Calm Waters

Ever since we had the talk on skype with our friend translating, Nicholas and Nadia have been happier. Nadia seems like a new girl, she approaches everything with more enthusiasm and confidence. Nicholas seems even happier and his English is quickly approaching Andrew’s.

We are working hard on homeschooling. Mark picked up a small chapter book, Mouse Soup, by Arnold Lobel, and each day they read and translate one story. The same story actually. The goal is to get each story down pat so that they understand what they are reading. We still go to the library for Rosetta stone and I watched Nick writing sentences like “I need the keys” which is very impressive. I can hardly do that in German and I’ve been working on it each session.

Both kids are almost ¾ of the way through the third grade math curriculum I got for them on the computer. They like math time. I supplement it with lessons. This week, they were learning about American money so I got out real coins and bills and spent about a half hour working with them. Thant night, Nadia and I wrote menus for dinner and gave each person a bag of money. Everyone had to pay for their dinner. Nicholas was the waiter and had to tell if the amount was right and if not, give change. They all loved it.

We are attending a homeschool convention next week in Atlanta so I’m holding off on purchasing more curriculum until then. I’m researching my dream list so I’ll know what to look for. I’m hoping there will be other families there who have adopted older teens from other countries and I can build up a support group of some kind!

We are still planning to join a homeschool co-op next year so the kids have more opportunities to socialize and so I get out of the house, too! There is a great option right here in Fayette County.

Nicholas has improved so much in gymnastics that he is moving up to a more challenging class which will meet four hours a week. He loves it.   The gym had a fundraiser going where the kids needed to sell tubs of cookie dough. Nick and Andrew were thrilled about going to every house in the neighborhood.  I practiced what to say with them and was amused when we got to the part where a customer graciously declines a sale. Andrew smiled and said, “Thanks anyway!” But Nick said playfully, “I see you want my socks?” We have a running joke about his socks because they were so stinky in Ukraine. He was supposed to wash them himself and you can imagine how well that worked out. I don’t know if he had to pull out that line, but he did sell over $200 worth of cookie dough!

Andrew is continuing playing baseball and loves that. We are looking for a sport  that Nadia will want to do, but in the meantime she is happier with craft projects to do and with her upcoming first time as a mother’s helper. Next week she will watch two preschool age kids while their mama attends to other things. She is so excited. I told her about another possible opportunity to watch a two year old and she said, “Come to me, two year old boy!” I’m glad she loves children.

Mark’s parents came to visit for the afternoon. The kids were very excited. That night at evening prayers, each of them prayed thank you prayers for their grandparents. It was very sweet. They love their families and love having a family.

As happy as they are this week, they still were very grateful for a taste of home when my brother Frank and I took them to the International Farmer’s Market on Buford Highway. There were three aisles of Eastern European foods and they excited picked out things they loved. When we got home, it was time to pick up Andrew from school. Andrew loves food and could hardly believe what we got. He said, “I never thought I’d have those tastes again!”

We had a late lunch of delicious fresh bread, mushroom pate and some kind of mushy looking bratwurst. They loved it. The boys drank Kvass and Nadia and I had tea. I mostly ate bread and cheese from Publix, but the kids had a feast. We continued the feast with vareneky at dinner that night. It was fun to see how happy they were to eat these healthy (well, not so sure about that fat content in the sausage) foods.

We’re glad the adjustments are smooth this week. Everyone is happy.

While I’ve been updating, Mark has been doing a reading lesson. Nick just passed him this note: dad plese co away is worck.

Dad, please go away to work.

Now, that’s impressive English for two months!

Shock and Awe

Last week was Holy week for the Orthodox, so it was the perfect time for repentance and renewal in our family. I brought all three kids to Father Jacob for confession and we attended several beautiful services.

One of my favorite services is the 12 Gospel service where we read the accounts of Jesus’ passion. We brought the Ipad so the kids could follow along on the Ukrainian Bible. Each time a Gospel is read, the congregation holds lit candles and gathers around the priest while he reads, afterwards we blow out the candles and pray in the darkened church while the choir sings. It’s a beautiful expression of the sorrow and grief of the sacrifice Jesus made for us. My heart was even softer than other years because of my grief over Mary Evelyn and stresses about the other kids and I seemed to cry my way through much of the services, but my grief, like the beautiful mournfulness of the services, is  tempered by the joy and hope given by Christ's Resurrection.

Holy Friday has other beautiful services and I was a little jealous of Nadia because she chose to spend the whole night at church with the other teens while they read Psalms all night. I was  very proud of her for being so brave to spend the night in the darkened church and thankful that she’d have that opportunity to both socialize and pray.

The following night we had our midnight Pascha service. The kids were all excited. Nadia and I got new dresses and the boys wore their Ukrainian shirts. We celebrated the beautiful liturgy at church and then continued the festivities the following day at our friends' home with a whole roasted pig! My boys are not squeamish about meat- Andrew ate some pig ear and Nicholas sampled tongue!

Monday and Tuesday seemed to be uneventful until late Tuesday night when Mark and I finished watching an episode of Downton Abbey on the Ipad.  I had been using the Ipad with the kids earlier in the day to teach a lesson about Ella Fitzgerald. We read  a cute primer book about her and  the kids enjoyed listening to some of her music on You Tube. The You Tube page opened up, but it wasn’t Ella, instead there were some things I would never want my kids exposed to. One of them had been searching unsavory things on our Ipad.

