Another year with our girl

November 20th marks 3 years that Anju has been home with us.  As she runs around the house talking about what kind of cake she wants for "her day", it's hard not to reflect on how far we've come.  Not only has she blossomed and grown and developed into quite a little lady, but as days turned into months turned into years, the difference in how she joined our family has also faded into the background.

Certainly, we have not forgotten her adoption.  Every November, I get out my Mysore Sandalwood soap and enjoy the "smell of India" as I remember it.  Each time I hear of children in need or read someone's adoption journey I immediately remember the struggle, emotion and elation of our long process to get our little princess.  And, she talks openly and often about being a baby in India, being adopted, her "India" mama and all her brown friends across the U. S. who have peach moms and dads like she does.

But this year's Gotcha Day finds itself not so much as a destination, but as a passing milestone.  This weekend is full of other commitments- visits with friends, birthday parties, church activities and a sibling's skating lessons.  There's a Thanksgiving dinner to plan, and a trip to the grandparents to pack for.  She is fully immersed in family life- our family life.

So, Anju will be celebrating her Gotcha Day this year by attending church with her family and then going to a friend's birthday tea party.  The cake will have to wait, as I haven't had time to bake it yet.  And it just might be the best Gotcha Day yet.

Anjulina Ballerina

Anju has gotten the nickname "Anjulina Ballerina" even though she isn't taking any sort of dance class.  She has, however, gotten very good at wearing leotards and spinning/tumbling around the living room practicing for 'nastics, which she began this fall.

She loves her class of 4 girls and 2 boys, and her coach, Jeff.  She did not advance to the next class at the conclusion of the first fall session, but she is excited to take the intro class again second session.  The stretching seems to be helping her heel cords, so I'm very grateful for that.  She now has 2 career choices in the works: either a gymnast or a stirrer (she is referring to helping someone in the kitchen by stirring things for them).  I'm fairly certain she's going to have to pick a different life path, but I'm glad she spends so much time doing things which apparently she can see herself enjoying doing for a lifetime.

Anju on the beam

Anju's class listens to Coach Jeff

Anju enjoys the fall leaves

Pictures (as promised): Lengby move + Hartland life

The Stafford kids and kitty returning home from a walk to the lake in Lengby.

Moving day!

How do you load up the pastor's library?

Loads of books wait to be loaded onto the truck

Last pose with our Lengby home

The kids in their "Lengby Kid" shirts by the Lengby sign as we drove out of town

Our new home in Hartland

Shawn's installation day

The kids and Spammy??? on our visit to the Spam Museum in neighboring Austin, MN- home of Hormel

Celebrating Jonah's birthday at Jellystone - Austin, MN

At this point, where do I begin?

We moved to southern MN in mid-June.  So, I spent much of late May and early June packing and tying up loose ends.  And going insane.  Then regaining sanity.  (That happened a bunch of times and I'm not certain really at which point in the cycle I am now.)  Then I spent mid-June to mid-July unpacking, and mid-July to present trying to give the kids some sort of summer by going to county fairs, festivals, swimming pools, campgrounds and grandparents' houses.  I've intended to blog, but each time I think that I should have pictures and I don't know where my cords are, or my camera batteries are dead, or I'm so exhausted that I need to lay down, or maybe it would be more important to unpack my crock pot or bread machine, or someone has scratched someone again and "There's blood, Mom!" or locked someone in the camper or something more pressing.  So, I haven't blogged.

Until now.  (And you're likely wondering why, as this is the most uninteresting blog post you've ever read, right?)

Well, there's been so much change, I could write about what has stayed the same.  I've already mentioned my exhaustion and battles with maintaining sanity.  We still have 2 cats and 3 kids.  We still have 2 cars and 1 camper.  The kids still are best friends and bitter enemies.  But that's pretty dull.

