Tag: Adoption

Two Months

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Sofie has been home for two months now! I’m not entirely sure where the time has gone. Days seem long but they fly by! I can’t get over how quickly Sofie is developing. This month has been filled with new feats that Sofie has accomplished and new experiences for her.

Sofie is getting to sleep so much better which makes for a happier baby and a happier family! We’ve just started putting her to bed a little earlier, on top of the new lullaby regime. We were always having to wake Sofie up in the morning in order to get her down for a nap on time and wake her up from her nap in order to get her down for bed at an okay time. For three days now we’ve put her to bed at 7pm and she is waking up just before 8am by herself! She is ready for nap time at 12:30pm which we are still trying to get better at so she can wake up by herself between 2:30 and 3pm. Livi is going down for her nap around 1pm until about 2:30pm and bed at 7:45pm (she reads until 8ish) to wake up at 7:30am. All in all, we are pretty happy with how this whole sleep thing is finally working out! Hooray! We have our evenings and afternoons back! It only took two months! I hope it lasts…

Sofie’s language is also taking flight. She consistently calls me Mama now and is starting to try to say Dada. She says baba for baby and bye bye usually mimicking us. She is also starting to say Ha (Hi) more consistently too! She understands English so much better than I could have hoped. It is completely amazing how quickly she picked it up. I’m not even convinced that she has any trouble understanding us anymore… well, at a 1 year olds developmental level anyway. She can follow simple verbal instructions like “no” and “arms up”. She gets tickled when she puts her arms up! When we say no to something she shows us that she understands by gently motioning what it was she wasn’t supposed to be doing while shaking her head ‘no’. Then she may or may not repeat the action with full force 🙂

Sofie is hitting and pulling hair WAY less but still grabs and throws anything she can get her hands on. I barely see her rock like she used to anymore. She barely pulls her own hair. She still clicks her teeth and jaw sometimes but that has lessened too. She is much more gentle and you can tell that she is feeling more secure. She still has no problem going up to strangers but she always comes back to me and wants me when she is upset, so I think the attachment stuff is going great too!

She still doesn’t chew food, suck a straw or drink with out spilling and we are still waiting to see a feeding ans swallowing OT but she is eating great. We just have to make sure the food is small and softish. I meant to weigh her today but forgot… so I’ll do it tomorrow and update this 🙂 She sure has chunked up though! She is 22.5 pounds! Up a pound since last month and up 3 lbs since we first got her!

Sofie still loves music. She hates sweet potatoes. I know! Weird kid. She likes her space but wants people around. She prefers adults to kids. She likes to clap, dance and eat! She eats a lot now 🙂 She loves playing with her baby dolls and Mommy! She LOVES getting ‘tossed’ around and tickled. I think she is going to love roller coasters! Can’t wait to see her smile and hear her glee while her heart is racing and I’m trying not to die from the side lines!

Belated One Month

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I missed blogging about Sofie’s one month, so here it is!

Sofie has been home in Canada for over a month now and out of the orphanage for 6 weeks. I’m celebrating the one month from being in Canada because that is when we really felt like our adoption journey had ended and when we started seeing Sofie begin to develop. It has been such an eventful month. My entire life has completely changed! Some things are much more difficult than I had hoped they would be, but most of it is easier. Things are starting to calm down though. Sofie definitely has her fussy, grumpy days but for the most part we are on a schedule and things are getting a little more predictable.

Sofie has exceeded our expectations. She is now 22lbs, which is over 2 lbs up! Most of that has been in the last two weeks since she has begun to eat “real” adult food. On September 3rd she was still 20.6 lbs and was refusing to eat the baby food for her dinner so I decided to try and see if she’d eat what I was eating. She couldn’t get enough and hasn’t stopped since! She still doesn’t chew probably so we have to be careful about the size but the textures don’t seem to bother her too much! She is rather particular though. She will usually only eat off our plate. We’ve tried to trick her a few times in to eating the baby food I still have, so she has some trust issues 🙂 She thinks if it is in her bowl then we are giving her baby food. Oops. Her development in the food area is amazing. I can still not get over how fast this transition was, especially with how big of an issue it was for her in Bulgaria!

