Those who exploit the powerless anger their Maker...

Proverbs 14: 31-33, from the Common English Bible:

³¹ Those who exploit the powerless anger their Maker, while those who are kind to the poor honor God. ³² The wicked are thrown down by their own evil, but the righteous find refuge even in death. ³³ Wisdom resides in an understanding heart, but it’s not known in fools.

We're not the most religious of folk, but then Proverbs is far from the most religious book in the Bible.  Most translations render the word "powerless" in the headline as "poor," but I like this translation, because it appropriately describes the following:

"Putin Signs Bill That Bars U.S. Adoptions, Upending Families," from the New York Times; dated today:

President Vladimir V. Putin signed a bill on Friday that bans the adoption of Russian children by American citizens, dealing a serious blow to an already strained diplomatic relationship. But for hundreds of Americans enmeshed in the costly, complicated adoption process, the impact was deeply personal....

The law calls for the ban to be put in force on Tuesday, and it stands to upend the plans of many American families in the final stages of adopting in Russia. Already, it has added wrenching emotional tumult to a process that can cost $50,000 or more, requires repeated trips overseas, and typically entails lengthy and maddening encounters with bureaucracy....

The bill that includes the adoption ban was drafted in response to the Magnitsky Act, a law signed by President Obama this month that will bar Russian citizens accused of violating human rights from traveling to the United States and from owning real estate or other assets there....

Merry Christmas

Christmas presents, 2012

This was our second Christmas together as a family (here's last year's Christmas pictures).  We did something a little diffrent this year: rather than staying home for Christmas, we went to Toronto and stayed for a few days.  Elena opened presents just before we left (that's the picture above), and then we piled in the car and headed east. 

It was still a relatively quiet Christmas, but Elena had a lot of fun swimming in the hotel pool, and eventually let us know that she liked staying at the hotel better than staying in her room at our house.  Which is kind of the point of a vacation, right?

Toronto hotel view.  Elena is eating an apple.

We also went to a puppet show, and rode on Toronto's subway and streetcars.  The train and the streetcars were both novel enough that Elena thoroughly enjoyed the experience.  It snowed in Toronto early on the day after Christmas, so we got to slog through snowy streets, too.  After last year's lack of snow, this is really the first good snow Elena's experienced since leaving Kotlas.

To her delight, there was a heap of snow when we returned to Detroit, too.

Snow at home.

 

Sad Mama

We've tried to be very open with Elena about her adoption, her experiences at the Kotlas orphanage, and how she came to live with us.  That's not really that difficult to do, because we have lots of pictures (see for example this post, where we've collected some of the pictures into a book), and more importantly shared experiences that we can talk about.

What's a little harder is talking about the first part of Elena's story: her and her birthmother.  That's not because it's a taboo subject (because it's not), or because it takes some thought and sensitivity to talk with Elena about such an important person (although it does), but because we don't have lots of pictures, and we don't have shared experiences that we can talk about.  In fact, we know almost nothing about Elena's birthmother other than her name, age, and where she was born; Elena, of course, has no memory of her.

What we do have is a photocopy of her passport picture.  It looks like it was photocopied on a vintage Xerox: there are no grey tones and the blacks are a little blobby.  Moreover, it's a passport photo.  No one looks all that good when posing for an ID picture, and passports, where neutral unsmiling expressions are required, are worse than most.

The Kotlas Baby house, right now.

Just for fun, here's an article from the Kotlas news service (translation) dated December 4.  It's actually about the construction mess on the road in front of the orphanage, and not about the orphanage itself, but it has a picture of the orphanage as it looks right now, in December 2012.


Kotlas orphanage, December 2012

Little bit of snow on the ground in Kotlas, it looks like.  I wonder how noisy the construction equipment is?

Scars

We visited Teresa's parents over Thanksgiving, and during one of our outdoor hikes, Elena slipped, fell, and cut her palm on a sharp rock.  It wasn't just a tiny cut; it was a nice 1/2" gash, and pretty deep to boot.  It bled pretty well, too.

We cleaned it up and put some ointment on it, but Elena really didn't want a bandage.  She's expressed that opinion before: when she scrapes her knee or whatnot, she'll specifically request "no Band-Aid."  With a scraped knee it's not a big deal to agree, but with a fairly deep cut on her palm (a place that's sure to attract more dirt), a bandage is kind of a must.  So we insisted.

And Elena was upset.  She cried and cried, much longer than she normally does, stopping and starting more than once.  Maybe it wasn't the bandage, maybe it was the painful gash, but she's bonked herself pretty hard before, and after the initial shock wears off she's usually relatively stoic.  But she wasn't being stoic this time.

Her reaction, plus the fact that she specifically rejects Band-Aids, plus the fact that one of the things she remembers well enough about the orphanage to talk about is a trip to the doctor; all makes us think that there's something traumatic in her past associated with bandages.  A painful shot, or being (seemingly) abandoned in an examination room - not necessarily something that would be traumatic to an adult, but something that a child wouldn't understand.  We don't know; we weren't there.  And we'll probably never know.

Luckily, Elena seems to be pretty resiliant.  Before long, her uncle distracted her with a ride on his shoulders, and she forgot about the bandage long enough to realize that nothing bad was happening.  She was even OK with putting on a fresh bandage later in the day.

The gash in her palm is doing nicely, and now is nearly completely healed.  Elena and I were talking about it last night.  I showed her the scar on my own palm, where a broken garage door handle had gouged a hole years ago. 

"See?" I said. "Soon your cut will turn into a scar just like mine."

She looked closely at my hand. "Hard to see it," she said.

Sometimes it is.  But it's always there.

Statistics

As I've mentioned before, one nice thing about the Blogger software is that it includes a crude statistics package, that allows us to track who's looking at this blog.  There aren't a lot of people who find this blog, but those that do are searching for specific things.  That's interesting to us, because hopefully this blog helps people find whatever they're looking for.

