Day 4

Wow! It really doesn't seem like it's been four days! We've made a lot of progress in four days. For one, she doesn't suck her thumb all day anymore. Even when she's mad at us (like when we want her to use the toilet for example) she starts moving her thumb to her mouth and then-usually-stops on her own and slams her hand down on the ground. She really does seem to want to please us.

We're now working hard on 'zakreetya rot' which, we think means 'closed mouth'. We're pretty sure it does, because when we say this, she closes her mouth! Usually it only stays closed for about 1-2 seconds, but once she kept it closed for 5 seconds! Her breathing is a lot better and she CAN breathe through her nose now, but I bet she's never really learned how to because she's been conjested her whole life. We wouldn't be so adamant about her trying to keep it closed except having it open all the time makes her drool and we're tired of carrying around Kleenex to wipe her mouth off with! So, she's trying, and I'm sure someday she'll be able to walk around like most people with a closed mouth.

I just have to keep reminding myself that all this (chewing with your mouth closed, breathing with your mouth closed, going on the big toilet, sleeping in a new place, not sucking your thumb all day) is new to her and each day she'll progress and we'll almost forget about how difficult it was!

Today we walked to the Astor mall. It rained some last night which gave us beautiful, cool weather, but it also gave us-MUD! Jill's new white tennis shoes are now splattered with brown spots. I tried washing them, soaking them, scrubbing them, etc. but it just won't come out. It also wouldn't come out of her socks. Hopefully some bleach will do the trick when we get home. We walked around the mall, looked in the toy store, and rode in the elevator. She is very well behaved. She held my or Wade's hand most of the time, but we let her walk on her own some and she stayed close by and walked nicely. Unfortunately, she then wanted to let go and walk on her own every once and awhile on the walk home, which surprisingly other kids her age seem to do, but the driving around here scares me, so there was no way we'd let her walk alone around here even for one second! This led to a few tantrum like episodes, but I think she understands now that outside she MUST hold a hand.

Potty time in the mid-morning was great! She got on and went (#1)!!! But, in the afternoon, 45 minutes again. (probably a #2 issue) NOT FUN!
Playtime has been great.

We've read all the books, she piles them up and one by one 'reads' them to herself too.

We used the dry erase boards and markers for the first time today. She loved that! When she uses crayons she isn't very successful at making marks on the paper. They're always too light or the opposite, she presses too hard and the crayon breaks. But the markers write so smoothly. We used red and blue and tried to get a start on learing colors. I drew a circle and she tried to draw one too. A few of hers were pretty good!

Later she BUILT with the blocks!!! This is a milestone because she usually just takes them all out of the bucket and puts them back in the bucket. Or, she takes them out of the bucket, puts them in the truck, then puts them back in the bucket. Either way, not much excitement. But yesterday she would hand me a block and I would put it on the table. She would hand me another and I would stack it on the previous one, etc. Then today, she was taking blocks in and out, I wasn't paying too much attention, but I looked over at her and noticed-she had built something! She had two blocks stacked together, then had stacked two more together next to the first pair. She continued stacking pairs of blocks until she had 8! We took a picture of course!

She still loves the nesting cups! She puts blocks in them, or Fisher Price animals, she stacks them together, uses them in the tub, etc.

She played with the Fisher Price doll a lot today too, combing her hair and using the lace from the lacing beads to make a necklace for her.

She continues to be a big eater. Breakfast and lunch were about the same as yesterday. For dinner she ate tomatoes, cucumbers, chicken and potato soup, and bread. These might have been her first vegetables!

The only eating problem we have is that she seems to regurgitate food to chew on later. I'm thinking this must be an orphanage thing, like, when they get hungry again they make themselves bring up a little bit from their last meal and chew on it. I'm really just guessing, but that seems like what she's doing. When we see her chewing and take a napkin and swipe it out of her mouth, then brush her teeth (which she actually likes now!)She did this a number of times, on days 1-3, but today she only did it 3 times between breakfast and lunch and hasn't done it at all since! So, maybe she's realizing that she'll get enough each meal to be full until the next meal and she doesn't need to??? Either that or she has some reflux problem. We really don't know, but are loooking forward to the day that this stops for good.

Sleeping is getting MUCH better. Today, for the first time, she didn't complain about her nap! We had to pat her back, but she didn't scream about it. She's also slept in until 8am the last two mornings! When she wakes up, she doesn't cry, she just says, "Mama" and I go get her.

