Vacation again

We went on a week-long vacation earlier in the month.  Elena loves going on vacation - "who doesn't?" you might ask, but the sudden change of venue and schedule can be somewhat scary for kids with an orphange background, as I talked about last year at this time.  Elena's never really had that problem, and in fact loves just about every aspect of taking a trip, from hotels to restaurants, even (to some extent) the car ride.

Part of her enthusiasm is getting both of us to herself for an extended period, I think, but another large part is just in doing different things.  We went again this year on a trip to Michigan's Upper Peninsula, staying in Marquette and Houghton.  Last year, we made a similar trip, but only made small, short trips out-of-doors, knowing that a three-year-old's stamina wouldn't match ours.

Elena's four-and-a-half now, and old enough that her stamina is noticeably better.  And, we found, she's much more adept at walking than she was a year ago, and can keep up with us for the most part with no trouble, even along paths filled with roots and stones.

And so we got to take some pretty lengthy hikes, along the beach or just exploring some of the terrain.  Like waterfalls, for example:


Water-walking at the Hungarian Falls

Or just walking on the rocks in the river:

Walking through the water with Mom.

What was really, gratifying, though, was that after we were done with some of our walks. Elena would say, "Mom!  I had a lot of fun today!  Walking here-or-there was really really fun!"  This even after she'd originally expressed some skepticism about whatever it was we were doing.

It's gratifying that Elena enjoys doing some of the same things that we do.  Maybe that's not all that surprising, since we're talking about walking in the water, or hopping across rocks, or just exploring - thinkgs I think kids would universally love.  But still, watching her discover some of these places and things for the first time is a little special.

Even more fun is that we spent some time walking around the Quincy Mine near Houghton - not underground (this time), but just through some of the ruins on the surface. I've always thought the old mining equipment and old buildings were cool - there's a sense of history, and the large industrial equipment appeals to my engineering sensibilities.

That's not really a reason I'd think would resonate with a four-year-old, though, so I wasn't certain Elena would actually enjoy looking at the mining equipment and buildings at the Quincy Mine.  But, surprisingly, she did.  Or, rather, she enjoyed climbing on the old mining equipment.

Dancing on the "stage."

Which, really, isn't all that much different from my attraction to this old mine stuff - it's just a different way to interact.


Climb aboard!

The internet giveth, yet again

As I've said before, I try to keep tabs on what's happening at the Kotlas baby house.  Thus, I just stumbled across a group that purportedly donates items to the baby house (I say "purportedly" because there seems to be some question about whether monetary donations actually end up where they're intended to go - but, for the moment, that's neither here nor there).  This group has been around for a couple-three years, and has visited the baby house a few times.

And...they took pictures.  Including a visit in May 2011 (this would be a few weeks after we first came to Kotlas) where they delivered some toys.  A few kids were wating for the toys:


Kotlas baby house, May 2011

And those few kids include a little girl in a yellow dress and red bow (in the center).  Yup, that's Elena; another picture of her that we've never seen before.


They also visited in June 2011, when the Baby House celebrates the "Day of the Child" with some costume skits:


Kotlas baby house, June 2011

The kids in the picture are the right age to be Elena, but it's hard to tell.  I asked Elena if she remembers this, and she matter-of-factly identified herself as the third baby chick in the picture above.  It's hard to tell if she's remembering truely, or is just influenced by the yellow dress in the first picture, but it's quite likely she's one of the kids in the picture or just off-camera.

I was just remarking to an acquaintance how rare and special pre-adoption pictures of orphanage kids are, and here are a few more to add to our collection.

More dancing

Late last year we enrolled Elena in a dance class - "pre-dance," actually - as we mentioned in this post.  Attending a class like this was partly to get Elena used to doing things without Mom & Dad, partly to give her practice following instructions, and partly to give her something fun to do.  The class seems to have been successful on all counts.

 

The class had their year-end recital recently.  The theme for the recital, for the pre-dance kids, was an undersea ball.  They dressed in dance costumes that looked something like 1920s style bathing suits and danced with flowing, swimmy motions.  We're talking four-year-olds here, so the performance wasn't as crisp as you'd see at the Bolshoi, but everyone got about 90% of the movements right, which is an A in my book.

 

More importantly, everyone had a lot of fun, Elena included.  We stayed to see the performances by the older kids - tumbling, ballet, flamenco, breakdancing, musical instruments - a lot of which Elena liked, and thought would be fun to do when she's older.

 

Elena in her "swim" costume.

Chugg-chugga-choo-chooing onto the floor.

Everyone having fun.