We have a parsonage in town.  It's a beautiful 100-year old home with a rich history and plenty of space.  It's taken awhile to figure out how to best use the layout, but we're getting there.  Solveig misses the wide open spaces of our rural Lengby yard, but is beginning to appreciate the neighbor kids who regularly stop over to play with her.   After a month of training, our cat Pumpkin is acclimated to his new stomping grounds, and he is already hard at work charming the neighbors and finding favorite outdoor napping spots: the shade under the tomato plants during the hot days, and the sunny porch swing on mild days.

We've lost Shawn's great-grandmother since we moved.  At 102, she finally reached the number of days God ordained for her, and began her life in Heaven.  She was the matriarch of the family and even with her advanced age, it just doesn't seem right that she is gone.  We found out that one of the members of our Lengby church was killed in Afghanistan, and we aren't there any more to provide support.  I resigned from my city clerk job in Lengby in June, and find myself without any outside-the-home responsibility for the first time in 8 years.  We registered the older 2 kids for their new school after weighing the options.  After having prepped Anju for starting preschool in Bagley this fall, she will now be doing homeschool preschool with her mom.  Jonah turned 9 and Pumpkin turned 8.  Solveig's goldfish died.

Solveig will be starting confirmation and figure skating this fall.  We have to drive a ways to get to the rink, but it's what she needs right now.  Anju will be taking a gymnastics class once a week, too, as the PT and OT people in Fargo recommended.  She's nervous about the class, but giddy to get to wear a leotard.  She's already dug one out of Solveig's dress-up box and has it set out ready to go--although we're still weeks away.  She wants to add a tutu.  I'm sure the teachers will appreciate that.  If we can find a piano teacher, Solveig and Jonah will have that, too.

So, the staffordsoflengby are not of Lengby anymore.  But, we're not of Hartland yet, either.  We miss the loons on the lake calling to us, and the slow pace of our northern life.  But we're enchanted by the fireflies dancing each night in our Hartland yard and enjoy the proximity to family and friends.  We know God has intended us to make these changes at this time, and has wonderful blessings in store for this parish, and our family.

( Pictures next time----and soon-----I promise!)

The envelope, please!

Anju's complete report came in from her clinic visit. 

She weighed in at 26.2 pounds and is 35.5 inches tall, both at the 0%.   They noted this time that she was petite, but there was none of the "genetic short stature" as a medical condition like last year.  Thank goodness!

Her gross motor development is reported to be around the 38 month level, which is a 7-8 month gain in skills in 12 months.  They describe this as a mild delay, with decreased strength and fair motor planning and coordination skills.   They note difficulty with jumping, hopping and stair mobility, and recommend gymnastics to strengthen her muscles.  I'm hoping tumbling around the living room counts for now, as there is no gymnastics program anywhere near here.

They also would like another MRI of her spinal cord next year to check up on her syringomyelia.


None of this is much of a surprise.  We know she's doing incredibly well, and we know that her heel cord tightness is a problem that we can't quite resolve.  The only thing I found troubling in the 8-page report was the fact that I am repeatedly called her "adoptive mother".  Sure, in the social worker's section, I'm fine with that.  They give her history and I can see that it is important in that section.  But come on, urology?  Can't I just be her mom?

Trying to get over the river after having been through the woods......

Friday was Anju's annual visit to the spina bifida clinic in Fargo.  It happened to be during a very emotionally and physically exhausting week for me, so I wasn't really looking forward to a day full of examinations by different specialists and keeping Anju cheery through it all.

We got a call the day before that they needed to bump someone back to 9 a.m. instead of 8 a.m., and they figured since Anju lived the furthest away, she was a good candidate for late arrival.  So, we took off around 6:15 a.m. instead of 5:15 as we had planned.  Still quite early enough.  I pulled into Moorhead (Fargo's sister city on the MN side) around 8:45 and figured I'd get there with about 5 minutes to spare.  We had only stopped once for 5 minutes along the way to get some coffee and juice, but many miles of 55 mph speed limit and following things like school buses and cops had taken their toll on our progress.

