Deadbeat Day

Today was an amazingly deadbeat day. Nothing happened of significance, nothing got done that should have gotten done, the house is a mess and so I am procrastinating by doing this blog entry so I can finally feel like I got something accomplished!

We had a snow "storm" yesterday (by Maryland's standards), and so the school opened late today. We all spent those extra two hours sleeping in. Then I taught strings class, which happens before school, only I was wrong about the start time and we ended up having a half hour more time before school started than I thought we would. This would normally be a good thing since our concert is not too far in the future and we could use the extra rehearsal, but I had made a doctor's appointment for Inga since she is in pain and acting like she has bronchitis, and I had scheduled it based on when I thought class would be over. Somehow Dan knew school started at 10:30 instead of 10:00, so he didn't show up with the rest of the kids until it was too late to make the doctor's appointment on time. So I had to reschedule the appointment, take everyone home for 10 minutes while I picked up some letters I needed to bring with me, and then off we went to the doctor to find that Inga does not in fact have bronchitis, it just sounds like it. But they gave us medicine for it just in case it turns over the weekend. Then we all got the flu shot. That was probably the most productive part of my day--holding screaming children while the nurses systematically performed acts of torment with needles on them. Boy was Pavel mad, because he wasn't expecting it (even though he went last and he was in the room the whole time...what goes through his head?). So we went home and had lunch and Inga insisted I take her back to school because she wants to get a perfect attendance record for the year. So I took her, came home, put Pavel down for a 45 minute nap (he usually naps for 2 hours), made an attempt to clean the house but really, nothing happened, woke him back up (again, mad child, mad, mad child) and got everyone in the van to go pick Inga up. When we got to the school I taught a student for half an hour, then we all went home, had snacks as fast as we could while Andrei and I changed into our Do Boks, and then we all went to Tae Kwon Do. Dan met us there, and the children watched Andrei and I take our separate classes. They are such a good cheerleading squad for me, even though they really should just sit quietly. The instructor worked me hard. I could barely move by the end of class, but neither could anyone else. At one point he said whoever gets to the other side of the room first didn't have to do ten push-ups and I was first. I hate push-ups, with a passion. Plus the flu shot in my arm was bothering me because I am a wimp.

Then home, with the five kids, while Dan went back to work (Dan usually works late on Thursdays because parents get a grade update on Fridays in his class and so he has to actually grade all those assignments he gives them. He has a reputation for giving the most work in the school). I fed the kids, and put them to bed immediately because no one had naps today and everyone was exhausted from doing nothing all day.

Usually I can say at the end of the day, "I got laundry done," or "the children are all bathed and clean," or "I wrote a little in my book today," or "we got a lot of good homeschooling done," or at least "I paid some bills." I need to feel a sense of accomplishment at the end of the day, no matter how small. All we did today was what we had to in order to survive, and I'm not used to that. It's time for some chocolate chip cookies (although I count that as negative productivity because, really, I'm going to be the one to eat most of them and how many calories is that?!)

Now I am going to force myself to go down to the kitchen and clean it, and before I get into bed tonight I will think over the day and at least I will be able to say I posted to my blog.

Don't Hit the Potty!

I have had so many ideas for posts that I no longer know what to say. So I'll say a little bit of everything:
Ben, Happy Birthday! Enjoy your last year of the 20's...you are yet young. Although in many ways it doesn't seem like you are my "little" brother any more. At some point in the last couple of years I ceased to feel like your "big sister" and instead I simply feel like your sister, an equal and comrade in sibling-ship. Does this make you older or me younger? I hope you have had a wonderful year and enjoy many to come!

Dad visited with Sandra recently, and Mom came shortly after. I was afraid when we moved here that we wouldn't be near anyone so no one would come to visit us. Instead we are ON THE WAY for everyone and we get one-nighters with lots of traveling relatives. Way fun!

Inga loves school, and she's good at it. Her teacher told us last week that she and another girl are the top readers in the class. That's pretty amazing, since she only really learned to read around a year ago and boy, did we struggle to get there! But when she got it, she got it.

I was telling Lena that I would love her no matter what, trying to hint around the idea that no matter what she looked like or what parts she might be missing this in no way affected my devotion to her. She wanted to know if I would still love her if she got her legs chopped off. I assured her I would. Then she asked about her ear. Of course, I would still love her. I got enthusiastic and asked her what if her nose got chopped off? She gave me a horrified look and said, "Oh, no, Mommy, then all of my boogers would fall out!"

Big huge topic of the month: should we have a sixth kid? It's Fall, and as Ben K. can attest I seem to start adoption paperwork right before Thanksgiving (and call him with the onerous request of picking up my Ohio marriage license from a usually over-crowded Department of Public Health or some such important location), so out of habit I am starting to think toward that direction. No answers yet. Just lots of questions. And yes, there is a specific child in mind.

Annie, thank you for the awesome letters! I haven't had time to write back, but the kids loved them and I loved my birthday letter. You have an amazing way with words. I can't wait to see you at Thanksgiving!!

Mandy asked if I got my quote at the top of the blog from a forum. Umm...what's a forum? Since I don't know, I don't think so. But I did steal it off someone else's quote on their website. It was authored by anonymous, according to this person. I like the quote...I want to have that attitude, and most days I achieve it (at least usually I have to take a shower the next morning).

