Silly Pasha Pictures

We still call Pasha, "Pasha" as that is what he responds best to. We do add "Pasha-Chase" when we remember, but he still looks like a Pasha to me. Today he was very silly, he got under my desk in the kitchen with Rosie the dog and was pretending to be driving a car with Rosie as his passenger.


This afternoon, he absolutely would not take a nap, so I just let him have the run of both of their bedrooms and closed the door. This is what I walked in on when it was time to go pick Caroline up from school, he dressed himself in Caroline's halloween leggings, her pajama top and put his shoes on the wrong feet. Oh, and when he undressed to put on his clothes, he also had a pair of her underwear on. Old orphanage fashion habits die hard:

"Stop eating the dog food"

That's what I say about 10 times a day to Chase! What would possess a kid to eat dog food vs. very good table food for people? Does he have some vitamin deficiency? At least now the dog food is in the kitchen instead of being in my bedroom where the dogs were locked up for the past two weeks. That's right, all six of us (three people, three dogs) are living in one house with no locked doors, no separating the dogs and the kids, it's "peace in the valley" for the most part. Chase is getting along great with all of three of them, of course that's because he is constantly dropping food for them. Caroline has a little way to go as far as the dogs are concerned, she still is weary of them, but basically tolerates them. On a scale of 1-10, I would say we are at about a 6.5 which is way better than the 1 we were at when we first came home.

Caroline loves school! She comes running to me when I go to pick her up, babbling away in Russian and laughing, so I am assuming it's all good. She loves her teacher, Miss Rodriguez, and has made some little friends named Natalie and Sarah. She came home with a fruit loop necklace yesterday and you would think it was made of gold, she was so protective of it. Of course Chase tried to eat it. She is picking up English like you would not believe, mostly just single words, not really sentences, but it is amazing. I really need to watch what I say around her!

Chase is bonding with Mama. We had a good day today, only a few time outs. He is still a terror when I take him out, but it seems he is listening to me more and knows that he should not behave with biting, hitting, screaming, pinching or using foul language (in Russian). He knows it will mean an immediate time out. He is going to be evaluated by the school district for early childhood intervention, but the first appt. is not until November 29th! I nearly cried when they told me that and she did push us to the top of the waiting list for a cancellation. If he qualifies, he will be able to attend a preschool 5 days a week in the morning. Right now, no preschool or daycare will take him until his behavior is under control. We are looking for a private home daycare that may suit him better with a smaller group setting and more individualized attention. One of the preschools that we looked at is determined to find us something that will work for him.

Bedtime is going pretty well, they both love the bath. When we first got home they would barely stay in it 10 minutes, now I have to drag them out after 30 minutes. Chase refuses to sleep in his own bed, he sleeps with Caroline every night. I think he is so used to sleeping with 12 other children, he is scared to be alone. This is one battle I am not going to fight, I have bigger things to worry about right now. There will come a day when Caroline kicks him out and he will have no choice but to go to his own bed. He misses Caroline during the day while she is in school and needless to say, naptime is difficult since he has to sleep by himself.

I'm doing fine, although a little tired. Chasing after two kids is hard work! I have amazing friends who have offered to sit with Chase for a few hours during the day so I can get out and get some "Jane" time. I am planning a mani and a pedi for Monday when my friend Jan will stay with him. Definitely long overdue! My nephew Chris is coming down in October for Chase's 4th birthday, I am looking forward to that. He also says he's gonna "whip that kid into shape" - Ha, we'll see what he can do in 4 days!

Thanks for reading. This blog is kind of cathartic for me. I appreciate everyone's well wishes and support.

Jane

Thank you Becky (SBP)

Thanks Becky, they absolutely love the shoes! They are a little too big, but with the way they are growing, they will fit into them in no time. Caroline especially likes hers - typical girl! Thanks again for all the surprises!
Jane

Caroline's first day of school

Well, it's 9:00 am and the school has not called yet with a "Caroline Meltdown"! So I am thinking it will hopefully be a good day for her. She has been so excited about school, that is all she talks about: "mama, skoll, mama, skoll"??? (that's how she pronounces it). Caroline was a little nervous this morning though, she hardly ate any breakfast, hopefully that will change tomorrow. Here are some pictures from this morning:

Doctor Day

Caroline and Chase had their first visit to the pediatrician today and it went pretty well with the exception of Chase being an absolute terror. It is clear that this kid cannot stand any excessive stimulation whatsoever. The doctor is married to a Russian woman and he speaks some Russian, and also his wife will translate the medicals, so it works out well for us. Both kids checked out pretty well, Caroline has a referral to Scottish Rite hospital for Children to have her left leg/foot looked at, as it turns outward. Chase has been referred to a pedi opthamologist to look at his slightly lazy right eye. The doctor could not detect any heart murmur on Caroline which was made to be a huge issue on her Russian medicals. The doctor also laughed when I told him about the Russian doctor's recommendation that Caroline have umbilical hernia repair surgery asap to prevent any pregnancy complications. Both children have to go to Children's hospital of Dallas for an extensive blood draw which we will do on Friday. The doctor recommended re-immunizing them to get them on schedule rather than doing titers, so each of them got 5 shots in the legs today, poor babies, but they love to show off their cool band-aids as their battle scars. Mama has bite marks and bruises to show off for hers; I won't even tell you where.

