Doctor's Appointment

On Tuesday, we made the long journey downtown to Children's Hospital at the DMC to have the kids fully evaluated medically. The appointment was at 9am and we had to leave this house at 7:20 to make it there on time. Which sucked, because we had to wake the kids up early, and they were having their best night of sleep yet. Also, on the way down, Tatiana completely upchucked all over herself in the car, so that was pleasant to deal with. Half digested yogurt and bananas, yuck. :(

We made it to Children's and got in with the doc about 9:20, I think. The front desk seriously didn't know how to run our private, excellent health insurance, because I'd be willing to bet all they deal with is freaking Medicaid (the Adoption Clinic is run out of one of the general pediatric clinics there, and the clientele seemed, let's say, ghetto fabulous).

The appointment lasted 2 hours. The doctor was very thorough, as she should be. She asked us every question under the sun, measured them a ton, and gave them full physicals. She was generally pleased with the state of their health, and with the things we've been doing with them. She also has twin sons adopted from Kazakhstan, so she totally understands what we're going through. Cola is in good shape overall, he's just tiny. He's not even on the growth chart. He is 2 now, and is the size of an average 12 month old here. Little lady Tania is good sized, but has issues like decayed teeth, a lazy eye, and something called funnel chest/pectalis, which means her chest, right in between where her breasts will be, is concave. This will most likely resolve itself, but it may not. They are most likely also developmentally delayed, and I have the school district working on coming out to evaluate them. They are certainly emotionally stunted. We're working on that.

Also, they had a ton of blood work ton. She took it like a rock star, but he screamed like a banshee. It was awful. It was 1:45 by the time we got out of Children's. We also have to do a urinalysis and a fecal test (3 times for the poop) to check for parasites. Fun for Heather and Brian. But these guys need to be checked for every little thing.

So, that's what happened with the doctor's appointment. Things are rolling. I honestly think taking them to medical appointments and getting out of this house may help our mood!

Thank You All...

For the tremendous support I got from my last blog update. To all of you who emailed me, or Facebooked me, sorry I haven't replied in person, but this blog entry is hard enough to get done. All of you that wrote sent lovely messages of support and offers to call you. Trust me, I may take some of you up on that at some point. Right now, I'm calling people who've specifically been through an adoption process, because they have the most insight into the specific things we're dealing with. I'm having a very bad day today, so writing this short blurb hopefully will help me stay sane.

The sleeping is not going much better, but at least the jet lag is over, I think. The white noise helps them go to sleep somewhat, but it only lasts 90 minutes on my iPod, so Brian ordered a white noise machine that we can play all night. I think that may help. They both are still waking repeatedly, which could go on for months. Basically, our poor babies have never had anyone comfort them in the night, and now that's all they want for a while until they realize that we'll always be there if they need us. Nicholas is SO hard to get to sleep, and the stroller is the only thing that works fairly consistently. So, we're going to go with that. We have to meet him where he is. At least Tatiana hasn't had any more night terrors, but she thrashes and wails in her sleep. I think she's having nightmares. Poor thing. We're trying to remember what these babies have been through in their lives, which, at 3 and a half and 2, is more than most of us will ever have to endure. But, its still difficult to deal with when we're less than our best.

Food is also a huge issue. If they see food, they will scream and wail for it, even if they ate 5 minutes ago. Food preparation around them is a difficult situation. I think they've been hungry quite a bit in their lives and now are just craving food until they explode. This is common and takes time to subside. We've had to bungee cord my pantry shut so they don't get into stuff.

We do see improvement and we hold on to that. Her tantrums are getting better, as she seems to be getting more of what's expected of her behavior wise. A huge problem we have is sharing/sibling rivalry, but that's normal for any siblings. It'll take time. Also, we've had them since January 18, and we can already see them filling out. They are getting little bellies on them! We love that, since we could scarily see their ribs A LOT when they arrived to us. I think T will always be tall and thin, which is fine by me! I wish N would grow height wise a bit. We have the full eval at Children's Hospital downtown on Tuesday and we'll see how that goes. I think they're in pretty decent shape overall. Next step will be getting T treatment for her lazy eye. I talked to the Adoption Medicine specialist today and she was very encouraging. She has twins from Kazakhstan and she reassured me that everything we're dealing with is normal and will subside, but it could take months. So, we have to be in it for the long haul.