There is a port-a-potty at the end of my driveway. They are re-paving our whole area (called Hernwood Heights) where we live and the workers chose our little neck of the woods for their loo placement. The problem is that they put it right opposite our driveway, so when we back out I almost hit it, every time. I have trained the kids to remind me by saying, "Don't hit the potty, Mommy!" every time I start to back out of the driveway. So far, I have avoided spilling the contents of the port-a-potty all over our little dead-end street. When the tractors finally made it to our part of Hernwood this morning I was all happy. Surely they would be finished with their project soon and not only would we have a newly paved street with a more level sewer connection but I would also no longer have to be worried about inadvertently destroying state contractor temporary toileting facilities. They did move the port-a-potty this afternoon before they finished for the day...and left a large bull-dozer sort of thing with a caterpillar attached to it...right across from my driveway. This is much bigger than the Tardis-sized toilet box. I must now put our van through several contortions to get out of my driveway--that is, if I remember to do so instead of simply plowing into the thing before checking in my rear-view mirror.

Alex is a hot dog

Alex goes to sensory integration therapy, and for the first time our insurance is actually covering it. This comes at a perfect point in our lives because he has been having a hard time recently. I think it is because he is putting all of his energy into learning the things we are doing in school, and his focus gets tapped out, and then he starts acting "sensory", as we call it. I am learning a whole new level of parenting.
At his sensory therapy lessons he spends an hour getting all of the sensory input he craves. It is amazing how much pressure he asks for...way more than I as an adult would ever be comfortable with, and sometimes more than the therapist feels she can safely give him. They come up with all sorts of ways to work with him, but the cutest is the hot dog. He dresses up as a hot dog, and they squish him in a huge bun-pillow, and put long yellow and red sandbags on top of him (mustard and ketchup) while he listens to a song about being a hot dog. The amazing thing is how still he becomes when he feels all enclosed and weighty. He gets a certain look in his eye, as if he is going far away. Usually he is fine for the next several days after therapy, and then he steadily falls apart until his next session. The therapist says it is fantastic that he is able to benefit from it for that long...most kids are falling apart again after less than a day. Her comment reminds me that there are so many reasons that Alex is a great kid--and I enjoy finding them out, one by one.
Inga's teacher has cancer. (Stay with me--this is actually related to my "Alex" topic, but you have to read on to the end.) For a while her doctors were uncertain how far it had spread, but now they are saying it is contained and if they perform a total hysterectomy she should be fine. Her surgery is scheduled for the end of October, so my little girl will have substitutes for a month. I am so glad this teacher's prognosis looks so good...she is a wonderful teacher, a fantastic person, and a friend of mine from church.
Another friend of mine also has cancer...melanoma. Of course I cringe when I hear that, especially around this time of year. She had a mole removed that turned out to be cancerous, and not benign. But it had not yet had time to spread, and so the doctors think they got it all and she should be fine. She sent out an e-mail to all of her friends letting us know the good news, and encouraged everyone to get any suspicious moles biopsied earlier rather than later. She was very insistent about it, since an early biopsy had probably saved her life. But I did not mind the authoritarian tone she took because she had every reason to warn me, and guess what...I'm going to go get a suspicious mole biopsied.
This is how the cancer digression relates: My son has FAS (Fetal Alcohol Syndrome). I love him fiercely, but I also have to stand by and watch every aspect of his life, especially his schooling, be affected by the choices his mother made while he was in utero. I have every reason to warn those I love to totally abstain from alcohol during their pregnancy, and if you compare my situation with that of my friend who has cancer, I should be able to take an authoritarian tone with my warning. But I hesitate. Social drinking is just so...fun. Who am I to spoil someone else's good time? And people can quote outdated medical articles stating that a little alcohol will not hurt the fetus. There are plenty of them out there, and doctors who still believe this is true. Who am I to argue with that? Except that I have lots of more recent articles I can refer to that prove that just one drink a week can affect the brain of a developing child. But no one wants to hear it. It's unpopular. It's hard. And people have been drinking during pregnancy since alcohol was invented. So they tell me that my sources are not professional. The Surgeon General, however, agrees with me, and the Center for Disease Control website states:

When a pregnant woman drinks alcohol, so does her unborn baby. There is no known safe amount of alcohol to drink while pregnant and there also does not appear to be a safe time to drink during pregnancy either. Therefore, it is recommended that women abstain from drinking alcohol at any time during pregnancy. Women who are sexually active and do not use effective birth control should also refrain from drinking because they could become pregnant and not know for several weeks or more.

Please listen, and spread the news.

How could you not?

OK, surely someone would comment on that last blog, I thought. Cute pictures of little children playing a game that Anne Marie in particular loved when she was in her youthful prime...Jennie actually admitting that she doesn't mind a sport...how could my family resist commenting? At least something like, "How can an armless kid be a goalie? Did she let any balls through?" or "You guys sit on a blanket when you watch the games? Really? Why don't you get regular folding chairs like all the other cool parents?" But nothing. Is anybody reading this?!
(dramatic pause for nose-blowing and pathetic sighing)
Boy, glad I got that off my chest.

Inga: "Are those bugs male or female that suck your blood?"
Me: "You mean mosquitoes? Female."
Inga: "So if they get some of my blood in them, that means we are half-sisters!"
Me: "Hmmm..."

Soccer!