I had the translator over yesterday to work with the kids and the dogs. It went much better than I expected, the translator has dogs so she had no problem working with them. She had me bring each dog out one by one and gradually allowed the children to pet and feed the dogs, it went beautifully while she was here; as soon as she left and probably was not even out of the cul-du-sac, the kids were screaming and scared again. She is coming back tomorrow to work with them again. Hopefully this time it will stick.

I turned in all of the paperwork for Caroline to register for kindergarten, she will first be tested at an intake center for language development and then actually start school. We are hoping to be able to be tested tomorrow morning and she will then start on Monday of next week. The translator also talked with her about school and she is really excited.

Here are some pictures from this morning before we left for the doctor's office.

Home one week

Mama is sooooo tired! Sorry for no update sooner, but dear Lord this is hard! Gail left on Wednesday, so I have been on my own for a few days now. Caroline and Chase are starting to settle in better and better each day. They are now sleeping in their own beds, at first they slept together in Caroline's and screamed for about an hour or so; then last night Caroline slept in Chase's and Chase slept in Caroline's and screamed for about 30 minutes. I don't really care if they sleep in the bathtub, as long as they sleep. Tonight, they are finally sleeping in their own beds alone! Yeah! And not one scream! Small milestones, but I'll take what I can get. We've mostly been hanging out at home with some small excursions to the store and also a haircut for Chase, I swear, he looked like some rock star with his hair, it was so long; I like little boys to look like little boys. Caroline's hair is such a curly mop, but I love it and couldn't stand to cut it, so we will wait a while longer to see what might suit her best.

We've had some moments though. We had some time to kill before Chase's hair appointment on Thursday, so we stopped at TJ Maxx to see if they had anything that I needed; well, Chase was an absolute terror. I had him in the cart and was holding Caroline's hand and her head is on a swivel: "Mama, look, look, look", "Mama, look, look, look", "Mama, look, look, look" and Chase was screaming peesit and cacit at the top on his lungs and calling anyone who came within 20 feet of us the "B*^tch" word in Russian. Hopefully no one at TJ Maxx in North Dallas spoke Russian and understood what he was saying. He was hitting and pinching me and pulling his sister's hair, it was an absolute disaster and we could not get out of there quick enough. What was I smoking when I decided that going there would be a good idea? Chase was great though at the hair salon, it's one that caters to children, so he sat in his "marchina" and watched Cars on the video and was a very good boy.

The kids are also loving the pool! They are little water babies. It's amazing, I'm not sure if they have ever been in a pool, but they took to it right away.

The Dogs. Well, that's another story. They are slowly getting used to them. Today, my neighbor came over and since the kids love the pool, her and I got in the pool with them and played for a while and then she went and got the dogs and put them on leashes and brought them out. No blood curdling screams, but still weary of them. We did manage to get them out of the pool with the dogs loose and sit at the table outside and feed the dogs snacks. This was major progress. They still freaked a little when all of us, dogs included, went inside, so I ended up locking the dogs up again for most of the rest of the day. I think if we do this everyday, we will get to a point where we can all live in the same house together without closed doors! That would be awesome in my book!

I've decided to go ahead and try Caroline in Kindergarten, she will hopefully start a week from Monday. I really think that by doing this will acclimate her to our lifestyle better and she seems a little bored. She seems to understand she will be going to school and making new friends and meeting her teacher. She about flipped when she saw the playground, lots of slides and monkey bars and swings, it probably looked like Disney world compared to what they had in the orphanage.

Chase will stay home with me for some "Mama boot camp". They would kick him out of preschool in a New York minute with his current behavior. He kicks, hits, bites, screams, pinches, pulls hair and has a horrible "potty mouth"; all this at three, almost four years old! Unbelievable! It has gotten better since we've been home and he's away from that orphanage, but when he gets angry, a lot of it starts to come out again. I look like I've been to war with all the bruises and bite marks!

Earlier in the week, they got to meet their other Aunt and Uncle, we met for dinner at a restaurant, (they are very good when they are around food) and we had so much fun. They all got along great, and they were so funny. At one point, Aunt Mary asked how to say something in Russian and Caroline hands her Gail's little Russian translation book! Chase and his Uncle got along so well, they were doing "boy stuff" like making sand castles by spilling the entire salt jar into a glass of water, thank goodness Chase didn't try and drink it!

