Adoption

The Beauty and the Grief of Older Child Adoption

Posted on by kimnjed

Vladik will turn 16 next month. It will be the celebration of the century, because our baby finally has a family. I can’t wait to celebrate the life of our boy. He is a warrior. He is a survivor. I can’t wait to shower him with love and attention. I can’t wait to show him with song and cake and presents and word and hugs that he is special; he is loved; he is wanted.  

After 15 years of nothingness, he was CHOSEN. 

Older child adoption is a tough thing.  It is a scary thing.  It is not something to go into without much prayer and consideration, just like with any adoption.  Every adoption has the scary unknowns.  Adoption is a leap of faith and there is no “easy” adoption.  Adoption is just hard.  Beautiful and hard.  ðŸ™‚ But it’s different with older child adoption, isn’t it?  You can’t erase the cold hard facts that are years and so.much.time gone by. It makes a difference.

Vladik had 15 years of life without us.  He has 15 years worth of memories and trauma and pain and stress and fears, and we weren’t there.  We weren’t there to comfort him.  He was in a very unsafe, very traumatic, very scary place and there was no mommy and daddy to fight for him.  It kills me to think of it. 

Our friends at Mission to Ukraine (MTU) and Bible Orphan Ministry (BOM) have told us about what Romaniv was like when they first visited: MTU 8 years ago and BOM 10, maybe 12 years ago.  Before BOM first visited there had been no outsiders ever, that we know of.  The boys were like wild animals, the conditions appalling and disgusting, the staff overworked and hopeless.  Romaniv looks amazing these days, compared to what was, and even today it is a place that turns sweet little boys into lifeless shells.  It is a bad place today.  No child should have to spend one night there.  It was even worse before.  

And my Vladik was there.  Sent to Romaniv as a tiny, chubby-cheeked four year old, he was there before there was hope. 

I got this picture in my inbox this morning from Bible Orphan Ministry.  It’s from a time soon after Vladik’s transfer.  Oh my baby.  If only we had known you.  If only we could have gotten to you sooner…

What grief.  All that time lost.  All that time, as his view of the world was being shaped, he was living in hell.  

The grief of older child adoption can not be ignored.  They have simply waited so long, and because of that, the healing is slow and tedious, and sort of like an onion.  So many layers of pain and fear need to be peeled away- and they don’t come off easily.  So many unhealthy learned behaviors.  Survival of the fittest.  In constant fight or flight- for 15 years.

I needed to see that picture today.  I needed to be reminded of where Vladik came from because I can easily forget.  The longer he is with us, the more I forget all the years before.  

Lately he seems to have taken some steps back in his healing.  We’ve seen more guarding, more anxiety, more institutional behaviors, less receptiveness to physical affection, more tears. Somehow I guess I thought we had won those battles.  We were already over those mountains, and I found myself becoming impatient, not wanting to climb them again.  I was growing annoyed with the institutional behaviors.  I was impatient with the tears.  I was less nurturing and more “buck up bucko”. 😉 

Then that picture popped up.  How could I have forgotten????  I mean Romaniv is always on my mind.  I never forget Romaniv. My babies are there, they are always in my heart, in my thoughts, on my brain.  But how could I have forgotten about all those years…all those minutes, all those moments that Vladik endured in that place?  FIFTEEN YEARS.  Fifteen years can not be undone in 9 months.  Sure, progress can be made, but we’re talking reprogramming EVERYTHING.  We are talking about starting at square one and learning anew EVERYTHING. 

And in that relearning comes the beauty of older child adoption.  

Redemption.  

We get the honor and privilege of showing Vladik with our actions and with our words that things don’t have to be the way they were. 

When you are hurt you can cry, you don’t need to laugh, because mommy will come to you.

When you are unsure in a new situation, you don’t need to hold your ears and make loud noises to fill the space, because mommy and daddy are here and we will guide you.  