Sometimes I forget how much I thought I would hate this part of life: the soccer mom part. Inga, Andrei, and Elena are all in soccer and they each have practice 1-2x per week and games on Saturdays. Each team requires each family to volunteer for snack shack or information booth, and each team requires each family to bring a snack to at least one game for the team. Oh, and you have to watch your kid play soccer out in the sun where there is no mercy from the heat and you have to somehow seem knowledgeable about what your kid is doing out there on the field while your other kids are driving you nuts with their antics. Of course I would hate this. But...amazingly...I don't. I love to see my kids working hard toward a goal with their team, I love to see them push themselves to keep going even when they are exhausted and I especially like it when they look like they actually know how to play this game. Because I never did. I remember going to Anne Marie's soccer practices (most memorable moment: I bit into a Star Crunch chocolate-y thing and got a mouthful of little worms and eggs and never ate another one again), and although I love Anne Marie (please let me make that clear), I hated watching her practices. Hated it. I recall thinking I must be receiving some sort of sisterhood points for caring and that is what helped me through it...but I swore I would never put myself through it again, so my children would just have to learn to live without sports. And then I married Dan. And found out that when it is your own kid out there, everything changes.


Oh. And it is really easy to get sunburned. (Like the shirt? It doesn't fit Dan, so he gets to enjoy it on me :)

Quotes from Petry dishes

Dan and the kids were driving home from Inga's soccer practice when Dan looked in the rearview mirror and saw a beautiful sunset in progress. "Look, kids," he said, "the sun is setting!" Elena had not heard him, but looked dutifully behind her along with the others. She turned back excitedly. "Look, Dad," she exclaimed, "a pink moon!"

"I...I...I Fuppaman!" --Sam, saying 'I'm Superman' (it sounds much cuter when you can actually hear it)

"Go tell Daddy he has good taste," said I.
--"But Daddy is not a hungry person," said Elena worriedly, "and we don't eat him!"

Elena is working on the alphabet. Because she is still transitioning to English (she was adopted shortly before she turned 4, so she is still working on it), she does not always hold onto concepts based in language very well. This means that anything to do with reading takes a little extra work. So we are starting with the names of the letters of the alphabet, and we are working on A and B. For some reason she cannot remember the name of the letter A, no matter what we do. After working on it for a few minutes today she looked up at me in exasperation and said, "Wow, Mommy, these are the hard letters!"

The fan in our bathroom stopped working today. Elena and Andrei were the ones to discover this, and they were very concerned about it. "Mom, the air in the bathroom is broken," Elena came running to tell me, "so we need to buy a new house!"

Bridge

We got together with some friends last night and played bridge. Actually, we taught them bridge. It seems like no one in our age group plays this game, but it is so great! So we are spreading it around in our generation. Or trying.
I'm sure you are not asking this, but I'll pretend that this is the question you asked: how did you get together with friends when you have five kids and no money in the bank because somebody at your husband's school decided teachers don't get paid over the summer and then wouldn't get their first paycheck for the new school year until the end of September? Well, we took our kids over to our friends' house and put them to bed there. Cheap. Easy. Fun. Not to mention our friends were impressed because they have three kids and they didn't feel like they could do that sort of thing if they came to our house because their kids just wouldn't be comfortable. So does the fact that my children will easily sleep anywhere mean that we are a flexible, fun-loving and easy-going bunch or does this mean that my children are rootless and adrift? I'll go for the former.
School starts on Tuesday, and when I read Jaime's post about her refrigerator being transformed by school lunch food I laughed because the same thing has happened over here! I am having the hardest time finding healthy enough food, though, because after going through the whole elimination diet thing I read labels on everything and then put it all back and you can't do that when you are trying to pack a lunch that must last safely through half a day AND doesn't break the bank.

Eliminating my diet

We have just finished our elimination diet experiment. This is a diet where we only eat from a short list of "safe" foods for a week or so to clear our system and then each day after we get to try one of the eliminated foods and see if it causes a reaction. It took us three weeks start to finish, and our whole family did it together.
We had a lot of friends asking us why we chose to do this diet, because none of us are suffering from some unknown food allergy that causes our quality of life to be horrible (which is the only reason anyone else would ever do this). I did it simply because I've seen the way wheat and milk have affected Alex and I wondered if we weren't all affected by a few foods in some way or another.
So...I learned to really like brown rice, organic turkey, and yams. I like rice milk better than soy milk, which is too bad because it was twice as expensive. I learned that I don't handle red meat well, and really shouldn't eat sugar. Especially not 10 sugar cubes in one sitting, which is the way we were supposed to experiment with it during this diet. Ugh. We also tried high fructose corn syrup, straight from the bottle, which is what is in pop and all sorts of candies and...well...everything. None of us reacted to chocolate, which surprised me because I thought I did, except that in order to test pure chocolate we had to eat the baker's kind (which is awful!) and so maybe what I react to in the chocolate is really just the sugar. We all reacted to red dye #40 -- that was an awful day.
I learned a lot about what certain foods do to you (did you know that wheat contains a high amount of toxin, and after going on a diet like this for awhile and then testing wheat you can actually taste it?), and talked to a lot of other people about their own food issues. I learned a lot, and lived it while I was learning it, and now it is over and I see food in a whole different way.
I felt really good while I was on this diet, and only had two days at the beginning where I felt odd and very hungry (all the articles I read about this diet said we should expect to "detox" during the first couple of days), and I lost ten pounds (legitimately, Mandy, not just the initial water weight Dad was talking about) without limiting my food intake at all. Now that I am done with the diet I am having a hard time eating the things that I used to eat. I look at wheat with suspicion. Anything with high fructose corn syrup in it makes me shudder. Food that looks unnaturally red is automatically off limits for anyone in my house...we even switched to Tylenol no-dye and GNC children's vitamins to avoid the evil #40.
So my grocery bill has soared, because it is much cheaper for everyone in the food industry to take food straight from the fields and do all sorts of unnatural things to it so they can package it to last for years. I am sure I will get over this as soon as someone puts something in my path that is tempting enough to lure me out of this food-snobby ditch I am in, but for now it is actually pleasant to feel good all the time. The most amazing thing is that I don't have any food cravings whatsoever. I'm sure if I were living with Mandy she would cure me of that immediately :) I haven't eaten a single chocolate chip cookie in a month!