You can see part of this statistics package on the right-hand side of this page, under "Popular Posts."  These are the top ten posts that people read.  At the very top is "Exploring St. Petersburg," with, as of now, a little over 600 views.  Next in line, with roughly half as many views each, are "Let's explore Kotlas" and "The baby house in Kotlas, illustrated."  Then, with a little under half of that,  are "Our baby house schedule" and "The Hermitage part II: The upper floors," then "The Hermitage part I: Down in the basement" and "Who elses here has seen the Kotlas baby house? Anyone? Anyone?" with a few less. Finally, with under 100 view each, "It's all about the Yaroslavs," "Malye Korely", and "What happened in court" round out the top ten.

That's actually kind of an interesting mix: five of those post ("Exploring St. Petersburg," "The Hermitage part II: The upper floors," "The Hermitage part I: Down in the basement," "It's all about the Yaroslavs," and  "Malye Korely") are related to Russian tourism, and five ("Let's explore Kotlas" "The baby house in Kotlas, illustrated," "Our baby house schedule," "Who elses here has seen the Kotlas baby house? Anyone? Anyone?" and "What happened in court") are related to in-country Russian adoption, with all except the last one about Kotlas and the Kotlas baby house specifically.

Sadness

I've mentioned before that Elena's a fan of the Claymation Pingu video shorts.  We watch them on YouTube.  She's pretty much a fan of all things penguin, including a couple stuffed animals and books featuring penguin characters.

YouTube, being the time-waster that it is, offers up new suggestions based on what other things you've watched before.  Since we watch a lot of Pingu, we get a lot of other suggestions for penguin animation.  Yesterday we tried out this one.

And Elena was completely grief-stricken by it.

If you don't feel like clicking the link, let me hasten to add that the video doesn't seem like anything much.  It's a loop of bouncy music, with splices of animated penguins line-dancing and one penguin determined to head south.  It's a long loop - ten hours - but with only about 2-3 minutes of original content that gets repeated over and over.

We only watched five minutes of this video, and it ended with Elena sobbing. She was completely distraught for probably half an hour. Holding her, moving to a quiet room, deep breathing then a walk outside helped. She wasn't able to articulate just what it was about the video that upset her, except the big penguin "was scary."

We rewatched it after Elena went to bed.  I think the issue here is that there's a baby penguin who tries to keep the big, unhappy looking penguin from taking his suitcase and walking away.  Yet despite the baby's many efforts at being cute, charming and funny, the big penguin just... keeps... leaving. Over and over and over.  And then it shows the baby penguin looking very sad and alone. Over and over and over.

The video obviously pushed a button, and it was probably the fear of abandonment that many adopted children have. (....We think. Or maybe it was grief from something else that happened in her early life?)  We know she must have these fears, so in retrospect her reaction isn't so surprising.  It's a nuanced reading of the video, based on her experiences, that makes her reaction what it was.  And it's a reminder that there are things inside her head that may take a long time to manifest.

Russian culture and Russian Life

One of the things we want to do is keep some Russian culture in Elena's life, and we've been on the lookout for ways to do that.  As I alluded to before, we'll occasionally swing by one of the Russian delis here in SE Michigan and pick up some Russian food.  We even bought a couple music CDs there.  It's not necessarily the food that's important here - although it is fun picking up little meat pies or imported candy - but more that we're trying to maintain a habit of going to a place that's identifiably Russian, a place that is a sort of link to Elena's earlier life.

We also all went to see the Fabergé show at the DIA.  Elena, being three and all, was somewhat unimpressed by the collection of fiddly little gold and enamel Czarist doodads.  But that's OK; pointing out pictures of people and objects from Moscow or St. Petersburg relates other things in the world to Elena's own story.  What she liked better was going to the PuppetArt Theatre.  The theatre puts on a variety of shows based on folktales; two of them (Kolobok and Firebird) are based on Russian stories.  Elena loved them - not because they're Russian, but because of the puppets.  And that's OK, too.

We're also subscribing to Russian Life magazine. The magazine's bimonthly, and contains a mix of short news and entertainment headlines with longer articles that delve into history, culture, and tourism.  The mix makes for an interesting read, with broad coverage of current events (as broadly as you can get in a bimonthly, at least) and a narrow focus on specific subjects in each issue.  Elena's still a little young to read a 5000-word article on the Napoleonic War, but by the time she is, we'll have it ready.

In the toooown, where I was boooorn... (Definition B)

Teresa and I had been married, and childless, for quite a long time before adopting Elena.  Before adopting Elena, we didn't really participate much in kid's activities.  We anticipated them - buying toys and clothes, putting together her room, that sort of thing - but didn't really participate.

Now, of course, we're doing kid things.  And one of the important things is music. This is important to Elena, because the Kotlas baby house used a lot of songs to teach and entertain the children, and Elena still likes singing.  So we've gone through the classic kid's songs, mostly cadged from YouTube: she likes the A-B-C song, "If You're Happy and You Know It," and "The Wheels on the Bus," among others.

But kids music has limited appeal; I'd rather find "grown-up" songs that everyone likes.  Yes, kid's music is pitched for children, and has easy-to-learn lyrics, but songs are songs, and songs for grown-ups can be appealing, too.

So we started introducing Elena to grown-up songs, from female singers to begin with (higher pitched, you know), and Elena quickly found her own favorites.  Her first was Nancy Sinatra's "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'", mainly because of the boots in this video.  Since then, we've listened to a number of things.  Elena has her own favorites, which she often requests, but there are a lot of things she's indifferent to.

Then we started branching out from female singers.  Elena's current favorite song, one she absolutely loves, is the classic "Yellow Submarine" by the Beatles.  She's even got most of the lyrics down by now.  And, since we're listening to the Beatles, she's starting to sing along with other songs by the band.  I think it's kind of neat to see her listen to Beatles songs for the first time; she doesn't like them all, but there are some that grab her attention, and there's a little burst of pleasure seeing her "get" a song for the first time that's different from seeing her mastering the A-B-C song.

