The Cluttered Pantry

We returned from our last trip to Siberia in late 2008. Making 2009 our first full year as a family at home with the Wee Kahunas. I haven’t really felt compelled to mark our court date  (the date we legally became the girls parents) nor the day in October that we flew home with the girls, as a significant anniversary in the way that many families seem to.

It’s not that I don’t see those dates as important,  it is that from the moment we saw the tiny pictures, and read the brief medical documents and background information about the girls in the referral packets that our adoption agency sent us, I have felt like the girls were part of our family.

It wasn’t like we flew all the way to Siberia to go meet them and see IF we wanted them. We wanted the girls to be part of our family, and our only fear was that some part of the adoption process, as affected by the incredible number of diverse and often times overlapping agencies, would grind to a halt and cause us to be unable to bring the girls home.

International adoption is not for the faint of heart and each adoption is as individual in it’s process and experience as the children are themselves.  I learned very quickly to ignore any book, “expert”,  web site,  or blog that started any advice  with the words  ”The rules are…” or “In Russia….”  There is no such thing.  Much like the USA, each town, hamlet or burg of Russia has judges who interpret laws and process in their own way.  There may be standards, and rules, guidelines and even laws to follow – but to be certain our experience in Far East Siberia would not be the same if we went back and adopted from Moscow or Tver or any other of the 100′s of regions. So I’m not going to take time here to write down tips or guides on adoption.  We were extremely fortunate to have the stars align in so many important ways, which enabled us to go from the first act of submitting our paperwork to boarding that last flight home in less than 10 months time.

What I can speak to is the incredible amount of adjustment and change and well, life,  that our little family has experienced this past 12 or so months. These are the milestones we sweat over, and memories we will celebrate. Perhaps when the girls are older, and want to know more about how we became a family, the date we stood in front of a judge in Siberia will be marked on our calendars, for now I choose to use the holiday season to be thoughtful about memories and changes like this:

Like starting off trying to parent a 3 year old who spoke only fluent Russian and a 2 year old speaking baby Russian and having them both completely replace that language with English in the first few months of being a family to the extreme of now not even recognizing words or sounds from their first language. We still have some funny syntax things that I think are remnants of the way Russian is structured, and the order of the alphabet continues to allude our older daughter, but if you didn’t know they used to speak another language you would never guess.

Coming home with both girls so underweight they didn’t show up on any growth charts. Their bodies had been conserving nutrition for their brains (a magic plan that nature puts into effect in times of emergency) so they hadn’t been growing, or having teeth come in, at the pace you’d want to see in small children – to now trying to keep up with our two robust little girls who have each had more than a 40% weight gain and grown more than 6 inches in one year (nothing like nutrition, sunshine, fresh air, and love to act as miracle grow for tiny ones.) Our youngest daughter is still really small for her age, and is working on catching up on those teeth coming in even now, but she is strong – really really strong.

The trials and tribulations of inserting myself as the mother to a child who for the first few years of her life was actually mothering her tiny sister.  When we first met Zhanna, even though she was obviously hungry and needing attention,  she wouldn’t take a snack or a drink from us without first insisting that Elena be given her own portion. She led her around the room and watched over her in a manner that let us know she had taken on the responsibility of caring for her sister and we’d have to earn that right.  I have used the phrase “you are not the mommy” more times than I care to admit, but it’s less and less often now, and the issues we deal with now are about being a bossy big sister and nothing more.

Memories of that first moment when we opened our front door and the girls began to scream and climb up as high as they could get on our shoulders to get away from our two tiny westie dogs. (At the orphanage the only dogs they saw were wild ones who came into the yard looking for scraps of food – the girls had obviously been told dogs were mean and scary and would bite you, as a way of being protected by the caregivers.) Now we have to beg the girls to stop hugging the dogs and give them a moment of rest, and both girls pretend to be puppies on a regular basis as they scamper across the floor.

The trauma of  having to put the girls through the battery of medical tests and blood letting and multiple vaccine injections so soon after coming home and then a few months later having to stay  in a hospital with Elena after they attached electrodes all over her head to try to rule out seizure activity as the cause of her suddenly loosing the ability to speak in multi-word sentences (a symptom that went away as fast as it showed up and has never returned.) For Elena’s part she was far more interested in the temporary tattoos that i covered her body with to keep her busy, than the electrodes and doctors and temporary confinement in the hospital.

Acknowledging that for our older daughter the extra time she spent in the baby hospital system while waiting for placement in the orphanage has at least slightly affected her ability to easily attach, to trust, to control impulses, and even to process information.  But seeing her face light up when her Daddy comes into the room, getting to share in her honest joy at every new discovery and chance to help, witnessing how excited she is when her big brother comes for a visit, watching her absorb new information, marveling at how fast she can grasp a new concept, and knowing that every day she gets a little better at taking a moment to think before she acts, at letting me actually be the mother to her small sister, and at letting me be her mother as well, makes it all fade away.

Realizing that there are some regular life things that the girls have never experienced so even the most mundane of chores or sights might still seem like magic to them. Sometimes overloading their senses at first experience – the first time we turned on the television, the first taste of ice cream or of COLD milk for that matter, playing in the snow (I know, you think since they were born in Siberia that snow would be a part of their world, but it turns out that the caregivers begin to bundle the children up in layers of clothes when the temp dips below 70 and once it gets really cold the children aren’t allowed outside at all.) Getting to be part of the shock and awe that they experience, the wonder and delight,  helps remind me to take moments, to value the getting there as much as the destination. Children do that naturally, getting to re-learn that skill has been a great gift.

Knowing that the incredible leaps of growth, knowledge and emotional stability of this past year are just the beginning of our life-long adventure in parenting.  Making the transition from approaching everything as a recently created/adoptive family to just family…  The adoption was an act, an event, a moment in time, the worrying effects of starting life in an orphanage diminish with each new day. Now it’s time to just be…

So during this  holiday season with the  chaos of cooking, gifts, tree trimming and family gatherings, and before the year ends, I just wanted to take a moment to remember what 2009 brought with it,  how far we have come – how much we have learned – and to try to keep the ideal of not taking these moments (especially the hard-earned ones) for granted.

We are truly fortunate, our little family….for my part, I’m looking forward to 2010 and all the promise and opportunity to make new memories the new year brings.

Popularity: 19%