Every 18 seconds, a child becomes an orphan. Lets not forget about them.

The children who are available for adoption in Ukraine are not allowed to be photographed and "published" for view due to current Ukrainian laws. This is meant to protect the children and eliminate the chances of unethical or illegal adoptions . That is why in my slide show you will not see any full view faces of the children from the desky dom.

Thursday, September 06, 2007

End of summer is here!

I have a lot to do yet tonight, but I thought I would check in and bring you up to date. Here are a few things that have happened lately...

We went to Northern Michigan and visited my great aunt and uncle who had not met Olena yet. We had a very restful and peaceful time. It was the refresher we needed. She was very well behaved and loved the idea that pretty much every waking moment of her days were spent outside.

I cut my hair off short, and I LOVE it. I had it short back when Jason and I started dating but I have let it grow out since then. I cut it on a whim and couldn't be happier. It is much easier and it is much prettier. I curl it in the morning, which only takes a few minutes, run my fingers through it and I am done. The best part is that it stays that way all day :) I love long hair but all I was doing was wearing it in a pony tail every day and I couldn't stand leaving it down.

Potty training was tried again and failed :( I am not getting frustrated because I can see that she is just not ready, but I am tired of paying for diapers. She just has no interest and has accidents all day long, and it doesn't phase her. I am getting pretty tired of cleaning up pee pee on my furniture. The pull ups feel just like diapers to her, she doesn't even flinch with the cold touch ones - and I can't find rubber pants small enough for her that actually hold the fluid in! It always runs out the legs. We'll try again in a few weeks.

Fall is around the corner! My favorite time of the year. And I am very excited about Olena experiencing Halloween. We have so many great orchards here in Michigan, my parents have a huge Halloween party which is always a lot of fun for the kids, we will be going to Huckleberry Railroad in Flint, and of course the fun of making her costume - well, my mom making the costume. She made everyone one of mine growing up and now she will continue the tradition and make Olena's. She is going to be a fairy - with a Halloween twist!! I am so excited!!! She loves wearing her wings around the house and loves the little fairy stickers that I put on the wall by her school desk so it seemed like the best idea. She is going to look so cool.

Not much progress in her learning since the last post. The pronunciation of her words is greatly improving however she has developed a pretty prominent stutter. It came out of no where. One day she started it and it was happening a lot. We had a feeling it was being done on purpose so we just ignored it. When it continued the next day, we started paying attention and would ask her to slow down when she was having trouble. It has now been about a week , and it is pretty frequent. You can even see her trying to "push" the word out. If you have ever seen the movie Paulie, about the talking parrot...her speech and actions are exactly like the little girl who stuttered. (No, Olena has never seen it.) I am assuming that her little mind is working a lot faster than her mouth can keep up. So I will wait it out. Strangely enough, I myself stuttered when I was a toddler, I out grew it before going into kindergarden and I am fine now. I will admit, every once in a while I will catch myself doing it. Seems she has "inherited" this from me! If anyone has any specific ideas as to what I can do to help her deal with it better please let me know.

That just about covers everything. I posted a few pictures below. Enjoy!






Is she Polish? or Ukrainian? In this outfit, I'm begining to wonder?


Can you at least crack a smile for me? Not a single one out of about 25 pictures would she smile for me. I was trying to capture the moment....she is 'wearing' her first set of side ponytails. Her hair is just long enough.


Doing school work praticing letters. This table is the best thing in the world. A family friend gave it to me, it was her girl's table. The top was marked up so I used chalk board paint - now she has a place to color for fun and to practice writing letters and drawing shapes. It is great when we are doing school work.

1 comment:

Tonya said...

She is adorable.

As far as the stuttering goes, a lot of young children stutter. All of mine did for a while. One of them (my oldest - strangely) did not outgrow it. He still stutters and he is 10. He isn't a true stutterer though so we are just going to let him deal with it in his own time. He doesn't seem to care and none of his friends care either so we are just leaving him alone. If she is still stuttering in another year and it bugs you, mention it to her pediatrition. They will tell you what you can do, but you are right in that her mind is working faster than she can speak right now. It will probably resolve itself.

Loved your post on cool things related to your adoption:):):)