I followed my Mapquest directions as we entered the Moorhead/Fargo border, as I only drive downtown there once a year for this clinic (except for a couple trips to be fingerprinted by Homeland Security when we were working on getting Anju home) and there are a lot of one-way streets to keep in mind.  I had 3 routes suggested by Mapquest on my piece of paper.  I soon discovered all 3 were blocked by large "Road Closed" signs due to flooding of the Red River.  It took me 10 minutes or so on the one-ways to get myself oriented back to the main road to go over the only open bridge to get to Fargo.  And, of course, the clinic had moved since our last visit.  We arrived in the building 10 minutes late only to be directed to another part of the building.  We got into the elevator to get to the 1st floor, which I had figured I was already on.  But no, the entry floor is the Lobby level.  First floor is up a floor.  OK.

Anju saw a pediatrician, an orthopedist, an occupational therapist, a social worker (everybody has to), a urologist, and had an ultrasound of her kidneys and bladder.  Then, we were directed to drive across town to another clinic to see an opthamologist.


Anju was a star patient all day.  Another way to say that: she got a lot of stickers----even a couple decks of princess card games.  She leisurely snacked on bunny crackers and pb/j sandwiches between specialists and did whatever they wanted.  EXCEPT give a urine sample.  In the 3 years she has been there, they have yet to get one from her.  This year, she said peeing in a cup was "grot" and she refused.  We tried 3 times, though.  And, of course as soon as we left the clinic, she had to go in a nearby thrift store where I had to park near scary homeless people.  I have empathy like everyone else, but this one guy looked like a bum from the 1930's and I half expected him to have his possessions wrapped up in a bandanna on a stick over his shoulder in proper hobo style.


The orthopedist commented that her heel cord tightness has not gotten worse, due to our exercises at home, but the hamstring on the left side is also tight now, and she still cannot get her left heel down to the ground when she walks.  The usual course of action at this point, is to Botox her left ankle.  However, all the doctor's other LMC (lipomyelomeningocele) patients with a defect at the L4/L5 level like Anju have ankles and feet that are basically flacid and devoid of any feeling at all.  If she were to treat the foot, Anju would need a calf-height brace instead of a shoe insert, because she would be unable to use the muscles of her foot.  They measured her legs, and they are not uneven.  One hip is slightly anterior to the other, but that is to be expected with someone with a spinal defect, and probably isn't causing any major trouble.   So, she's better off having a limp and keeping the use of her foot.  They consider her reduced sensation in her feet and her tight cords to be such a minor effect of her LMC and were so excited to see how well she was doing.  They could tell she'd been playing soccer, as the therapist rolled the ball to Anju who proceeded to kick it with such force that it hit the orthopedist in the crotch!  How embarassing!  Anju laughed and laughed.

Shawn took her to the medical accessories branch in Bemidji yesterday to be fitted for her new orthotics.  I think they are only going to be flat inserts this time and not ones that wrap around her whole foot like her current ones.  We'll see!


Today I got the results of her ultrasound, which was again normal.  Another oddity.  She is the only patient they have who has not had even one UTI.  She has been truly blessed!

Happy Birthday To Our Baby

Our baby- unknown date

Our baby Anju will be 4 tomorrow.  We've always called her our "baby".  We've often gotten comments when people overhear us call our 2 or 3 year old "the baby", but it's fitting for us.  When she was in India, we were excited to get "our baby" home.  Once home, she was carried around like an infant for months, as she could not walk.   She clung to me like a baby koala clings to its mama for months and months on end even when she was able to walk by herself.  Because of her early life in an institution, she's always been just a bit behind emotionally- and still very much a baby in many ways.  Besides, she loved to hear that she was my baby, and I was thrilled to finally have a tiny bundle to hold once again.

Perhaps I still call her my baby because I missed out on her babyhood.  She was six months when we got her information, and after the initial flurry of pictures, we saw her grow from afar in odd photos taken at 3-month increments until we picked her up at 19 months.  