When you have free time and you aren’t sure what you should do next, you don’t need to bang the walls or pace or rock because your brother will play basketball with you.  Your sister will cuddle you and watch your favorite cartoon.  Your daddy will take you on a motorcycle ride.  ðŸ™‚ 

When you worry about having enough food or if your body is safe or about your feet that are so different, don’t.  We will always feed you.  Your body will be safe even without long sleeves.  You will always have socks to cover your feet.

Look what God says! 

“…Behold, I am making all things new.”Revelation 21:5
“He heals the broken-hearted and binds up their wounds.” Psalm 147:3

God loves our kids so much, and He is all about redemption.

In an older child adoption we get to start over.  We get to watch the redemption and we get to see our child grow from a frail, cowering little boy into a strong, outgoing teenager with a smile that lights up our world and a basketball shot that amazes us all.  If you would have told me 10 years ago that God would give us a 15 year old son from a rural mental institution and he would be one of our greatest surprises, greatest treasures ever….I’m not sure I would have believed you!  We are so thankful that God knows best. 

If you are considering older child adoption, please don’t shy away.  The battle is uphill, but the view at the top is beautiful. No child is beyond hope.  No child is too far gone.  After all, an older child is still just a child, and every child deserves to have a family.   


These two older children are boys that I know and love with all my heart.  They live where Vladik used to live.  They are precious, and deserving, and they have waited too long.  Would you please consider adding one of them to your family and being a part of their redemption story?  Email me if you have any questions about them.  PS: They are each eligible for a $10,000 adoption grant through Reece’s Rainbow!   

All About Vladik: Seven Months Free

Posted on by kimnjed

I wish every single person who ever met Vladik at Romaniv could see him now.  You would not know this child.  

Jed is back in Ukraine right now and has been sending me tons of pics of my babies there.  When I see those pictures and then stop and think about Vladik living there I almost can’t even imagine it.  The boy I know now is so much different than the boy I knew there.  He’s a new creation. 

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Vladik is a miracle.  How could a child raised there be this joyful, this full of life, this loving, this generous?  Only God could do something like that. 

General Transition: He’s a rockstar. Vladik is growing in his development in leaps and bounds.  His language is growing as well, both Ukrainian and English.  He’ll often ask us what certain words are in English, and if we tell him once he usually remembers.  So, now Vladik speaks a mixture of Russian, Ukrainian, English, and “Vladik speak”.  Everyone in our family understands about 99% of what he says, but it’s another story with the rest of the world.  Slowly and surely he is becoming more understandable.  He desires to communicate and his social skills have vastly improved, so we are not worried. 

  
Vladik came to us with many institutional behaviors.  He didn’t know how to behave in most any environment and had a lot of nervous twitches- like sticking his tongue in and out really quickly, licking his hands, and putting his elbows up to his ears, almost like he was blocking his ears.  He would also make tons of inappropriately loud sounds at inappropriate times.  Like if there was quiet he just had to fill it!  If we were in a store or the library and it was quiet you could guarantee Vladik would start filling up the space “BEEP BEEEEEEP!  BEEP BEEEEEEP!”  Oy. We’ve come a long way baby. Now if he beeps we just remind him that he’s not a car and he instantly stops.  ðŸ™‚ He is sensitive to environments and if all is quiet he is usually good about being quiet.  The only real nervous behavior he still holds on to is the elbows up at the ears, but that one is more and more rare.  He usually only does that if he knows he’s done something wrong, or if someone else is in trouble.  It’s wonderful to take a moment to think back at how far he’s come. Praise God! 

Family: We’ve hit a point where it feels like he’s just always been here.  I no longer have that feeling like I’m the babysitter of a child who just always stays (that is a normal feeling in adoption, FYI). He is our son and it feels natural.  I couldn’t have said that even one month ago.  He still loves his Seth and I think when he had his surgery it bonded him more to the other kids as well.  They were all so concerned for him and that empathy really helped with relationship building.  He really is just one of the gang.  I’m so thankful for that. 