And, I think, I'm not the only one who feels that way.  Here's Dave Grohl, of Nirvana and the Foo Fighters:

Recently I showed my 6-year-old daughter, Violet, the brilliant Yellow Submarine movie. It was her introduction to The Beatles, and she instantly shared the same fascination I felt when I was her age discovering The Beatles for the first time. She wanted to know their names, which instruments they played, who sang what song, etc etc etc....

In the tooooown where I was booooorn
Lived a ma-a-an who sailed to sea
And he toooold us of his life
In the la-a-and of submarines....

In the toooown, where I was boooorn... (Definition A)

As I mentioned a couple posts previously, we've been talking to Elena about her time in the orphanage in Kotlas, and how she came to leave Kotlas and live with us.  It's part of her story, and important to her.  We're talking to her about Kotlas because that's a place that she remembers, and something that we can talk about using first-hand information, because we all were there. 

But Elena wasn't always in Kotlas; there's more to her story than that.  Elena was born in the town of Nyandoma.  Nyandoma is almost due south of Arkhangelsk and due west of Kotlas. There's a map of the area below, or you can click here for a larger Google Maps view (or, for more detail, try Yandex).



We're going to have a harder time talking to Elena about the Nyandoma part of her story, because we know only a little about it.  We weren't there, and no one we talked to was there, and we just have a few notes.  We know when and where she was born (Jan. 26 in the Nyandoma Central District Hospital, shown below).

Nyandoma Central District Hospital

We also know her birth mother's name and when Elena was transferred to Kotlas, but almost nothing more.  We don't know where else she lived, we don't know much else about the the city, and we've never been there.   That's unfortunate, because it was an important time in her life, even if we didn't know her then, and she'll eventually have more questions, ones that we'll have a hard time answering.

Vacation

We like to travel, or at least go on trips for vacation.  And, honestly, that was one of the great things about adopting from Russia - the chance to visit St. Petersburg and Moscow, as well as Arkhangelsk and Kotlas, and just do things in a place away from home.

However, once you adopt a child, particularly one from an orphanage who's used to routine, it's best to stay home and stick to routine tasks.  This helps the child get used to her new surroundings, and reassures her that she won't be once again uprooted and taken somewhere else.  For example, recall that Elena's first experience in sleeping in strange places was when she was taken away from the orphanage by a couple strange people (us), so it would be perfectly natural for her to be worried if she again winds up sleeping in strange places.

But still, we like to travel, and we wanted to make sure Elena also enjoyed traveling, which meant easing into the travel experience.  We didn't know Elena's tolerence level for sleeping in strange places away from home, so we started slowly.  (more after the cut)

We're starting to have "the talk"

One of the things kids from orphanages (and adopted kids in general) can struggle with is the questions of How and Why: Why was I in an orphanage? How did I get there? How did I wind up in this family? Why me?

Those aren't just questions of curiosity; at the root are two important questions: What did I do that made this upheaval in my life happen? and Will it happen again?  Those aren't silly questions at all: if you've gone through a traumatic upheaval in your life, it's natural to suppose something similar might happen again.  Moreover, it's human nature to ascribe responsibility to yourself for events completely out of your control: the concept that you might deserve things that occur from random chance.

Because these questions are important, it's important that kids ask them, rather than chewing on them in private, and so it's important they know that these questions are OK to ask.  We try to signal to Elena thatasking questions about her past is OK - we share stories about us visiting her, and we often page through her picture book containing the pictures we took in Russia.

We let her know that she's staying with us, and not going back to Kotlas - an idea she often repeats back for confirmation.  At first I wasn't sure if she was repeating the idea because she felt it was important, or only because we seemed to be attaching importance to it, and she was picking up on that. But now it's pretty clear that it's important to her. (more after the cut)

Hey, I found something else

The web just keeps on giving.  Here's another video I found, shot last year, of the Kotlas orphanage:


It's a news article, I think about a bomb threat last year. (The title is "April 1 Nightmare at the Orphanage;" here's a print news article about the bomb threat.) 

The video is dated April 5, 2011. That would have been about a month before we first visited - unfortunately Elena's not starring in the video, but there is some footage of one of the rooms where younger babies live.  That's something we didn't get to see, but something Elena would have experienced.  One small bit of knowledge.

And if anyone out there is adopting a child from Kotlas who's two-1/2 or three right now, you should check out the (admittedly low-res) video to see if your child shows up.

Rock n Roll

We went to the DIY Festival soon after Elena's eye surgery.  She still had fun.

At the DIY Festival

 

"Family Day"

It was one year ago today that Elena appeared in our hotel room.

I've been asked two or three times whether we plan on celebrating Elena's birthday, OR the "family day" when she came to live with us.  Then answer, of course, is both!  We want to acknowledge both the importance of  her becoming part of our family (family day), and Elena's own personal importance, independent of the our family (her birthday).  Minimizing either of these does a disservice to either Elena herself (by failing to acknowledge her life before she came to live with us) or our attachment to her (by failing to acknowledge the huge change in her life). 

And celebrating twice a year isn't such a bad thing, either.  Wish Elena a happy family day.

OW! Ow ow ow ow ow.

I noted a while back that Elena was going to have surgery to correct her strabismus; the surgery was originally scheduled for July 26, but was postponed until September 13 (that's yesterday).

The surgery was at the Children's Hospital of Michigan.  The hospital gave us a nice brochure, with pictures, about getting kids prepared for surgery - telling them what to expect, what things will look like, and what they're expected to do.  Elena took the preparations for surgery in stride; she seemed a little nervous, but was OK with doing whatever was expected of her.  (I think the willingness to go along with these medical things is another aspect of learned orphanage behavior I talked about before.)