This is a picture of Pavel trying milk, in the form of homemade whipped cream (made with local farm honey) and strawberries!

Surgery times three

The boys had surgery today. All three, one after another. Lots of people have been asking me what sort of surgery they are getting, and I am uncertain as to whether or not I should make an effort at privacy on their behalf. Since this blog has such a limited following I will go so far as to say, in the words of their doctor, they are "having their stems trimmed". Painful. In addition to that Andrei got his tonsils and adenoids out and Alex had tubes put in his ears. And something else private, but now he will be able to have children. Enough said.


Alex is staying overnight in the hospital because he has a bad history with anesthesia reactions. Dan is staying with him, reading books and coloring and playing with toys with him. I took Andrei and Pavel home and they are sleeping and being grouchy alternately. We went to the library and got 24 videos out to keep them still, but it looks like we might not have much of an issue with that early on. They are supposed to stay still for at least a week, though, so we might have need of them in the future.



OK, fast forward 1.5 weeks because it has been busy around here recently. We watched 23 of the 24 movies. Ugh! My kids act weird after they watch too many movies. They get hyper, and emotional, and clingy, and very difficult to manage when they all do it at once. Plus I guess I have to allow for the fact that they were in pain every four hours when their narcotics wore off. I was actually really happy to unload those movies back at the library drop box! Well, not exactly, since I miscalculated the due date and they were one day late and now we have a whopping bill.

The whole summer in one post

We have been in Maine for the summer, and are leaving tomorrow to begin the journey back to real life. One of the biggest things I will miss will be late nights watching movies with Mandy, but I am already practicing getting over it since Mandy left us for Ben and Julie last week.
But while she was still here, Mandy introduced us to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This did not come out of the blue--Brad started the whole thing when we were out in California and we watched the first few episodes of Angel. From there it just spun out of control. One and a half seasons later, I realise that in order to support my Buffy habit Dan and I need to sign up for a Netflix account or something. Only we are going to go with Blockbuster, mostly because we are doing the cheap version with only one CD at a time and I am too impatient to wait for stuff in the mail so I will just trade in to Blockbuster if I actually want to watch a movie two nights in a row (which is pretty unusual during the regular non-Maine year, but might happen). So, after that boring explanation, I have to say something interesting:
Last night I finally realised who reminds me of Angel. Or, actually, the other way around. It's Brad. Wait, don't shoot me down--the dark, unattached, brooding, mostly silent guy with strong opinions that don't really come out unless you know him fairly well and hang with him for a while...see, I'm right, aren't I? And he always comes through, doesn't he? And he may not necessarily be openly friendly with the masses but is fiercely loyal to those he holds near and dear (like sisters). Just in case anyone thinks the contrary, this is a COMPLIMENT. Way to go Brad, you stud!

Real life comes soon. We have known for a year now that Inga would be going to her Daddy's school for second grade. I've been preparing for it all year and I think I am finally ready and I know Inga is way ready. It's fun to think that Moira and Inga are entering the world of the school classroom at the same time. We don't have all the same battles, though. Inga will wear a uniform, so that solves the clothes issue (it actually makes it easier). My biggest issue is outfitting a particular school bathroom stall for Inga's use, and then hoping that when she needs to use the bathroom it will be available to her. Her teacher, Jayme, is awesome. Jayme has an aunt who is quadriplegic and became quite famous when she started a foundation for accident victims who became paralyzed (this is Joni Eareckson Tada http://www.joniandfriends.org/, for those of you who have heard of her). So this teacher has all the right attitudes toward Inga (which is to say that she will not be making any excuses for her), and has already started getting Inga excited about being in school by sending her home from church with various second grade-y type things like an extra baby praying mantis they had left over from a science project. So this is perfect, right? It's still hard to let go, though. At least I have my other kids still at home to torment with lessons.

Toilet Paper

Hmmm...Mandy mentioned something in her last blog that inspired me to post. Why two rolls of toilet paper? I thought the same thing myself a few moments before I read her comment, but the difference is that I know the answer. Kids. Inga and Elena have to have the toilet paper on the floor in order to use it, and adults feel a need to put their paper on the top of the toilet seat in order to have it conveniently available (after you twist around, groping desperately behind you because you can't quite see back there) for adult use. And some people just put it on whatever nice modern toilet paper holding appliance has been placed on the wall for your use (which, as you can imagine, doesn't exist in Dad's still-being-built house). Combine these three customs with a house full of people who don't normally live together and you have multiple rolls of toilet paper making their appearance at the same time, in different places, until someone neatly puts them all in a row, causing Mandy to blog about it. OK, I just wanted to sound smart and provide a complete answer for someone today.
Oh, and if someone is visiting my site for the first time because you Googled the word "toilet paper", I'd love to hear the history in the comments section!

Inga's Toe Walk

We are going to look into enrolling Inga (and possibly Elena) in a dance school next year. Inga has a peculiar talent for dancing on her toes, the very tip ends of them. It's uncanny.

