Moritz Adoption

Update Thurs/Fri morning

Thursday night (5/25)

Our reunion day with R finally came! Dan and I were so looking forward to it, but were also rather anxious about it. We found ourselves pacing our apartment with first-time-parent-jitters. At 8:45 pm we heard the knock on our door. We both ran to get it. Yelena was standing outside (our lawyer) and Regina was holding her hand. She looked petrified and tired. There was no recognition of us on her face. Her whole body seemed to shout, “What is next?”

She reluctantly came in and hung onto Yelena for dear life. We got down at her level and spoke to her. We helped her take her coat off and got out some toys to play with. After a few minutes of playing I took her hand and led her into the bedroom to grab some more toys. While in there I handed her the doll and she burst out into tears and wouldn’t stop. She just stood still and her body shook while tears ran down her face.Yelena spoke to her while we held her hands and tried to comfort her. She didn’t want anything to do with us. She just cried and cried. Yelena suggested we go to the park across the street for a bit of stress relief. It was a good idea. Regina loved it. We gave her a bag of cheerios to take along and some juice. That went over well. But it started to rain so we had to go inside, “back home”.

Yelena (and her 6 year old son who was with her---cute, cute boy) came up with us for a bit. She told me to get out a ton of toys and crayons and just start playing. So we did. We played with books, bubbles (she giggled so cute for them), a beach ball, crayons/paper, and a crinkly book. Yelena snuck out after a bit. Regina noticed about 5 minutes after she was gone and began crying intensely. I think she thought Yelena was her mom even though she’d only known her for an hour. She had been calling her Mama. (I am calling myself Mama Mommy so I can hopefully get her to say Mommy eventually. Mama is a generic term for any woman over here it seems. But she’s in love with her papa so we’re just going with it.)She also spoke her language though which is comforting to her. Nothing we did stopped her crying. She didn’t really want us to cuddle her and we don’t have enough of the language to be able to comfort her verbally. It really stinks. This crying continued for a good 30 minutes. We finally got her into the kitchen and offered her some snacks. We weren’t sure when she ate last. She wanted a cliff bar and some crackers. I got her some yogurt too. She seemed to enjoy it all and we played “feed each other” games for quite some time. She then played with some toys again in the living room off and on. We had her content with us for a good 45 minutes.

But it was 11 and we were exhausted. So we told her we were going to put on pajamas. She was not into this. I put mine on and showed her hers. No go. I tried to let her pick her own pajamas out of the 3 we brought. She wouldn’t do it. We tried to get her in the bathroom to go potty. Nope, not happening. We looked up all the night time phrases for bedtime and pajamas. Every time we took her pants down she freaked out and pulled them back up saying, “Nyet, Nyet”. (She had on tights, jeans, a long sleeve shirt, a short sleeve shirt, shoes, and a blue puffy coat. That’s a lot for a warm day.) So we finally had to take them off while she cried and cried. I put those clothes away and brought out pajamas. She would not put them on. So we put her in her bed w/o any clothes on, just her underwear. She cried hysterically for a very long time. Dan just laid with her and spoke Russian from what he could remember. He is much better with her because of the language. She does not want to sit in our laps or hug or hold our hands. She takes my hand off of her if I try to touch her or comfort her. But if you think about all the people that have abandoned her in the last 2 years….oh it just breaks my heart. Even the boat caretaker left her with Yelena. Then she just got to know Yelena and she left her with us. We just hope she can know from now on that she is with people that will not leave her. Even though our environment might change, we as the anchors in her life will not change.

But tonight was one of the most heartbreaking, helpless nights of my life. I don’t even think my daughter liked me and it certainly wasn’t the reunion evening we had dreamed about. There were many tears shed…and believe me, I wanted to cry along with her. It was horrible. This little girl needs so many prayers. All I could do was step away from the situation and pray for her every 20 minutes and for myself. I must admit that I was terrified and wondered what we had done. How will I ever be able to spend time with 4 children on a one-on-one basis?? It is not as if I didn’t expect to feel some of this but when it actually happens it’s different.