She hates the microphone we use for Skype, so Mom and Dad, and Ty and Jake don't get to hear her, but she does love to listen to them. She especially likes it when Ty and Jake laugh, she comes running to see where the sound is coming from. I guess getting the camera phone for the computer would have been a good idea. But, in 10 days she'll get to see where those voices are coming from and hear them laughing all the time!

Day 3

Well, it took two days to break the thumb sucking (during the day) habit, and it looks like it’s going to take two days for potty training! That’s not bad at all! Yesterday she only went twice; once on her pillow and once in the tub. Today though, we could tell she needed to go mid-morning. And we could tell that she knew she needed to go. She very willingly went to sit on the toilet, but got up after about 30 seconds. Then she would walk back out to play, turn around and run to sit on the potty again. She did this a few times when I started making her sit longer and longer each time. She cried after about 30 seconds and SCREAMED when we hit about 45 seconds. Wade suggested ditching the pants, that way we didn’t have to go through the pulling them up and down every two minutes. She hated that. SCREAMING, SCREAMING and more SCREAMING!!! When we ditched the pants, we’d let her off the toilet if she wanted, but didn’t let her out of the bathroom (The rest of the room is carpeted!) She really hated that. Crying, SCREAMING, laid on the floor with her head on a towel. I continued to try to put her on the potty, but at this point she wouldn’t sit at all without screaming. Wade said to let her out, but to not give her the pants back. She quit crying when she got to leave the bathroom, but surprisingly she didn’t go but about two feet from the bathroom door. Here she sat, laid down for awhile, cried for awhile, then came back in, sat down on the toilet and WENT!!!!! (both kinds) We cheered and cheered and hugged and kissed her and gave her animal crackers! Surprisingly, she continued to cry through our celebration. She ate the cookie, but cried while eating it. When we got her pants back on, hands washed, etc. you could tell she looked proud of herself. Now, fast forward to after dinner/before bath. She was playing, she was holding herself and whining much like she had been during our mid-morning ordeal (which I forgot to mention only took a mere hour and a half) she went and sat on the potty, didn’t go, got off, went back to play, played 15 seconds, went and sat on the potty, didn’t go, got off, went back to play, played 15 seconds, went and sat on the potty, didn’t go, got off, went back to play, played 15 seconds, Wade said, “If she does that again, ditch the pants.” She did, so we did, and then—SHE WENT RIGHT AWAY! So that time only took about a minute and a half instead of an hour and a half! WOW!

Other good things from today…
She slept through the night, until 8:00am, when she woke up she didn’t cry or anything, just said, “Ma-ma”.
On our mile there and mile back walk to dinner, she only tried to suck her thumb once!
We think her eating may be getting quieter, or else we’re just getting used to it.
She was singing in the stroller, “Mama, Mama, Mama, Dada, Dada, Dada, Mama, Dada, Mama, Dada” while pointing to either side of her where each of us was walking.
She sort of did the puzzle cards! She really just likes to take them out of the bag, then put them back in the bag, over and over and over. We try to coax her into matching them up and putting the together, but she never will. Today, she let us help her do them! We would set out three, two that went together and one that did not to see if she could find the two that went together. Some she got right on her own, some we helped her with, but the big news is that she let us help her use the toy the way it’s intended!
She played with the Fisher Price animals and made the sounds for each animal. She thinks the black and white bunny is a cow though; it’s her bunny that says MOO!
She didn’t scream at naptime, just whined a little, then slept a little over 2 hours!
She didn’t cry, or scream at bedtime, and didn’t even really whine. She called out Mama, Dada, a few times, and now Wade is rubbing her back, our usual nighttime routine, but really, not a fight at all.

She was a good eater at all three meals; a yogurt, bread, ham, cheese, half a granola bar and a whole banana for breakfast….ham, cheese, a few strawberries mixed with applesauce, and crackers for lunch, and A LOT of my chicken stuffed with mushrooms and brie cheese that is so good from one of our favorite restaurants, almost all of the grapes from my lettuce with grapes salad, some of the lettuce, and a roll for dinner.

We walked to a new place today. I can’t believe we didn’t know about it until we went to buy our Aeroflot tickets on Friday. It’s very close to the Azimut and not too far from here. It’s right on the river with a statue of Peter (don’t know which one). The streetlights have a nautical theme to them, the paving is beautiful, there were people swimming over on one side, two big houseboat type boats there, speedboats on the river, 3 men fishing, lots of flowers, a beautiful view across the river, lots of people with kids strolling about, etc. If you are planning to be in Astrakhan, e-mail me and I can try to give you walking directions from the Korvet or Azimut.

So, three days down, five to go. We’ll be in Moscow in no time!