Surgery was scheduled for 2pm, but was actually underway more quickly than that.  We were prepared to spend a long time in the waiting room, but wound up spending only about five minutes, after which it was a quick but orderly march through the pre-surgical procedures.  Here's Elena in her scrubs:

A process-oriented approach to food

We went food shopping yesterday at Detroit's Eastern Market. When we got home, we got busy putting the food away, and in the hubbub, Elena ate a few bites of food without asking.  I caught her eventually, when she slid her hand in and pulled out another piece of... broccoli.

Yes, broccoli.  Her surreptitious between-meal snack was little pieces of broccoli.  I didn't say anything, of course, because (a) it's not a big deal, and (b) it's broccoli!  Oh, no, my baby ruined her appetite by eating too much broccoli!  Whatever shall I do?

Seriously, though, this illustrates an interesting approach Elena has to food, and to things in general: she's more interested in the process than in the final result.  In this case, I don't think she was actually hungry, but the whole process of reaching in the bag and breaking off little florets (from broccoli she picked out at the market, I might add) was just irresistable.

(More after the break.)

Empathy

Elena and I sometimes troll around YouTube for kid's videos, just to see what she likes.  Just yesterday we stumbled on the Swiss claymation series Pingu the Penguin (Elena's got a stuffed penguin she really likes).  We watched a couple episodes (they're short), including this one, where Pingu's a babysitter:

The video features Pingu taking care of a pair of baby penguins, who spend most of their time crying to get food or attention.  The crying parts are done in a surprisingly realistic representation of babies in total sobbing meltdown, (especially for something done in claymation).

When Elena first saw it, tears just streamed down her face, poor little thing.

I'm not quite sure why;  the video's not scary at all, nor is it particularly "sad" to my adult sensibilities.  My best guess is that seeing a couple babies crying so much, then getting only their basic needs taken care of (but not picked up, notice) hit just a little too close to home.

After a few big hugs, some explanations about how babies need LOTS of care, love and attention, and then some extra "pretend baby care" for her too, Elena asked to see it again and was OK with it.

Orphanage behavior

OK, a long and serious post now, one about orphanage behavior, in general and in specific. 

"Orphanage behavior" is something of an ill-defined term.  People seem to use it to refer to things that kids who've grown up in orphanages do, that other kids commonly don't, because of their orphanage experience.  Exactly what it encompasses, though, seems to depend on who's using the term.  Moreover, in many cases, "orphanage behavior" is just behavior: things kids do.  Behavior is a continuum, and non-orphanage kids may do the same things, just to a lesser (or even greater) degree.  Of course, in what way and to what extent both of these types of behavior manifest themselves depend on the orphanage and in some part on the child herself.

Because this post wound up a lot lengthier than I had envisioned when starting it, I'll break it into sections.

Background
When professionals talk about orphanage behavior, it's almost always a negative; something that must be overcome.   Here, for example, is a short article with a rundown of behaviors exhibited by children raised in orphanages. The author calls this "Post-Orphanage Behavior," because he's focused on children who enter families after orphanage life. He defines the behavior like so:

Right here

We spent the last weekend in Chicago (as described in the last post) and stayed at Ray's Bucktown B&B, which was quite convenient to the Bucktown Arts Fest.  Ray had a giant world map in the entryway for people to identify where they're from.

Kotlas is right here.

 

Regression Analysis

Teresa was an artist at the Bucktown Arts Festival in Chicago this weekend.  The Festival runs two full days, Saturday and Sunday, so all three of us made a long weekend trip out of it.  We've been on short vacations with Elena before, but this wasn't really a vacation-it was something of a hectic trip, with odd hours and activities.

Elena did have fun, particularly so since the Festival was held right next door to Holstein Park, which has both a playground and a pool.  Saturday was sunny and hot, and both the Festival and the playground were pretty crowded. The playground, of course, had a lot of kids about Elena's age.

I think the combination of the excitement, the lack of sleep, the different location, and the gaggle of kids pushed Elena harder than we thought it would.  She played with other kids in the playground, but then started interacting with the other kids' parents.  Her first "look, man, look!" directed at another adult was kind of amusing, but then she did it more, and it was less amusing.  I finally pulled the plug when she asked to be picked up by a strange woman.

In retrospect, it seems clear that the playground atmosphere seemed very much like playing at the orphange, and the strange surroundings made Elena less sure of her place: the last stressful, crowded travel experience she'd had was one where she wound up living with two strange people half a world away.  Consciously or subconsciously, being "taken back" to an orphanage-like playground probably pushed a few to many buttons.

Sunday afternoon was rainy, and the playground was nearly empty, and we had a perfectly fine (although somewhat wet) time on the swings.   So no real harm done, I think.  In any case, it's not unusual for adopted children to regress to this kind of coping behavior when they're feeling uncertain or overwhelmed.  However, this is a good reminder that it's not always obvious beforehand when Elena is feeling that level of uncertainty, and that might take some thought.  On the one hand, I don't want to underestimate her adaptability and shield her from things she doesn't need to be shielded from, but on the other... she's still three years old.

And she's our daughter.

Another yearly milestone

One year ago today, we were in Kotlas Russia, visiting Elena at the orphanage.  Our court appearance in Arkhangelsk was a few days later.

We give back

To commemorate the upcoming one-year anniversary of our familial addition, we thought it would be fun to buy new children's clothes and ship them off to the Kotlas orphanage.  We bought clothes for the kids once before, on our second trip to Russia, when we hand-carried a bag of clothes to the orphanage.  Hand-carrying, though, is a pretty straightforward process: you pack a bag and bring it with you wherever you go, until you get to the place you want to leave it.

Shipping, however, is a whole different matter, especially when you have customs to deal with.  Shipping to Russia via the post office isn't horribly expensive ($75.00 or so), but the customs requirements seemed confusing and the shipment value was limited, and we really didn't want to screw it up.  Also, I understand that mailing packages into Russia can be chancy; items "disappear" between here and there.  That might be an outdated perception, but still, we'd rather the package actually get there.