Or maybe it is because she missed out on her babyhood.    Solveig and Jonah each had special songs as infants that I sang to them as I rocked them to sleep or fed them in the middle of the night.  Solveig had, "You Are My Sunshine", as her name means sunshine.  Jonah had the Winnie the Pooh song since he was my big boy "all stuffed with fluff".  Anju asks, "What is my lullaby, Mama?", and I'm not sure what to say.  She slept through the night her first night with us, and has no special lullaby.  She says "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" is her special song, and that's fine with me, but I know it just isn't the same.

So, even though tomorrow she is 4, she is still my baby.  And, of course, my twinkling star.

Anju shares her birthday spotlight with her Great-Great-Grandma Edna. 

 They met at Grandma Edna's  100th birthday party in April 2009 when Anju had just turned 2. 

 That means Grandma Edna is celebrating her 102nd birthday!

Spring is here!

SPRING HAS ARRIVED IN THE NORTHLAND!

  You can tell by the terrain and attire demonstrated in the following picture:

Note the wonderful combination of receding snow, mud, puddles of water and gravel.  How perfect that once you're up to your calves in mud,  you can rub your feet on patches of snow to clean them!  Of course, that's what your mom's carpet is for, so why bother?

Also take care to examine the proper attire for spring tricycle riding:  Bike helmet over princess beach hat, winter coat over s/s Easter themed tee, Indian skirt over brown leggings, and girly mud boots to complete the ensemble.

And the number one sign of spring in the northland-----a snow storm is on its way.

My Little Grown Up

My darling Anju has been thinking about and discussing quite a bit lately what it will be like when she grows up.   This, of course, is because she will soon be 4, which is "growed up."

When she is 4, she can start preschool, which makes her a big kid.  Big kids are "growed up".  She longs to be big.  She discovered belt loops on her pants a couple days ago and ran around looking for a belt so she could be "just like Sister!"  She's ready to dump the toddler bed on her fourth birthday and switch to the bunk bed.  She doesn't want anything to do with a sippy cup.  She can do it all herself.  After all, she's almost 4.

So, today, it was no shock when she crawled in my lap wearing her jammies and started telling me all about what she's going to do when she grows up.  She's going to have her own house.  She's going to save her toys so that her kids can play with them (except the Little People which I should keep for them to play with when they visit me.)  She's going to be a mom, and I will be a grandma.  Her kids will call me "Grandma Mom".  She will have a daddy at her house, but not THAT daddy (points at Shawn).  She will have her own daddy to live with.  And she will have lots of kids.  "But they won't have black hair like me.  And, they'll probably have peach skin."

What?

I reminded her that kids usually look like their mama and their daddy.  (We have a book that talks about this.)  I told her that her kids would probably look like her, with brown skin, but it depended on what kind of daddy she married.  She thought about it.  Hmmmmm.  She pointed out that some daddies were peach, some were black and some were brown.  She thought maybe she'd like a brown daddy for her family.  Then we talked about what Solveig and Jonah's kids might look like.  They might have yellow hair, she thought, and peach skin.  She thought Jonah's kids might have jammies like his, because kids sometimes look like their daddy.  Unless they adopted a kid, and then it would probably have black hair and brown skin and be from India.

I told her I hoped her kids looked like her, because she is very beautiful with shiny, black hair; soft, brown skin; and sparkling, brown eyes.  She smiled and snuggled into my chest with her special blanket wrapped around her, holding her teddy and sweetly sucking her thumb.  Ahhhhhhh.  So grown up.

The One Where Anju Wears A Wet Hat

On Monday, January 3rd, Anju had her third appointment at the University of Minnesota for the adoption study she is a part of. After an uneventful evening at the hotel in Minneapolis for the 5 of us (no puking this time-yay!), Anju woke up that morning with a slight fever. This being the end of our Christmas vacation trip, I think we were all a bit run down and pooped out. However, we had already rescheduled this appointment once due to weather, and they had paid for our hotel room the night before, so I figured we'd have to follow through. Fortunately, after she'd been awake for a half hour she perked up.

