What a difference a year makes!
All is going great! I promise to get you all updated very soon on everything that's been going on the past 6 months and post some new pictures!
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
One Year Ago....
One year ago today we arrived in Tomsk, Russia and traveled to an orphanage to meet our son. He was very small and was sick when we visited with him on the first trip. He wasn't walking or talking yet.....boy has that changed!!
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Mama Said.....
Every morning I think to myself when Konner takes his nap I'm going to update the blog, but I end up taking that time to try to clean up this house which used to look half way decent. My mom always had a picture hanging in the dining room that I used to think was odd, but I completely understand it now, it goes something like this: Cleaning the house while the kids are still growing, is like shoveling the walk before it stops snowing. This is so true!
I will try to get everyone up to date on how things have been going and I promise to try to keep things current so it doesn't look like we fell off the face of the earth! I'll start from where I left off on the last post....
Konner has slept great since we got him home. I think it had a lot to do with the sleep deprivation in Moscow from cutting teeth and coughing all night long. We have been amazed at how quickly he gotten into his sleeping and napping habits. He wakes up promptly at 7:20 a.m everyday and is VERY impatient waiting for breakfast to be fixed, he eats lunch by 11:45 and naps from 12:00 to 2:00 and is normally in bed between 8:00-8:30 p.m. depending on when he gets done with his bath. It is very hard to get him out of the bathtub now without him getting mad, but we've finally found out that if you let the water out he will get out willingly.
We were told repeatedly before and after we left Russia that we had 30 days to get his immunizations up to date, so we had that done the 2nd week he was home. All I can say is OUCH! By law the most that they can give a kid at one time is 5 shots, so that's how many he had, 2 in one leg & 3 in the other. I felt so sorry for him. His legs swelled up & were hurting, he ran a fever all night long and Alan and I didn't get hardly any sleep that night. Good thing I'm out of work or I wouldn't have been able to function the next day. We have an appointment to get the rest of his shots the end of May and they said he would have 5 that day also, so looks like I need to take off work the next day.
I think we are progressing pretty well with the attachment issues. He still goes to almost anyone, but he immediately wants to come back to Mama or Daddy unless we are with family. Nobody else exists in the world if his PawPaw is around though, I'm pretty sure he is thinking "Mama Who?"! He loves playing with his sisters when they are here and they are very good with him. I think he realized pretty quickly that all he has to do is point at a toy and these sweet girls bring it to him! We've nicknamed him Konner the Con Artist!
He has picked up on some English. The only thing he can really say that we definitely know he understands what it means is bye bye. He starts waving anytime someone says it and starts walking toward the door and if you don't get up and take him outside he is going to be VERY mad! He LOVES the outdoors and it's very hard to get him back inside the house. It used to be a little easier when he was terrified of the cat and dog, but he has now figured out that they are more scared of him than he is of them. The first couple of weeks every time he would see them he would start shrieking in horror, but now he may yell at them, but no serious fear of them. He was beating up on our poor 17 year old dog today. She had sticks and pine cones thrown at her, her ears pulled and he even tripped her a couple of times! Good thing she likes kids! The cat runs as quickly as he can when he sees Konner coming, I guess he doesn't like being smacked on the head & having his fur pulled out!
I have to go back to work on the 15th. I'm not really looking forward to leaving Konner at the daycare all day, but I like my job and I actually kind of miss it. I think I would love to just work part time and still be able to be with my little man most of the day. Konner's been to the daycare 3 times now, but he's only stayed twice. He seems to like it pretty good, he just gets upset when I first leave, but they said he stops crying after a few minutes if they get him interested in something else. He was ready to go when I got back the other day though because he picked up his jacket and waved bye to the teacher when I got there! His cousin Isaac also goes to the same daycare and most of the kids from our church, so it's not like he doesn't know anyone there.
I'm still trying to get all my pictures posted on here. I did add a slide show of our first trip & I plan on adding one for each of the other two trips also. I added another song to my playlist also, I find myself singing it to Konner a lot when he's mad because I can't get his food fixed quick enough or I want let him go outside because it's too cold! "Mama said there will be days like this......."
Glad I could get this song stuck in your head too! ;-)
I will try to get everyone up to date on how things have been going and I promise to try to keep things current so it doesn't look like we fell off the face of the earth! I'll start from where I left off on the last post....