We thought maybe shipping via UPS or FedEx might be a reasonable, if somewhat pricier, alternative.  It is indeed an alternative, but "pricier" is an understatement: shipping ranges around $400.

Fortuitously, while looking at a local Russian newspaper, we happened to see an advertisement from Meest (this is an example of when it is handy to know how to read some Russian).  They're a Ukrainian firm that ships between the US and Canada and former Soviet states, including Russia.  What's more, they have a couple local offices here in metro Detroit (one in Oak Park, one in Warren).  Since they ship to Russia pretty much all the time, and cater to the local emigre population, I expect that their success rate in getting through customs and into the hands of the intended recipient is pretty good.

Armed with that as a plan, we shopped around for good quality children's clothes that were on sale.  We bought new, and left the tags on: that gives the folks at the orphanage the option of reselling them if they decide they need other things more urgently. This also enabled us to send many more things and stay under the $250.00 limit for paying customs duties.  We got a mix of items: sweatshirts, dresses, pants and shirts, socks and underwear.  Twelve pounds of kid's clothes, in a cubical cardboard box.  We printed off some pictures of Elena from the past year or so and slipped them in too, along with a letter to the folks at the orphanage (poorly translated into Russian via Google).

We dropped the box off with Meest today; their price for shipping here to Kotlas was about $55 (plus $12 insurance, which we opted for).  The downside is that the box of clothes is literally going on a slow boat: expected delivery is about two months.  That seems terribly slow, but I expect there will still be kids in the orphanage two months from now who can use the clothes.

Traditional Russian Clothing

As I said a few posts back, we're approaching the year anniversary of our second and third trips to Russia.  The second trip, in August 2011, was when we had our court appearance, and also when we visited Elena in the baby house in Kotlas.

And, as I said in the previous post, Kotlas isn't exactly a tourist mecca.  But it is a mid-sized city, and there really are some interesting things to visit, if you have a few spare hours.  We pointed out some of them way back in this post.  But there are also places to go shopping.  We went to a few of them.  There are a series of souvenir stands at the train station; that's where we bought the little magnets in he picture below, as well as the matroyshka doll and wooden box you can see on the stand in the lower picture:

Souvenir magnets

Kotlas hotel, August 2011

There was also a really nice little bookstore just a couple blocks from the hotel.  It had a good selection of nice children's books, and astonishingly low prices. 

Finally, there was a clothing store literally next door to the hotel.  We browsed through the kid's clothes, and wound up buying a couple things.  One was a little overall dress with Russian-themed embroidery; unfortunately, Elena quickly outgrew it.  The other was a traditional heavy Russian shirt.  Since it's been chilly the last few days, we've pulled it out; it still fits Elena.  Here she is wearing it:

Bad news indeed: August 2012.

The little patch says "vintage apple & smile."  The inner tag is labeled with Chinese characters.

The Swedish are Coming! The Swedish are Coming!

One nice thing about the Blogger software is that it allows us to track, in a general way, who's looking at this blog.  We started it with friends and family in mind, as an easy way to let people know how our trip to Russia was progressing.  However, this blog is indexed by search engines, and a fair number of people find their way here through a search engine.  That's actually really fun - I've had email conversations with half-a-dozen people who we didn't know previously, who had "met" us through this blog.

This isn't a huge number of people - this blog just topped 7000 pageviews, which is relatively tiny as blogs go - but that's OK.  We're talking about pretty specialized subject material, and there's not all that many people who might be interested.

One of the stats Blogger coughs up is the country of origin.  As you might expect, most people reading are from the US - about 65%.  Most of those are probably people we know.  Of the other countries, Russia is, again as you might expect, high on the list.  But it's in the third spot.  The second-most number of people come from Sweden.

Sweden? Why? Well, there's a general answer and a specific answer (more after the cut).

We Go To Restaurants

The one-year anniversary of Elena's adoption is fast approaching, as I noted a little while ago.  That's got me thinking about how things have changed over the course of the last almost-year.  How Elena's grown taller, for example. Or how her experiences have broadened.

We went to a new restaurant last night.  New to Elena, but also new to Teresa and me.  The Green Dot Stables, a place here in Detroit that opened fairly recently.  Elena's been going to restaurants for a little while now, and she's usually pretty good (as she was last night).  She actually likes going to restaurants quite a bit; she's unduly impressed by people bringing her food.  She even incorporates the "baby waitress" part into her play at home, bringing us pretend food and clearing away the "dirty" dishes afterward.

She's less easily overstimulated than she was a year or so ago, as we bring her more places and she gets more used to loud, open spaces.  One of the first times we felt comfortable enough to bring her to a restaurant at all was around Easter, when we went to a family dinner.  The restaurant then was large and noisy and very busy, just the place not to bring an easily overstimulated toddler.  However, Elena lasted for a whole hour-and-a-half, which was actually quite encouraging.

Since then, we've brought her to more places, and she's more used to the bustle; she generally has no problem sitting through the meal (although I think there's likely a time limit on her patience).  It's good training for her, I think, to sit and watch in a busy place. Orphanage kids tend to be easily overstimulated, as they're used to a quiet and repetitive schedule.  Elena was no exception, but bringing her out and about has significantly eroded her tendency to be overstimulated.  The first few times, she insisted on getting down and walking around, but by now she's generally content staying seated for a reasonable amount of time. 

She still get fidgety, but not a lot.  That's a pretty significant shift from nearly a year ago.  Part of the shift is because she's a year older, but I think she's now more comfortable going places, and more comfortable being part of a family.

It is in the nature of both weeds and children to grow

Ben Franklin said that.*

It's not unusual for kids from orphanages to experience a growth spurt after they come home with their new family.  It's probably due in part to getting better nutrition and in part easing into a lower-stress environment.  Like other orphanage kids, Elena was tiny when she was in the baby house: below the third percentile in height and weight when compared to other kids here age.  The orphanage kids will often "catch up" once they're out of the orphanage environment.