As we left Shawn and her siblings in the hotel room to enjoy the wifi connection, Anju noticed a Somali hotel worker cleaning in one of the rooms that had the door open. She was wearing a flowing garment with head covering. Anju walked up to the doorway and asked the woman (I'd guess in her 20's), "You from India?" The lady laughed and told Anju that she was from Somalia. Anju looked confused. I smiled at the worker and we went on our way. Anju asked in the elevator, "Why that lady wear India clothes? She not from India?" We discussed cultural clothing choices and the difference between Asia and Africa on our block walk to campus.

During the study, Anju again was given the opportunity to interact with a stranger while I ignored her doing "paperwork" (Parents magazine on a clipboard). She did NOT want anything to do with the stranger and stood holding my knees the whole time, asking to sit on my lap, which I was not supposed to allow. This was a change from last time, when she did leave me and was tempted by the toys the stranger had. She did cooperate with playing with me and the stranger later, however. We did a lot of the same activities. We played with play-doh, blew bubbles and tossed balloons. We built a structure with blocks. They sent in remote controlled trucks with weird decorations to see how freaked out she would be by them. She was more scared than last time, but didn't cry. They took her height and weight: 34 inches tall and 24 1/2 pounds. (Grew 2 inches, lost a half pound.) And, they took saliva samples throughout the 2-hour appointment, which we will also be doing at home.

Then the new aspect of the study. Instead of having sensors attached to her chest and back, she was supposed to wear a hat full of sensors to test her brain activity when stressed. I thought she would never do it, but believe it or not, she allowed them to put on the wet hat, place the sensors, and then use an eye dropper with water to activate the sensors that weren't being picked up by the computer. You may recall that the video they showed while attaching the sensors last time was not to Anju's liking, and she suggested Winnie the Pooh instead. She was elated that this time when they put on a video for her, it was Winnie the Pooh! Of course this was the video they always used for that test, but she was very excited that they had taken her advice. When the hat was on, they had her focus on a toy for a minute, then shut off the lights so it was completely dark for an unknown period of time. This went on for 5 or so minutes. When she was done, they asked her if she wanted a picture of herself in the funny hat. She responded that it wasn't a FUNNY hat, it was a WET hat. She thought Jonah would enjoy it, so allowed a picture.

Anju's next appointment will be at age 4 1/2, and the last time will be when she begins 1st grade to see how she has adjusted to school. They usually come and observe the child in the classroom, but most kids are in the Twin City metro area. We'll see if they really drive 5 hours one way to observe her.

She asked the staff for toys for her brother and sister in addition to the toy bag they gave her. So, armed with a goody bag for herself and 2 stuffed gorillas for her siblings, she proudly left the building. "I wear a wet hat, Mama! When we come again?"

Posts about Anju's first adoption study visit:

http://staffordsoflengby.blogspot.com/2009/08/home-at-last.html

http://staffordsoflengby.blogspot.com/2009/08/adoption-study-details.html

Posts about Anju's second adoption study visit:

http://staffordsoflengby.blogspot.com/2010/04/adoption-study-take-2.html

http://staffordsoflengby.blogspot.com/2010/04/more-about-study.html

December 10/Jan 11- in summary (more to come)

snow

more snow

even more snow

sinus infection

bronchitis

skate show

Sunday School program

2nd grade school program

church

lefse

swedish rice

gifts

church

packing

shopping

church

car

screaming

crying

cousins

playing

family

car

gifts

fudge

car

shopping

car

family

games

gifts

car

pink eye

fever

downtown

university

strangers

tears

biting

pinching

car

snow

ice!

car

home

meeting

fish is dead

boy is sad

brrrrrr!

own beds