Vera--10 years ago

I found the original information sheet we received about Vera from the adoption agency, dated April 2003, a year before we found her. It was so fun to read the description of her personality, to see the enduring characteristics as well as catch a glimpse of parts we never really experienced:

"The child is energetic, inquisitive and curious. She enjoys classes, music, PE and role plays. Follows instructions of caretakers accordingly and willingly. She is obedient.

Vera is a character. She is a leader and wants to be in the center of attention. Quite selective in relationships, especially with adults.

Loves to play with dolls, put on and off clothes, likes putting the dolls to sleep and feeding them. She has favorite toy dishes. She sets up a toy table, put the dishes and uses her imagination really well in this role play. Sometimes uses different bottles, tins and other stuff to replace the dishes. Vera expresses interest in books. She carefully watches each page with pictures and illustrations. Tries to be neat, turning over pages. She shares toys with others, but mostly those toys that are of no interest. She will not give up toys she plays with or loves best. Can put on and off clothes, but can't button up. Washes her face, hands, uses soap and a towel. Eats independently. Picky eater."

(From the adoption facilitator, Marina) "The girl looks good to me. I videotaped her dancing, eating, washing hands, combing her hair in front of the mirror. She showed me her towel, jumped on the trampoline, waved hello and goodbye. The girl looks really happy. Both caretakers love her much. Supply manager says she is her favorite and often brings treats to her. Vera comes to her office often and has special feelings towards this lady. She smiled to me, answered my questions (yes or no), followed all my requests patiently."

Having seen so many children with Ds come home from orphanages in such a neglected state, these descriptions are glorious and amazing. She had access to toys and books and exercise and loving caretakers. She was special to someone...was a favorite!

I was sad to read two sentences, though: "[Mother's name] and [Father's name] signed up the letter of relinquishment on April 22, 1999 because of Down's syndrome diagnosed. The girl arrived to the Infant's Home at age of 2 months, 19 days."

They had her for 80 days. I wonder how they processed that loss, how was the leaving, the parting, accomplished? I wonder if it might have made a difference to have the information I just shared, to know their girl would be such a character, a really happy girl? I think of them often and wish I had a way to ease any hurt they may still have in their hearts. Adoption is always a chiaroscuro--filled with light and shadows, joy and pain.

I read the information at dinner tonight and Vera, of course, knew we were talking about her, her adoption. She got "the look" on her face, the one that says she knows she is special to all of us, she is still a favorite, and she solemnly came over to bury her face in my neck and tell me she loves me.

Vera has been our daughter for 3090 days. I could write a book filled with observations and stories about her and I am so grateful for that privilege. She is still a leader, still the center of attention when she needs to be, and oh my, what a character, full of light.

My new favorite Christmas card

Yesterday, when I visited my new friend Renee's blog, I found she had left me the most wonderful Christmas card. Of course, I had to show it to you! As you can see from the video, Renee is adopting a darling little girl, but those who are still waiting weigh heavily on her heart, as they do mine.

Enjoy...but don't forget the tissues!

Make photo slide shows at www.OneTrueMedia.com

And the winner is....

I had a giveaway. Sophia was blessed! Now it's my turn to bless those who were able to give during this busy and often expensive holiday season. I wish I could bless you all but I suppose I'll need to leave it up to Jesus, who has much better gifts at His disposal than we do down here. ;-)

Here are the entrants:

Here is Alex choosing (and Luke choosing to act goofy, knowing I would post this):

And...the moment you've all been waiting for...Alex shares the winner:

 Luke is giving you a hand, Carrie Joy!! You won!!! Go take a gander again at Laura Lu's photographs and tell me which one you want (although I seem to recall something about a barn) and which size would work best for you (I think it would look best in the larger size unless you have a small spot in mind to hang it). You can message me on facebook and we'll get 'er done so you'll have it for Christmas. Oh, and don't forget to give me your address! As soon as I get it your picture will be ordered from Laura and your book from amazon!

All four of the ladies who contributed are so special to me. CJ is one of Reece's Rainbow's biggest cheerleaders, often beating me in posting information about RR on facebook. Sarah, through her etsy shop, has contributed financially to numerous RR adoptions (and I have the necklaces to prove it!). Tina has long since inspired me with her family's generosity and loving ways.

Last, but certainly not least, Megan has become my new friend. Not just because she's a sweetheart, although she is, but because....