   
   
School: Vladik started school a few weeks ago and is doing amazingly well!  In January he started seeing a tutor for a half hour a day while the school district found a classroom placement for him.  Then in the last week of March he became a freshman at South Salem High.  Ha!  He’s in a self-contained classroom and we are so blessed by teachers and assistants that love him and treasure him.  Vladik LOVES school.  We started him going half a day at first, but now he is going full day.  Most of the fun, more active learning happens in the afternoon, so we knew he would really enjoy that.  Like every day his class gathers the recycling from all the classrooms and they sort and shred.  Vladik is kinda obsessed with the shredder. 🙂 Today he goes on his first field trip to a recycling center!  He could hardly sleep last night he was so excited to ride the school bus. I am so happy for him that he has this opportunity.  Sweet boy deserves every bit of joy and life that we can offer him. 

  
Medical: Vladik had sleep apnea, so we had his tonsils and adenoids taken out on March 30th.  He also had the back of his throat expanded to make his airway larger.  He did great and has fully recovered.  We had a few scary hours in the recovery room after learning that his body is extremely sensitive to narcotics, but we learned our lesson on that one!  I’m excited to repeat the sleep study, but I can already tell you that the surgery made a big difference.  You know how when you have a newborn and they’re sleeping so still and silently that you have to go super close to make sure they’re still breathing?  Yeah, I had to do that the other night with Vladik.  ðŸ™‚ I’m used to being able to hear Vladik sleeping from every other room in the house, but that’s not the case now!  He sleeps absolutely SILENTLY.  I’m so so so happy for him!!!!!!  His body used to have to work so stinkin’ hard just to get air.  He had to sleep with his head back and his back arched just to keep his airway open.  The ENT told us that Vladik probably had many very dangerous nights as a small child because his airways were so small.  Thank you God for protecting our baby!  Now I pray that he will start to gain weight since he won’t be working so hard just to sleep. 
The next surgery for Vladik is on his right hand.  A plastic surgeon will be giving him a thumb sometime in May.  WOOHOO!  That is the surgery Vladik is so excited about.  We were hoping to do surgery on his feet first, but we won’t be able to.  The foot surgeon will be out of the country for the months of May and June and we will simply run out of time.  We need to be back in Ukraine as a family in August, so we have to let the feet go for now.  Most likely Vladik and I will return for that surgery sometime at the beginning of next year.  So now we just eagerly await insurance approval so we can schedule hand surgery!  

  
Otherwise, I guess I can just say that Vladik is our joy and we love him more every day.  A couple months ago we started teaching him how to hug.  Vladik is very protective of his body and would barely receive a hug.  He would kind of back his shoulder in to you and that was as good as it got.  He would often come and kiss my shoulder, but he was embarrassed or nervous to hug.  We taught him that you give friends high fives, but with family you need to wrap your arms around them and that is a hug. Now if I say “I need love” (in Ukrainian) he will wrap his arms around me and hug me tight.  And yesterday, for the first time, he initiated.  I was in the kitchen and he came in and said “LOVE!!!” And gave me the hugest hug! Melt.my.heart.

He’s just awesome and we are so thankful that we get to have him in our lives.  Precious, precious boy. 

   
 

UNBELIEVABLE.

Posted on by kimnjed

I am in awe. My heart is so full it’s about to burst.  

Another one of our boys will soon have a family!!!

I.CAN’T.BELIEVE.IT.

Last March we introduced you to 7 of our boys who were available for adoption in this post, and this post.  I held my breath and hit the publish button, wondering what God planned to do about it.  For many months it seemed that nothing was going to happen.  And then all of a sudden…BAM! The families started rollin’ on in!  We now have FOUR families in process to adopt our boys!

Like I said, I.CAN’T.BELIEVE.IT.

God loves our boys so much!

First Vladik was set free, 

 

then a wonderfully brave family found Alex,  

then a family saw Jonathan and knew he was theirs, IMG_2512

then Ben’s family fell in love,  

 and now Isaiah’s family has found him!
  

I can’t even tell you how much this builds our faith.  We love these boys like they are our own, and we know that adoption will save their lives.  Literally.

The gates of the institution are about to be busted wide open! 