Thanks for the support and encouragement everyone. We know that in the near future we'll hopefully be able to look back at this and go, "Wow, that sucked, but we made it through." Hopefully, that's sooner rather than later!

Since You've Been Asking

Hi All. This will be a short post, but many of you have been asking how it's going, so I decided to try to give a blog update on our situation.

We are, of course, thrilled to have the kids home. We made it home on January 26, barely avoiding the storm that hit the east coast, which we are grateful for. It was a very difficult day, though. On an 11 hour flight from Moscow to NYC, the kids slept less than 2 hours. So, they were exhausted and we were exhausted. It was 10 pm by the time we got home, and we put them to bed. Then, the jet lag you all have been hearing about on Facebook hit. I think that's getting a bit better, thank goodness. However, due to other issues, we are still not sleeping in the Nault household and may not for a while.

The kids wake up repeatedly in the middle of the night. This is not uncommon for adopted kids. They are in a totally different environment, after having experienced a lot of trauma in their lives. Nicholas (nickname Cola) wakes up and takes a long time to fall back asleep. Hopefully the white noise I downloaded will help. It helped them fall asleep last night. Tatiana (nickname Tania) also wakes frequently, but more importantly,experiences ferocious night terrors. It's awful. Last night we thought she was going to kill herself by accident. She was jumping up on her bed and throwing herself down repeatedly. We thought she was going to hit her head and die. This lasted for 40 minutes, then she did it again, albeit shorter and quieter, 2 hours later. Brian and I thought she was going psychotic, until we called a few people this morning and found out that this is not uncommon. Awful, but not uncommon. Ugh. Hopefully this will wane as she gets comfortable in her new home and environment.

Also, she has terrible tantrums in the day, up to 6-8 times a day, mostly we feel due to us not being able to understand her when she talks and her not being able to understand us. I feel really badly for her, but we also have to set limits. It is not okay for her to hit me or bite Brian. I feel badly because Nicholas is not at all getting the attention he deserves, but I guess it is still much better than being in an orphanage, right?

There are other issues going on too, but that's the major stuff. I feel its important to be honest and not sugarcoat this stuff. We've been honest about everything we've dealt with thus far, so this post is a continuation of that. Hopefully soon, I'll be able to post that things are getting better. To all of you whom I've called and cried to, thanks a lot.

THREE WEEKS!!

I cannot believe that in THREE WEEKS the kids will be home! We leave a week from Saturday and will be home January 26! It is so nutty around here trying to get everything together. Brian's been installing baby gates, I'm getting paperwork together, and I need him to help me organize their room and put a bunch of toys downstairs. Everyone has been so generous with clothes and toys that some of the toys need to be put away and taken out slowly. These kids are NOT used to having an abundance of things and it can really overstimulate them. That's also why we did not decorate the room very much. Decoration can come with time! Also, thanks to Holly and Jill, I have full drawers for Nicholas and TWO sacks of too big clothes in the closet for when he grows! We also have plenty of clothes for her right now, thanks to my lovely aunts Holli and Margaret, and it'll be cheaper and easier buying for one kid on down the line than both of them!

I am SO NERVOUS, but obviously excited too. Hopefully, now that this blog is linked to Facebook, I'll be motivated to post more in the new year. The kids themselves will provide motivation too--everyone wants to see pictures! I can't wait until I can oblige all of your numerous photo requests!!

Things I Learned in Russia

I know everyone wants to hear about the trip, and there are some things we can discuss and other things that we really can't. I hope you all understand that. So, in light of that, I decided to do a quick rundown of lessons learned from the trip, both silly and serious!

1) I need to invest in whatever stores or companies sell women's knee high black boots in Russia! Seriously, they are the footwear of choice of every freaking woman there between the ages of 10-40, and even people younger and older! I seriously saw a 5 year old wearing them. If you go to Russia and want to fit in, wear your "hooker boots" and a short black skirt, and you're good to go.

2) I learned I can pee in a hole in the ground if I need to! Seriously. The toilet at the airport going to Kotlas (the town where the kids are) was a sink basin sunk into the ground. I ended up stripping from the waist down and then squatting. I stripped because I had a huge fear of peeing all over my pants, and then I would be screwed. I figured if it went down my leg, I could clean that up! Sorry if this is gross, but its true. Brian warned me, so I was somewhat prepared at least. :)

3) Sanitation standards in Russia are not what they are here. Sometimes there's soap, sometimes not. Sometimes the toilet flushes well, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes there's paper, other times, no. And the paper they did have--well, it hurts your bum and they don't flush the paper. I guess the pipes can't handle it. So, there's a trash can next to every toilet and there goes the paper. It's gross. Sorry, I can't wrap my brain around that one.