MEGAN IS ADOPTING SOPHIA!!!!

You can check out her blog here!! Megan is a single mom-to-be and has really stretched herself and her trust in God to help her through this expensive adoption. I can see already that it is true love that compels Megan toward Sophia and that is precious to see. She is head over heels in love with our darling little Sophia and I can see she's ready to move mountains to bring her home. Isn't that exciting news? Megan may not have won the giveaway but she's certainly getting the prize!!

Thank you, truly thank you all, from the bottom of my heart! Your generosity humbles me.



3 pictures of Wilson!

He's even more irresistible now! What a doll!! He's at such a great age to come home to a family, having just turned 2 in October.

I just know someone's going to fall in love with those big brown eyes and blond hair. I just know they'll want to see God work and move mountains to bring this little guy home. I just know someone is dreaming of being cheek to cheek with him, feeling his chunky little hands pat them on the back as he starts to understand what hugging is. I just know someone wants to put some chub on that skinny little belly so they can blow raspberries on it. I just know someone wants to plop him into a big warm bubble bath and wrap him up in the softest towels, just to let him know he has a soft place to land now. I just know someone has some soft fleece jammies for him to wear as they slide him between clean sheets in his own bed and tuck him in after bedtime stories and prayers. I just know someone wants to tell him that Jesus loves him, in word and in deed.

I just know someone is wishing for a little boy who will love unconditionally, smile often, laugh more, stay little longer, need his mommy a little more, try harder to reach his milestones and keep the empty nest from emptying quite so soon.

God has a family for Wilson. I just know it's you.

Eastern European Orphanages and Down syndrome

My least pleasant post to date. I can't help it. This is going on in our world, today. While I was feeding my children steak, potatoes, salad and cheesecake yesterday in celebration of Luke's birthday, these children were surviving, only just, in these conditions. This is why I share pictures of children with Down syndrome available for adoption.

The video below is 9 seconds long. This is what happens to children left in orphanages or, worse yet, mental institutions in former Soviet bloc countries. This could've been Vera.

The video below shows Serbian children and adults in mental institutions in a report by NBC. You are seeing (if you choose to watch it) real people, who feel pain, who are hungry, who could feel love, who have no sense of worth any longer.

This video is of Bulgarian orphans, emaciated and weak while their fat nurses hover around and treat them roughly. It isn't in English but that hardly matters. Skip over the interview in the middle and you can see the nurses bathing one of their charges. Heartbreaking hardly seems a strong enough word.


To be sure, not every orphanage in Eastern Europe is this bad. To be sure, almost every mental institution is close to this bad, and that's where our children with Down syndrome will end up if they aren't adopted or, in rare cases, returned home to their birth parents.

I honestly have only one response to videos of this sort, of which there are many:

Come quickly, Lord Jesus!

Ignat

№ m6v6

Magadan Region

Ignat Yu

Brothers and sisters no

Date of Birth: April 2001

Gender: Male

Eyes: Blue

Hair: brown

Character: calm

 
After my post about finding Vera, I realized I could look at the Russian photolisting for her city and see if I recognized any of the children on the listing. I didn't find the beautiful girl with the disfigured hands but I did find Ignat, the little boy who was listed alongside Vera on The Shepherd's Crook website.

We met Ignat in Magadan's baby house when he was 3 years old. He's 9 years old now. Wow.

He looks great, doesn't he? So sweet. I wonder where he is. Theoretically, when he turned 7 he should have gone to live in a mental institution. Did he? Doesn't seem like he did, since he is still on the photolisting. Has this poor, remote city once again decided to go against the grain and find something better for their special needs kids? I wish I knew. The facilitator we used to adopt Vera has since moved to St. Petersburg. Last I heard, the only agency that even placed kids from Magadan was an agency in Alaska, and when asked they were not interested in helping Ignat find a family.

If volunteering with Reece's Rainbow has taught me nothing else, it's that you must continually remember that God loves these children more than we do. Sometimes we have to push and push to find homes; sometimes we have to accept that God's ways are higher than our ways.

Finding Vera

October is Down Syndrome Awareness Month. Many of my friends whose children have Down syndrome take this opportunity to blog about it daily during October. I'm not a terribly consistent blogger in the best of times, but I thought I might try it, too. Yesterday was certainly the perfect way to kick it off as we celebrated the entrance of daughter #2 with Ds into our family. Today, I thought I would write a bit about the long process to even find Vera.