Day 2

We're just finishing up Day 2 with Jill. It's going fairly well. When we're just hanging out playing in the room things are great! She plays well with us or alone. We're having a little trouble with sleeping and using the toilet. I guess that's pretty typical for three though. Here's an outline of how today went...Jill woke up during the night at 1am (patted her back to get her back to sleep pretty quickly) then again at 4am (patted her back, but much longer to get her back to sleep again) then was up for good at 5:30 (after patting her back from 5am to 5:30). We watched Blues Clues: Blues Big Musical until 6:30, then Dada got up and played toys with her and I dozed off until 7:30 when we all got dressed and ready for breakfast. We went down the hall to the hotel restuarant for breakfast where they had fried eggs (They've finally learned that I like my yolks well done!, bread, butter, strawberry jam, banana yogurt, pineapple juice, cheddar cheese, some meat that looked like raw bacon, (but Wade tried it and said it was just smoked ham with a lot of fat still on it), pickles, and coffee. Jill ate about a fourth of one of my egg whites, a piece of bread, a half a piece of cheese, an entire banana yogurt, and almost the whole pineapple juice box. She said 'nyet' to the pickles and ham, and sat nicely waiting for the food. She also sat nicely while eating. What we will have to work on is the acutal eating. She 'chews' with her mouth way open and pretty much sounds like a pig. It's quite disgusting. We've learned the word 'closed' in Russian and have even tried holding her lips closed while she 'chews' to help her understand we'd like her to chew with her mouth closed. The problem is that the word for closed is zat-KRY-ta and the word for open is at-KRY-ta. They sound so similar that she probably doesn't know which one we're saying; whenever we say zat-KRY-ta she opens her mouth wider that I thought humanly possible and makes even more chewing noise than before!!! If you noticed that I put the word 'chews' in quotation marks, I did that for a reason. She doesn't really chew with her teeth. She smooshes the food between her tongue and the roof of her mouth. It takes forever! Anyway, after breakfast we went back in the room and played some more, then put her on the potty. She did not go even once yesterday, despite the fact that we put her on the toilet about four times. But, she did wake up with a wet pull up this morning. So, no luck on the toilet, then we went for a walk. We didn't put her in the stroller since we were just going around the corner to the small grocery store and we wouldn't have to cross any streets. She walked nicely holing hands with both Wade and me. All we needed was bread for sandwiches for lunch, so it didn't take us long. When we got back they were still cleaning our room, so we left again and went to the open market where we bought a couple of tomatoes and some strawberries. When we got back they were finished with the room and we fixed ourselves some lunch. She didn't eat as much today as yesterday, maybe because she had had a bigger breakfast today than she had had yesterday. She ate a little ham, a little cheese, a piece of bread and tried the strawberries three times, spitting them out each time. I think that she's never had strawberries before, as they mentioned that they don't like giving the children red fruits or vegetables. I was not making her try them, they were just on her plate. So, I was surprised that every once in awhile she would poke one with her fork (Something else we had to teach her; I think they only used spoons in the orphanage because she just tries to scoop everything and then it falls off the fork!), smell it, (She smells everything before eating it,even if it's a piece of the exact same thing she just took a bite of!)try it, spit it out and go on to something else. Then awhile later she'd poke another one, smell it, try it, and spit it out! So she's open to trying new foods and even trying them multiple times. You never know, maybe tomorrow she'll like them! After lunch we tried the toilet again. She sat there at least five minutes-nothing again, so-time for a nap. She SCREAMED! Even more than she screamed at naptime yesterday. This surprised me because she didn't even cry at bedtime yesterday. Maybe she just doesn't like naps. Anyway, SCREAMED, SCREAMED, STOOD UP, SHOOK THE CRIB (Which is on slight rockers and therefore we thought she was going to tip it over!)We tried to calm her, but nothing worked, she kept getting up, screaming and shaking the crib, then-she peed all over her pillow (that she was standing on). The only good thing about this is that it didn't get on the sheets. We put her on the potty while I washed the pillow, pillowcase and her blanket (it got on the blanket a little bit) and she cried the whole time. Then, we put a pull up on her and put her back in bed. She cried, but didn't scream like before and eventually we patted her back enough for her to fall asleep. She was asleep by 1:15 and slept until 3:00! I slept the majority of this time too! At three we tried the toilet again, you guessed it-no luck. We gave her a banana for snack and tried to practice the 'chew with your mouth closed' thing. Then played until 4 when we called home! After talking to my parents and the boys for about 20 minutes, we went for a long, long walk to La Vanille (The French Restaurant). For this one she rode in the stroller. I ordered a Ceasar salad of which Jill ate about two lettuce leaves of and a bunch of croutons, Wade and I both ordered chicken sandwiches of which Jill ate about 1/3 of my bread and hard boiled eggs, but minimal chicken and cheese, and NONE of that lettuce, and Wade and I both ordered the fruit salad of which I picked out all of the apples for Jill and she ate them all! A pretty well rounded meal for her! She is very good at drinking out of a glass. If you give her a plastic cup, though, she squeezes it while drinking, thus spilling it! So, we have to use a real glass. Another weird thing we can't figure out is when she doesn't want to drink any more, she dumps the rest of her drink all over her plate!!! This happened twice yesterday, and now we can see it coming and grab the glass and/or move the plate. Weird! When we tried to put her in the stroller for the walk back, she didn't want in; she wanted to hold my hand and walk! She walked at least a half mile when she started to try to let go of my hand, so we put her in the stroller. She DID NOT want to be in the stroller. She got used to it though, (even without sucking her thumb!) and we kept her in it until we came upon a park-like area. We got her out to walk around, but she freaked out when we put her on the grass! She settled down after we walked a few feet over to a pathway where you could see some water. There was a parkbench there too that we sat on for awhile. Then, we began walking towards the hotel again, Jill holding my hand and Wade pushing the stroller. She walked the rest of the way! It was probably about another 1/2 mile. Wade just can't believe she walked a mile!!! We played with blocks for about 1/2 hour after returning to the hotel and then I told her (in Russian) that it was time to take a bath. She put those blocks away so quickly! She ran to the bathroom! She remembered how much she LOVED that bath yesterday! Before we put her in the tub we wanted her to go potty; surely she had to go by now; she hadn't gone since 12:30! It had been 6 and a half hours! She sat and cried, and cried, and sat, and cried, etc. In the meantime, the bath filled up with water, so we took her off the toilet, put her in the bath and then...she looked down, and-THE WATER STARTED TURNING YELLOW!!! I swooped her out of the tub and plopped her back on the toilet. I dried her off as she sat there and cried, and screamed, and cried "NE KEKE" (No potty, perhaps???). After ten minutes of not going, we took her off, put a pull-up on her, brushed her teeth (which by the way she hates), put her nightgown on, and told her it was time for sleep. (By the way, while she was sitting on the potty, we drained to tub---you pee in the tub, you don't get a bath.) She of course didn't want to sleep. We said, sleep(spat) or potty (pisat)? When we put her in the crib and she cried. We took her out and led her to the potty, when she cried there we walked her back to the crib, and again said, 'spat' or 'pisat'? and she said "Spat!". So, into the bed she went; she would rather sleep than go potty! She cried some, but I patted her back and she settled down. It was a little early for bed since we skipped the bath, and so it took her a little longer than last night to fall asleep. But, she's alseep now, and we'll try the potty thing again tomorrow! One thing that is going very well is the breaking of the thumb sucking during the day habit! She did it A LOT yesterday and we would take it out of her mouth. Today, she hardly did it at all. On the walk to the restaurant (about a 1/2 hour to 45 min. walk with the stroller) she only did it twice; once about 5 min. into the walk, then again about 5 minutes later, then not again at all until bed! Wow!