4) I can fly in crazy small planes and not get sick or scared. The last plane we took was a 21 seater double propeller Soviet era thing, where your luggage just goes in the back of the plane, and the cockpit is wide open. No lie. It was INTERESTING, to say the least.

Now, onto more serious things....

5) The orphanage was a lot nicer than we thought it would be, and the workers, the doctors, nurses and caregivers, really care about the children. They absolutely want the best for them. It was reassuring. And everything we'd been told about the kids 100% seemed to be true, everything seems completely above board.

6) Regarding their surroundings, they kids are definitely not kept in cribs all day and ignored like some of the stories you've heard. It's just not true. They have music and art and exercise and playtime. They also get a decent diet, not as much fruit and dairy as we'd like, but it's nutritious and there's enough of it. So that's also reassuring.

7) Can't say too much about the kids, but I learned it is completely possible to get super attached to kids you only met 3 times. It was sad, so much sadder than we thought, to leave them. Now I'm frantically trying to get paperwork done to speed the process as much as possible. But, just so you know, we won't be going back until January or February. Unfortunately.

8) So this is really fun to announce to everyone, not really something I learned, just an announcement. Our daughter is going to be Tatiana Louise and our son will be Nicholas Brian! The first names are Americanized versions of their Russian names and the middle names are for my mom (she's Marie Louise) and for Brian, of course. :)

9) The last thing I learned was this--we have a CRAP TON of baby proofing to do! OMG--we are bringing two small Tasmanian devil like creatures into our house in the near future. :) Let's hope the house survives it! Oh, and us too. :)

California Vacay

So, I realize I'm again a bit behind on my blog. So, I've decided to at least catch myself up in the next week or two on the trips I've taken recently! With pictures, for reals!

I went to visit my good friend from Western, Ruth. She and I rarely get to see each other, but when we do, it's like we were just together yesterday! I left on July 15 (Brian's and my anniversary, trust me, I took crap for that one!). My flight out of Flint was super early in the morning, which meant I was literally up BEFORE the butt crack of dawn. And, seeing as how I always get travel anxiety, particularly when I go by myself, I LITERALLY didn't sleep a single minute that night. So, at 6:45 am, after getting no shut eye, I was on my way to Minneapolis for my connection. I managed to sleep a little on that plane, thank goodness, and got to Minneapolis just fine. I had a delicious breakfast (Minneapolis is a great airport for food), and left for San Jose, where Ruth lives.

I also managed to sleep a bit on my second plane, so by the time I got there at 11:30 am Cali time, I was at least a little coherent. Ruth came and got me and I was so excited to see her! Yay! We cruised back to the Radle residence, where her husband John, son Nathan (who I hadn't seen since he was a baby and he's now 5 and a half) and daughter Hannah (age 1, who I'd never met!) were waiting! A few members of the Radle clan had dentist appointments that afternoon, which actually worked fine, as I went and took a nap in the "Executive shed." Yes, I said SHED.

The "Executive Shed" is maybe the funnest place to sleep EVER. When Ruth's dad and late mom bought the house when Ruth started college, it had this toolshed in the back that they didn't need. Seeing as how the house is a modest California ranch, they could really use that extra space. So, Mr. Stephens' brilliance came through--they converted the approximately 7 by 20 foot shed into basically a guesthouse, with air conditioning and electricity, etc. But, here's the kicker--no plumbing. So, if I had to go potty, I had to walk all of 30 feet across the lawn and go in the house. No biggie. The lack of plumbing is pretty advantageous from a property tax standpoint, because if it had plumbing, it would actually be considered a guesthouse, and Ruth and John's taxes would go up a ton! Way to go, Mr. Stephens!

