Elena Turns 3

We recently celebrated Elena's 3rd birthday.  She actually had two parties, one with family and one with friends and family. 

Elena on a slide

Julianna going in for a kiss

We get this look from Elena a lot.  In this case, Daddy told her not to throw rocks.

Elena had a rainbow-themed birthday party.

And CAKE!!!!   She understands cake and ice cream very, very well.

So does Julianna.

Elena got (among other presents) a doll and a stroller, which she likes a lot.

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A year ago, we were in Ukraine.  We have had them less than a year.  Last end-of-March was a blur as we had frantically packed and gotten on the plane (March 28th) (we had our appointment date a lot earlier than we had expected).  Has it only been a year?  Our lives have certainly changed a lot.  We have certainly enjoyed our first year with our daughters (heart surgeries, cleft palate surgeries, tubes, late nights, dirty diapers, and so forth notwithstanding.  The girls grow bigger and more alive and more beautiful with each passing day.  No longer are they undernourished.  No longer are they starved for attention.  No longer are they unwanted.

When she turned three, Elena got to go to big-girl-school.  She is in a per-kindergarten classroom at a nearby school.  She enjoys going to school and is making strides towards toilet-training.  She knows over 70 signs and is very communicative (either through signing or through her nearly constant babbling).

Juliana is starting to take her first steps.  She will take a couple steps and fall over (usually because she starts excitedly clapping her hands when she stands up, and this destabilizes her).  She is starting to pick up some signs, but she has the attitude of "signing is peasant work, my staff should attend my whims better".  She understands when we talk to her.  She has a verbal vocabulary, but often does not repeat herself.  She will say a word, then realize that she spoke and not do it again (and certainly not when asked).  We do catch her saying "Da-da" for daddy, "nanana" for banana and "up" on a semi-regular basis.

Goodbye to the Gumming Wonder

Juliana, at 17 months, has not had any teeth.  This has not slowed her down much in the eating department, as she can out-eat Elena when she wants to.  We have been calling her the Gumming Wonder because she eats a huge amount of solid food with just her gums. She reminds me of a turtle or a parrot - they don't have teeth either.  She can eat anything short of tough meats.  She especially likes it when Mommy or Daddy stick fingers in her mouth (removing foreign objects, feeling for teeth, etc.) as she then bites down on a knuckle joint with a truly staggering amount of force.

Tonight we caught her gnawing on a piece of gravel she picked up from outside.  In the process of removing the gravel, I felt little teeth.  Closer examination revealed that Juliana has two teeth growing - one on each side of her mouth.  However - they are molars.  Juliana is very tricky and has decided to forego her front teeth and grow the molars first.

Valentine

The girls had a Valentine's dance at school the other night.

The pictures (please excuse the graininess) are very typical of the girls' personalities.

Over the weekend, Kelly was helping Elena write Valentine's day cards.  Kelly would hold up two cards and ask "Which one do you want to give to so-and-so?"  Elena would point to the card she wanted to go to her classmate.  Sometimes Elena would pick the one on the left, sometimes the card on the right.

Finally, Kelly named a girl in class that Elena doesn't like.  Elena refused to point to either card, very clearly indicating that she did not want to give this little girl a Valentine card.  Kelly went on with other names and Elena resumed picking cards.  Kelly periodically returned to this one girl - and each time Elena refused to pick a card.  We finally gave Elena a choice for the girl of a scrap of cardboard or a card, and Elena **reluctantly** picked the card.

It is a scary thing to see a child's personality develop - it becomes more clear that this is a small person.

Pics of Babies

It's a snack! It's body paint! It's art! It rhymes with spit!

Julianna and Elena at Christmas

I started off this entry with a cute picture.  The girls had a good Christmas.

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Today I went in to get Elena after her nap.

She was standing in her crib stark naked.