We first met Elena on Thursday, April 28, 2011, after flying through St Petersburg, Arkhangelsk, and into Kotlas. That's exactly two years ago today. Here's what we did two years ago, with some pictures.   Two years is a fair chunk of Elena's life, as you might be able to tell from these two pictures, one taken two years ago and one taken yesterday:


Elena, April 28 2011, at the Kotlas baby house.

Elena, April 27 2013, gardening in Detroit.
She's sporting her "I love shopping" T-shirt

And, just for fun, we sort of re-created a scene from Kotlas:

Snow baby

Kotlas is pretty snowy, as one might expect from its location in the north of Russia. Here, shamelessly stolen from another blog, is a picture of the playground at the Kotlas orphanage in the dead of winter.

Kotlas orphanage playground, January 2011, via Denise & JJ

Still, fresh air is good for kids, so the thinking goes, and the children will play outside even in the winter.  I don't think they let two-year-olds just wander around in head-high snow (instead, the kids use the playground shelters seen in the picture below), but they do get outside into the snow.

Kotlas orphange playground, April 2011.  The toys in the
first picture are just off-camera to the left.

Detroit, though, doesn't get near as much snow as Kotlas. In fact, here's a graph of average snow depth, courtesy of Weatherspark, for 2011:

Snow depth in Kotlas, Russia: historical average (grey band)
and 2011 actual (bright blue line)

The actual 2011 data shows about 20" of snow on the ground for all of January - March. For reference, Elena was just about 30" tall at that time.  Must be a pretty impressive sight, when you're that small, to see so much snow.

(Oh, and if you're wondering, below is a graph of daily high and low temperatures for 2011, also from Weatherspark. Note the brutal weeks in January and February where the highs were below zero Farenheit.)

Happy Birthday

Saturday was Elena's fourth birthday.  She's old enough to be properly excited about it, the primary reasons being presents and cake.  Elena's cousin Helen, who's about the same age, also came for a visit.  It was pretty low-key, and everybody had fun.


Sticking sticky stickers - a birthday card from Grandma & Grandpa

Opening presents

Let her dance, let her dance, let her dance dance dance

We've noted before that the Kotlas baby house used a lot of songs to teach and entertain the children, and Elena still likes singing. And not just singing - dancing, too.  Moving to the music.  I imagine she's not much different than most three-almost-four-year-olds in her love of movement, but she does indeed love it.

Knowing how much Elena loves dancing, we enrolled her in a toddler's dance class this past November.  It's not a "dance" class, per se - it's more a "movement" class, where the kids practice moving their bodies and listening to the teacher's instructions.

What's more significant, though, is that Elena's attendance in class is something of a milestone for her.  Since we adopted her back in September 2011, she's been out of our sight exactly once - a half-hour experimental stay with her grandmother.  That half-hour stay went relatively smoothly, but we weren't sure how Elena would react to being "left" in a dance class, out of sight of either of her parents.

Lots of kids have separation anxiety, but it's a little different for adopted kids.  Remember that Elena has already been abandoned by her birth parents (and was rather precipitously removed from the orphanage by us), so, for her, a fear of abandonment isn't a nebulous and irrational fear - it's something she's experienced. But life goes on, and it seemed to us that participating in something fun, but short - like a dance class - would be good preparation for the longer separations of preschool, kindergarten, and first grade.

We prepared Elena as best we could-we visited the class the week previously, and explained to her exactly what was going on, and showed her where Mama would be sitting.  Elena was pretty excited about the whole thing. Still, it was not without trepidation that we took her to her first class.  Teresa dressed her in her leotard and tutu (which Elena loves, by the way), drove her to class, and watched her file in with the rest of the toddlers.  Elena looked a little nervous, but...she loved it.  Absolutely loved it.

Dance class tutu

I think she enjoyed the dancing, but she also enjoyed being around kids her age again, something she's done only occasionally over the last year.  So much so that any anxiety she might have had was quickly swept away.

That's a relief, but makes me wonder if I should have been worried in the first place.  There are things that adopted kids in general - and Elena in particular, I'm sure - struggle with more so than most kids, but I wouldn't want my own worries to hold Elena back. Something for me to chew on.

But in the meantime, let her dance, let her dance, let her dance dance dance.

Thanks to the Bobby Fuller Four for the title of this post.

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.

 

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)

Rock n Roll

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

At the DIY Festival

 

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:

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.

 

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.

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.   

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.....

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:

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.

UPDATE 6: Pictures

Here are some more recent pictures

Being mischevious

Elena getting a haircut.  Thanks Sally!

Checking the telephone.

Sitting with some friends.

The last three pictures are from the last month or so:

A Peruvian costume with a Cheburashka doll

Lena has shoe hands!

Happy Birthday!

Then and now

August 2011: Kotlas, Russia

December  2011: Detroit USA