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

Merry Christmas from Anju and all!

Paying it Forward

You may recall that we found Anju through the website Rainbowkids, which features children with special needs needing adoptive homes, three years ago in an article written by Teri Bell of AIAA. The article featured 3 children with spina bifida at Ashraya: a child we were pursuing who ended up being adopted by an Indian couple, Anju, and our friend Vismay. How delighted we are that all 3 of these children found families!

Teri is the one who visited Anju at 6 months of age right after she had been transfered to Ashraya from Sisters of Charity. We have pictures and videos that she took at that time which are priceless to us, and of course, we would never have read the description of Anju if not for her article.

Anju's baby pictures- taken by Teri

So, I was thrilled that a recent phone conversation with Teri resulted in her using Anju's picture and a few quotes from me in order to help promote the adoption of two more special children at Ashraya who are waiting for homes in her new article.

I have seen pictures of the girl with spina bifida who is described, and she just beautiful. I know that her birthday is a month off of Anju's and that she also was at Sisters of Charity before being transferred to Ashraya. The surgery they describe that she recently had was one that was brought up at Anju's last sb appointment --- we are doing therapy at home to prevent Anju from needing it.

As Teri and I discussed, and she mentions in the article, Ashraya is not a home. No matter how well they care for the children (and this could be debated but let's just let it go, shall we?), there is nothing more important than the love and attention a family provides.

Please pray with me for the children at Ashraya who wait.