And that's exactly what Elena's done. We measured Elena recently, and in the ten months since we got home from Russia, she's grown over four inches taller. That's pretty substantial for a 2-3 year old, and it makes her taller relative to the kids in her age group, too. Now she's more like the 25th percentile: still smallish, but not quite so far out on the tail on the normal distributution.

Experiencing a growth spurt really isn't surprising, as those of you with kids know.  But it's sometimes surprising when you recognize just how much they've grown.   

Tummy troubles cause eye troubles

Elena's been generally pretty healthy, save for a couple brief there-and-gone fevers way last fall.  She got through the entire winter, spring, and most of the summer without getting sick at all.  I suspect that's due in large part to not being substantially exposed to other kids and their disease of the week.  It might also be due to having a beefed up immune system from living with other kids 24/7 for two years.

Whatever the reason, we've avoided a lot of childhood illnesses, until just this week.  Elena woke up Monday night, throwing up and with a high fever.  She had a pretty rough couple hours until her stomach settled and the Advil took effect, but she eventually dropped back off to sleep.  However, the low-grade fever has stuck around, and that means her eye surgery, originally scheduled for tomorrow, will have to wait.  So now it's all the way into mid-September.

We're not done yet

Way back when we petitioned the Russian court for parental rights, we promised to do a number of things.  One of these things was to file "post-adoption reports."  The post adoption reports are similar to the homestudy that is done before adoption, but focus on the child's development, attachment, and integration into the household.  This, for example, is a blank report form from out adoption agency, and here's a bit more information on post-adoption reports, courtesy of other adoption agencies: Children's Hope and Dove and Adoption Ark.

Russian law requires four post-adoption reports to be filed: the first is due six months after the adoption is finalized, and the next three are due at 12, 24, and 36 months after adoption.  Filing the reports cost some money: one has to hire a professional caseworker to actually write the reports, and then there's translation and mailing (although our adoption agency takes care of that).  However, there are a number of reasons to actually comply with the post-adoption reporting requirement, not the least of which is that we promised to do so, and a promise is a promise, right? 

More importantly, though, the Russian government can be understandably miffed about non-compliance with their requirements, and they can and will halt adoption proceedings from adoption agencies whose clients have not filed post-adoption reports.  So, in other words, not filing the post-adoption reports screws things up in a big way for the people behind us in line. Not that we need more motivation to do the right thing, but it does make me wonder why anyone would not.

In any case, this subject is topical, because our second post-adoption report is due in September.  Given the time it takes to write and apostille and translate and mail, that means the caseworker visit needs to take place right about now.  This afternoon, as a matter of fact.

The eyes have it

If you spend time with Elena, you'll eventually notice what's obvious about in this picture:

Elena's Russian passport picture

Her eyes have a tendency to cross - strabismus is the medical term.  With Elena, the condition is intermittent: it will be nearly imperceptible most times, but will show up more often when she's stressed, or when she's looking either askance or at something very close (when one's eyes tend to pull inwards naturally).   She has some tendency to favor the left eye and let the right wander, but which eye she uses will change (in the picture above she's actually favoring her right eye).

We've talked to a couple pediatric opthamologists about this condition, and although their opinion on the potential effects of strabismus varied, they both agreed that, at this age, the only effective corrective action is surgery.

We had a pre-surgical meeting with the opthamologist today, and Elena's sugery is scheduled for Thursday July 26.  It's fairly minor outpatient surgery, but it does involve general anesthetic, and any surgery is not to be taken lightly.

Wish her luck.

Searching for the perfect word.

I noted some months ago that Elena loves to be told (in Russian) that she's a sweetie, and she's smart: "Elena slatkaya, Elena umnia."  But she also, quite quickly, added her own request: Elena kukayaka.  "Elena slatkaya, Elena umnia, Elena kukayaka."  It's a little mantra; we'll go through the list and she'll prompt if one is missing.
Me: Elena slatkaya.
Elena: Umnia.
Me: Elena umnia.
Elena: Kukayaka.
Me: Elena kukayaka.

So we've been telling her, for months, that she's "kukayaka."  Only problem is, I didn't actually know what "kukayaka" means.  The usage here is pretty context-free; all I could tell is that the word was a noun or an adjective.  And Elena couldn't really tell us; I doubt too many three-year-olds are that good at providing definitions of words, let alone ones in a different language with no concrete context.

But, I thought, it's time to figure out what the word means.  That's not as easy as it sounds: two-year-olds (Elena's age when she learned the word) consistently add or subtract syllables, or change letter sounds, in the words they use.  Elena's no different, and she absolutely mispronounced some of her Russian words: substituting a K into "bumaga" (paper) to make "kumaga," for example.  So it's not only a hunt for what "kukayaka" means, it's a hunt for how it should actually be spelled and pronounced.

It's unlikely to actually be "kukayaka."  There is a "Denis Kukoyaka," who's apparently a Russian actor/comedian who starred in a 2012 Police Squad-style film, and has some notoriety (as seen in this odd little "Kukoyaka-style" video).  But, a) I don't think he was well-known in 2011, and b) who calls a baby by the name of a comedian?  "Oooo, my precious little Richard Pryor"?  C'mon. Nyet. Not likely.

So what's it likely to be?  I figured it's probably an endearment, similar in tone to "slatkaya" (sweetie), so I'd start there.  After a little searching, I found this list of Russian endearments for children. It doesn't have "slatkaya" or "kukayaka," but it does list "KUkolka," and that's awfully close: turn the L into a YA and it's the right word. (Pronounce both L and YA slowly and see how similar the tongue position is; an easy transposition for a toddler.)

