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)