...And we're at it again!

After a lengthy hiatus to attend to life, the Niles Blog has returned!!

As many of you are aware, we have begun the process to adopt again! Over the next few weeks, I'll fill in the gaps over the past year, and share where we are in the process and what we expect to happen over the next few months. But for those of you clamoring for an update....

The Cliffs Notes Version:

While we were in Ukraine to adopt Masha in June 2007, we met her best friend, Lena. She was a very sweet and soft-hearted girl, always there with a smile and a hug. We would have adopted her on the spot if we could, but we learned that her family situation was such that she was not available for adoption. Masha remained in touch with her after we returned to the US, calling and sending letters and photos.

Over time, we learned that the Center (orphanage) was working through the legal details to allow Lena to be adopted, but we understood that process was very long, involved, and often unsuccessful. While we had hope for her to eventually become part of a forever family, we committed to stay in touch with her and share our love with her regardless of what happened.

Fast forward to August 2008, when we had the opportunity to host Lena for a 2-week visit in our home. We knew that her opportunities to participate in hosting programs was pretty limited, and we wanted to give her a chance to travel to the US, visit with our family, and shower her with love for the time that we could. After some very chaotic travel arrangements, she arrived in mid-August and returned at the end of the month.

And no, i did not blog. :(

As she was packing to return to Ukraine, though, we learned that there had been a significant change in her status, and that she had been declared adoptable by the Ukrainian court system!! We rejoiced, but definitely recognized that there were still many hurdles to clear before she could become part of our family, including a 14-month waiting period before she would be eligible for adoption to a country outside Ukraine.

We began the process to update our Home Study (the first step in any adoption process), and learned that new State requirements meant we had to obtain some additional background checks through the appropriate Child Protective Services division of each state that Mark or I had lived in. A couple of mine took MONTHS to come back, and so our update took MUCH longer than our original homestudy.

As soon as we got the homestudy documents, we were able to move to Step 2: submit our application to US Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS). We submitted that about three weeks ago, and we have an appointment to be a guest in their Indianapolis office to take our fingerprints and verify that our fingers haven't changed since last time we did this....

It generally takes them another 4 weeks to do what they do, so we hope to have their approval by the end of August. While they process our application, we will use the time to collect the many many other documents that Ukraine requires for us to submit as our application to adopt.

Just as with Masha, there is a risk that a Ukrainian family could choose to adopt Lena before she becomes available for international adoption. there is also a risk that we could be denied by the US or Ukrainian governments. While all of these risks are small, we are still praying that all goes smoothly!

If everything goes according to plan, we hope to be invited to travel to Ukraine late this fall.

Eight Months

Winter is heaving-to. It has clearly decided that it’s not going anywhere, and in the meantime, it’s going to have a bit of fun with us. In typical Midwest fashion, we’ve experienced the battle between Canada and the Gulf of Mexico, throwing their separate weather patterns at us and laughing as they wreak havoc on our lives and plans.

After a couple of 55-degree days a couple weeks ago, accompanied by flooding worthy of a live remote on Good Morning America, we are again looking at a blanket of fresh snow and sub-zero wind-chills. God has thumbed his nose at the school system’s allotted number of snow-days, and they have begun tacking time onto the end of the kids’ sentence. The school year has been extended one day…so far. Any more snow-days, and our first summer vacation will be in jeopardy.

Masha takes it all in stride. The Winter Meltdown retreat brought kids from three churches together with the staff from our new “positive” radio station (www.remedy.fm check it out – great mix of rock, hip-hop, and alternative with none of the toxicity that is soaked throughout the mainstream media!!) for a weekend of fun and fellowship in southern Michigan. She had a great time; the highlight seemed to be an afternoon of Extreme Sledding.

She has continued to excel in school. Her teachers are all working hard with her, and she’s catching up to her class more quickly than anyone expected. Her homeroom teacher believes that she’s learning English quicker than normal, and we believe him. She understands most casual conversation now; while we still run into new words, she is more and more able to figure them out through context. She constantly comes home with new phrases…her current favorite word is “seriously.” “Seriously, Dad, the dog is stinky.”