A few months after Emma was born and we were still in Canada, I started wondering about what happened to kids with Down syndrome in Russia. When we adopted Alex, we had been given several videotapes of Alex in his group and often there was a little girl with Down syndrome in the background. When we arrived to adopt Alex, however, she was not in his group. That orphanage evidently liked to shuffle kids and caregivers often. John and I were both disappointed that she wasn't there. Looking back, I think it's funny that we wanted to see her since we didn't even have a child with Ds then.

Back to Canada. We now had sweet little Emma and my mind turned to the little girl in Russia. I wondered if kids with Ds ever made it to adoption photolistings (which were still fairly new and small). I got online and started doing searches like "Down syndrome Russia" or "Down syndrome adoption Russia" or even "Down syndrome adoption." I never found a single child with Ds available for adoption during that time.

I did find something else, though: a report by Human Rights Watch on the treatment of children with Down syndrome in Russian orphanages, complete with pictures of their emaciated bodies, twisted limbs and vacant expressions. Mercifully, the report also included a happy ending of sorts. A doctor had gone into this orphanage and taught the workers to feed these children (the orphanage way of feeding does not always work in children with low muscle tone and they end up being unable to eat solid foods), to work on exercises to improve trunk strength, mobility, and other skills that had been ignored. The report ended with pictures of bright children now walking and plump, smiling and happy.

Nonetheless, those pictures of the children--clearly unloved, unwanted, discarded--stayed with me. It will surprise no one when I say that I sobbed and sobbed the first time I saw those children. I was sick to my stomach for days. I think John was actually worried about me. Problem was, every time I might get it out of my mind for a moment it would be time to hold Emma, change her diaper, do her therapies with her. I would imagine her, fragile and needy, abandoned in a place that wouldn't do a thing more than they absolutely had to for her, and my heart would fall again.

For the next almost three years I would still periodically do a search for orphans with Down syndrome in Russia. One day, one glorious day, a new site showed up in my search: The Shepherd's Crook. I clicked on the link and found descriptions, but no pictures, of two children with Down syndrome in Russia who needed homes. The little girl was almost 5 and the boy around 3: Vera and Ignat.

So, did I immediately know that Vera was MY Vera? Nope. All I knew is that I wanted to see her picture and The Shepherd's Crook had a wonderful way for me to do so: I could request a prayer card for her and they would print her picture, birthdate and name on it! That prayer card is still hanging on my refrigerator today! It's a funny picture of Vera as a 2-3 year old and she's obviously talking. I still didn't necessarily think that she was the one, but I knew I wanted to pray for her and for Ignat (whose prayer card I also received).

One day, while perusing The Shepherd's Crook website as usual, a picture popped up next to Vera's description!

And that, sports' fans, is when I knew I was looking at my daughter. All the air was just sucked from my lungs and as per my usual, I cried. I don't know why the earlier picture didn't grab me (the exact same thing happened with Ella, too) but I can guess that for whatever divine reason, this was the day God chose to remove the scales from my eyes, as it were.

It took God a couple more weeks to remove the scales from John's eyes (John can have some thick scales when it comes to adoption; I have thick scales when it comes to, well, almost anything of a practical nature). After a couple of weeks of praying and fasting, we felt God leading us to adopt Vera. I will never forget making that decision on a Sunday and having to wait until mid-morning Monday to call the agency in Seattle. I was so nervous! What if someone else had decided to adopt her, too, and had called before us! That picture would surely have moved hearts all over the country, right? How could you miss the potential, the beauty, the sweetness?

As it turns out, not one person had ever even called to ask about her. Not one, other than us. But one was all she needed.

Happy 6th Adoption Anniversary, Veronika!

Today is the day! Our family grew by one amazingly wonderful little girl by decree of a Russian judge in Magadan, Russia. Although Vera was still too young to have any say in the matter, several of the ladies who worked in her orphanage (including the supply manager who had a soft spot for Vera and brought her special treats) came and testified that the judge needed to give Vera a chance to live in a family, needed to give her a chance to blossom as they knew she could.