So, the rest of Thursday we hung out and made a quick trip to the mall with Nathan, and Friday, Ruth and I took the kids to a place called "Happy Hollow." It's this place owned by the City of San Jose that's like a petting zoo/tiny amusement part for very young kids. We had a blast with the kids, Nathan and I went on a ride called the Frog Hopper together, we did the train, and took them to the petting zoo. It was a ton of fun and a great place for families! Then, later that day, Ruth and I went shopping and sight seeing in this nearby town called Los Gatos (which means The Cats, and yes, they have cats on some of the signs in town). This is the sort of place that one should not bother trying to buy a house in unless they have seven figures to spend. And then you might still get a dump. It has cool and eclectic shops downtown of all types. Very cool! Ruth then took me all around San Jose and showed me the school at which she's an Assistant Principal, Quimby Middle School. One day, she WILL be superintendent of the district, I guarantee it!

On Saturday, Ruth and I went into San Francisco! It was cold at first, which is typical, but then turned into an absolutely beautiful day, which is rare! Ruth said it was one of the best days she'd seen in the city. We hung out at Pier 39 at Fisherman's Wharf, went to Ghiardelli Square and had chocolate, ate lunch at the Hard Rock so I could get Brian a shot glass (he collects them), and then we drove over the Golden Gate Bridge so I could get pics. What a view! It was clear enough to see Alcatraz! (Which I cannot wait to do when we go back!). By that point, I was totally exhausted, and we went home. The next morning, I had to get up and leave pretty early.

All in all, it was a wonderful weekend and I psyched to see my old friend. I need to get out there more often! Now for some pics:

View of the City from the north end of the Golden Gate Bridge. It's rarely that clear out!











Me in front of the Hard Rock Cafe. Cheesy I know, but it had to be done.











And finally, the famous sea lions at Fisherman's Wharf!

So Much To Do, Even With No Work

Wow, so much stuff is going on these days! Despite being off work for probably the months of July and August, I have been going, going, going! While Brian's at softball tonight (I skipped due to my dislike of being rained on), I thought I'd let you all know what's been going on!

We did get the furniture for the kids and it's all in the room and set up. If I had bedding, tiny little Russian babies could sleep in it tonight. On one wall, there's the crib and nightstand we bought, along with a toddler bed donated from our friends the Hills (tons of thanks to them!). On the other wall is the tall 5 drawer dresser and a tall 3 shelf bookcase. SO EXCITING. I literally go in there 5 times a day and look at it, pull out the drawers, and walk to the crib and imagine taking a small person out of it. Sappy I know, but I think these are the things that pregnant moms do, and I am pregnant in the only way I'll ever really experience it. So, I'm indulging myself in all those things and NOT FEELING BADLY ABOUT IT. :) My next project is to buy some bedding for the beds and start decorating. My wonderful friend, frequent reader A, has graciously volunteered to make me some sort of quilt for the children (I'M SUPER EXCITED), and I'll be going to see her soon to pick out fabric. I actually need to talk to her about this, because I don't know exactly what she has in mind, and I need to know before I buy bedding. So, A, if you're reading this--CALL ME. (When the stuff regarding Grandma is settled, of course. Hope you're doing well.)

Fourth of July weekend was pretty quiet, which is fine for me, but I think Brian was bored. He felt left out of other parties, etc. He truly feels that certain folks are not inviting us places anymore because we don't have kids. I feel other factors are in play, and it doesn't bother me as much as it does him. But he hates being bored, so he was a bit crabby that weekend. Plus, his parents were ill and canceled on having dinner with us on Saturday, so he was upset at that too (they don't come down often and he was excited). Poor guy. He's having a bit of a hard time lately. It was very nice to have the Meese's over for dinner though. We truly enjoy having company, so please come visit us people! I also baby sat Oliver Meese this morning while Candace went to the doctor and he is my favorite (and only) godson, as always! Then Candace and I had a very nice lunch at Applebee's, in which Ollie squealed his favorite word "Eeewww!" the whole time and flirted with waitresses. Typical man. :)

Finally, the other stuff I have going on is that a week from today I'm leaving to visit Ruth in California! It's going to be so much fun! I've only been to visit her out there once and only get to see her probably once every couple years, so this is great. I can't wait to see Nathan again and meet Hannah, who's a year old. I'm going Thursday through Sunday and then the Sunday after that, Brian and I leave for our week of vacation in the UP again! We're camping with my fam again Grand Marais Sunday through Wednesday, then two nights on Drummond Island, finished with two nights on Mackinac with the Meeses! We plan to ride our bikes as much as possible and just relax! I think my husband needs it, and I hope we get some more awesome pictures!