She had:

1) Stripped the cover off her mattress
2) Pooped in her diaper
3) Stripped off her clothes and diaper
4) Thrown clothes and diaper to the floor
5) Made a large poop on her mattress
6) Smeared poop on her legs, hands, and face (little patches under the eyes like grease paint)

Given her past behavior, she probably snacked on some too.

Oh Elena.......

Giving Thanks

We had a great Thanksgiving.   Both girls have enjoyed the wealth of plentiful food that they now enjoy.

Elena has learned that some food taste better than others.  At school, she had to make a collage from photos of different types of food.  She picked cakes, cookies, bread, mashed potatoes, and macaroni and cheese.  She put back all of the pictures of  vegetables.  Several weeks ago, Elena went from eating *Everything* to suddenly eating very little - just picking at food.  We were very worried when after three days she had eaten practically nothing and still had no appetite.  We were eating at a Chinese buffet (which she normally loves) and got at last a plate of dessert (for us).  Elena perked up immediately and ate all the pudding and jello and other desserts.  We were amazed - she had refused all food for DAYS because we weren't offering her any dessert.  She has since become "picky" about what she eats, but we can get her to eat vegetables and food that she doesn't like anyway.


Juliana has switched to solid foods completely and she can gum anything less stringent than steak into mush.  Juliana especially likes collard greens and spinach.  She doesn't like foods that are too spicy, but other than that has eaten pretty much everything we put in front of her.  She out-eats Elena most days.

If the girls were to write a letter back to Ukraine, it would read "WE LOVE AMERICA.  FOOD IS GREAT!"

A couple days before Thanksgiving, we celebrated (yes, celebrated) Juliana's first fat roll (on her leg).  Yes, we know that many people do not celebrate fat rolls, as it means eating less and working out more.  However - we have been desperately trying to get her weight up in the months since we got her (she now weighs about 17 lbs / 7.7kg) .  When we got her, she was 11 pounds (5 kg).  This was off-the-charts in a bad way for an 8-month old.  There was not any meat on her scrawny legs.  Part of it was her heart condition - part of it was the orphanage just doesn't feed the kids as much as the kids would like.  The girls' orphanage was one of the *better* orphanages in the Ukraine - there were pictures of the president of Ukraine congratulating the orphanage director and the director seemed to genuinely care about the children.  Bad as some of the things were (both girls were significantly underweight), from comparing notes from others who have adopted from Ukraine we have heard many more tales of orphanages that were worse but we have not seen evidence of better.


We became aware of this family's adoption a couple weeks ago:
theblessingofverity.com

The little girl they adopted from Eastern Europe is nine years old.  Her weight when they adopted her was also 11 pounds (5 kg).  There is no typo in that sentence.  Let those numbers sink in.  This little girl at nine years weighed the same as an newborn - due to malnutrition.  That she has even survived this long is miraculous.  They are home and she is in the hospital gaining weight.

Here is the scary thing - this is not the first skeletal child we have heard of being adopted from this area - there have been other people adopting from Eastern Europe with similar children.

Here is the real scary thing - there are more like her still imprisoned unto death unless they are ransomed - whose only crime is being born different.

Give thanks for what we have been given.  Be mindful of those who go without.

Lemon Lemon

When we had been back in the states for a few weeks, we tried Elena on a lemon slice. She popped it in her mouth, then immediately spit it back out. We gave her a slice of lemon a week later (to test her memory). She picked it up, looked us square in the eye, and then very deliberately threw it on the floor. She has since learned to like lemons in small doses; she will run her finger over a lemon slice and then suck on her finger or she will lick a lemon slice but she won't actually eat it.

A couple of nights ago we gave Juliana her first taste of lemon. The first taste of lemon is primarily designed for the amusement of the parents. Juliana liked the taste of the lemon and ate practically a whole slice of lemon, but she was wincing and shivering the entire time. She kept going back for more! She doesn't have any teeth yet but does an amazing job of eating table food with her little gums. Juliana made the jump from rice cereal / milk to table food VERY quickly. She is bound and determined to eat grownup food.

So anyways..... here is the video of Juliana's first lemon.