August 18, 2008 - Time for a little work

As you can tell by the last video clip with the girls dancing- my living room is a mess. All those papers that were dumped out in the floor were part of my mad search for more documents that I needed to send to Russia. Yes, we are getting that close. Still waiting for the USCIS to send us our approval but that is about all we need. The paper I was looking for was a tiny receipt that had our fingerrprint ID's for our local Police clearance. Our fingerprints are still good so all I needed was to have them pull the records and re-run the background check - this would save Randy from leaving work during the fragile 2 hour window that they give you on Fridays to be fingerprinted. It is a mountain of paperwork and a lot of effort to complete an international adoption but I think these are worth it.
However, my livingroom is nothing compared to the girls' room. Michael very aptly calls the girls Hurricane Caelia and Tsunami Lera. Today we will be working on making their room sparkle. We also need to think about arranging their room to accomodate a new arrival. The room is plenty big enough - if you remove all the excess toys. We are working on the outside of the house, so the familyroom in the basement is on hold. In Minnesota the season for home improvement to the outside of the house is pretty short - especially if you are trying to pack as much playing in the warm summer sunshine as possible!

I will be posting at least every other day as we approach our travel. At least, that is the goal - blogging is hard to do with 110 pounds of squirming, giggling girls on your lap.

August 17, 2008 - A little bit of fun

First, there was swimming: Then there was playing outside: There was even time for a little artwork by Caelia. She chose a bright pink nail polish as her medium and added her artwork to herself, the sofa and the livingroom carpet:)


And then it was time for some dancing. Lera throws herself into this with great enthusiasm. Caelia was very tired but still determined to dance the night away.

If you listen to the last clip with sound you can hear Lera excitedly saying "Lera!" over and over. That was not: "its Lera's turn" but her looking at the camera as I was taking the clip of Caelia. Even she gets confused...

August 6, 2008 - Questions

Ok, we get a lot of questions - the most common, "Are they twins?" I try to answer the curious questions graciously. I'm not known for my tactfulness but I figure if having a question answered makes them more comfortable with the next person with Down syndrome they meet - or helps them realize it's not such a tragedy if someone is born in their family - then that's a good thing, right? I also love to talk about my kids.

Over the course of the years, I have been asked if Caelia has Down syndrome in unique ways. I had a little boy ask if she was "retarded?" His mom tried to disappear but I wasn't really offended - I just told him that she has Down syndrome and that means she learns a bit slower. He was happy to continue playing with her - but he did slow down his instructions to her. My favorite was a cashier at Target who looked at the girls and asked if they were twins or did we get "special angels" twice.

We went out to eat with both girls this weekend - Michael was playing with a friend. Caelia sits pretty well while waiting for service - Lera tries to crawl under the table, lay down on the bench. etc. We sit in a corner whenever possible and contain the girls by sitting on either side so they don't escape and disturb other diners. On this particular outing, I heard a loud voice from the table across from us say - Oh! she's really pretty! I said, "thank you, so is her sister if she would come out from under the table", and continued coloring with Caelia. A few minutes later - right behind me I hear, "Are they twins?" and turned to see this woman had come across and was standing next to our table.

"No, they are 3 months apart. We just adopted Lera from Ukraine"
She looked at Caelia. "is she from Mongolia?" Ok - this is a new one.
"do you mean, mongoloid? She has Down syndrome, yes"
"She's pretty but the other one is prettier" (OMG!)pause "She doesn't understand me, right?" (which one? Caelia is looking at you like that because she just doesn't like you)
"Is it expensive to adopt?" - "you should go to Reeces Rainbow if you would like more information" (sorry, Andrea)
"Are they hard to keep?" (they're not dogs!!!!!)
"I would like to adopt one" --- "It's VERY expensive"
We paid our bill and tried to leave as quickly as possible before this woman was anymore offensive.

I didn't chew her out for two reasons. One, OMG!!!!!! I just couldn't register what she was saying and two, I serious began to wonder if she were "slow" herself and perhaps, no one had ever told her.

Not everyone is as enlightened as I would like to believe but this was the most obnoxious, that I can recall. Sorry for the negative post - I just couldn't wrap my brain around this person's perspective.