Something Wicked This Way Comes

Ever since Anne Marie gave me the book Wicked by Gregory Maguire a few Christmases ago I have had a soft spot for the Wicked Witch of the West. Especially since her younger sister was born without arms. However, I have never seen the musical because, silly me, I figured that once you read the book you knew what it was about and how could a musical possibly be better than the book when the book came first? Then I heard a song from the musical and I can't get it out of my head and I really want to see the musical. This particular blog post is in honor of Jaime, since she sent me an e-mail full of handy tips and tricks for doing all the things I have been very un-subtly hinting at needing help on over the past several months (and she hit every item, so she must have been keeping a list or something!). I am about to use one of those tips and actually paste a real live YouTube thingy on here. It is of my favorite song, called "What is This Feeling". If it doesn't work, then you know who to blame (I learned this after years of being a teacher...it is never the student's fault, but always the fault of the teacher and I might add that this rule still remains in effect in spite of any technical issues the student may have with just about any website she has ever visited):




If you want to listen to a really good recording of the music (which I do, because I don't necessarily like the way this particular YouTube version acts it out nor do I care for the sound quality but I couldn't get the other one I know of to work properly), then you have to go to this guy's blog I found who somehow posted the audio track directly to his blog. He also posted the lyrics, which is very helpful. His story is interesting, since he is ex-LDS (Mormon) and he ties the entire musical into his journey into adulthood and out of the Latter-Day Saints. Anyway, don't watch his YouTube version, it's British and the singing isn't as good (not that one is a cause of the other, mind you, I just don't prefer it). Just listen to his incredibly good audio track (I really need to buy this CD for myself.)

N.B. The above testimony is a good example of how YouTube and the ability to post tracks to blogs actually encourages the sale of music legitimately--that was a plug for any economic gurus that happen to drop by my blog anytime soon while policy is still being debated

Happenings

I didn't know what to call this post, because it is basically just a random selection of happenings around our house recently. Hopefully of the sort that is vaguely entertaining to relatives who don't live nearby (which is all of them).
Dan and I are into House recently. Jaime already posted the Valley Girl House takes from the second disc of the second season (OK, I'm going to try this link thingy, Jaime, let me know if it works!), but Cameron's "That's hot" at the end makes us go into conniptions!
Elena has a kidney ultrasound tomorrow, so she couldn't eat anything with fat tonight from dinner time on. I had no idea how many things have fat in them! Yes, Mandy, I know, but I am not the incredible dieter that you are. Speaking of, I think I will be "en regime" while I am in Maine this summer and one of my reasons for choosing that time to lose a little weight is because I am hoping you (still talking to Mandy here) will encourage me to stick to counting calories. Feel free to make me feel guilty constantly. Anyway, Elena had dry rice and stewed tomatoes with peas for dinner, can you imagine? I was practically gagging just watching her eat it. But I gave her jell-o for desert (wow, the computer actually made me put that hyphen in for "jell-o"), so my Mommy rating isn't too low...yet. Wait until she can't have breakfast or even drink a glass of water in the morning, then we will have cries of impeachment. I am comforting her with the promise of French Fries after the ultrasound is over. This picture I have of her is from Hilton Head on a Gregg Russell boat tour and she is watching the dolphins playing in the water. It was really hot that day, so her sunglasses were sliding off her nose.
Alex has new glasses. Actually, he has had glasses for months and months now but he keeps eating key parts and so we had to break down and buy a second pair for him, one for wearing and one for fixing after he destroys it. This has worked well for him, but not for our budget. I am amazed at how expensive and annoying poor eyesight can be. I know lots of people go through the glasses/contacts thing every day and pull it off with style and grace but I'm not sure it isn't up there with missing limbs on the disabilities list...just more common, so no one thinks much of it.

Today is father's day (happy Father's Day, Dad!!), and we gave Dan a shirt from St. John's College that says, in Greek, "If you can read this you are over-educated". Obviously Dan loved it! He decided that he wanted to go camping with the kids in the back yard tonight, so they set up the tent and we all went out and played "hot potato" and now everyone is sleeping peacefully. It's sad, really, because we have to work ourselves up to using this thing properly. The first time we set up the tent Dan and Andrei slept in it. Tonight everyone is sleeping in it except Pavel and me. Next time we will all try it together, and then hopefully the next step after that will be to actually go somewhere with it. I remember all those camping trips to that lake (in Kentucky?) when Sam had the earaches and Anne Marie and Mandy were little and Ben I had the raging nightmares and I guess I am really happy to go slow with the whole tenting thing.

Andrei has new Spiderman sheets. I have this thing about waiting until Christmas and Birthdays to get my kids anything they might actually want, but my oldest son was sleeping under my comforter from college that has flowers on it and when I saw the Spiderman bedding on sale I rethought the whole thing (Christmas is a long way away) and went ahead and got it for him. Now his bed is the most popular spot in the house. Pavel plays in it rather than playing with toys like a normal human child, and even Alex will slip under the bedcovers every once in a while and pretend he is the lucky one. It's a good thing Andrei is pretty easy-going about sharing his things.
And now an Inga story. We had a storm here, and Inga and Dan ended up stuck in Blockbuster while the rest of us huddled in our basement during a tornado warning (who was it that hates tornados? Jaime? I still have nightmares about them from my childhood!). Inga, being Inga, made fast friends with a little girl named Anna she met there and managed to get herself invited to this little kid's birthday party the next day. She in turn invited Anna to her Adoption Day party, which was the day after. They exchanged phone numbers and then began to work on their parents. I have never seen Inga beg so hard for anything in her life, and from what I understand after calling Anna's mom the same thing was going on at the other end. So we went to the store and bought a gift for this kid we didn't know and then I spent 4 hours at this party with about 12 girls who were all in the first grade. Inga and Anna were inseparable. Inga made several other friends and exchanged more phone numbers and tried to invite more kids to her own party the next day (I put my foot down, though). Life will never be dull with this kid...