As long as everything moves smoothly, the families should be adopting one after the other in a pretty small window of time.  This is so good!  It’s great for the local government to learn that there are people who love these boys and see their value.  It is also great for us as we work toward opening our group homes and deinstitutionalizing the other boys.  People’s eyes will be opened and we pray that God does His miraculous work in the hearts of government officials in the town. It’s just unbelievable. 

Please pray for the four families who are in process.  All of them are private at this point, but as soon as I am able to introduce you to them you can bet I will.  If you would like to give them a note of encouragement just send it to me and I’ll pass it along.  

To God be the glory for the great things HE has done!!!  

PS: Now only two adoptable boys are left!  I’ll spend the next two Fatherless Fridays on Aaron and Stephan.  My faith is big right now, what about yours?  

IMG_0032IMG_0028

Fatherless Friday: Isaiahu

Posted on by kimnjed

A friend told me that I had neglected to blog the big news!  BEN HAS A FAMILY!  An adoptive family has stepped up and are working as fast as they can to get to him.  Praise God.  Adoption will save his life.  We are so thankful!   The family is private for now, but when they are ready I’ll make sure to introduce you to them.  To keep best up to date on our boys make sure to follow us on Facebook.  I update there several times a week.  ðŸ™‚

Introducing…Fatherless Friday!  I’d like to take Fridays to share about children we love who are still waiting for adoptive families.

First up is our precious Isaiahu.

  

Pure sunshine.

Jam-packed with potential.

Beautiful baby boy.

This is the thing: I am confident that if you could all just meet Isaiahu in person, look in his eyes and hold him in your arms, he would be snatched up in an instant.  Everyone who meets him falls in love with him.  His diagnosis sounds scary, but he is so wonderful!  He is absolutely a delight.

I mean, think about it.  This little boy lays in his bed in one single room day after day after day.  He only leaves that room when the weather is nice and his nanny takes him for a walk, or if one of our team members carries him out for a stroll down the hall.  He most likely hasn’t left his small building since the early days of fall, before winter set in- except to visit the hospital.  His world is so so tiny.  Yet he still smiles.  He still makes small gains.  He is awesome.

  

Wide Awake International and Bible Orphan Ministry have teamed together to hire two special nannies that alternate days, caring for Isaiahu and Ben from 7am-7pm.  Those nannies keep those baby boys alive.  Literally.  They care for their needs, hold them, feed them, bathe them, all in that little room.  They keep them safe from other boys who have not been taught to be safe.  Those nannies are such a blessing to our little ones.

  

Three times a week our teams come to spend time with the boys, and then three other days a week Wide Awake Int interns work with specific boys, providing therapeutic interactions that help to move the boys forward in development. His potential is ENORMOUS!  This is the first time he has had consistent therapeutic interactions and he is blossoming.

But it’s still not enough.  

Isaiahu will never really thrive in his current environment.  A mental institution is no place for a 7 year old boy- especially one as helpless as Isaiahu.

He is learning to hold his head up and to sit with support.  He smiles and laughs when his name is called.  He prefers his nannies over others and seems to have obvious attachment to them.  He is ticklish and loves to be praised when he’s working hard.  The doctor’s say he is losing his sight, but it’s obvious he can still see.  Oh how I pray for a mommy and daddy to come for him before it is too late and his world fades to black. 

  

Someone see this precious treasure and say YES.  He may be dependent on you all his days, true. That is no small thing.  It is a very big reality.  Another big reality is that he will bring his family so much joy.  He is a ray of sunshine in a very dark place where he does not belong.  Think about what blessing will come from serving a sweet one like this.  Think about the rejoicing and cheering and smiles that will come from seeing him hit new milestones.  Think about the beauty of watching him truly live with a mommy and daddy that treasure him and fully see his value.  

Sweet little Ben has a family coming for him, and now it’s his roomate’s turn.  

Please watch this video of Isaiahu and Zita and share this post far and wide.  Thank you for loving our boys! 

