After what seemed like quite some time, we were invited up the stairs (to my left in the photo) to the director's office. She welcomed us and we all sat down as Maggie pulled out her notebook of carefully worded questions to ask on our behalf. I noticed that this was the room where the original photo we had seen of K (she was then listed as Camille) was taken. Maggie and the director, Maria, spoke quickly and loudly as is customary for speakers in this country. We received some welcome and surprising news: that during the 2012-2013 school year K attended a special needs kindergarten Monday through Friday! You may recall that yesterday we assumed that she rarely or never left the halls of the orphanage. This was a good assumption at the time, since going into parenting an internationally adopted child is best done with zero expectations in all areas, including education. We were under the impression that she did not currently attend school because that is what her summer report said, but evidently she had just been out of school for the summer. Apparently she rides a bus to school and has the opportunity to sing, dance, and practice some physical therapy there with a teacher to student ratio of 1:3. This is close to the ratio she will enjoy in our homeschool room (it is illegal to homeschool here), and we certainly do a lot of singing and dancing up there! You never know what you're going to get with international adoption, and today was full of good surprises. Let me see if I can recall them all...she has remarkable gross and fine motor skills compared to the "mentally retarded" child on her reports. She can kick a balloon across the room, catch a balloon, pick up a tiny crumb with her thumb and forefinger, count to four, mimic sign language instantly ("more" was used a lot for goldfish), run, jump, and play iPad coloring quite well. Her biggest problem is language. She will need one on one attention, just like all our other children needed and we all needed, to master language. She uses her eyes very well to express what she wants, and is glad to dig in the backpack for food. We started out just giving her goldfish, then goldfish and a banana we bought at a roadside market, then goldfish and a banana and her very first peanut butter crackers! Maggie said she could nearly guarantee this was the first time K had ever tasted peanut butter. She loved those crackers and, for another first, was offered a choice between goldfish and peanut butter crackers. She considered both quickly and dove for the peanut butter. Yes, she will eat well in our house! I can't imagine her reaction to the huge pantry full of food, free for the taking at any hour of the day.
Today we got to see a prolonged tantrum, which still didn't hold a candle to Ezekiel. ;) She loves playing in the sink (why did they have to put us in a room with a sink?) but unfortunately insists on getting her hair wet. It is cold and not a good idea for us to soak her head and clothes during our visits. What's scary to me is she will throw her body back, hitting her head hard on the floor (we have caught her head every time but I feel certain it's happened before with the amount of force she uses). But the odds are stacked against you when you have been pulled out of your kindergarten routine for the week and are hungry for lunch and you see water and want to play in it but these strange new loving people won't let you do it! Mason ended up carrying her to the lunch area which calmed her down.
Immediately after our visit with the director, workers began popping in to our room to watch K play with us and answer our questions. They all looked happy and surprised to see that she was going to have a family! Maggie told us that the reason the director didn't want to meet with us yesterday was that she thought we would change our minds after meeting K and would not want to adopt her. Only after we came back the second day and again requested a meeting did she take us seriously. This is because many couples do come and then change their minds after meeting the child. Maggie showed our photo book to several people including the director asking that they faithfully read it to K to prepare her for her adoption. The director looked long and hard at the photo of our house. She must have thought we were millionaires. We are, compared to every single person we have seen since we arrived in country.
Interestingly we are not permitted to see any of the other children. We know they're there, but we don't hear them or see them, with the exception of 2 or 3 that have walked the halls with the psychiatrist. We do know that K sleeps in a bed with bars and no pillow. We saw some of these beds, extras maybe, sitting empty outside beside a cart of baby bassinets. That was right about when I started to lose it for the day, as we passed those beds walking out of the orphanage after dark (we go for two separate visits each day). I missed my precious little ones at home and couldn't bear the thought of sweet little abandoned newborns and infants spending their days lying in these boxes. So we went back to the hotel to eat after a quick stop at the mall, and I cried and ran upstairs to answer a FaceTime call from Ezekiel while Mason got our food. It was definitely a hard day. Now that we have made our appearance to officially accept our referral and say yes to adopting her, and we have no option to bring her home this week, I am ready to go home to push through the process and reunite with my other children. Hopefully tomorrow will seem like we're closer to the big Saturday travel day. We have to leave K in order to be able to come back and get her, but still I know that leaving her on Friday will be painful. Leaving her there every night is painful, though we are encouraged by many of the things we saw and learned about her today. She has an upcoming evaluation regarding her current meds so we are praying that she is taken off of them, as many as possible, as they are not suitable for a child. It's late and I've got to try to get some rest before tomorrow even if I haven't remembered everything that happened today. Please continue to pray for safety, health and strength for all the family members taking care of Ezekiel, Eden and Isaiah, for their hearts, for my heart which throbs every moment for them, and for me to be able to focus on K while here. It's easy for my mind to drift off to the other kids as I watch her and Mason play. He is doing an excellent job and is cool as a cucumber as usual. She is plenty comfortable with me, but let's face it, 6 years of age is prime time for Daddy play, especially if you've missed out on it your whole life.
No comments:
Post a Comment