Doctors

This is the season of doctors.
Today Sam went in for an MRI, and did all the things I had really hoped he would not do. He fought with the nurses when they put an IV in, and then he fought with them the other two times they put the IV in (because the first two times didn't work). He fought with me when I told him to go to sleep, then finally when they had given him so much medicine he had maxed out and his eyes were forced to close against his will he continued to fight it, which was really funny because the nurse kept thinking he was truly out and got ready to move the bed and then he would rise up and start talking and swinging around some more. The cute thing is that toward the end he turned all sweet and started giving me kisses and telling me he loved me very much (with his eyes closed).
When he woke up he was a grouch. He scream-cried at everything, and demanded cookies and water and then cried when I gave them to him and choked on the water because his muscles wouldn't work right. I put him on the couch for just a moment to fill his cup and he fell off in slow motion (didn't really hurt him, in other words) and couldn't raise his head up--it was like watching the chickens at the Boneless Chicken Ranch on Far Side. He's fine now, sleeping like a log, and hopefully he'll be coordinated tomorrow because he is really getting heavy to carry!
Anyway, I never want to do that again, at least not with this child, so I hope they got everything they needed. Now I just need to get through the next week and a half, which involves Andrei getting an MRI (general anesthesia for that one!), Elena getting a kidney ultrasound, Alex getting his hormone levels checked, Inga going to dentist for possible teeth pulling (her adult teeth are growing in behind her baby teeth, which is why she isn't losing any), Elena and Alex getting immunization shots, Andrei spending the night at the hospital for a sleep study, Alex and Andrei having speech evaluations with a new speech therapist (the public schools are not doing a good job, so we have to go private), Alex getting an intensive hearing test, Andrei and Alex getting evaluated by an ENT for surgery in August, and Sam's first opinion hand surgeon appointment. Then we go to Maine to live with Dad for the next 6 weeks, free of all doctor visits but enjoying the company of the one doctor that doesn't ever want to operate on them. Although it would be fun for the kids to try on some fake casts like the good ol' days...

OK, fine, I'll call him Pavel!

Pavel is getting baptized this Sunday. Kind of fitting that it's Pentecost Sunday, isn't it? In honor of the occasion I pulled out these REEEAALLY cute outfits my mother got all the kids and made sure everything fit and then I couldn't resist, I had to take a few pictures. Getting five kids to all look cute at the same time is impossible! Honest. I cleared my camera, took over five hundred photos of the kids, and not one has all five looking good at the same time. The one I put on this post is the best it gets.



Inga asked if she could read tonight before she went to bed. Andrei asked if he could practice the cello tonight before he went to bed. They are growing up! (and they don't want to go to bed).

Vulnerable

OK, I am about to be really vulnerable. You can tell because I began this post with the word "OK".
Last night I went scrounging around the internet looking for some information on FASD (Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, what Alex has). I was doing this because I know I have recently read many research studies claiming that even a little alcohol drunk during pregnancy can have adverse affects, and I was discussing it with some friends but of course this is a radical claim and I had not memorized my sources so I was trying to see if I could re-find those links. I found plenty of articles and lists and even some YouTube entries (the best one was http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uip8sv9tCKw), and as I was calmly reading through everything I started to bawl. Not just cry, bawl. I think everyone who reads this blog knows me really well (I would love to know how Mandy knows who reads her blog, that sounds really handy), so you know that I don't do this crying thing often. The last time I cried was when I trusted a friend to watch my kids and she nearly killed them through willful negligence and the very real thought of them dying made me lose it (coupled with total and complete anger toward my friend the likes of which I have never experienced before). Anyway. Back to crying. I was crying for Alex. I was crying for what had been done to him, for how he struggles every minute of every day just to live life and how "normal" will forever be unachievable for him. As he gets older he is going to become more and more aware of the invisible gap that exists between him and everyone else he knows, and already I see him gazing around in bewilderment when he loses control or can't remember something he knows he ought to know.
I've read all these things before, I've even seen a few very moving videos on FASD, so what triggered this? And what is it that was triggered?
I know what triggered it--I have a friend that encouraged another friend to drink while pregnant, because it was really "no big deal" if you only drank a little each day. As for what it is that hits me so hard that I had this sort of reaction...I've been aware all along that Alex's birth-mother's drinking is the cause of his issues, of course, but I guess the total helplessness of my little guy in utero while his mother poured liter after liter of alcohol into her son just sort of hit me. For some reason when I saw the healthy and FASD brains compared side by side (also see YouTube video), the report of Alex's initial physical exam came into my head, the one where they did an ultrasound and there was so much fluid where his brain should have been that they called it "hydrocephalus" despite Alex's very small head. That was his mother's doing. I am sure she didn't mean to do it, I am sure she was struggling with her own awful life and she couldn't get up enough hope or energy to quit drinking and it is very likely that she was unaware of the awful effects her drinking was having on her unborn child. I have no beef with her. Just overwhelming pity for Alex. But my friends, the ones who were comparing notes on how much they drank and were saying these things in front of another friend of mine who was still pregnant (yes, everyone seemed to get pregnant this year) made me feel so frustrated. Alcohol is a known tetarogen (substance causing birth defects). They see that Alex and Sam are two years apart and yet Sam is taller and heavier than Alex. They see that Sam's speech development after two months home from his orphanage is already surpassing Alex's after he has had two years of speech therapy. They see Alex who can't sit still to save his life despite the fact that he is denied every fun or even typical food known to every other child in the church. Of course he had a lot of alcohol in his system during his development but his issues are extreme. By logical conclusion therefore a little bit of alcohol will give you a little bit of his issues...but which ones? Who knows where the boundaries lie? No one. Why do they have to push that envelope? Who says, "oh, a little thalidomide won't hurt this evening, honey." I am certain that Alex's mother didn't think these things through because she was ignorant. But my friends are not.
So I crept into Alex's room and held him and cried and he was so light and felt so fragile and that made me cry even harder because that, too, comes from his mother's drinking. Please don't misunderstand me. I am not crying for myself. We chose him, I am excited to be his mother, he challenges me in ways no one else can and I am grateful for it. I just needed that moment to grieve for him. And now I am finished, and can move on.
Don't drink when you are pregnant. http://www.come-over.to/FAS/LowDose.htm.

