Home just over two weeks now...

We have been home just over two weeks now and so much has happened. I have wanted to update for some time now but have never found the time or energy to do so. Anya I have decided is very much like a newborn. A 5 foot 6 inch, 135 pound, bilingual new born. She is soo needy! And demanding of all of our attention. Very jealous of the computer time. Today she is at school all day with our daughter Jasmine, who is attending the same High School Anya will attend beginning in January. She is doing what they call a "shadow day" where she follows Jasmine all over thru her day just to observe and become more comfortable with the whole idea of the school. So I am thrilled to have some alone time!! Oh yes and my wonderful husband Matt, started back to work on Monday, so I am truly alone for the first time in 2 months. No more 24/7 Matt!! Not that I don't love him and enjoy my time with him but enough is enough already. Thank you God for healing his ankle!! Back to Anya and the update. She has become increasingly angry and difficult. She is very anxious about school and overwhelmed by the size of the place. She is afraid of all the newness. Her English is pretty good, much better than we expected but she is still afraid that she will not understand her teachers and they will not understand her. All this anxiety came to a head on last Sunday night. We had scheduled a meeting for Tuesday at the school to have her English comprehension tested, and just thinking of that sent her into a big fit. This ended up in her digressing into all Ukrainian/Russian words and screaming at me because I don't understand her. I had to get firm and tell her to go away from me if she was going to keep yelling at me. I told her no Russian, give me a little English and I would listen, or else go away! She did not handle this perceived rejection from me very well, and she stormed off to her room and of course slammed the door. We get the door slams a lot! So I continued on making dinner and a while later Haley went up to tell Anya it was time for dinner and she got yelled at too, sorry Haley! Anya came down to dinner but did not stay long enough to eat. She ended up back in her room after another Russian screaming fit. After about an hour had passed she came down to me again, now in the middle of cleaning up dinner dishes, and she showed me her arm. Anya had taken Scissors and cut about 29 slashes into her self. And she wanted me to react in a panic, I was fairly calm thank you very much. I told her that was a bad choice and if she chooses to hurt herself then I do not want to see and I will not be around it. She was shocked, her plan did not work. Then she tried to convince me it was funny, that did not work. None of this was getting her the reaction she had hoped for, not from me and not from Papa. The rest of the evening I was secretly furious at her but did not let her see it. She then turned to her favorite game of feel sorry for me. The rest of the night she followed me around and repeatedly told me how bad, stupid, and unloved she is but all along she sat very close practically forcing me to touch her. I know she is hurting and trying desperately to communicate her needs. but I refuse to give her that type of negative attention. The next day we started therapy. Anya did some hard work, I am very proud of her making this type of effort. She talked a bit about her abuse from her mom, and the anger she has at her dad for giving her up and at her grandma for dying and leaving her alone with her mother. She gave some specific details about severe abuse that landed her in the hospital, and it was soo hard for me not to cry. Anya gets really upset when I cry, and I do not want these sessions to become about me, but continue to be about her healing and grieving. Our therapist thinks Anya is safe and not truly suicidal but truly angry and hurting which we knew, but it feels good to hear it from the professional. Anya has not cut herself again as far as I know, hopefully that was an isolated incident. We believe she assumed if she acted out enough she would avoid having to go to school. She now knows that can't work. We have decided after having her tested to enroll her in the ESL program and ease her into it a little bit at a time. The staff at her school have been wonderful and understanding of her needs. Anya will do two of the shadow days before Thanksgiving break week, then begin English classes one period a day four days per week. Then we will have two week Christmas break and she will begin a full schedule as a freshman January 5th, that is the beginning of the second semester so it works out nicely. Anya will be taking 2 beginning English classes and one Literacy class designed for kids whom English is not their first language. She will also take what is referred to as PLATO Lab Math. This a program designed to help kids get the basic concepts of math if they have missed it along the way. It is done on the computer which Anya likes, and done at an individual pace. She will take PE everyday to help her by providing movement and a break from sitting all day, besides Anya loves almost all sports. Jasmine will be in PE with her and also in her Art class and lunch period. We have designed it this way so Anya gets some contact with someone familiar thru out her day. Jasmine has been a great sister to Anya, all of the girls have really. They are putting up with a lot of Anya's outbursts, and so much attention going towards Anya, and yet they are still willing to love her, play with her, and help her when ever she wants and needs it. We are so blessed to have such great kids. Thank you Haley, Jasmine and Taylor so much!!! Anya's last class will be Keyboarding, she choose this one because she likes computers, but does not know how to type well. I think it will be fairly easy to understand for her, mostly visual rather than verbal. I am really looking forward to Anya beginning school, it will keep her focused on something other than self pitty and hopefully boost her confidence. Anya has been to the dentist twice now, and returns next Wednesday to fill four more cavities. She did really good the first time just cleaning and x-rays. Yesterday was a long hard appointment, but again her understanding of verbal English was such a blessing, it really helped with her fear level. She had to have 6 cavities done on the right side top and bottom. Two of the cavities were really deep all the way to the nerve ending, but stoped just short of that so she was not having much pain from it. It took about an hour and a half to complete. Anya was tired and sore all the rest of the day, so she watched cartoons and lied on the coach most of the afternoon and