I have never seen a kid work so hard at schoolwork. It’s a challenge to get her started, but once she has some momentum, she can’t stop until she’s all done. Recently, we were looking up vocabulary words in the dictionary. And yes, I am making her use a REAL dictionary. With pages. And a cover. Like…a BOOK NOT typing the word into dictionary.com and seeing what comes up! What a horrible, horrible monster I am! Or so I’ve been told. But I digress…

Recently we were looking up vocabulary words at the kitchen table. We had a few minutes as Mark was finishing up dinner, so I figured we could get about half of them done. She fought me on looking them up, but after the first couple, she got in the groove. We were starting on #5 when Mark announced dinner. He set the table around us; she moved the silverware away. He put her plate of roast chicken ON the open dictionary; she handed it to me. I had to take the dictionary away so she would eat. She was late to Campus Life because we needed to finish. I can honestly say I never cared that much about my homework!!

In school, she is gaining more confidence and grasping more each day. She even volunteered to read out loud with her reading group last week!!

Overall, we could not be more proud of her. Of course we have 13-year-old moments. We have times when her plans clash with ours. She sometimes perceives our home as a democracy rather than a benevolent dictatorship. But Masha is a good girl. Open-hearted, kind, and generous. We watched a movie last night with a teenage girl who, when talking to her mother, called her father “your husband.” Masha was baffled. “Why does she call him this? He’s her father. She should call him Dad. That is not nice.” She deals with anger much more constructively that I do, and I’m learning from her. And she always apologizes. On her own.

God has blessed us indeed!

Happy New Year!!

Snow is an overused metaphor, but as I watch the flakes dance to the ground on the first morning of 2008, I see a clean white palette. A year of possibilities, opportunities—life, just waiting to be written.

As you can imagine, busyness got the better of us this fall. After meeting with the guidance counselor, Masha entered 6th grade on 16 August. Although she is slightly old for 6th grade, we hoped that easier, repeat content might give her the opportunity to focus on developing her English skills and acclimating to the American culture. Looking back, we definitely made the right choice!

At the six-month mark, her conversational English is great. She has opened up, and shares her thoughts with us…in fact, she had trouble sleeping a few nights ago, and woke Dad up for a 2-hour chat, covering every topic imaginable. She can follow most of the dialogue in movies and she’s even noticing different regional accents.

As expected, cognitive language and reading skills are lagging, but she’s learning quickly. She says she still thinks in Russian, but more and more, we are hearing instant reactions in English. She is staying in touch with several Russian speakers, and is maintaining her Russian, but she’s starting to struggle to remember some less-used Russian words. Her grades are right in line with class averages, and her teachers are working very hard to balance challenges with likelihood of success. They started out the year making significant accommodations for her, but she’s now taking many of the same tests and quizzes as her peers!

Social planning is a challenge; in typical 13-year-old fashion, she is loathe to plan ahead, instead opting for last minute sleepover requests. She has a couple of close friends, and is starting to get involved in activities with the church youth group. We’re trying to tread carefully, but so far, she’s falling in with great kids, choosing decent music (for the most part), and making good choices.

It’s interesting to see the difference between her relationship with both of us. She’s still pretty reluctant to share personal thoughts and feelings with Dad; she’s a perfectionist with him, and won’t share any work-in-progress… With Mom, she’s more open to talk about “girl-stuff.” But she also is a ferocious wrestler, and loves to roughhouse with Dad. Christmas break has seen the emergence of amateur martial arts, combining a couple of moves taught by Uncle Rob, more learned from watching movie fight scenes, and a few crazy, made-up actions successful only by brute force. The kid has no idea how strong or tough she is!

Overall, Masha is settling in better than we ever could have hoped. Of course, there are challenging moments for all of us. Unrealistic expectations, disappointments, homesickness, memories….but they are balanced with joy, accomplishments, surprises, and belonging. She is truly our daughter in every sense, and none of us can imagine life any other way.

So today, I reflect on the year that’s passed and the year to come, and I watch just enough snow to hide the sleeping grass and spilled birdseed, not enough to shut the city down. God knows how to kick off a year!!

Two Months

It's days like this that make life worth living. This morning, as we ate breakfast and bid my father and step-mother goodbye, Maria announced that she would like to go to Extreme Park. We told her that it might be a little expensive to fly all the way to Ukraine to go to Extreme Park in her hometown, but that we could maybe go to Fun Spot in Angola if she wanted...

School starts next week, so we were thinking about a last hurrah already. When she offered to pay for her own ticket out of her allowance, we realized she was serious!

The past few weeks have been a whirlwind. We are finally wrapping up the Twelve Days of Birthday. Thursday marked the final day of YMCA Day Camp, Friday brought shopping day with Nana. Maria will have three well-deserved days at home before starting sixth grade on Thursday.