Tidiness

I have a new insight into Grandma Mickey. I have discovered, upon welcoming the fifth child into our family, that the ONLY way to keep things reasonably tidy (and by this I mean, "waist deep instead of neck deep") is to be in a constant mode of picking up after people. This is the first line of defense, and the only effective one. The second line of defense is to teach the children to pick up after themselves, but considering their ages and the fact that they are human beings this is a very weak strategy and only minimally lessens the havoc.
I came to this realization because we had guests last weekend, had a visit from the social worker this weekend, are having guests at the end of this weekend, and Mom is dropping by twice this week on her way to and from Ohio to visit Ella (oh, and Ben and Julie). So I would like the house to be presentable. This has been on my mind for a couple of days now, so I have had an eye toward getting the house clean and keeping it that way. As I was cleaning my room today (which I have to admit is by far the messiest), I would pause every minute or so to put an errant toy in its place or call a child to come put away its underwear, etc.--and I realized that I was acting exactly like Grandma Mickey. Exactly. And that is when I realized that she also had five kids (I never really thought about it before), and at some point they must have been young, and--judging from the way they are now--she must have been picking up after them all the time, just like I have to do. Like she still does, if you have ever noticed. This gave me pause, as well it should--I do not want to be neurotic. So if you come to visit and you notice it is not as tidy around here as it might be at your house, it is because I am practicing for when my children are all grown up and have left the house and I become normal again.

The Kesslers came to visit

Ben and Julie and Ella came to visit and they were SO FUN to have. Yes, you can be jealous, I don't mind.

Our picnic in the back yard.











Ella on the guest bed (she is actually posing for a commercial for the rest of the extended family, who are all heartily encouraged to visit any time!)



A peaceful moment in the dining room.











Julie and Ella and the cousins.

From the kids

Here are a few things heard around the house recently:

One afternoon I needed to pack but I only had about 45 minutes before we needed to go somewhere for an appointment. So I told the kids they could watch a movie, but not a long one. "How about Little House on the Prairie?" I asked. They all cheered and as I was putting the DVD in I heard Lena explain to Sam: "We are watching LITTLE House on the Prairie because the big one would take too long."

Inga: "You mean when you get things out you should put them away?!" (said with utter sincerity, as if hearing this for the first time!)





A little preface to the next one:
"Pit" (pronounced "peet") is the Russian baby word for "drink". All our kids have a pretty good grasp of baby words in Russian by now, and use them interchangeably with English (however strange the grammar may turn out).
Lena's food quotes:

"I'm fine, I don't want no pit."

"Please don't eat all of them because then your belly will be too full and then you will have a baby--save some for me."

Happy Birthday Megan!!

You are a terrific sister! I love the person you are turning out to be, so spontaneous, witty and independent. Enjoy your last days as a Freshman at NSA, and despite what Dan says STAY AWAY FROM THE BORDER!

Can't wait to see you soon. I do wish I could eat Sam's cake...

That time we went to California

It was like living a completely different life for 1.5 weeks, a life where I had only one child and she was "in the movies". Even though she was only an extra (which is the lowest species of appearance there is, unless you are dead, I suppose), she was treated like a star because she was specifically chosen to fit the movie (being an amputee). We flew in on Tuesday evening and a "limo" (Lincoln Town Car) picked us up to drive us to the hotel. Everything was paid for, by the way, including taxes and all gratuities. Our limo driver told us the last guy he had driven was Russell Crowe.

In the morning we met everyone else they had flown in, all of whom were amputees (mostly congenital) from all over the States. It was easy to tell who was in our group :) We had a bus waiting to drive the kids (and their parents) to their initial costume fitting and hair and makeup evaluation. Then we had to get work permits for the parents who hadn't planned on their kids actually getting into the movie (silly people) and then we had to open Coogan accounts for our kids. Apparently a long time ago a kid named Jackie Coogan made millions and his parents spent it all, so now any child in the movies is required by law to have 15% of his earnings go into a "Coogan Trust Account" where it will earn a pathetic amount of interest until the child is 18 and liberates the money into the real world once more. When we were done with all the running around the kids jumped into the pool, which became a ritual each day from then on (until the kids got their hair dyed the following week). Inga became quite a good swimmer!