evening. It was a nice change to have quiet Anya, but sad she was hurting. Anya will also go to the orthodontist on Wednesday to get a consult about the replacement of her front top tooth, it was knocked out in 2004 as a result of abuse by her mother. The tooth next to it has shifted over into it's slot and we may end up having to extract one that is pretty bad further back to allow room for the teeth to move and a false one to be eventually placed. Matt and I are thrilled about the possibility of having four girls in braces or some type of ortho treatment all at once!! Jasmine is in full braces for about a year now, Haley is scheduled to begin in January, Taylor who had braces in 3-5th grades, yet refused to wear her retainer during 6th grade, now has teeth that have shifted again and is looking at more time in braces. And now Anya, no idea how we will afford this, hoping the orthodontist will take pity and give us at least a small break or discount. Halloween with Anya was very interesting. She did NOT want to dress up or go Trick or Treating, but at one point she and I did wear witch hats while giving out candy. The other girls went Trick or treating with Friends and or were at their other parents for the week, Haley is the only one who stopped by our neighborhood, so I could take a picture. Matt, Anya & I sat on the front porch and roasted hot dogs and brats on the outdoor fireplace while giving out candy. We also roasted the little smoked sausages and put them on toothpicks to give out to the trick or treaters, and the parents who were with them. Anya now thinks this is how it is done, so we have started a tradition that will have to continue. She got very good at saying "Sausage or Candy, or both" oh and "Happy Halloween" all which was done in a scary witch voice followed by some really "scary" phrases in Russian, which normally set the kids running from the yard. Towards the end of the night we added our Ukrainian candy to the bowl, cause we were running low. We had a group of high school kids come by and take this candy, one kid stopped and recognized it as Russian candy. Turns out he and his family are Russians, immigrated here about 15 years ago when he was 3. His name is Anton and he lives here in Longmont. He and Anya spoke for a while in Russian and exchanged phone numbers. We are glad she met a friend but a little worried about him being male and two to three years older than her. We have since ran into the problem of her inviting him over with out our knowledge (because we can;t understand the phone conversations) and he shows up at the worst times and we have to ask him to leave. She has not figured out the concept of asking parents for permission, and family time. This happened one day when Jessica Carlson and Luba(who was adopted from Anya's orphanage last November) showed up to visit and welcome her home. Luba is 9 now. She loves Anya very much. Anya was rather upset after they left because Luba is no longer speaking Russian. Luba has decided she does not want to keep her Russian, Anya very much wants to and is afraid if she learns English and speaks it too much she will forget. Anyway it was very good to see Jessica and Luba and meet the new baby Rylee. She is adorable. (pictures of them are on the picasa site) I found out thru this experience of playing on the floor with Rylee that Anya would not handle me watching babies well at all. I am reassured of my decision to stop doing day care for the babies, was the right thing to do, even though I miss that a lot. Anya was upset with me giving attention to the baby and came down onto the floor with us and laid on my lab and told me SHE was MY baby! and then "no I not baby, but teenager" "Your teenager baby" and I agreed she is just like I said my teenage infant. Anya has talked to Kolya Hickman once on the phone.( he is another boy who came home from her orphanage over the summer, they also live here in Denver) She was happy that Kolya was speaking Russian to her. He has decided I am told to "Keep" his Russian. Wendy says he has a boy his age who is Russian and they get together often to play, I think that is great. Anya got to have lunch with Luda Weaver, Barbara daughter(16 adopted from Ukraine at 14) the first week we were home. This was soo good for her. She really loves the comfort of speaking to friends in her native language. I hope her and Luda become close friends. They live real close to us only about 20 minutes. We also introduced her to Leah, a girl who works at our King Soopers, she has been waiting to meet Anya for over a year. She too was adopted at age 14, she is now 18 but has kept the Russian language. We have had a little time with the Barrett's Johnny and Twyla and their two little ones of course still speak Russian. Anya really likes both Mari and Misha, but Misha is still a little shy of Anya. He won't talk to her much, but hoping that will change as we see them more. We had lunch with other good friends Richard and Cindy Houghton who adopted Adam last August from Ukraine. He is 6. Adam speaks mostly English now, and claims not to remember any Russian. I was told later that when the kids were down stairs playing games away from us parents, that Adam did in fact remember, understand and speak some Russian to Anya. That is very interesting to me. I just wonder what that is all about? And of course Nastiya Fields who came home on Saturday, Yeah!! They have talked once on the phone since then. Brian and Tami Fields were the couple that were in Mariupol with us and we all have become very close, Ukraine has a great way of bonding people. Not only did Matt and I bond with Brian and Tami, but Anya and Nastiya together because they were both going thru the adoption process together and they spent so much time during the Visits together, I hope we remain good friends/family for a very long time.

Anya has two weeks of lots of new people. She has meet and spent some time with most of our extended families which at times is over stimulating for her, and wears her out being introduced to everyone and all the cousins are overwhelming to her at times, but I think it is good to do a little at a time before the holidays hit. So our first two weeks has been a big mixture of good times, bad times, and lots of emotions, but over all it is good. We know it was the right thing to do and Anya is meant to be a part of this family. We have a lot of hard work ahead of us, but it is worth it and all the reward that is too come in her growing into a successful person will make all these trials seem minor one day.

Got to end now meeting Twyla for lunch to enjoy "my time" away from the ever present Anya. Posted some more pictures of her time home so far. I hope to write again later.