Snow, Snow, Snow…or Not

Earlier in the fall of 2011, we planned a trip to the snow to visit Dave’s brother’s family at the beginning of the New Year. There was to be snow for sure and Anya could get some of what she misses so much. Well, if you are from Southern California, you know there was no snow. There was a tube run made from fire hoses shooting out near a fan a night when it was cold, so we had a bit of snow to play in.

Our oldest daughter came down to visit us in January and decided to join us on our trip up to the Sierra Nevada’s. Matt’s girlfriend was able to join us too. It was about a seven hour trip when you add the eating and bathroom stops and Anya did exceptionally well, especially if you compare it to the same trip one month after she arrived in America. The only problem was on the way home when none of us noticed Anya drink most of her sister's coffee. After the initial buzz and LOUD AND CRAZY caffeine high, she didn't like the way she felt. Make a mental note for future reference.

I purchased (on eBay, at a thrift store and on sale) three different snow suit sets for Anya. I altered them all and felt kind of weird with three sets-isn't that a bit obsessive? Even with that little snow, I needed the two sets I brought. Anya was all over the snow and dirty and wet everywhere. The first thing she did was to take a handful of it and smear it all over her face. Any time we stood in snow, she was on the ground, rolling and wiggling in it like very young child would. Regression in these kids leads to healing and for her first time in snow since she's been here, she was very regressive and very young. Glad for the chance to heal in the safety of family!!

"Really, Mom?"

"Better watch out!"

Nailing Uncle Tom.

Just love how her hair looks in this one.

Anya was able to go tubing down a hill and loved it! She went by herself the first time and then went in trains of people many times after that. That night we went ice skating. Boy oh boy, was that up her alley. She hadn’t done it before and they had skates available that had a double blade on the bottom and straps to hold it on your own shoes.

Help from big brother...

and from big sister. The two of them skated around like they were in the Olympics, we'll one did more than the other (and that would be the one who actually knows what the Olympics are).

 

 

 

The easier way to skate.

Below are actual videos of Anya skating. In the bottom one one she is propelling herself backwards as her cousins skate around her and in the top one, she demonstrates the key to learning how to skate-dancing along with the music.

She was in “the body meets the earth in an organic way” heaven. She decided it was easier to skate by bending in half and propelling herself with her hands, even at the risk of possibly losing a few fingers. Her entire being was covered in the snow dust your find in a skating rink and was, despite my protests and her cousin’s disgust, delighted with eating the dust. She kept going and going for ninety minutes; I know it would have been longer if the ring hadn’t closed. We were the last ones off the rink. Hopefully later this spring we get some real weather in the local mountains so she can have a bit of her Motherland Winter.

Uh, yeah. What I said before. And, I let her do it.

~Monica

No matter how smart you get, you could use some kindness there girl.

Anya’s teacher says the change in three weeks in her understanding of all things school is amazing and all of a sudden it will click and she will jump ahead. I, however, feel like I will be sitting next to her in this class until she is 26. I am too close to the trees to see the forest.

There are 70 phonograms that the kids are learning. A phonogram is basically a letter or group of letters that makes a sound and has a rule. For instance, “dge” is shown on a flashcard and the kids say, “j (the sound of j), three letters”. They also take tests where the sound and rule are given and the kids write the proper phonogram. Obviously I have to learn them too in order to help her. So, the teacher held up a card and Anya chanted off the three sounds it made. I didn’t know she knew it nor did I know if she were correct until the teacher gave the answer. She is learning them faster than I am! She took a test and told me, “I am remembering in my brain!!”

Anya was melting down at number 17 out of 20 on the test (it was the first one I had her take alone while I watched) and the teacher pointed out that during the first three weeks of school for rest of the class, they only had to learn 10 phonograms and Anya is trying to learn 70 in her first three weeks. After meeting with the reading teacher for her weekly assessment, she had done really well and came back in the room saying/singing and dancing to me, “I’m getting really smart, I’m getting really smart!” Of course that set her into a bit of regression (changes and advancements she didn’t know she could do cause that and this one has great possibilities) and the rest of the day was pretty difficult for her.