You can read more about Isaiahu in these posts: The Day We Met, Fighting for my Babies, Guest post for Isaiahu.

If you can’t adopt, but would like to help, you can donate to Isaiahu’s adoption grant here.  This will help relieve some of the costs of his adoption when his family finds him.  
 

The Sky’s the Limit

Posted on by kimnjed

Since the beginning of December we’ve been taking steps toward putting Vladik in school for the rest of this school year, while we’re in the US.  It’s been a decision I didn’t expect us to make, but for many reasons it just seems right.  We aren’t set on him being in a special Ed classroom all day every day, we just feel that it makes sense to take advantage of the opportunities he has here in the US to be taught by professionals- before we head back to Ukraine and it’s all up to me. [GULP]
On Monday we spent about 2 hours with a school psychologist and a speech pathologist and they evaluated Vladik.  They had never seen a situation like ours before: 15 years old, no educational history AT ALL, smart, but behind in everything because he’d simply never had a chance.  ZERO life experiences until 5 months ago.  Born at age 15. 🙂

Vladik blew them away.  His zest for life, his joy, his eagerness to learn- he is truly a miracle.  

There may have been some tears in the room as we talked about how far Vladik has come-  from the cowering boy in the Isolation Hall to the brave boy shooting matchbox cars across the meeting room table.  

Those two ladies got it.  They really and truly “got” it.  They saw the treasure in Vladik.  They saw the untapped potential that has waited years and years and years to be discovered.  They looked past his outward appearance and his awkward speech and institutional behaviors and truly saw the person.  Those two women saw the value in my son and I will be forever grateful to them for that.  At the end of the meeting they declared “We need to get this boy in a classroom! He’s waited long enough.”  

And boy did they live up to their word, because today Vladik started school. 
  

It will take a while to figure out which school and which classroom is the best fit for our boy, but they didn’t want him to have to wait, so they arranged for Vladik to start with tutoring in the meantime.  I think that was a fantastic idea.  Tutoring is the perfect transition for Vladik.  

We started today and are just doing 30 minutes per day, 5 days a week.  Vladik’s attention span is like minuscule, so 30 minutes is about his max.  Plus, this is his first activity away from Mama and Papa, so it’s a great way for him to learn that we will always come back for him and it’s a really safe place for him to learn some independence.  The teacher speaks no Ukrainian 🙂 so, Vladik will be learning some English along the way!  

Oh my, I made the rookie mistake of telling Vladik last night that he would start school today.  Silly me.  I should have known that in order to avoid approximately 372 questions about when we will go to school, I should have just waited and told him in the car on the way there. [live and learn]   But I just couldn’t wait to tell him!  He was jumping and laughing and clapping with glee.  He said “Addy has a school, Ezra has a school, Hava and Seth have a school, and Vladik has a school!!”  When I came to pick him up today at the end of his lesson he said “Mama!  This is my school!”  He was so proud.

I love that boy.  I picture him wandering the halls of Romaniv and my heart breaks in two.  He had so much more in him than we ever realized.  He had an imagination and a smart brain and a sense of humor and a great capacity to love, all just sitting and waiting for a chance.  Born at age 15, now my sweet baby can fly.  The sky is the limit for our boy. 

March 2015 and February 2016

I dream of that same future for the rest of our babies that sit and wait at Romaniv.  I wonder what they will be on that day when their chance at freedom finally comes.  I wonder who will be funny and who will be super smart and who will have a knack for growing flowers and who will be great with the animals.  I do know that they will all exceed our expectations, because the sky will be their limit.  And I pray that day comes soon.  

Jed is working hard in Ukraine, deciding on the best property to purchase and meeting with government officials.  This God dream of ours, it’s going to happen.  It’s really going to happen.  Doors are flying open in front of us.  People are going to see the beauty of our boys and they’re going to see their value, just like the school psychologist and speech pathologist recognized the beauty of our Vladik.  The joy of Vladik experiencing his first day of school is just a glimpse of the freedom that is to come.  We.Can’t.Wait.  When God puts a dream in motion the sky’s the limit!