End of the Year

It has been a rocky year for us and most of the world. Thankfully 2009 looks like it will be better, full of hope and change.

Recap of 2008
The girls are starting to become more "American" and open up and deal with their trauma. I am very thankful for our therapist Magda Tevdoradze - we started bringing the girls to her within the first few weeks of being home, and I think she has been the only reason Andrew and I are mostly sane still. LOL. Katie, as she likes to be called now, is mostly a normal teenager - self consious, likes boys, is responsible, likes her mp3 player and facebook, and tried to get around the internet parental controls a few times. She had a cell phone for about a month before we took it away for her misusing it - again fairly normal. She is still trying to pass her driving permit test - she's taken it two times and can't seem to get enough questions correct to pass. There is a boy - Alex - who we are trying to push her towards. He is a friend of the family, goes to a gifted private school, likes swords (like Andrew), and is a really great kid. He's cute too of course. Katie is having a lot of dental work done - she now needs 3 root canals and 2 crowns, and I think that will be the end of the work for now. We did one of the root canals today, and I am looking into having the other root canals done in Ukraine when we visit next month as they are tons cheaper there, and the dentists are just as good. Ukraine is actually listed as a medical tourism hotspot!

Katie is still having problems with clothes - she dresses ok, but she still doesn't grasp the idea that people judge other people by what clothes they wear, and that clothes can be an indicator of what kind of person someone is - for example "gangster" type clothes. She gets all upset at the store when I pull her out of those clothes sections and chide her that she can't wear those kind of clothes until she is an adult (if she chooses to at that point) because we don't agree with the lifestyle associated with them. She says her friends wear those clothes, and they are not "bad" people. This usually leads into the discussion of guilt by association, and if one of these "friends" has drugs in their pocket when they are all hanging out together, the police will arrest all of them, not just the one with the drugs. etc etc

Marina on the other hand is still not "normal" but she is doing so much better. She has obvious attachment and behavior problems, but she is learning to use her words instead of her disruptive behavior or biting etc. to get the feelings out. So systems of stars, marbles, points, rewards etc never worked for very long. She does the bare minimum to get the point or star etc, and then after a few weeks, she doesn't do anything at all again, and we are back to square one with no chores getting done.

We don't buy them toys, and we have started limiting the computer access and TV. We don't bring them out too often - but maybe we can scale that back even. Nothing seems to motivate her to do chores. Katie on the other hand, does chores without us even having to ask her. Both girls are getting better at doing homework and getting good grades - it started to slip for a while there.

Marina is now reading in English at a 3rd grade level, but her writing is still at first grade level. The neuropsych testing did show that she has deficiencies in the memory parts of her brain, and the visual spatial sections. This is why she has problems with math and writing - the letters and numbers and their order don't make any sense to her and they move around. We are worried that she won't be able to pass the "gateway" graduation test to get into 6th grade this year. We are still trying to figure out what to do with her middle school situation anyways - Shamrock is horrible, but getting better, and I don't know if Henderson Middle would be any better.

Marina's behavior is getting better too, though she almost got kicked out of the afterschool program for a series of mishbehaviors including "pants-ing" a boy on the playground. She is still sassy and backtalking at home, but that has lessened with our new method of addressing it. She is also still having problems "lying" and just plain being disobediant. She makes up stories that are clearly not true, and "plays" about losing something important or that one of the animals ran away etc as a "joke" of sorts.

Will write more about our upcoming trop to visit Ukraine soon.

Neat tools for protective parents

I know we are all super protective of our adopted kids, but at the same time we want to make sure they get to benefit from some of the great technologies and resources we have access to in the US. I found these two resources that were a great help to us and our girls, and have turned on other parents (not just adoptive ones either) to these tools.

Glubbles by Firefox
http://www.glubble.com/glubbles
This is an internet safety program. It uses a “white list” instead of “black lists” or keyword filters. Basically kids can only access the internet through the Firefox Glubbles interface (you have to be sure they can’t get to internet explorer, or otherwise they will just use that instead), and the only websites that they can view are the ones you explicitly approve. It comes with a set of preapproved sites that you can enable or disable, things like Disney.com, Barbie.com, Discovery channel Kids, etc.