Compassion 101 by Anya

The previous weekend I’d taken Anya for a burger and a couple in their late 70’s or 80’s were getting out of a booth to leave. I told her, “Someday Papa and I will be really old like that. Then you can help us walk.” Pause. She squints one eye a bit.

“No way. Use your stick.”

That’s my girl.

~Monica

Guess Who Is Going to School? And Guess Who Else Is Too?

We took a visit to the school Anya will attend three days a week. She’ll do her seat work at home on Monday and Tuesday. She is beside herself about the uniforms. Something about the officiality of it all excites her to the bones. They have little logos on the shirts and she loves it. She is still concerned a boy will call her “carrots” and she will break a slate over his head, but other than that, she can’t wait to start. The only thing is this…Anya is going back to school and I have to as well. I’ll be with her until she and the teacher can handle the transition. There are already several kids in the class that are hard to handle with their lack of focusing ability.

First Day of School

Need a picture with big brother and our backpacks.

Anya arrived at school very excited. The teacher had asked for information about Anya before she came to school, so I sent a brief bio about her, her dwarfism and some photos to be forwarded to the families at school. So, all the kids knew her when she arrived and many of them were excited to help her.

She shares a table with another girl, we me in a chair at the end of the table next to her. In true Russian form, she was seen cleaning up after her table mate. Pencils were put in the shared pencil bucket by cleaning maniac Anya. Earlier in the day I decided to sharpen all the pencils in the bucket to prevent her being fixated on an unsharpened pencil later.

We did a math page together and Anya got 100% and a star on her page in red. You would have thought the president had awarded her a medal.

Her table mate is getting over the flu that is going around and has a wicked cough. She was coughing and Anya looked sternly at me, used her head to point over to the girl and said in anger, “She’s gonna get me sick!” She already had this illness and doesn’t understand antibodies…that lesson is for another day.

At recess, Anya had a group of four to five girls following her around and she had them formed up in a kind of game of hockey at one point. Luckily there are three recesses each day, PE on Thursdays and playtime before and after school. She's been rolling in the grass and throwing the sand all over her body. I didn’t think she’d be so sweaty after a full day of school, but she will definitely getting a shower or bath each night before bed. I used to be able to get away with every other day.

I am the one who has a problem with being back in school. Anya might too, but she isn’t showing it yet. It is LOUD in a class room with 16 six to eight year olds from 8:30-3:00. I am used to the level of Anya’s chatter and she didn’t bother me, but all the other fidgeting and noise wasn’t what my depleted body and mind could handle. Let’s just say that after lunch there was a Nordquist lying on pillows in the reading center during story time and it wasn’t Anya…

I am also on phonics/letter overload. It will be perfect for her, all the repetition and oral work. I just need to learn the sounds to help her learn them at home. Right now, I listen to the sounds, write them and then Anya copies what I wrote.

She only needed to hug me three times during the first day and only lost her ability to cope the last 10 minutes of the day. I did stop her from taking a girl’s long hair and from trying to stuff it through a punched hole in a card and from knocking over the teacher’s water bottle several times. I also had to hide the drawing of a girl she made (I heard giggling and she pointed to the two circles on the chest of the girl and said, “Look! She had breasts!”) On a lighter note, I was invited to a 7 year old boy’s birthday this weekend. He also asked me, “So. Why did you decide to adopt Anya?”

The day ended with Anya winning a small prize during “magic trash”. If you clean up an item the teacher has chosen ahead of time, you get a prize. She wasn’t happy on day two when she didn’t get a prize.

Day two-we are facing time issues today. Anya can’t keep up with her writing and processing all the new things and she’ll just have to let it go. She did some writing and announced, “I’m doing a beautiful job!” The teacher and I laughed. I told her that eventually Anya will provide her with a little comic relief throughout the day. This second day, she also is moving away from me, trying to make the other kids laugh and is only concerned about recess. Miss Adaptability stands on the tire of the tether-ball set up to hit the ball or uses a hockey stick. She cracks me up. During PE in the afternoon, after about 20 minutes of playing a game, Anya came over to me and lay on the grass with her arms outstretched. She looked up at me and murmured, “I want In-N-Out.” So, off to class we went to get her a snack, since in this new life, you can’t just leave for In-N-Out burgers when your body needs some protein.

