Day 5 of being Thankful

Today I am thankful for my daughter Olivia. We adopted Olivia from Ukraine when she was almost 10.

Olivia at her orphanage, she was a police officer in a play. In orphanages there are a lot of plays, it keeps the kids busy and is free!

A friend of Dan's, also a bereaved parent, had told Dan that he and his wife were going to go to Ukraine and adopt little boy. At the time, I thought they were out of their freaking minds! I couldn't understand how any bereaved parent could risk the pain of loving and losing again. That must have planted a seed in my mind because a few years later I told Dan that I wanted to adopt two girls. I guess I was twice as freaking crazy as Dan's friends because we adopted twice.

Olivia is from the Crimean peninsula. She was born in Donetsk. Her orphanage was in Simferopol.

First day in the U.S.

Surprisingly, Dan totally agreed to adopt. I think we were still in a grief fog following Amy's death several years earlier. A child's death never leaves the parents, never. It tool me several months to do our adoption documents. Every document had to be notarized and apostilled. An apostille is a state seal documenting that the notary is in good standing. Dan drove the documents to Harrisburg to get apostilled because we were afraid to lose them in the mail. Dan got to know the women in the Harrisburg office so well that they invited him to their Christmas brunch! The local notary notarized some of our documents for free because we were adopting an older child. I wanted to adopt girls that I could have had biologically. Our CPA also travelled to doctor appointments to notarize our documents. We took three trips to Ukraine to adopt Olivia. She was in a region in Ukraine that worked very slowly to process papers. There was so much wait time that we decided to fly home after we met Olivia. She was just the cutest thing ever. She was tiny, had crossed eyes and was skin and bones. She looked beautiful to us. All of the girls in most of the orphanages have very short hair. This is to prevent lice and because shampoo costs! Dan went back to pick her up for the third and final trip. I was surprised that Dan was so attached to her right away. When he went back to get her for the final trip, she was all wide eyed smiles. Here was this tiny little girl willing to go with perfect strangers who couldn't even speak her language. They landed in Philadelphia on June 2, 2007. June 2 is Amy's birthday. When I picked them up at the airport, Olivia was all wide eyed smiles. She was this tiny little thing riding in the back of the car and watching everything out the window! I was driving home thinking...............now, what do I do with her??When we got to our house, she followed Dan around like a little puppy. Ukrainians really have no concept of personal space. if there is a small hole in a line, they step into it. Olivia had no concept of personal space. Olivia liked to help me make dinner. She would be so close to me that she was almost an extension of my body. I had brought her clothes in Ukraine and more in the U.S. when Dan and she were still in Ukraine. I think I bought about 10 craft kits for her to do. She loved the new clothes and shoes! That first night, she just didn't seem all that tired but I put her to bed about 10 pm. After I put her to bed the first night, she got up and did every craft!! She brought them down at midnight to show them to Renee and me. Olivia loved everything about being part of our family. Everyday was something new and exciting for her. I put signs all over the house to identify items and for her to see what the letters in the word would look like. Every room had about 25 signs hanging on the wall, on the lamps, on the light switches, on the carpet, on the window, on the tables, etc. Everyday I would teach her more English, she just soaked it up! I think it is much easier for younger kids to learn a new language. She came home on June 2 but I still had to work. I had to teach summer school and I had to make up lots of hours from being away for the adoption. I enrolled her in a lot of summer camps.

Her first summer camp was at the YMCA. Fortunately for her, two girls in her summer camp group spoke fluent Russian. She loved camp. I also sent her to Agnes Irwin camp. I remember that I packed her lunch because the lunch at the school was very expensive. the first day I picked her up, she said..."Mom, restaurant in schola...hot dogs, soda, apples." Apparently, she decided to get in line with the kids buying lunch. At her orphanage, all the kids lined up to eat so at camp she got in line too because she was use to getting in line to eat. The school called me and I just told them to let her buy and I would pay the bill. What I remember most about those first few months was her saying to me..............."what we do now, Mommy?" And me thinking, "we've been DOING" for hours already. I want to sit my rear on the couch and read my book or watch TV! Olivia learned English so quickly! I think it was because she is so nosy and couldn't stand not knowing what Renee and I would chat about. She quickly learned how to dial Dan's office number and she would call him everyday at 4 pm and say "svim, daddy?"She couldn't pronounce the w in swim so it sounded like svim. Dan would come home and get in our ice cold pool and swim with her! She was so full of life and so joyful! Olivia was conversationally fluent before school started that Sept. of 2007. Her ESL teachers told me that they never had a student who learned English as quickly as she learned. I placed Olivia in fourth grade even though she had only completed first grade in Ukraine so she had a great deal to catch up as well as learn to read, write, and speak English. In Ukraine, kids start first grade at age 8. Olivia's grandmother had never sent her to school so she didn't start first grade until she was almost 9. She worked really hard to catch up in school. I don't think people really understand how hard it is for ESL kids to catch up. We are really proud of her. One of the kids in her class thought she lied about living in Ukraine because she knew her times tables so well. What the kid didn't know was that I drilled her everyday in the summer. The first day that Olivia came home from school, she said to me, "Mom, boys pee in sinks." She had mistakenly wandered into the boys bathroom and had never seen a urinal! The boys yelled at her to get out but she must have seen some of them urinating in the urinals! Every day was something new for her! It was so much fun for Dan and I to experience her joy and excitement!