Third Post of the Day!

Well, I had to post as soon as I could after we got her here, then of course I had to post pictures!!! And now that we've spent the day with her I wanted to post again!

She's already saying some words! She says Mama, Papa, Dada, Ty, Jake, Jill, baby, ball, and up. She'll repeat other things we say, but these are the ones I think she really knows.

She played with the blocks and big dump truck a lot today. She actually built some towers with the Lego-like blocks, we played "Boo!" (Dada stands behind the corner, she runs to find him, he jumps out and yells Boo! then she runs away laughing) for a long time, we played with the 'My First Leappad' for a long time using the Winnie the Pooh and Dora cartridges, and she looked through the big photo album of mostly herself several times.

We went for a walk to the grocery store in the mall. She rode nicely in the stroller and it went just fine. For dinner she ate an entire chicken leg (cut off the bone) and some of my chicken thigh plus an adult serving of cole slaw for dinner.

She took a bath and LOVED it, playing with the stacking cups in the water pretending to soap up her hair and dump a cup of water over her head again and again and again and again (for a half hour!).

We all watched an episode of Sesame Street where she imitated Elmo acting like a chicken, made her baby dance to some of the songs, held up 10 fingers in a counting song, and then.......when I laid her in bed and told her it was time to sleep-

SHE DIDN'T CRY!