She is facing this newest challenge with an appropriate mixture of anticipation and terror. She has taken the first tour of school, picked up her books, walked through her schedule, and learned her locker combination.

We will take her back to school on Tuesday to walk through the building one more time and meet with her guidance counselor to ask any questions that might be bugging her. She will have another girl in her grade who also speaks Russian, so she can help explain the subtleties of middle school culture. Further, all the kids in her sixth grade class are new to this school, so they will all be getting lost in the halls for the first week!

We expect the first few months to be challenging, but Maria is well equipped to meet that challenge head-on, and to beat it with a little time and patience!

Overall, things are going well. Maria is learning English very quickly...she is spontaneously using "cool" and "awesome" appropriately. She eats nearly everything in sight. She loves Hannah Montana and High School Musical. A pretty typical kid.

Of course, we have our teenage moments, but the battles we are having hardly differ from the ones you veteran parents have always been fighting. Occasionally, she shares a word or comment that reminds us of the trials she has faced in her short life; this is a gentle reminder to balance discipline and structure with love and fun. And I guess that's what being a parent is all about.

One Month

So much for "Update the Blog once a week" on my task list! Despite every effort to keep our schedule manageable and to avoid over-stimulation, I'm finding that there are no moments to spare. I thought we were busy before…

All of you parenting veterans will laugh your tails off at me, but I'm still holding onto the shred of hope that as Maria settles in and learns more English, she will become a little more independent, and I won't feel as obligated to be there ALL the time. I also suspect that as that happens, I'll get scared of her slipping away too fast and then really want to be there ALL the time. Laugh all you want, but you all have had the luxury of easing into this!!

All in all, I can't complain. We arrived home exactly one month ago, and Maria is settling in much better than we ever could have hoped. She is learning English very quickly, and has a good attitude about it most of the time. We are learning what works and what doesn't. We are not photographing every moment of our lives. We're settling into a routine, culminating last week with both of us returning to work and Maria beginning to attend Day Camp.

Today, I'm taking my first business trip since our return (and using the uninterrupted "quiet time" on the flight to write this). It's only a 2-day trip, but the tempest of emotion kept me up half the night. I thought perhaps this would be my equivalent to other mothers' "first day of kindergarten" stories…sobbing as I walked away from my little girl for the first time. Instead, it was the responsibility of the new routine that chewed my guts up and spit them back out. The worry of the things I should have done and didn't. We're out of milk. I didn't freeze a water bottle to keep her lunch cool. Is there a forgotten load of laundry molding in the washer?

I trust Mark. I am confident in his ability to keep things running in my absence. In fact, I suspect that Dad and his Little Girl will have a blast in my short absence (not literally, I pray). I just feel like I'm forgetting more than one something. I just have to remember that as long as he knows how to toast an Eggo (and he is capable of much, much more), the child will not go hungry!

So, aside from today's angst, things are great! Over the past month, we have been keeping very busy. We've visited Fun Spot amusement park (the bigger-than-Ukraine-but-small-for-America "Extreme Park"). We've made the 3-hour drive to visit cousins Morgan, Dylan, and Gavin and spend a day at The Beach waterpark in Cincinnati. We've seen fireworks for Independence Day. And we've been swimming. Oh, man, have we been swimming. Hardly a day goes by that we don't swim…the YMCA membership has been well worth the expense!!!

Maria has begun a short series of private swimming lessons, intended to catch her up so that she will be prepared for the Youth Conditioning team in the fall--a precursor to swim team season, which I've been told start in December. Her first lesson was last Friday, and we have been blessed with an instructor who has been an ESL tutor in a former life…so in addition to learning proper technique and strokes, we're learning the English words that Maria will hear from coaches and team members (well, the appropriate, sport-related ones anyway!) She is soaking it all in, and practicing her streamline glides to perfection.

We have a school tour scheduled for Wednesday so she can meet her guidance counselor, start learning her way around, and get mentally prepared for school to start in mid-August. We are still discussing grade placement with the school, and have not discussed school plans in-depth with Maria yet. We are pleased to see that her anxiety about school seems to be waning a bit, and at times she even seems excited about school starting. We'll see how long *that* lasts!

So I'll say it again (knock on wood), all is well. We are happy, she is healthy. Before we know it, summer will be over and school will have started. Pray for us!!!!