Vera should have gone to a mental institution when she turned 4, but because they were afraid she would take over the mental institution she was so amazingly wonderful and smart the orphanage was able to send her to the orphanage for slightly older children, which is where she was living when we discovered her. God made provision for her to remain available for adoption, knowing we wouldn't be aware of her until she had already turned 5. God made provision for her to have people in her life who saw value in her, especially the supply manager. I have the sweetest picture of Vera being held by that lady on the first day we met Vera. You can just see the mix of joy for Vera and sadness at her departure.

 
We were able to visit and tour the baby orphanage where Vera lived her first four years. They were so sweet and were trying so hard to give those babies stimulation, even while living in a town that was amazingly poor, even by Russian standards. We'll never forget the newborn room--18 babies and one worker. Can you even imagine? Nonetheless, they had dedicated one room of the orphanage to stimulation. They had a disco ball, nature music, a bean bag chair, flashing lights...I have no idea where they got the idea that this was the sort of stimulation these kids needed but like I said, they were trying.
 
Vera's orphanage was also trying. They had a giant inflatable bounce house type thing in the main room when we arrived. No kids were on it, but it did look used. Vera's group had a play room with lots of toys and they were actually played with (something that doesn't always happen). Most importantly, when Vera's group went out to play the workers played with them. That's not to say the kids weren't needy; they lapped up our attention. They weren't frantic, however, and that's important.

 
One sad moment has stayed with me over the years: a beautiful, beautiful, girl of mixed Caucasian/native Siberian origin (think Enuit) walked up to me, holding out her hands for me to see that they had been injured. Our facilitator/interpreter told us she was wanting us to bring her home, too, and showing us how much she needed a family because of her disabled hands (her parents were neglectful and had let her wander out of their home in the Arctic Circle, barely dressed, and causing the severe frostburn that disfigured her hands). As far as I know, she was never adopted. This particular part of Russia is just so remote and only two agencies worked with the orphanage; both agencies were quite small and the agency we used closed when the owner died a couple of years after Vera's adoption.
 

On a happier note, after our court session we returned to the orphanage and took Vera out for a drive around her hometown. She happily jumped in the car and had the best time! It was cold, the town isn't beautiful but it was a great ride because we got to see so much of her excited personality. I had brought clothes with me to make they would fit her for the next day when we would take her out. The orphanage workers asked to keep the clothes and shoes so that they could have her dressed and ready for us the next day. Sure enough, they had put her in the cute aqua outfit my mom had bought for her...and had added bright orange tights that showed up very well with the Mary Jane shoes I had brought (I hadn't brought socks to try on the day before because, well, they're socks!).

Nothing like an aqua/orange combo

 

Thankfully, Vera was just as excited about going with us as she'd been the day before. She was more than happy to jump into our car again! She still loves to go places. I don't think she had a clue that we weren't coming back. We hopped on our plane at 1 p.m. local time and arrived in Moscow 8 hours later at 1 p.m. local time! We crossed 8 time zones in 8 hours!! That was a long day. Thankfully, Vera slept for almost the entire flight.
 
We stayed in a beautiful, very Westernized hotel in Moscow--the Marriot Tverskaya, I believe it was. They had a large open space on the third story and we took Vera there to play ball. Yes, even then she liked to play ball! We ventured out occasionally, but it was slushy and cold and dreary so mostly we stayed in, slept a lot, and got to know our Vera.

(Obviously, this was purchased before we got to know our Vera)

 
We arrived at DFW airport in the early evening and my kids and nieces immediately surrounded Vera, talking and trying to hug her...and she started kicking at them! Ooops! Nonetheless, we made it home, made a pallet for all the kids in our room, and on a bright October morning much like today Vera awakened to a family full of forgiving brothers and sisters who immediately pulled her out our door to play on the swing set. She never looked back.
 

Vera during her fun nighttime routine in Mommy's bathroom

Praise God from whom all blessings flow!

 
...remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ....Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. Ephesians 2:12-13; 19-20

Vera in pictures--lots and lots and lots of pictures

I went through my blog today and made a file of most of the pictures of Vera from the past few years of blogging.  I must admit now...I showed no restraint. All 72 pictures that made it into the file are now included in this post.

Cute, funny, silly, dirty, gorgeous and happy...they're all below. Skim through if you have a moment; savor if you have more time! Either way, join me in giving thanks to God for bestowing this amazing gift on our family. As a picture frame holding a beautiful picture of Vera from Russia says, "Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows." James 1:17

That's my girl!!