She's still awake though, so Wade is patting her back like I did to get her to sleep for her nap, but I'm still amazed because she cried off an on for 15 minutes before her nap, and stood up every once and awhile, so I'm shocked that this time she just laid down! Whewww!

So tomorrow will be our first FULL day! I will post when I can about tomorrow's adventures!

6/27/08 The Day We Can Officially Share Photos!

Bye Bye Baby House!

Right at this very moment, Jill is taking her afternoon nap right here in the hotel room! We left this morning at 8:30, met by the driver Voloya and CHI rep. Galina. From here we went to the Ministry of Ed. for Galina to pick up some paperwork and for us to pick up Elvira. After this we went to an unknown building to sign and pick up more paperwork, I believe one of these documents was her new birth certificate! We left Galina and went on to the orphanage to pick up Jill! They made us write out on a piece of 'scrap' paper that we had been given all of her medical information and had no claims against the orphanage. Their social worker told us that her mother had been putting some money in an account for her each year. They said it was minimal and that in order for her to get a hold of it she would have to come here when she was 18 and try to prove herself to be this person which would be hard to do with her name change. They asked us if we wanted to go to the hassles of doing this when she turns 18 or if we would write on another 'scrap' paper that we are aware of the account and will not make attempts to retrieve it. I just found it very nice to know that her mother has been doing this for her! She will be glad to know in the future that her mother cared enough about her to try to save at least a little something for her future! They then gave us her schedule. She gets up at 7:30am, eats breakfast at 8, has a 10am snack, plays outside from 10:30 until noon, has lunch at noon, naps from 1pm-3:30pm (which is right now!), has a four o'clock snack, goes outside again at 5, has dinner at 6, then goes to bed at 8:30pm. Sounds pretty typical to us! The boys schedules were very similar to this when they were her age. We took a few pictures of us in our shirts that say Mother, Father, and daughter in Russian. The staff there really liked the shirts! If anyone's interested I bought them online from a site called cafepress. Then...to the van! Surprisingly she didn't protest at us buckling her in! We drove back to the Ministry of Ed. where Galina was and Wade signed two things, then Elvira took us to buy our plane tickets!!! We are leaving here at 7am next Saturday (the 5th of July) for Moscow. Then, we headed one more time back to the Ministry of Ed. and picked Galina up. She and Elvira came back to the hotel with us. Galina had gotten two younger pictures of Jill on her flashdrive while at the Ministry of Ed! They're not very good ones, but at least they are from when she was probably one or two and I am so happy to have them! The hotel staff brought up a crib, Galina and Elvira stayed a little while while Jill got acclimated and then they left! We're pretty much on our own now. We can call if we need anything, but there is really nothing planned until Voloya picks us up at 5:30am next Saturday to take us to the airport!

We're Very Close!

We leave in 10 hours to pick up Jill!!!! I can't wait to let her walk out those gates she's been hanging onto the last two days and let her get into the van. I also can't wait to see her in the outfit we brought for her to wear! I am SO tierd of the pink ruffled dress and the blue 18mo size dress that is so short that it shows her underwear!!! We're putting her in pink capris with her shirt that says 'daughter' in Russian. We'll wear our shirts that say 'Mother' and 'Father' in Russian. Hopefully Evlira will take our picture outside the orphanage together. Today we stayed outside again. We walked a lot, she stood at the gate a lot, she looked through her photo album, we sat on the steps and read books; it was a beautiful day with extra beautiful weather! Then we went to dinner, then to the grocery store where we picked up some milk and bananas for Jill and some ice cream for us, then we went back to the hotel. I unpacked our "Backpack full of Toys" that we carry back and forth every day putting the books in the side pockets of the futon, the other toys in a big plastic zippered 'toybox' we brought (it was the zippered plastic container a comforter once came in), the 'arts and crafts'stuff (crayons, coloring books, playdoh, Crayola Magic fingerpaints, stickers, and paper)in the end table drawer, the bubbles on a high shelf in the bathroom, I put her clothes in the futon drawers, and the stroller by the door! I also put her clothes for tomorrow, the baby doll, and her photo album of home that she loves, in a bag by the door to take with us in the morning. WE ARE READY!!! Now we're about to fix some ice cream and watch Russia play Spain in the semifinals of the Euro Cup! If they win they'll play Germany in the final match on Sunday. The games start so late we usually only watch the first half of each one, but tonight we're planning to watch the entire thing. And, if they play Sunday, we'll watch that one for sure! We're hoping to be able to find Euro Cup shirts for sale in Moscow too. It's been a fun time to be here!