The next day the wind was so strong (see photo) they had to close down at least one highway in LA and the set blew over on Mystery Mesa, which is where the movie was being filmed. So we all went to downtown LA and shopped, each amputee determined to spend everything they were earning as fast as possible--and Inga was no exception.
That evening busloads of Afghan people checked into our hotel and the hotels around us (our movie was using up 3 entire hotels). I was told there were 600 Afghan extras in the movie, and over a thousand extras up on the Mesa. There have been few times in my life when I have truly been the minority race...and the rest of our trip was one of them. The amputee children stood out even more now, and everyone knew about them because the other extras were there to provide background for the hospital scenes. No one was a stranger in the elevator. "Are you in Charlie Wilson's War?" a tall, dark man in a beard with a mysterious-sounding accent would ask. "Yes, are you?" I would politely ask in return. Duh. After the first night, by mutual unspoken consent, the political incorrectness of stereotyping was suspended. If you were white and missing a body part, you were in the movie and in the hospital scene. If you were darker and staying at the hotel, you were an extra for the movie in general and maybe even a principal. If you were a white male and wore a business suit, you were probably very weirded out by everyone else.

On Saturday we went to Universal Studios on a VIP tour and saw all sorts of things that were interesting to us but would probably bore you. VIP means you skip to the front of lines, and get 25% off of things you buy. I like it. Inga made her first official purchase using her own money that she had earned and paid taxes on. She bought a dog in a purse (these are very popular) with two different outfits. Brad joined us toward the end (see his blog, I don't know how to make that cute little URL thingy that gets you there just by clicking on the words) and patiently helped her make her decisions. He also carried around a huge stuffed bear that Inga did not win at a game she played, but that people gave her anyway because she thought she had a fighting chance against a whole group of grown-ups. Go, Brad!
We spend the night at Brad's apartment, Inga guzzled root beer and watched the Incredibles, and we went to church and made friends. I won't really say much more than that because Brad basically covered it in his blog.
Monday Inga didn't work--they didn't need the amputees, but they did pay them :)

Tuesday we went to the set to get Inga's hair dyed, and we stayed all day and did school (basically they sit the kids down in the middle of a large tent and tell them to concentrate but no one does because all sorts of interesting things are happening everywhere), and Wednesday we went back and got makeup done. Some of the guys who worked on her had also done Pirates of the Caribbean, and they were very good at making everyone look maximumly disgusting. At first Inga freaked out, totally convinced that they were going to need to cut her up to make her look as awful as the others she had seen walking around in blood and gore makeup--but they were really good with kids, and by the end she was asking for more.By the time they were done, Inga looked horrible, in a cute sort of way. It looked totally realistic, even up close.

The kids got all decorated and then went to the holding tent, where they stayed in school all day, waiting to be called. One by one they "timed out", which means their allowed time on set (according to age) was coming to an end and they had to go back to makeup to take everything off. Before Inga timed out she was chosen to go to a scene involving a lot of hospital beds so she could be convincing background. They had a nurse attending her and were making a big fuss over her, but there was light filtering in from a window in the tent that made her skin shine. In the end she was pulled out by the director, who spoke rather rudely to her because he just wanted to hurry up and shoot the scene and once he decided her bed should be empty he wanted no delay. Inga did beautifully, she did just what she was told and waited quietly on the side while they shot the scene. Meanwhile everyone came up to her apologizing for the director and saying what a great kid she was, and after the scene was shot the director himself came by and did his version of an apology, and told her she was too beautiful to use for a scene like that. Inga bought it hook, line, and sinker, the vain thing.
Oh--I forgot to mention that while everyone was fussing over Inga and the nurse in the bed, Tom Hanks was waiting in the sidelines right next to me and another mom and we got a chance to talk just a little. He really is nice. He tickled Inga's toes as he passed by her bed, but she didn't notice.
Well, back to the timing out. We were scheduled to fly out on Thursday, but had not shot our actual scene. We were told it was cut. Apparently they had to do a lot of that sort of thing since they were so behind. They asked if anyone was able to stay and everyone said they could. They chose three kids from our amputee group to stay on for another scene they had in mind which they hoped to shoot the next day, and Inga was one of them.

Unfortunately Inga had made a lot of friends, and was unhappy the next day when she got up to go to the Mesa and only two others did, both of them significantly older. She was a trooper, though, and held well through the scene (which is one with Tom Hanks entertaining the amputee kids). She didn't eat breakfast ahead of time, and they had whisked her off to makeup when the kids arrived, so she worked for 6 hours before she ate anything (thank goodness for that law that says children must eat a major meal 6 hours after they arrive on set!). She ate a huge amount of very fancy food afterward (the amputees got to eat in the crew's tent, which has really amazing food). She kept her makeup on, just in case, but after lunch we found out they didn't need to do the scene again since the original had been so good (they call it a "one-shot wonder"). We were told by someone who saw it that the director actually cried it was so perfect. He came out afterward to thank us for coming out and to say what a great group of kids we were, which I understand is very unusual for him (he is apparently a very well-known director).
We returned home happy and healthy and exhausted (and in another "limo"). It was great fun doing the movie and Inga already received a check for last week's work. Her hair is slowly turning blond once more, and she misses her friends, but she is a normal child again. I am looking forward to December 25, when the movie comes out, to see if that scene actually made it after all.