It was midnight, but we woke the kids up then and there to find out what had happened. Why wait? Better to catch them off guard, a bit sleepy, and let them know by just the sheer experience of being woken up that we were serious. The guilty party confessed and we were able to talk to him about keeping a pure, clean heart and not letting sin control him. Mark stayed calm, I was not so calm, but before long we had them all back in bed and we were strategizing about this new issue. Of course, the first thing was getting a nanny browser, which I hate because it inconveniences me, but I love because it means I feel safe for now leaving my Ipad around.

When you adopt kids you don’t know everything about their background experiences. All three of our kids came without much detailed info,but even kids from nice, Christian, Jewish, or whatever families can also be easily drawn into looking at not so nice things online. It’s one of the challenges of modern parenting and we hope to try to nuture their desire to be good and help them learn to control themselves, just like they will need to as adults.

The next morning, we were able to have a long conversation with Nick and Nadia through our friend who translated for us on Skype. We started with Nadia. She has been telling people she was forced to come here. We reminded her that she asked us to adopt her. She nodded and said yes she remembers that. Then we asked if she had called Luda repeatedly, asking when we were coming and saying over and over that she wanted to go with us. Nicholas blurted in Yes! And Nadia once again nodded yes, she had done that. We went on, walking through all the steps leading us to the adoption and reminding her that she had been in control of her decision. She‘s not a victim; she’s a brave girl who courageously went after something good to create a new life for herself. She agreed, and seemed to like seeing it that way. She has been much happier ever since the phone call. Being adopted and moving to a new country with a new language is a huge challenge so  it would be easy for her to begin to feel trapped and let her emotions give her false ideas, but we want her to remember the truth and feel strong and in charge of her own destiny.

We helped her see that in Ukraine, she’d have no job, no money, no education and no family while here she has a family who loves her, the chance to get an education and to have a bright future if she embraces it.

We also talked about other serious issues with Nick and addressed the Ipad stuff. These issues gave us an opportunity to help both kids see that sin causes walls to come up between us and other people and between us and God. Those walls make it harder for us to trust and love each other. By repenting, asking forgiveness and trying not to repeat the sins we become more beautiful inside and the walls come back down. Each of us has to choose, every day, whether we will beautiful inside or if we’ll let the darkness of sin control us. They both thought about it and said they wanted to be beautiful inside.

By the time we got off the phone, the kids were snugglier and happier. It is amazing how gentle honesty and goodness can break down barriers. I cancelled school for the day since we were all tired and instead took them to Hobby Lobby to pick out craft projects.  They enjoyed that. Nick likes to embroider (it’s manly in Ukraine) and Nadia like to make mosaics out of little glass beads. Having a project is good for both of them but we still need a little more to occupy Nadia. Thankfully, a Ukrainian friend of ours has had her over to visit this week and that helped her feel less homesick. She may also be a mother’s helper for another friend because she loves little children and babies. Another friend is helping me find a place for her to volunteer with horses.

Later that day, Nadia called Cindy to apologize for her angry outburst and sullen behavior at the beach. I had been impatient for that apology, but was glad I waited for her to give a sincere one. She was eager to make the call. At dinner that night, we were laughing and enjoying a nice meal. Nick had requested Vareneky  (Ukrainian pirogues- pasta stuffed with mashed potato and served with browned onions and lots of butter and sour cream) and I  made homemade ones. As Nick ate his special dinner with gusto, he joyfully announced that he could feel his wall coming down! Andrew chimed in and said his bad wall was coming down but that he was building a new good wall of love!

So the shock was the Ipad stuff and confronting the issue about Nadia telling people she didn’t want to be adopted. The Awe was the beauty and love of Pascha which opened up everyone’s hearts to forgive each other and remember truth with love.

Many of you e-mailed me encouraging ideas after my last post. I am so grateful for your suggestions and your compassion! Please forgive me if I haven’t written back yet, it has been so busy! Thanks as always for your prayers

Stormy Seas

Nadia sat in the sand on one of the most beautiful beaches in the world, her back turned towards the view of the lovely waves and cried. Her adjustment seems to lessen each day as she longs for her old life in the orphanage. She claims she intends to return to Ukraine the day she turns 18. She’s counting them.

Right now, she has dual citizenship, but at 18 they have to renounce one or the other- America or Ukraine. I shudder to think of the life she’ll have if she persists in this. She has no special skills or education that would enable her to support herself in Ukraine and the family she has there wouldn’t take care of her when she was a child, so I’m not optimistic about how helpful they’d be to her as an adult.

She has a future that is bright here, full of opportunities and a loving family hat welcomed her with open arms, but the struggle to learn the language and culture (?) seems to be discouraging her and she’s not trying. It's so much easier to retreat to her room and wait it out..

Sixteen is a hard time for any girl and being adopted at this age makes it even tougher.

As the parent, it’s hard to be patient and understanding, especially with such a new and tenuous relationship, but I remember that inside, she’s a scared child who has been through enough unahppy things to land her in an orphanage. Probably this is a normal post honeymoon adjustment phase that many kids have after such huge upheavals.

My job as adoptive parent is to stay sane, calm and keep above the rising tide of emotions that could engulf our family, while making sure behaviors are lovingly corrected and realistic futures are the ones we aim for. I've arranged for a translator for later this week and hopefully we can talk a lot of it out and help her get her head straight.

The other new kid, Nicholas, is as happy as a child could be. He’s speaking a lot of English, works hard on his schoolwork- he has already completed over a fourth of the third grade math book they are both doing on the computer- and is soaking up and giving back lots and lots of love. He’s made the leap into his new life and is full of love and happiness. I  have understandable phone conversations with him.

ON the beach, while his sister mourned a life that she only imagines was that good, he had fun in the sand and made the most of the moment.

Our lives are full of opportunities, but you can’t really enjoy them without a grateful, willing and open heart.

Praying for that heart.