After school was a trip. I had been telling people for a month or so is that the only word Anya doesn’t seem to understand is exhausted. Now, she does. She was sure she was close to death. She has been sleeping for 12 hours and probably would take more. She tried to go to bed that night at 6pm, I should have let her!

Day three=melt down. “I am not coming to school anymore.” This was said with her arms crossed. “Uh, yes you are.” She is fluctuating today between melt down and cooperating. She is eating up a storm and if I keep feeding her, she does okay. This new life is depleting her coping ability pretty quickly. Soon we’ll have four days of rest. Well, if you consider your mother making you instantly memorize half of the math facts and a huge stack of phonograms for reading as “rest”, then that’s what we get.

~Monica

The Best Day of Her Life, Ever

Well, we contacted our friend Lehti about riding their pony again. This time, it was Anya's idea and she really wanted to do it. All the other things Anya has experienced over the last 14 months have been thrust upon her. Riding now, after learning about horses and falling in love with them, maybe even more than dogs, is really an Anya thing. 

She told me the day before we were to ride all about her expectations for the next day. 

"I will walk the Logan, I will ride him, I will jump over the fences..." You can't say the girl doesn't have high goals.

I wanted Anya to experience all the parts of horsemanship and since the pony was being boarded at stables for the time being, we went to Lehti's house to help muck out their four stalls. Let me tell you, this Russian can outwork almost anyone I know. She just goes and goes and goes, especially when it has to do with cleaning.

Anya with their new 3 month old gerbil.

Aren't the colors in her hair amazing?

So we left the house to head to the stables. We had the horse trailer hooked up to the large truck so we could bring back one of their horses from the stables. What else to you do on the way to the stables with a horse trailer on your truck than take it all through a drive thru? I double checked that this would work. Once there, I saw that there weren't any walls or enclosures (well, just one at the pay window) on the passenger side so it wasn't as dangerous as I had imagined!

It was so neat to go to the stables after watching so much of The Saddle Club. First we went to see one of their ponies that was there (Casey) and met some lovely horses. Then we took Logan out to the paddock (I think that is what it is called, a fenced off pen for the horses). Next we helped them get Casey get ready for Lehti's daughter to ride. We watched that for awhile and Anya asked Lehti if she could go over to the paddock and give Logan an apple. Sure enough we let go by herself about 300 feet away to the pony and we couldn't even see her. She did it and even fed the apple with a flat hand like Lehti showed her and came back with both hands in tact!! 

Look at Anya's delight at being able to carry a saddle!!

"Hello nice horsey."

"Logan, where are you?"

Putting Logan into the paddock.

Bringing Logan over to get tacked up for his rides.

After that it was time to cool down Casey. Anya watched Lehti wash the pony and then took her turn at it. The horses open their lips really big and expose their teeth when you shoot water at their mouths! Some horses that were worth quite a bit of money were being washed too in the showers next to ours. They were really beautiful.

Washing Casey.

Casey was tied up to the trailer to dry while we got Logan ready for his rides. Anya was allowed to get Logan out of the paddock, while I stood by. Like I can chase a horse down if it chooses to run from her. Lehti's daughter rode Logan around for exercise and to wear him out a bit for Anya's ride. But, lo and behold, it was Anya's turn. As we were getting ready, before she rode, I was giving An some food and water at the truck. A young lady came by saying, "Excuse me, is this your horse?" She had Casey by the lead and was bringing him back to us. I really didn't know if he was ours or not, I had to ask Anya! Apparently, he saw Logan and escaped to be with him while drying off.


Anya rode really well. It did help that Logan is 9 and is trained so well that he responds to a clicking noise to go. Little Miss Miss held her hands just right and pulled them correctly for stopping and turning. Lehti is a great teacher for her too. She just loves seeing Anya discovering and learning.

We talked with lots of people at the stables and looked at many other horses. Finally it was time to wash Logan, pick up some hay at a feed store and bring Casey home.


What a day, what a day, what a day!


~Monica