"Kukolka" is a diminutive of "kukla," which means "doll."  (as in the title of the old TV puppet show: "Kukla, Fran, and Ollie"). "Kukolka," then, means "little dollie," in the same way that "slatkaya" means "little sweetie." 

That all seems to hang together as an explanation of Elena's "kukayaka," although when I suggest she's a "kukolka," she immediately corrects my pronunciation back to "kukayaka" (she being the resident expert on the Russian language).  So I'm not completely sure I have the correct meaning of the word, but it's at least a pretty good educated guess.

UPDATE, August 1: Elena now likes to also be called a "kukolka," although she now pronounces it as "kookagon," and considers it a seperate word from "kukayaka."  Still, "kookagon" amuses me, to the extent that it resembles an as-yet-undefined geometric shape.

My baby's so smart...

I've said before that I don't really want to turn this blog into a "funny thing our kid did today" blog, and neither do I want to turn it into a "my baby's so smart" blog, but I'm going to make an exception just this once, and for a reason.  This is really a post about language acquisition and communication, but it's also about problem solving.
I've recently been mulling over problem solving as a useful skill, specifically because of a particularly knotty issue we've had at work. For me, as an engineer and a researcher with a doctoral degree, a lot of what I do--particularly the really hardcore parts of the job description--boil down to "problem solving."  I suspect that, for most other professions, "problem solving" is part of the job to some extent, and probably a large extent.

And so it's been intriguing to me to see Elena use problem-solving skills, particularly in language and communication.  As I've said before, Elena seems to value communication pretty highly, and really makes an effort to get her meaning across.  However, her pronunciation and grammar are still pretty shaky (she's three years old, after all), and that leads to some problem-solving opportunities as she learns English.

These were most apparent last year, when her vocabulary was still minimal and her pronunciation shakier still. A couple stand-out examples:

The world is full of dadas

An interesting anecdote: Teresa took Elena shopping today.  Elena tends to indulge in a running commentary on whatever catches her eye in her surroundings; since she's three years old, her commentary is somewhat... unfiltered.  As an example, she'll loudly label interesting or odd things or people as "funny looking," which can teeter on the edge of amusing, but usually more towards being a little embarassing, as in  FUNNY LOOKING PANTS! FUNNY LOOKING CHIN! FUNNY LOOKING MUSTACHE! etc...

Today at the store, she startled both a rather distinguished looking African-American gentleman, and a Sikh with a large turban by pointing and calling them "DADA."   This is not a new thing.  Any random guy that she notices in her perambulations may be called DADA, even though there may be few discernable similarities (besides pants) to her "Official Dada".

That might seem like a troublesome indicator, but I think it's really more a problem of definitions, as well as a window onto Elena's history.  There are no men working at the orphanage, so the only time the kids see a male face is when someone visits, wanting to adopt a child.  The first time we visited the orphanage, for example Elena's friend Anna kept pointing and labelling me a "dada"--an experience shared by other potential dadas.  Women might fall into more than one category, but all men are dadas, even if they aren't THE official dada.

Elena knows the difference between random men and her "Official Dada" (that would be me), I'm sure, but her internal definition of the word hasn't yet caught up.

Update, 7/7: We had a few discussions with Elena about this, pointing out the potential social awkwardness of her off-the-cuff verbal commentary. Really, "discussion" is a bit strong of a word, because how much explanation of "the potential social awkwardness of her off-the-cuff verbal commentary" is going to sink into a three-year-old's brain, anyway?  Still, something seems to have sunk in, because now she's pointing out random guys and calling them "NOT DADA."

Our lives intertwine

One nice thing about having a blog is that the posts in it are accessible to other folk, and if you're interested in the particularly narrow subject of adopting from the Kotlas orphanage, it's easy to stumble on our blog (Google "Kotlas baby house" to see what I mean).

I had an email conversation with a woman who stumbled across our blog in just such a way.  They adopted their son, Jon, in April 2011.  More excitingly, Jon was one of Elena's dorm-mates; most excitingly, she had pictures from January 2011 of the group of kids eating lunch, pictures which included Elena.  Here are a couple (I've cropped out the rest of the kids out of respect for their privacy).

Mmmm. Soup.

I showed this to Elena. 
Her comment was, "dirty baby Lena."

We don't have many pictures of Elena from before we actually met her in April 2011; the three or four sent with our referral are all we have (see this post; the very first one on our blog).  Here are two of them from the referral:

Welcome to summer below the 60th parallel

Kotlas is above the 60th parallel (as noted before, on the same latitude as Anchorage Alaska), so it tends to be cooler than it is here below the 45th (although they apparently had a string of miserable 90-degree-plus days last summer).

In any case, I imagine Elena will be  spending more time trying to keep cool this year than last.

Our above-ground pool

Helping water the garden

This was at Point Pelee in Lake Erie.  Waves!

Aaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh!

What do you do when Dad makes a funny face?
Do you laugh and look cute? Noooooooo.....

Strolling through Russia

Yandex apparently re-enabled their "panorama" view, which is much like Google's street view.  It's pretty neat, in that you can see a street-level view of most streets in Russia's major cities--those include St. Petersburg, Moscow, and Arkhangelsk (but not, unfortunately, Kotlas).  The pictures are pretty crisp; you can pan around 360 degrees by dragging your cursor (as in Google's street view), "walk" down the street using the arrows, and zoom in using the telescope in the upper left, getting a high level of detail.

