NOW it's spring.

Now I think it is finally safe to say that spring is really here. The snow is all gone again except where big piles were left behind for snowman fixin's. The tulips are definitely worse for wear but doing their best to bloom. We are hopeful that ticks hate snow enough that the first crop of them is all gone. Tomorrow is J's birthday and opening day of the boys' baseball season.

They Weren't Kidding.

We heard that we might get up to 10 inches, but no one really believed it. I mean, c'mon! We've already been to the beach. In swimming suits! And now this. It is just too weird. I pulled a tick off of #1's head while digging in the attic bins for everyone's snowpants and winter boots. They had a two hour delayed start for school today. And The Spark brought me a broken tulip from next to the sandbox while I was searching for winter mittens. These things should not all go together. Tulips and snowpants and ticks and blizzards do not go together. I guess Zippy's track practice will be inside today!

Almost May

Only three more days until May. Can't you tell? Nothing like a winter storm warning after the tulips are up!

April Break in Maine

Here we are on the coast of Maine for a few days of April vacation. It has been mostly nice weather which always makes for a nicer vacation. This afternoon was sunny, breezy, and mild which to the kids meant they should be able to swim in the North Atlantic Ocean. I think the water temp is probably about 38 degrees. Zippy put his head under and got out the boogie boards. Both littles poured water from their sand buckets all over each other and then yelled that they were wet. Um, yep, that's what will happen when you are standing knee deep in water pouring it all over yourselves.

Had a nice boat ride this morning in the little boat which was an experiment since Princess Eee had never been out in it before. She loved it, and every time J slowed down at all to go into a marina or scope out the seals, she would demand, "Go faster, Daddy, go faster again!" We cut the motor and drifted around a big group of seals for awhile. We weren't sure if it was too cold for them to around yet, but we saw more today than we ever do at one time in the summer. I counted twelve, but The Spark said she counted seventeen.

Gymnastics!

The Spark has been working hard at gymnastics all year. She is a natural and since I have nothing to do with her genetics, I can brag about her natural ability here without feeling too badly about bragging for her. I try to keep her eating healthy and well rested, but the rest is all her. She is so good at gymnastics. Since I can barely touch my toes, it always puts me a state of awe when she comfortably hangs out in a full split or links her hands together, puts her arms on the floor while standing and steps through her arms. She is doing a kids' yoga class now too and is completely in her element there.

She is the youngest member on the team at our gymnastics center, but since she didn't turn six until February, she was too young to compete in the official, points gathering meets this winter. But yesterday our gym had a "mock meet." The Spark was so excited (and nervous). There were a lot of girls and a lot of spectators. She did great! All the competitors got the same trophy, and she knew that ahead of time, so the pressure was off, but she did her best and it was fantastic.

Ready for vault:

Warming up for floor routine:

She is totally enamored with her trophy.

An adoption milestone

It is a great day when an adopted child has lived with her forever family longer than she ever lived anywhere else. Cupcake has passed that milestone. She has lived with us longer than she lived in her orphanage. It is a wonderful feeling. Not that it means anything close to smooth sailing from here on out; she has been a walking nasty tantrum lately complete with night terrors and spitting and pinching her next oldest sister who she is still really angry with for being here at all. But I am so completely in love with her and since she is so difficult it really sheds a lot of light on the whole unconditional love concept. This is what that feels like. Plus, there are moments like last night that remind me of how far she has come since the tiny, frail, dehydrated, pissed off waif she was the moment we met. Take a trip down memory lane here.

Last night at bedtime she reached her two little arms up to me for a hug. Might not sound like a big deal to most parents, but those of us with kids who lived in an institution understand how cool that moment was. Cupcake has accepted kisses and hugs from us for more than a year now. In the very beginning...no way. We gave them anyway, but man, did it make her squirm. Now she initiates affection on her own volition. And not just when she thinks she's been naughty and wants to check to make sure we are still loving toward her. This was just cuz she wanted me to hug her goodnight. It made me realize that she is so totally one of us, and that she has indeed been here longer than anywhere else. Woo-Hoo!!!

The scary thing is that when we get to this milestone with Princess Eee, she'll be almost eight!