Some other websites I’ve approved include:
YouTube (I know this can be bad, but there are tons of Russian TV shows and music videos on there that the kids like to watch)
Millsberry.com - arcade games by General Mills cereals
Brainpop.com – educational videos and quizzes on every subject
Clubpenguin.com- owned by Disney now, arcade games played by your penguin avatar.
Wikipedia.com – online encyclopedia, great for school work
Rosetta Stone online through our library – award winning language software, offered free through many local library systems. Good for practicing their English, and remembering their Russian!

Kajeet mobile phones for kids.
http://www.kajeet.com/4u/index.html

Kajeet phone are finally available at Target and Walmart and the phones look like “normal” cell phones, unlike the FireFly kid mobile phones that look like toys. You buy the phone, activate it online, set up your controls, and then buy minute refill cards. No contracts (unlike Disney Mobile), no overages, and no HUGE bills – it’s all prepaid. It can even be part of your kids “allowance package” if you want. Katya got one of these phones before she went to visit my parents for a month this summer and she liked it.

You can lock the phone so that your kid can only make calls during certain times of the day (like you can make sure that no calls are made during school hours, or after bedtime!) and you can limit who your kid can call and who can call your kid (no boys for Katie and no telemarketers or 900 numbers)

It has games and ringtones that the kids can download for free, and it looks like a regular phone. You can set certain numbers to “always” be allowed – like your cell phone or home number, so they can call anytime day or night or while in school in case of emergency.

You can get one of the phones for around $20 and the minute cards are comparable to other companies’ rates.

VisaBuxx cards

I hate giving my kids cash – cash gets lost, spent inappropriately, etc. And our new American culture is becoming more and more “plastic” in our money. VisaBuxx cards are prepaid credit cards for teens that come with a bunch of online tools and educational resources to teach kids how to manage money, and use their credit cards wisely. Parents can set up auto refills on the cards from their own bank accounts for the kid’s allowance and other family members (grandparents) can “gift” your kids money onto this card for birthdays or good grades. You can also log on to a parent portal to monitor your kids spending and balance.

Life books

So, I finally am near finishing up the girls life books. I’ve had to add a few photos to the existing layouts as Gene got us some additional photos that I hadn’t expected. We also finally got Marina a regressed baby photo from Phojoe.com and she wanted that added to her “birthday” page.

I decided to do an 8x8 scrapbook for each of them as apposed to the larger sizes, since I knew I would be short on photos in some places and larger pages are harder to fill when you have limited photos. They also fit nicer on book shelves than the larger books. I used the Creating Keepsakes layout magazines to come up with my layouts – I altered them according to the photos I had and I tended to lean towards the more geometric, balanced layouts.

Here is the general table of contents I used:
Cover page – “Your Lifebook”
Your Birthdate
Your Birthparents
Your Birthplace
(here it varied due to the girls life experiences)
Your Childhood- Katya/ Shelter Nadiya- Marina
Your Journey (shelters and orphanages)- Katya
Barvinok Children’s home- Marina/ Oleksandriya Boarding School- Katya
Your German Host Family – Marina
(here it goes back to the same for both girls)
Your Birth Family (still working on clarifying this as it is complicated)
Your Adoption

When I didn’t have photos, I used Flickr.com to find “fake” photos or photos of important objects. For example, Katya remembers riding on her aunt’s pig when she was little, so I found a photo of a little pig and used that in the scrapbook. Or they had some experience in a Ukrainian outdoor market (Rinok) so I found a generic photo of a Rinok and used that.

If your kids are older, talk to them and try to construct a timeline of their life – it may be fuzzy at first, but they will remember more and more as they become more comfortable with you and they start coping with their loss. ** A therapist is a good idea for this as well – not only to bring up memories of their early life, but to SAFELY deal with those memories!** Talk to the kids about things they did in the orphanage – ask about funny stories. These can be focal points in your kids’ life book. If they are younger kids who have been in the orphanage their whole lives, try to take photos of every inch of the orphanage. If you forgot to, or weren’t allowed to, talk to other adoptive parents who adopted from the same orphanage – maybe they have photos they can share.

