Bye- Bye Detsky Dom, I'm Never Coming Back!!!!


Where to begin? The last five days have been challenging, to say the least. They have been filled with the highest highs and the lowest lows and everything in between. We spent the morning on Sunday at Disneyland, so Dasha could experience every little princess's dream. She must have picked her outfit out the night before, because when I told her it was time to get dressed for Disneyland (in English, no less), she got a huge grin and ran up to her new room. She flipped the closet open and pulled out a pair of jeans and a cute shirt without hesitating. Have I told you how much she loves her clothes????? We go through about 3 costume changes a day, and I now have to put her hair up in bows and ribbons before we can go anywhere. Such a cute girly girl! At Disneyland, we took lots of pictures at the front entrance, in front of the big Mickey Mouse face made out of flowers. Then we went to the Disney Town Hall to take her picture for her annual pass. We explained to her that she had to smile big, because this pass would let her come to Disneyland over and over all through the year. No problems getting a smile there. We walked down Main Street a little slower than she wanted to, but our coordinators, Vera and Medet were also enjoying THEIR first visit to Disneyland, so there were a lot of photo ops that had to be taken! Once we got to the end of Main Street, her eyes got as big as can be when I told her that we were going to walk through the castle. She was in heaven! We went on the huge carousel first (her request), and then told her we were taking her to a very special ride. We headed to It's A Small World. The day before, the whole park had been decorated for Christmas, and this ride gets completely decked out and changed up a bit for the holidays. The small world song is sung in a little medley with "Jingle Bells". My heart almost burst with joy seeing her little face light up as the lights and little dolls sang and danced for her. She kept grabbing my arm and pointing to the different things that she saw with delight. At one point, she was even swaying to the music and mouthing the words. A perfect experience. We went on several more rides, including the teacups - apparently motion sickness doesn't exist at Disneyland. We got ourselves lulled into thinking that this was not going to overwhelm her at all, as we had originally worried about. We were wrong. We took her on a Star Wars ride after having Vera explain everything about the ride and exactly what to expect. She took great care to explain that it was all pretend, and even though it would feel like it was real, it wasn't. Dasha said that she understood and that she wanted to go on the ride. Bad idea - turns out that children that have lived their lives in an orphanage have not really had the opportunity to go through the developmental stage that lets you differentiate fantasy from reality. She was terrified and clung to me as I told her in Russian over and over that it was alright, it was not real. I felt like the worst parent on the planet after that. Can you believe that I actually had the approval of two countries, social services, state police, the FBI, AND the INS to protect this child, and this is what happens???? Heck, as a psychiatric nurse, I even ran a children's psychiatric unit - I really should have known better. I was just so thrilled seeing the smile on her face and hearing her laughter that I didn't want it to end. After that, we took a break and had a little lunch. Once she stopped shaking, she got brave enough to try a food that she hadn't tried before - french fries. She loves french fries, so we now have about 5 foods in her repetoire.

Once that was over, she seemed to be okay, and actually started crying when it was time to leave, so I guess I didn't completely scar her for life. That evening was spent trying to be mellow. She loves the trampoline in our back yard, and we found out that it is the "great communicator". All four kids get on the trampoline and make up silly games that involve yelling out words or each other's names. Guess who yells the words out the loudest? That's right - looks like the quiet one actually does like to talk. She just needed the encouragement of her brothers and sister to bring it out of her. Up until this point, she was still not talking to Jeff or me, though. I decided to run to the grocery store to get a few things while Jeff and the kids were playing - another bad move. Apparently while I was gone, Jacob got hurt and started crying. This made Dasha nervous, as she saw Papa comforting Jacob, but not Mama. Jeff said it looked like she got so nervous that she got down off the trampoline and made a beeline for the house, probably to come get me. She was going so fast that she didn't see the screen door and ran right into it. This was all it took to throw her over the edge. Jeff had both kids on his lap, crying and crying. She took this opportunity to say her first words out loud to us. You will never guess what she said to Jeff while I missed the whole thing - she said "Mama". Jeff called me right then and there and told me I had better run through the store and get home. He put the phone up to her ear so I could talk to her and tell her in limited Russian that I was going to be right home and that I loved her. When I got home a few minutes later, she came running out to me and gave me the biggest hug of all time. That night she fell asleep on my lap and had the best sleep she has had since being home.