She still has a bit of a hard time getting to sleep but this is slowly getting better. We have her on a strict schedule of up at 8am, nap 1-3pm and bed 8pm. We generally have to wake her up in the morning and at nap but if we let her sleep until she wakes up she will not nap at a decent time or go to sleep really late. She generally takes about an hour to relax enough to get to sleep. During this time we lay beside her crib, reassuring her, singing lullabies and modelling sleep 🙂 The time to get to sleep is lengthened if she has been overstimulated during the day but in recent days we have had her asleep in 45 min! There have even been a few 30 minute down times and one 15 min! One particularly bad day we did give her a few drops of melatonin. It works really well for her. She goes straight to sleep with it. I think I’m okay with using it sporadically for her on rough days. She needs her sleep! Once she is asleep she generally sleeps the night through. There has only been a handful of nights where she has woken up crying. I love being able to teach her that I will always be there and come to her!

Sofie smiles every time we come in to the room. It is priceless. She is smiling and responding to us a lot more now too. It is quite awesome to see. She is a little moody though and can give the most deadly glares. When she is upset, mad, or frustrated, everyone knows it! She hits what ever or who ever is closest to her when she is mad and she can hurt! We are slowly figuring it out though. We remove her a few feet from what ever she is hitting or put her down. She usually yells at us then, but once she signs to us that she will be gentle she can come back up or get close again. Not sure if that is in any of the parenting books but it is working. I don’t think she is ready for time outs or anything like that yet. Once she starts using her voice to talk, things should get a lot easier! Not sure if that is coming any time soon though.

She did say Mama though! On September 11 she was starting to cry in the hallway and called for me! Yay! She only says it when she is upset but she is saying it. It is the beginning! She understands a lot of English now, particularly when we are telling her not to do something 🙂 Her thin hair patch is almost gone. It is filling in nicely. She rocks far less. We only see her rocking now when she is listening to music alone or when she is winding down to get to sleep in her crib. This is also a huge advancement. She rocked ALL the time in Bulgaria. She also clicks her jaw way less too!

Livi has been adjusting really well too. I think these last two weeks have really been great for her. She has realized Sofie is here to stay and her classes have started. She is in gymnastics on Wednesday nights and gets to go with one parent and no Sofie. She LOVES gymnastics and has been talking about it all summer. She is in the kindergym class now and doesn’t have parent involvement. She is such a big girl! Her dance class has also started which she also really enjoys. We’ve pushed that these are things only big girls get too do and she takes a lot of pride in that. I think it helps her to have something that only she gets to do.

Livi is a very doting sister, most of the time. She helps out a lot in getting things for me to help with Sofie and  likes playing with Sofie, even if Sofie doesn’t usually like Livi in her personal space. They are both learning each other’s boundaries though. Livi does get easily frustrated with Sofie but doesn’t like it if any one else does, even Jon and I. If we use our “stern” voice, Livi is the first one to remind us that Sofie is just a baby and doesn’t understand. Just the other day I was telling Sofie not to touch the TV and she was not listening. Livi could hear I was getting frustrated. She turned too me and put her hand up saying “I can handle it. I can handle it.” I wasn’t sure if it was a smart parenting move to let her handle it but she was so sure of herself and I thought it was too funny to step in.

Another precious sister moment was last week. Livi had woken up first, like she usually does, gone to look in Sofie’s crib. When she came over to our room I asked her what she was doing.
“Just looking at Sofie.”
I asked, “What were you thinking?”
Livi said, “Just thinking that Sofie is so beautiful.”
My heart melted a little bit.

All in all, this first month has been really great. We are getting a routine figured out. Sofie is attaching really well and Livi is feeling loved and cared for too! Now if Jon and I could only figure out how to have energy to spend some quality time together we’d be set! I can’t wait to see how well the next month goes!

Sofie’s Blessing

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Today we celebrated the end to our adoption journey and the beginning of our newest parenting journey. My sisters helped throw Sofie a Welcome Home party! Around 40-50 of our closest family and friends were able to join us. It meant so much to us that everyone made such an effort to come out and meet Sofie. Sofie did really well with all the people there. She started getting fussy about 2 hours in but calmed right down when I took her inside for a break.