Also, charity groups are a great resource for photos of the orphanages in Ukraine and possibly your kids! I found a group that had done work in both my girls’ orphanages over the years, and they had photos of my girls when they were younger! I saw the low quality photos on their websites, emailed the group via their “contact us” email on the website, and got a warm response with 20 or so high quality original photos. Peace Corps volunteers are also a good source of photos. Do a Flickr.com search for “Ukraine” “orphans” “orphanages” “children” etc and you will find tons of photos.

Birth family search

So we finally had the extra money to attempt a search for the girls’ bio mother and get some photos to fill in some gaps in their life books. Thankfully, our girls remembered much of their early life, so we had a lot of good info for Gene Sagin to start with. We also gave him Aunt Nadiya’s address and phone number as she would have even more info and be able to help him find the girls’ bio father’s grave in the cemetery.



We had some specific questions and tasks we wanted him to accomplish and he was successful in all but one, which was not his fault. The birth mom, as usual, is roaming with gypsies, and was not nearby to visit. Gene got photos of the maternity hospital where the girls and their little brother Kolya was born, better quality photos of the birth parents wedding photos, photos of the girl’s grandparents and birth father as a child, photos of the birth father’s grave and the graves of the
paternal grandparents graves, and he managed to find the maternal grandmother’s home and to speak to her. The maternal grandmother gave Gene info on the birth mother –
saying she had visited only one month ago and that she returned on a fairly regular basis to Znamenka, and lived mostly in either Znamenka or Belgorod Russia. The maternal grandmother also confirmed the existence of a 4th sibling – a 3 year old little boy named Georgiy who is still with the birth mom. Funny enough though, the
birth mom wrote down the girls’ birth father as the father of this 4th child on the birth certificate, even though the bio father is the gypsy she lives with – maybe for stigma reasons? The baby doesn’t look gypsy at all, based on the photo Gene got from the maternal grandmother – big chubby cheeks and white blonde hair. Can’t tell the eye color though – probably brown like our girls. The birth mother looks HORRIBLE in the photo though – I think she may have HIV or tuberculosis.


Not much else was able to be accomplished with the maternal grandmother as she was drunk and Aunt Nadiya was ready to fist fight with her.

Upcoming blog topics

So, I have been wanting to update this and keep it going - I think of topic ideas almost daily, I just don't have time to get on the internet and update it. I need to figure out how to email the posts to the blog again like I did when I was in Ukraine.

So, what I hope to blog about soon:
Review of the girls first year home!
Neat tools and services for keeping our kids safe
Lifebook's I made for our girls
Our birthfamily search results
Medical problems in our kids - including the emotional and developmental ones

Long time with no blog access

A few people have been on me to update this. Been busy with life and didn't have alot of access to the internet for a bit.

Brief overview of the last few months:

We moved into the three bedroom place - so normal move related stress, disorganization, and unpacking.

Lost my job at Macro - but found another job within two weeks, though didn't start said new job for about a month. Been at the new job now for about a month and loving it. I'm back in the lab, making more money, and get to go to Africa in September to do REAL public health work.

Dealing with the tax return - government captured ALL of our stimulous package and our adoption credit for my husband's student loans even though we filed injured spouse forms. Our accountant is working on getting my portion of the refund.

Had to turn in the Aveo as the lease was up. With gas prices where they are, we decided against the minivan for now and have been using one car.

Had Katya/Katie's 15th birthday party this past weekend. Not many of her school friends showed up, but got to see Dee and her kids and one of the Barr girls, so it was great. Took Katie to take the test for her driver's permit, and she failed the written test. She is taking the test more seriously now and is studying her butt off and we will take her next Saturday to retake the test.

In behavior news, Marina is doing much better and is much more consistent in her behaviors. We are still trying to get neuro psych testing done on her due to her continued memory problems with are likely due to very mild FAE or head trauma from her abuse. We are working on her "backtalk" and sassiness, but its getting better. The girls also deal much better with the rules we set and the consequences for not following them. They whine and stomp for a few seconds and then they are fine. Big issue the past few weeks has been them not wanting to wear their glasses and or losing their glasses. Marina has lost three pair so far. If anyone has any suggestions on how to get them to wear the glasses and not lose them, let me know.