On Monday afternoon we took a trip to the beach so Dasha could see the ocean for the first time. She is truly Jeff's daughter, as she LOVED the beach. It was so much fun to watch her put her toes in the ocean with Amber and build sand castles while she tried to get a glimpse of Papa on his surfboard. I am so excited for her to be a little beach bum next summer - she will look so cute in a bathing suit!

Our family has been so sweet and supportive. They all wanted to get to see her, and we had a little welcome home party for her over the weekend. She is so overwhelmed and terrified by all of the changes in her life that she really didn't enjoy it until the very end when she started playing with some of the kids. Most of the night was spent on my lap and holding my hand. This is totally normal behavior for adopted children, especially children from orphanages. Actually, according to all adotion experts, we really should only be staying in our house with our nuclear family for a few weeks before even introducing her to anyone else. Not going to be able to do that one! I totally understand now, though, the reasoning for this. She is so frightened when people come over. She has no understanding of what is going on and whether or not these people are going to take her to their house, or what is going to happen. I have explained over and over (in Russian), Ya tvaya mama, vseech-da (I am your mama forever), but with the things that have happened to her in the last two years, there is just no way she is going to let herself believe that for a long time. For now, we just work on building trust. I remember years ago studying child development in college. Those stages of development from Erickson, the ones that start at birth with Trust vs. Mistrust, are really true. Orphanage children have not had the opportunity to even get through the first stage, and with Dasha's history of being abandoned several times, by more than one family, it is even more severe. This is why for so many reasons, having her home is so close to having a newborn again. It is very important that she learns to trust her parents to do things for her, everything from getting dressed to feeding her. It sounds silly, but until she is able to experience the nurturing that babies normally get from their parents, she won't be able to complete this stage of development. For now, that includes me putting her clothes on for her, even though she can certainly do it herself, and feeding food to her as often as possible. In the orphanage, children are expected to fend for themselves as infants, so children never learn to depend on an adult for anything. This is the boundary we are crossing now, and are making great strides.

Sleep time has continued to be hard for Dasha. She has never slept in a room by herself, and she is so frightened by the prospect that she just quietly cries as soon as we put her in bed. Of course, I can't let her be terrified, so I have taken to laying in her bed with her until she falls asleep and then going into our room. Five nights into this, she has had three nights where I wake up hearing her cry in the middle of the night and I bring her into our bed, and two nights of sleeping through the night. By sleeping through the night, I mean 4 am instead of 2 am. It is actually kind of sweet to be up with a new child again every day at that time. I know it sounds crazy, but I am one of those people that absolutely loved the early morning feedings with all of my other kids. There is something to be said about the bond that is made between a mother and a child at 4 am. Dasha and I have a regular morning routine for this time now. I take her to the bathroom first, and then we go downstairs on the couch. I get her snuggled up with a blanket and we watch Disney while she eats and drinks. She gives me the sweetest hugs over and over, and now she will even talk to me during these times. She whispers to me, still fearful of saying the wrong thing and having the same thing happen to her that happened before with the other family. I smile and tell her how much I love her, and she grins at me while she hugs me again.

Yesterday was Jeff's 40th birthday. He has been such a trooper this week. I know it is very hard to have a child here that is pretty much attached to my hip and not his yet. Of course, he is the superhero in the family, and he gets all the hugs and laughter, but for now, I am the one that does the comforting. She shows her love for him in different ways, though. I had all of the kids sign his birthday card, and after Dasha saw them all doing it, she jumped right in, too. I asked her to write her name in the card. She has the prettiest handwriting. She wrote "Dasha" in perfect cursive cyrillic. Then she wrote "Papa" on the front of the card, also in Russian. Then she really went to town and started writing all kinds of things on all the empty parts of the card. Some parts she was copying the English that we had written, and some parts she was writing words out of the "First Thousand Words in Russian" picture book. She took such great care in writing and making it perfect for her papa. It was definitely a great gift.

Today our coordinators left to return to Kazakhstan. Before they left, they wanted to take some pictures of all of us. At the end, they told Dasha that they wanted to take a picture of her sitting on her new bed in her new room waving to the camera. They asked if she wanted to say in the picture, "Bye Bye Detsky Dom - I'm Never Coming Back!" She enthusiastically shook her head "Yes!!!" and ran up to her room to get her picture taken with a huge grin on her face. I think she likes it here....