They are starting to pick up English more and more each day. Here's a list of some of their favorite words, many learned from "Troyta" Gail:

Kissy, Kissy, Smoochie, Smoochie
Yummy in the Tummy
Mmmmm, mmmmm, mm, mmmm, mmmm, m, m, m
Mama Mia!!
Baby
Stop it!!!
Dog

Here are some pictures from this past week:





I'll try and be a better blogger now that things may be settling down a little. I really need to put a post together of Gail and my experiences in Russia; there were so many funny moments I don't want to forget any. I will try that one tomorrow.

Love to all,
Jane

It's so good to be home!

We made it home Saturday night after a very long journey. We left Moscow early Saturday morning as I needed to go to the Delta ticket office and pay the difference in my fares for coming back early. Well, I was absolutely insistent that we get bulkhead seating because I did not want a repeat of the nightmare flight we had taken 3 days earlier and this flight would be even longer. My translator told me to go ahead and ask the cashier at the Delta office to secure our seats in bulkhead as she felt we had a better chance with him rather than at the ticket counter. Well his first response was absolutely not, they were all taken and and none were available. I was nearly in tears, I had two very rambunctious kids so I showed him a $100.00 bill and asked again, he shoved it away and again told me no all the while typing into his computer. A few minutes later, lo and behold, suddenly 4 seats became available in bulkhead! and my "gratuity would be greatly appreciated" he told me! Gotta love Russia!

The flight home was much better than the first one, although Gail was not seated in the same row as us and no one would switch places with her. Caroline fell asleep and slept for about 8 of the 12 hour flight and Chase, well he finally fell asleep for about 4 hours of the flight on the floor in front of me. I did dose him with some benadryl which helped a little, but Lord this kid is tough. It took a long time to go thru customs in Atlanta and then immigration, we had about 25 minutes to spare to make our flight to Dallas, but we made it hauling all of our carry on and two kids who's heads are on swivels. I did use these stuffed animal backpack/harnesses most of the trip with the kids especially for Chase as he just will not listen either in Russian or English and I was so afraid of losing him in airports and such; his name Chase, suites him to a "T"! The flight to DFW was pretty uneventful as we all were so tired. I had called the limo service from Atlanta to change our arrival date and time and after calling around, they found a driver with a large SUV to pick us up, not the stretch I had wanted, but at this point I didn't care if we had to pile into a VW bug to get us home. Our luggage didn't make it with us on the flight to DFW but Delta said they would deliver it to my home when it made it on the next flight.

I had had the dog sitter lock the dogs up in my bedroom so they wouldn't scare the children when we arrived home, but the kids heard them barking and started to panic. They did settle down a little when they saw their rooms which they loved and after playing with some of the toys, they had their baths and off to bed and fell asleep; so I thought. I climbed into bed at about 11:00 pm and fell sound asleep only to be woken up at about 3:00 am with blood curdling screams coming from Caroline's room and then Chase's room. I ran in there and they we're both screaming and sobbing terrified of the dogs that they had yet to even meet, at the same time the phone is ringing with the courier to deliver the luggage (3:00 am!!) I'm thinking this is ridiculous and finally picked them up and put them in my bed and moved the dogs to the living room and closed the door. They finally fell back asleep and slept almost the entire day and didn't get up until about 3:00 pm. Gail and I did no less than 14 loads of laundry, we decided if it even touched Russian air, it was going in the wash.

When the kids woke up we talked with them about the dogs and assured them in both Russian and English that the dogs were friendly, would not bite and liked to kiss and lick their fingers and toes. I picked them up one by one and carried them into the kitchen and again the loudest blood curdling screams you have ever heard! They would barely even look at the dogs. Now my dogs are two small terriers and one medium size golden retriever/Shepard mix with very sweet dispositions and have been around children and basically ignore them and sleep on the couches all day. They did calm down some when I sat them on the counter in the kitchen where the dogs could not possibly get to them, but still incredibly scared. Over and over we told them the dogs would not hurt them, they are friendly but not much was working. I put the dogs outside and went out and played and petted them so they could watch thru the window and they seemed somewhat okay with that, but still had no comfort in meeting even the littlest one. We went ahead and left the dogs out and cooked dinner, steak, baked potato and salad which Caroline loved, but unbelievably Chase didn't seem to like the steak. They did love the "drumstick" ice cream cones for dessert though!.

Bedtime last night was another nightmare even with them in my bed and the dogs locked up and nowhere in sight. Caroline finally fell asleep after about 4-5 hours and Chase was up most of the night crying every 30 minutes. I don't know what to do about this situation. There has got to be one. If anyone has any ideas on how to make them more comfortable or even tolerate the dogs I would welcome any and all suggestions.

Thanks, even though this is hard, it's sooooo good to be home!
Love,
Jane