Konner has slept great since we got him home. I think it had a lot to do with the sleep deprivation in Moscow from cutting teeth and coughing all night long. We have been amazed at how quickly he gotten into his sleeping and napping habits. He wakes up promptly at 7:20 a.m everyday and is VERY impatient waiting for breakfast to be fixed, he eats lunch by 11:45 and naps from 12:00 to 2:00 and is normally in bed between 8:00-8:30 p.m. depending on when he gets done with his bath. It is very hard to get him out of the bathtub now without him getting mad, but we've finally found out that if you let the water out he will get out willingly.
We were told repeatedly before and after we left Russia that we had 30 days to get his immunizations up to date, so we had that done the 2nd week he was home. All I can say is OUCH! By law the most that they can give a kid at one time is 5 shots, so that's how many he had, 2 in one leg & 3 in the other. I felt so sorry for him. His legs swelled up & were hurting, he ran a fever all night long and Alan and I didn't get hardly any sleep that night. Good thing I'm out of work or I wouldn't have been able to function the next day. We have an appointment to get the rest of his shots the end of May and they said he would have 5 that day also, so looks like I need to take off work the next day.
I think we are progressing pretty well with the attachment issues. He still goes to almost anyone, but he immediately wants to come back to Mama or Daddy unless we are with family. Nobody else exists in the world if his PawPaw is around though, I'm pretty sure he is thinking "Mama Who?"! He loves playing with his sisters when they are here and they are very good with him. I think he realized pretty quickly that all he has to do is point at a toy and these sweet girls bring it to him! We've nicknamed him Konner the Con Artist!
He has picked up on some English. The only thing he can really say that we definitely know he understands what it means is bye bye. He starts waving anytime someone says it and starts walking toward the door and if you don't get up and take him outside he is going to be VERY mad! He LOVES the outdoors and it's very hard to get him back inside the house. It used to be a little easier when he was terrified of the cat and dog, but he has now figured out that they are more scared of him than he is of them. The first couple of weeks every time he would see them he would start shrieking in horror, but now he may yell at them, but no serious fear of them. He was beating up on our poor 17 year old dog today. She had sticks and pine cones thrown at her, her ears pulled and he even tripped her a couple of times! Good thing she likes kids! The cat runs as quickly as he can when he sees Konner coming, I guess he doesn't like being smacked on the head & having his fur pulled out!
I have to go back to work on the 15th. I'm not really looking forward to leaving Konner at the daycare all day, but I like my job and I actually kind of miss it. I think I would love to just work part time and still be able to be with my little man most of the day. Konner's been to the daycare 3 times now, but he's only stayed twice. He seems to like it pretty good, he just gets upset when I first leave, but they said he stops crying after a few minutes if they get him interested in something else. He was ready to go when I got back the other day though because he picked up his jacket and waved bye to the teacher when I got there! His cousin Isaac also goes to the same daycare and most of the kids from our church, so it's not like he doesn't know anyone there.
I'm still trying to get all my pictures posted on here. I did add a slide show of our first trip & I plan on adding one for each of the other two trips also. I added another song to my playlist also, I find myself singing it to Konner a lot when he's mad because I can't get his food fixed quick enough or I want let him go outside because it's too cold! "Mama said there will be days like this......."
Glad I could get this song stuck in your head too! ;-)
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Life With A Two Year Old
I am SO far behind! I've had a lot of people asking if we were still in Moscow and telling me I needed to update the blog. Things like that are now easier said than done! I guess I should start where I left off in Moscow......
Our coordinator came to our room on Tuesday and had us some paperwork which she took to the Embassy for us to get our appointment, so we had yet another day to fend for ourselves. We decided after nap time Tuesday to venture out on our own and do some sightseeing. We took the metro into Red Square which wasn't too bad, but I wouldn't recommend it. The stroller definitely helped with all the walking we had to do. We had decided before we left that we wanted to eat at the Hard Rock Cafe' and buy some souvenirs while we were out and we did finally get that accomplished. We almost gave up on finding Hard Rock until we finally found a nice lady who spoke some English who walked with us a good little ways to show us where to go. Here is Konner eating at Hard Rock.
We decided to take a taxi back to the hotel instead of torturing ourselves with the metro again and it was so much easier! It wasn't cheap, but at that point we didn't care, little man had been out as long as he could stand it and still be an "angel".
Our coordinator came to our room on Tuesday and had us some paperwork which she took to the Embassy for us to get our appointment, so we had yet another day to fend for ourselves. We decided after nap time Tuesday to venture out on our own and do some sightseeing. We took the metro into Red Square which wasn't too bad, but I wouldn't recommend it. The stroller definitely helped with all the walking we had to do. We had decided before we left that we wanted to eat at the Hard Rock Cafe' and buy some souvenirs while we were out and we did finally get that accomplished. We almost gave up on finding Hard Rock until we finally found a nice lady who spoke some English who walked with us a good little ways to show us where to go. Here is Konner eating at Hard Rock.