Here's a few panorama images of the places we were:

St. Petersburg
Right outside the Brothers Karamazov Hotel where we stayed in St. Petersburg
Moma Roma Restaurant, (Italian/Russian/pizza joint) where we ate a few times
Tres Amigos, the South American-Mexican restaurant with the American pop music-ballet floor show
The end of the Gostiny Dvor shopping plaza on Nevsky Prospect
The Hermitage, looking across Palace Square
The Russian Museum
The iconic Church on Spilled Blood
St. Isaac's Cathedral (You can stroll inside the cathedral in Panorama view--pretty cool)

Moscow
The Hotel Peking where we stayed in Moscow
The 24-hour supermarket around the corner from the hotel
Patriarch's Ponds (a park)
Heading down Tverskaya Ulitsa toward Red Square
The corner of the Kremlin
Entering Red Square (this one's kind of fun to "stroll" along)
In the middle of Red Square (St' Basil's Cathedral is in the distance; Lenin's tomb is to the right if you spin)
The New Tratyakov Gallery. We walked here in the rain.

Arkhangelsk
Pur Navolok Hotel where we stayed in Arkhangelsk
Bobroff Restaurant
Central square with the statue of Lenin
Regional Court where we petitioned for parental rights
Dom Knega (book house)
Chumbarova-Luchinskogo Street with its wooden buildings
Supermarket

Whoa. Look what I found.

So, following up on my last post, I was poking around on the Russian search engine yandex.ru.  I thought I'd try to find something more about the Kotlas Baby House, and maybe even find a few pictures that I could add to our album.

And I did indeed find some more information about the Kotlas Baby Home.  In fact, I found an article from last year (dated May 27, so almost exactly a year ago), published in the Kotlas Evening News.  Here it is in Russian, and here's the English translation.  It's about the influx of children into the Kotlas Baby House, how they get there, and how they are adopted.  The article is interesting as it shows some of the Russian perspective on orphan children.

But really, the most interesting part of the article was the accompanying picture.  I thought that little Denis in the foreground looked familiar, like we might have seen him before.  But take a look at the slightly out-of-focus child in the background:

The Russian caption says, "Little Denis, who lives in the Baby Home"

Yup.  That's Elena.  Compare to this picture, taken at the end of April 2011 (so something like 4 weeks earlier than the above picture).

It's not every day you stumble across a picture of your daughter published somewhere on the Internet.

ADDENDUM:


I also found this video, taken at the Kotlas orphanage. It's from 2012, so well after Elena departed.  Correction: The video was posted in 2012, but we recently ID'd the kids as being groupmates of another, older child, so it looks like the video was taken sometime in 2010.

The title is "Ilyina Oksana - Speckled Hen," and I think it's meant to demonstrate educational methods at the orphanage.  The lesson plan centers around a chicken, and includes (I think) identifying parts of the chicken, a little art project, song and dance, and some textural stimuli.  (I'd know more if I spoke Russian.)

But what's really cool about it is that it's taken in the room Elena lived in (I checked: the decals on the wall are exactly the same as in pictures we have). Compare the background (and the yellow dress on the dark-haired girl) to the picture below:

Kotlas: the pictures we wish we'd taken

I just discovered yandex.ru, which is something like google.com; in particular, it has a detailed maps feature, which can be overlaid with some geo-tagged photos. Here's a yandex map, centered on the Sovietskaya Hotel in the center of Kotlas.  Compare that to the Google map in this earlier post of ours.  The cool thing about the yandex map is the sheer volume of the overlaid pictures.

So here are some pictures of Kotlas taken by other people, but ones I wish we had taken.

Here's the Kotlas City Hall; it's right across the street from the hotel.  We did get more than one picture of the City Hall, but this one's taken with snow on the ground, something we didn't see.

This is apparently a picture of a branch, but it's taken in the small park right next to the hotel on a nice sunny day.  I took a few pictures in the park here, but they were all at the end of the day when the light was failing.  This picture makes the park look much more inviting.

This building in a couple blocks south of the hotel.  The first floor has a supermarket we went to more than once (the upper floors have apartments).  Wandering through a supermarket is actually a good way to learn a little about the place where you are.  The supermarket here was well-kept and well-stocked.  The colorful banner on the outside is advertising.

It's been one full year

We first met Elena on Thursday, April 28, 2011.  That's exactly a year ago today.  Here's what we did a year ago, with some pictures.  It's a little hard to believe it's been a full year, particularly when I remember that a year is nearly 1/3 of Elena's entire life. 

Moreover, this is one of three important yearly milestones in our family life with Elena: her birthday, the first day we met her, and the day she was actually ours.  For most families, those three days are all the same; for us, they're spread evenly through the year.  That's cause for three times as many celebrations, I think.

More language: science gets it right

If you recall reading this post from a couple months ago, I talked about language acquisition and transition from one language to another. Although Elena has been picking up English at a pretty rapid clip, we've still had general (as opposed to specific) concerns about her language acquisition.  In general, internationally adopted children are at high risk for delayed language devolopment, because of issues with transition to a second language, and, often, a dearth of positive language feedback in their early years in an orphanage. 

Although Elena seems to be doing very well in acquiring English, language delay can be subtle, and may even crop up unexpectedly when the child starts school and encounters the more formal, less contextual language of the classroom.  In addition, way back when we petitioned the judge for parental rights, we had promised that we would have Elena's language skills evaluated, and provide professional assistance if needed.

So we wanted to be proactive about language issues, and in any case a promise is a promise (especially to a Russian Judge), so we made an appointment with a speech-language pathologist.  I think the pathologist is used to dealing with profound speech and language delay, because her first questions were "does Elena use words?" and "does she use more than one word at a time?"

We explained Elena's background, and our general concerns, and the pathologist ran some tests to determine Elena's language ability.  The tests were designed for native English-speaking children, the pathologist explained, so we'd just have to see where she scored and adjust based where Elena might be lacking in her English vocabulary.

Happy Easter

This coming Sunday is Easter in Orthodox Christianity (which includes the Russian Orthodox Church), so it's still the Easter season.  Here are a few Easter-related pictures from our house.

The Bunny Cake. Coconutty!

A Li'l Traveler chocolate bunny for li'l traveler Elena.

The ears are of course the first to go.

What's Easter without an Easter bonnet?
That's a bag, of course; compare to
Elena's hat on the airplane.

Playing with a large ball.