Another new thing has been their interest in boys. Katie is wanting to start dating or having a boyfriend. We said no, not until you are 16. But we relaxed it a bit, allowing her to have a pseudo-boyfriend who she can call on the phone, email, and hold hands with at school. We may even allow her to have a boy over to watch a movie, with us in the same room of course and the lights on. We are trying to encourage her to find a Russian boyfriend. Language is such a big issue in dating since communication is the corner stone of a good relationship. Most of the boys she is in class with are hispanic, since she is in ESL and ESL-friendly classes all day, so they don't speak English very well and they definately DON'T speak Russian.

I added some photos above - the blonde girl is my cousin Liza. She is 17 and has been staying with us for part of the summer- partly to get away from her family, and partly to help us with child care while the girls are out of school.

Sibling reunion and Marina turns 11

Been muddling along the past few months - losing Oksana hit me hard, but a few good crying and screaming sessions in the bathroom helped me get it all out. The girls are behaving better now, not too many tantrums or fits in awhile. Only "normal" kid behaviors that we are still not "ok" but are at least managable.

We finally got to meet the girls biological brother, who was adopted to the US in 2002. He and his adoptive father came down on a train to visit us for MLK weekend. It is amazing how much he looks like Marina. Katya loved taking care of her little brother, holding him on her lap, helping him with his jacket and gloves. Marina liked having a playmate around - they spend hours playing in the snow outside, building snowmen, throwing snowballs. We also took the kids to the new World of Coke and the Georgia Aquarium - it was pricey but worth it. The kids even handled their frustrations and occasional tiredness with self control - no melt downs, just a few pouty and grouchy moments.

While Kolya and Greg where here, we had Marina's 11th birthday party. My parents also drove up from Florida to be at the party. Thankfully everyone stayed at hotels! The party was red and pinked themed, and I was SOOOO stressed out planning and getting everything ready. It was my baby's first birthday in America and I was terrified it would not be a happy event for her. Thankfully 6 of her friends showed up, and they all had a great time sledding in the snow, playing barbie, watching High School Musical 2 on the big screen projector and playing with Marina's hamster. Food and cake went over well, and everything was eaten so no leftovers to clean up. Some of the girls parents even stayed for the party, so it was nice getting to know them too. Half of the kids spoke Russian, so that was also nice for Marina. I really liked her friends, really sweet kids.

Farewell to SnowWhite

So, Snow White, aka Oksana, is out of our reach and unless God himself intervenes and a miracle occurs soon, she will never be part of our family.

The foster family in Nizhyn intends on adopting her. The family is wealthy, powerful, and will be able to care for Oksana as she deserves. Supposedly, this is some new program open to Ukrainian families - foster-adopt fast-tracking. They pick a kid out at the orphanage, and even if the kid has no legal release or registration papers, they can take the child and adopt them. Even unregistered kids. The legal guise is that the child can live with the future adoptive family as a "foster child" while the legal paperwork is sorted out. while this is a great thing that now a lack of legal paperwork will not prevent a child from having a chance at adoption, I still think the program is a little shady and open for corruption and bribery.

I still don't understand why this powerful, rich family would want an older child like Oksana. She is 8 1/2 years old. She has major personality - totally high maintenance and stubborn as a mule. Millions of possible reasons swam through my head in the last few weeks since we found out. Some good, some not so good, some criminal....

We hired a family-finder to try and meet the foster family - discuss our wishes to adopt Oksana ourselves, exchange photos, maybe become friends with them. The foster father wanted none of it, and refused to let the district social worker office release his address to our representative. Thankfully I also had a contact who spoke with the regional social worker in charge of visiting this family checking in on Oksana, and this social worker is supportive of us being in contact with Oksana, and agreed to deliver a letter and photos to the family and Oksana on our behalf.

So Oksana beat the odds. She was an unregistered, older child, and she was chosen by a Ukrainian family for adoption. This happens in less than 1% of the time for children in her situation. Most Ukrainian families want to adopt babies, or to foster older kids in a group home.

Everyone in our home is crushed, but we are trying to be happy for Oksana. As I wrote, not many older Ukrainian orphans will ever be adopted at all.