cook in the kitchen, they will sit and eat dinner with us and only once this week did Tanya have to get up and spit food out in the sink, we had that beautiful week where they tried to speak English, when they smile their faces light up, Tanya still doesn't want anything to do with our biological kids, but has stopped refolding all of Morgan and Ana's clothes on a daily basis, the kids at the bus stop love Victor and everyone wants to sit by him on the bus (he's even been to two parties). We moved Ana upstairs away from Tanya and her behavior improved over night. She is quiet happy and social and a great eater other than green vegetables...

These past two weeks I've also read a lot of blogs of amazing families who have adopted children with disabilities or psychological issues. I've been so amazed out how much they do and how they have learned to handle things and deal with things. And the overall reminder that they have shared is that all children are children of God and deserve a chance at life. A reminder I very much needed a couple weeks ago.