And I just checked one of my favorite blogs to read and saw that Christine had also posted about a milestone- two of her kids have been home two years now. You can read her great post here. She is amazing.

How Could She?!

Probably by now you all have heard or seen something about the woman who put her seven year old son on a plane back to Russia. The adoption community is all a-flutter about it. There are so many things to think about this story. The knee jerk reaction is how could she!?!? He's her son! But if everyone really believed that, then it doesn't look as bad since people put their young children on airplanes under the care of airline staff all the time to go be with other family members. In a twisted way, this mother arranged for her son to go be with his other "family" again. The catch is she meant for it to be a permanent visit and he has no other family- life in an institution doesn't count as a better option for him. She was only thinking of the better option for her. Rather than deal with her troubled son here in the US where there are indeed support systems and safety nets for kids like him who are exhibiting nasty, threatening behaviors, she stupidly attempted to bypass all the right ways to cope with her situation. That a social worker visited the home in January and left feeling like everything was going along swimmingly only to find out a couple months later that he was "sent back" is crazy. This is one woman who must have a total mental block about asking for help.

This is far from the only Russian adoption to go bad. Statistically more adoptions from Russia end in a disruption/dissolution than from any other international adoption program, even Guatemala's which has its fair share. That this woman did not know the right/better/proper/legal way to cope with her troubled son is far fetched. She would have HAD to sit through adoption training sessions or online courses before being approved as an adoptive parent. In that training she would have been told about all the bad things that can happen when a child as old as seven comes home to a new family. The training probably even mentioned how Eastern European countries have a higher risk of things going poorly. She was told about seeking support from her adoption agency and social worker and other support services available in this country. She had to be living in a bubble if she was having enough trouble parenting her son to chose to end the parent-child relationship but not ask anyone about how to do so. Google it, lady!

This child is legally hers. He is legally a US citizen despite Russian authorities attempts to claim otherwise. She is a single mom which means this child came to the USA with an IR-3 visa since as with any Russian adoption the parent(s) must travel twice therefore "viewing the child" before the adoption was finalized which is the USCIS requiremnet for granting and IR-3 visa. An IR-3 visa gives the newcomer automatic citizenship upon landing on US soil in that airplane that brought this boy here in September. Every int'l adoptive parent knows this if his/her kid came home with an IR-3 visa. Citizenship status is not revoked simply by returning to one's country of birth. And putting one's child on a plane to his birth country does not revoke parental rights although in this case authorities should probably push for it to mean just that. This child is still a US citizen and still the legal son of the woman who visited him twice in Russia and went before the Russian court as per their adoption procedure to promise that she would never abandon, abuse, or neglect this child and to prove to the Russian judge that she deserved to parent this child.

She didn't know how bad/difficult/excruciating it could be to do so. Once she felt that she could not parent this child, she went about it all wrong and caused a big international media mess taht could cause thousands of waiting children and parents to wait even longer. Here's the sticking point: the longer kids wait before joining their forever families, the higher the risk of the adoption disrupting. Governments put all these safeguards in place and halt adoptions while they revamp processes thereby keeping kids in institutions or temporary homes longer which leads to more problems, not less. That goes for the adoption system right here at home in the USA too.

Here's the other thing that keeps gnawing at me about this whole "Russian boy sent back alone on airplane" story: there is little, less, or even sometimes no media coverage about adoption disruptions that went down in even worse ways. This mom shelled out to get the child all the way back to Russia so it's all over the int'l news. What about the mom who left her newly adopted Guatemalan son in the Gainesville, FL airport upon returning home from Guatemala?!?! He was taken into foster care where he began to thrive only to be kidnapped months later by the original adoptive mom who, of course, still held all legal rights to the child. Then she gave him back to the foster parents. Then she reclaimed him again. WHAT?!?!?! She's even more of a nutcase than this latest scandalous mom, but there's no news report about it. And what about the couple who were fellow clients of our Guatemala-adopt agency who were allowed to bring home several children from Guatemala only to end up currently on the run from charges of homicide and multiple felony charges of child abuse. Those adoptions all disrupted too.