Regina wore herself out crying in bed. She was basically begging for her clothes back. We let her have her short sleeve shirt that she arrived in for sleeping. She even had on brand new undies. They must have brought out the best clothes for her arrival here. We are supposed to send them back to the orphanage with Yelena when she goes next week. I don’t know if Regina will put on anything else for us. She probably loves her special clothes and maybe we should just let her wear them. All I know is that we felt like total first time parents last night. We didn’t know what the heck we were doing. We kept offering advice and suggestions to one another. I have to give Dan so much credit though. He’s completely dedicated to her and patient and will try anything to connect. I think I just got frustrated and tired. We never could get her into the bathroom so we didn’t fight it. We took turns laying with her and eventually she fell asleep at midnight with me on the floor laying my head on her bed. She did not want me to touch her but she did put her hand on my arm every once in awhile to make sure I was there. I didn’t acknowledge it. I just laid still as if I were asleep. But it did mean a lot to me. She dozed off while scratching a million mosquito bites all over her little body (most have been from the long boat ride…can you imagine a 14 hour boat ride in Russia??) Dan and snuck in about 20 minutes later and put a pull-up on her just in case she wet the bed. We certainly didn’t attempt to brush her teeth or anything. But her teeth do look a little better. She sounds exactly like Holden when she sleeps. I miss the boys so much.

Friday, May 26^th (morning)

Dan and I went to bed at 12:30 AM but we had a restless night. We just felt like we were on alert the whole evening in case Regina woke up and got scared. She did sleep through the night and did not even wet her pull-up. I have no idea why she doesn’t have to go to the bathroom. Maybe she’s scared of the way the toilet looks here. We will hopefully get help with this with the translator later today if she still hasn’t gone yet. She does not seem hungry yet. She woke up at 7 AM and just laid in bed with her play cell phone for a very long time.(She adores this toy to pieces. It talks and rings and you press buttons, etc… It was a last minute item I threw in the suitcase. It is her toy forever now. Of course she came with no photo album or toys we’d given her in December. But she sure did enjoy looking at the photo album I had brought of us, the boys, grandparents, and R/L from trip one.) She seems to understand that you stay in bed at night and don’t get out.Even when crying she stayed in there and never left and this morning she just got up and started playing with her phone while laying in bed.

SHE JUST WENT POTTY!!!!! I heard her in there with Dan. YES! Ok. That’s a huge step. I guess she’ll just go when she has to. Thank goodness. I was really worried about that. I bet Dan was freaking out that he just took a little girl to the bathroom. J

Ok. So no tears this morning. She is happy with her toys and is dragging Dan all over the place. I will fix oatmeal and yogurt for her in a little bit here. She has a horrible cough. I wish I had some antibiotics for her or cough syrup or something. I brought Tylenol and motrin. We will try to put some clothes on her next. I don’t know if she’ll go for the ones we brought. If not, we’ll just let her wear the other ones again. I will buy new for the orphanage if she likes them that much. But the shoes were in bad condition so I sure hope she likes the ones we brought.

Regina does look a bit taller and she has definitely thinned out. She needs a bath really bad but we’re not going to attempt that yet. She needs to know us better and trust us. Her bed head will be interesting to deal with today. Her hair is longer and lays better.

Tired parents today….thank goodness we only have one child at a time. I can’t imagine doing this with 2 children who are frightened to death. Please pray for Regina and for us. We could really use it. This isn’t exactly what you picture when you adopt. It was like the first night home from the hospital with a newborn. Unpredictable. It’s just hard to see someone experiencing so much sadness and fear and not being able to do anything about it. What was a happy day for us was one of the worst for her.

No one seems to know when Lilia is arriving. She was supposed to come on a 2 pm flight today but it sounds like maybe she’s coming on a small ship too. She is apparently only 6 hours away by car/boat. They are just trying to figure out how to get her here. It is probably best if we have a day or two with Regina though first. We’ll keep you up to date on the latest with Lilia. We expect her to cry a lot…since she did cry the first time we met her. But maybe it will be a bit easier for her since she’s not really conversing yet. Regina is talking to us a lot in Russian but we only und

posted by Dan @ 6:16 PM