During the party we took a little time to incorporate Sofie’s Blessing in. If you were reading my old blog when Livi was a baby you’ll already know what this is. If not, I’ll recap for you….

We have decided to do Blessings for our children instead of the typical Evangelical child dedications or the Orthodox baptisms. For Jon and I, being raised Evangelical, we both never really liked dedications. I couldn’t wrap my mind around how I could dedicate a child to God who was already so completely and obviously of God and from God already. It didn’t sit well with me. I also don’t love the idea of having a dedication in a large church setting with people there who are not in your close community. In Evangelical dedication services that I’ve been too, they always have a part where the church affirms they will support the parents and hold them accountable to rear their child in a Godly manner. I’m sorry, that is just opening up a whole can of worms that I have issues with. Most of the church goers, in my experience, are not going to actually support the parents, so why vow to? If anyone who is not in my close community comes and tells me I am not raising my kids right or in accordance with their ideas of Godly rearing, there is going to be some very pointed and harsh words spoken. It is not their place. As for a baptism, this was more my issue. I just can’t get totally on board with the theology behind an infant baptism, though I have no problem with other people choosing this.

A Blessing, for us, is a much better choice. We invite our friends and family, who we know are in our community who do and will support us. Because we have not really had any special bond with our church pastors, we have our closest friends do the blessings. This is also in part because when we did the Blessing for Livi as a baby, Jon’s dad had just died and he would have done it for us. So, we needed our close friends involved to help fill that void. We chose to have the blessings in three parts. Blessing the Child, Blessing the Parents, and the Pastoral Blessing for the whole family. It is such a special and unique experience for us that seems to be catching on with our friends too!

Geoff was Jon’s room mate all through college, best men at each others weddings, and have remained ‘hetero-life mates’. He is also our most “pastoral/religious” friend so he was the obvious choice for the Pastoral Blessing. He opened up the ceremony and closed it with some words of affirmation and a prayer.

Brent was also one of Jon’s room mates in college and we have remained good friends through out the years. Jon and Brent both met their wives in their college years and Mary and I have become good friends too! They are so good to us and help push us out of our comfort zones, which Jon and I need every once in a while. We asked them to do the Blessing for the Child. Mary made a beautiful quilt for Sofie as part of the blessing that will be treasured. Brent also read a poem to go with it.

Patchwork Quilt
This family is like a patchwork quilt
With kindness gently sewn
Each piece is an original
With beauty of its own
With threads of warmth and happiness
It’s tightly stitched together
To last in love throughout the years
This family is forever.
– Unknown Author

Ben was another roommate of Jon’s in college and the same as Brent, met his wife in his college years. All 6 of us have remained quite close through these last 10 years. Ben and Danielle became parents just a few months before we did, both times! So, they were the obvious choice to do the Blessing for the Parents 🙂 Ben gave some words of wisdom and Danielle read a poem as well as gave some rocks with significant words of blessing written on them. The words were Space, Rest, Breathe, Release, and Gentleness. I’ve needed each of these things in the past few weeks and I’m sure in the coming years!

The Way
It is in spaciousness
That we breathe
Find stillness to rest in
Allowing what is
To be
Letting go of expectations
And embracing gentleness
As the way to truly heal
Opening and softening
We become
This is how we unlearn our way back to God.
– Lisa A McCrohan

All in all it was a fun party! My sister made a super amazing ladybug cake. She’s been taking some cake decorating lessons and getting really good at it! The weather was amazing and we had the kid’s pool out. I don’t know what we would have done if it had rained. We felt so blessed by all the love and support we received from people. We truly are one lucky family. My only regret was that I didn’t get to talk with everyone. I said goodbye to some people before I said hello to them. It is very different visiting when I have to attend to two little ones who need my constant attention and get in to everything!

Life is definitely full right now. Exciting, challenging, adventurous, difficult, joyful, fun, and frustrating all wrapped up together. I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I love my life, my husband, my girls, my family, and my friends 🙂

Livi got a few gifts at the Blessing too. 
This apron was from her Uncle Tony and Aunt Lisa. 
They searched high and low for this gift and it was much appreciated by Livi!