Not sure if I have a point to all this writing other than to simply comment on the Russian case. The fact is adopting a kid is hard. It is also an amazing experience, good and bad. Thank God it is an option for all the children in the world who would otherwise not know the love of a family and for all the parents in the world who would otherwise not have the experience of parenting these children. Some statistics state that 10-30% of adoptions of children beyond toddler age end up with a disruption, dissolution, or residential treatment facility placement. It happens. It sucks for everyone involved. But this woman from TN went about it all wrong and now tons of great parents willing and ready to meet the challenges of adopting from Russia will have to wait even longer and maybe have an even harder time with their new children.

Anyway, here's a shout out to a good friend who wrote a piece about this case that you can read here.

Traveling Home

The boys are heading home. Here they are waiting in yet another line at the Denver airport.

Update from Colorado- Updated!

Here are the final results from Colorado: Zippy is sixth overall in the country for 7 and under boys! #1 is sixth in the country for his age group too! And J is once again the first place rider overall for men in their 30's! J is coming home with three medals: two silvers and one bronze.

#1 wiped out today doing a front flip off the giant hit for the slopestyle competition and ended up stuck in the first aid clinic under observation for a chunk of the afternoon. He's fine though. They called it a step down from a concussion, but J still has to wake him up tonight and ask him a question to make sure he's not acting all weird and confused. That'll be interesting because he always acts weird and confused when awakened in the night. He feels completely fine now but really bummed because he would have placed really well had he landed the trick, and it's one that he was landing consistently for a few weeks. Oh well, they are all done and no one got really hurt.

Here are J and Zippy with JJ Thomas who I guess won some XGames events this season:

And here's Zippy skating which is what they were doing every free off-snow moment they had this week. Luckily they both did almost all the homework I sent them with on the flights out.

This is #1 yesterday which was their first nice (as in not snowing and blowing sideways) day. Nice face he's making! Notice the big jumps in the background. That's what he did his front flip off of today.

They'll be home in 2 days. Woo-Hoo!!!!!! We've missed them. Cupcake has asked for Daddy to lay down with her every night since they left and then she says, "Daddy home, Daddy 'leep me" which means when Daddy gets home he'll lie down with her. And every time the phone has rung this week they all yell, "I wanna talk to Daddy!" It will be nice to have them all home even if it means we get out of the house about 20 minutes slower in the mornings.

No Fair!

Hey, Julie was my friend first! Yes, not only are the boys snowboarding on a really big, fun mountain with lots of snow, but they are spending their off-snow time with MY BFF from high school and her family. One of the bonus features of a trip to the Colorado Rockies: they get to hang with the Moores.
J with their youngest of three. Love the kiddie binoculars J is sporting in these!

J with Julie's hubby, Doug.

flowered dresses and chocolate eggs

Posing on our deck in their new Mommy made Easter dresses. Cupcake really digs her sunglasses from Great Gramma Joy.

Hunting for some of the 1000 eggs hidden in the long grass, snowbanks, and three floors of the Appalacian Mountain Club's Highland Lodge.

After the egg hunt, waiting for brunch, missing our boys.

The ride home: Chocolate coma.

Broccoli salad for dinner because I'm pretty sure all they really ate so far today was chocolate.

Happy Easter!

It may be hot in NH...

But it's still winter in the Colorado mountains! J sent this photo this afternoon of #1 checking out the starting gate for tomorrow's Boardercross course. It's snowing there today and supposed to again tomorrow. Meanwhile the girls and I went to the local "beach" at a lake where a few very brave souls did swim all the way under in the water that was ice a few weeks ago. None of us were so inclined today but the swimming suits are out and sand castles were made.

And They're Off!

J sent this from his phone just before take off this afternoon. The boys are en route to Copper Mtn. Colorado for USASA Nationals. Their first competition is Boardercross on Sunday. Zippy is ranked #2 in the country for boardercross as far as points go. I think #1 is at about 6th. We'll see how they do with some stiffer competition from those boys out west.

The girls and I have a busy week + planned. And new Easter dresses for an egg hunt and brunch with friends on Sunday. It should be a nice one since it is about 30 degrees above normal right now!