We decided to take a taxi back to the hotel instead of torturing ourselves with the metro again and it was so much easier! It wasn't cheap, but at that point we didn't care, little man had been out as long as he could stand it and still be an "angel".Wednesday we went to the Embassy to have our "interview". It was the easiest part of our whole trip. There were about a dozen other families there and being able to understand everyone in the room with you was wonderful. You really don't have an appointment time at the Embassy, all the families are told to be there at the same time. You pay your fee, go to a room with all the other families, wait to be called to the window and then they go over all the information about the child and make sure their new name is spelled correctly. The interview part takes about 5 minutes and then you sit back down and wait about 30 minutes and they call everyone back up to pick up their envelope for Customs in the US.
I had vaguely mentioned to my blogger friend Tina that bath time was scary, so I should explain that to everyone. When these kids are in the orphanage they clean them with a rag and a pan of water, so they are never actually "submerged" in water. We found out how traumatizing this apparently is when we got to Moscow the first night. I ran some bath water and stripped little man down and it was kind of like putting a cat into water. There was A LOT of screaming and A LOT of crying. I washed him and got him out of there as quickly as a possibly could because I could see he was definitely terrified and we were afraid people in the hotel were going to think we were trying to kill him or something. The second and third bath we had the same problems, but he had stopped screaming as loud. I had tried to get him to splash the water some which he almost liked and he was a little interested in his "parts". Wednesday night, much to our surprise, he suddenly decided maybe it was OK and a few minutes into the bath he was splashing water ALL OVER the bathroom and squealing in delight, he even stuck his face in the water a couple of times! Since we have been home you can't hardly get the child out of the bathtub! If you take off his clothes in the bathroom he's kicking his leg up over the side of the tub trying to get in and cries when he has to get out, even though he is shriveled up like a prune and is sitting in cold water!
We had a decent flight home. Konner threw up on Alan when we got on the plane to go to Munich, but other than that it was OK. He was so tired and felt so bad that he slept a good part of the flight back to Charlotte. When we got to Customs we were detained for about 30 minutes waiting on them to go through our envelope with our paperwork. It wasn't that bad, we were just ready to get out of there and our family was waiting. Alan's parents, brother, and Mary and Molly were waiting for us at the airport and we were so happy to see them and Konner just loved it! When we got home we were surprised by all my family waiting in the dark in our living room! Our nieces and nephews had made a Welcome Home banner for us and everyone had fixed us dinner, made us some sweet tea (we really missed this while we were gone), got us some milk, juice, and cinnamon buns for breakfast Friday morning. They really thought of everything and I can't tell you how wonderful it was not to have to worry about that stuff as soon as we got home!
Well, that gets you caught up to us getting home. We are currently trying to adjust to life with a two year old who seems to think that he is the boss most of the time! I will try to get another post done tomorrow (hopefully) to tell you what's been going on since we've been home and try to get some more pictures posted.
I did figure out today that my friends Tina and Kellie who are both currently in Tomsk were at the same baby home together today (the same one Konner was at). Tina's currently waiting out her 10 days and Kellie is meeting her little girl for the first time!
Monday, March 9, 2009
Day 3 in Moscow
Well, we never made it out to go sightseeing since it's been snowing or icing everyday since we got here. We've all got cabin fever. We went to the end of the block last night and ate at McDonald's which was ok. Tonight we went to TGI Friday's and for the first time in over a week, I AM FULL!!!! It was very good, just like home! Konner is very good when we go out to eat, we are just amazed.
The medical doctor came to our room this afternoon for Konner's exam. He was very nice and said that Konner was in excellent shape. He's cutting some teeth and drooling something awful which makes him cough, but other than that he said he's fine.
Tomorrow our coordinator for Moscow will pick us up and take us to the US Embassy so we can get an appointment for Wednesday for our interview. Leo had told us that she would take us to some of the sights in Moscow if we wanted her to, so we will ask her in the morning. This may be the only opportunity we have for all of us to get out of here together.
The medical doctor came to our room this afternoon for Konner's exam. He was very nice and said that Konner was in excellent shape. He's cutting some teeth and drooling something awful which makes him cough, but other than that he said he's fine.
Tomorrow our coordinator for Moscow will pick us up and take us to the US Embassy so we can get an appointment for Wednesday for our interview. Leo had told us that she would take us to some of the sights in Moscow if we wanted her to, so we will ask her in the morning. This may be the only opportunity we have for all of us to get out of here together.
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