The final post is here

Well everyone, the time has come.

This is the actual 100th post, and a symbol that one journey is finished and another is beginning!
I can't leave this blog, though, without telling you all what a very rich plan God has revealed in all of this. One of my friends has a great quote on her website:

"We're not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be." -- C.S. Lewis (Thanks, Em)

Isn't that just about right? There is a lot of suffering and a lot of joy in life. And it's all so unpredictable. Without the Bible putting together the pieces for me - showing me how this all fits together, as confusing as it is - I would be lost. But instead I am found, knowing that God is trustworthy because he came down in my lostness and showed me a glimpse of what he was doing. It involves Jesus. Maybe this sounds a little cryptic, but if you are interested, just ask and you know I will be eager to talk. I would be a strange friend indeed who didn't long for her friends to get this same glimpse.

We have started a new blog to chronicle the continuing journey of our lives with Meredith. You can find it at:

www.magnificentmeredith.blogspot.com

(The explanation for the blog title is on that blog, in the sidebar on the right.)

There are more pics there, but here's another for your enjoyment! She is enjoying her three gifts from Grandma and Grandpa -- a special bracelet (given to Grandma when she was a baby), a music box with duckies that sings "Singin' in the Rain", and a "tag blanket" (because she loves the tags on everything!).


God bless you, my dear friends. It has been a wild ride and we thank you for sharing it with us.

Sarah and Rob

Videos of our Multi-Talented Daughter

And now what you've been waiting for - demonstrations of Meredith's incredible talent. Here are a couple of activities she has mastered. The ball activity is after much practice - it did not work like this the first week we were doing it with her :) The other one...well, that's a new discovery Rob and I each made independently this week. Who knows how long she's had that up her sleeve!

(Note to those not familiar with it: on the bottom of the YouTube windows below, the second button from the right will make the video full-screen if you want)

Meredith and the Ball



Meredith's Special Talent

life at home after the first shots

Meredith had her first pediatrician appointment on Tuesday morning. The good news is, the doctor thinks she is doing very well for a baby born about 3 months early. She clocks in at the 10-15th percentile for height and weight for her preemie-adjusted age of 9 months. This is not bad at all, especially since living in a baby home in Russia usually slows growth relative to living in a home with parents. So she is doing well. The only specialist we will probably see is an opthalmalogist, since her eyes will likely need some help due to her extreme prematurity (apparently they're one of the later things to develop in the womb, and early exposure to oxygen isn't good for them). As far as we can tell, her sight is very functional and she makes eye contact a lot, so we are hopeful that there won't be any extreme issues. However, it is possible she would start wearing glasses at a young age due to likely farsightedness. Good thing little tyke glasses are so cute!

The end of the doctor appointment was not so fun, as Meredith had to get 3 shots and a finger poke. She did what any kid would do and screamed her head off :( She calmed down OK afterward. But then she had the (apparently common) experience of a fever and irritability (soreness maybe?) for the next two days. A little longer than we expected, and it wasn't fun for anyone including Meredith. What happens when a little girl who used to take 3 two-hour naps instead takes - with considerable effort on her parents' part - 3 half-hour naps? Cranky, cranky, cranky! She was pretty exhausting all day Tuesday and Wednesday and part of Thursday.

Yesterday (Friday) I went back to work - without Meredith - for about 5 hours. I actually enjoyed it a lot - it was a good reminder that I have multiple callings in my life. I was also happy to leave her with Rob, both because I think their bonding is equally important and, honestly, because she had been so difficult the previous few days when I was with her almost all day. Also, Rob and I made a deal that whoever is going to work has the privilege of trying to sleep if Meredith wakes up at 3 in the morning and needs help getting back to sleep (which she does pretty much every night) since the person staying home can presumably get in a nap during one of Meredith's naps (again, HA!). So what do you suppose I heard when I got home at 1:30 yesterday afternoon?

Me: So Rob, how was it?

Rob: It was great! She was up from 3:00 to 3:30, but then she slept until 8:00 and was so happy! She didn't cry with a diaper change, didn't whine when I put the bib on her (note: unprecedented), ate lots of her breakfast, and then she was all cheerful and talkative and we played for a while and then she started getting tired so I brought her in for a nap at 10:30 and she woke up at 1:00 and just had her lunch. And now she's here just playing happily.

Me: (moment of silence...) You stink!

Of course, I was happy that she was doing better and so I don't begrudge Rob his great day with her. Hopefully today will be great too - we are heading to an adoption group picnic at Blue Springs Park. I will be sure to get a photo of Meredith in her amazingly adorable bathing suit. You really won't believe how cute she is! We are so excited to finally end our spell as the eternally "expecting" adoptive parents in the group - we've been attending for 2 years and very often were the only people at the meetings without kids. Luckily, we've made such good friends there and learned so much that we managed to keep attending all that time. It's a great group, with several types of adoption situations - international, domestic, interracial, foster-to-adopt, you name it. We are glad that Meredith will have other friends who are adopted so that she does not feel like she is unusual in her situation growing up adopted.

I have some videos I want to post but I will need Rob to help with that, so for now you get a few more photos. Our friend Nate took some amazing shots the other night.

enjoying life at home

I don't have time to write anything tonight, but wanted to post a few pics for you to enjoy!

Trying out the new high chair - it's a hit! Well, as long as she has a spoon to play with.


Trying out the snail rocker - not so sure about it yet....we'll try again later!



Dressed for our first day all together at church.


Asleep. Notice the effectiveness of the crib bumper.

Home Safe and Sound!

We are home and life is good! And actually this doesn't have to be my last post because my friend Matthew discovered that the blog "post counter" that I saw was not quite right - it apparently included a couple of old drafts that were never posted, so I have a few more to go before I reach 100.

Before anything else, I forgot to mention something about the links on the last post. Rob and I noticed when we looked at them that they seemed to emphasize "the mother". If you look at it, please substitute "the parents" there. We are both working hard on bonding well with her.

Our flight from Moscow to Atlanta was not too bad - it was about 11 hours. In the first hour and half on the plane, Meredith got her diaper changed and ate some lunch, and then slept for 2 hours. Wow! We figured this would be a breeze if she kept this up. Well, she didn't. But it was okay...there was just no sleeping again until about an hour and a half before the flight landed. (Sleeping for her that is... for us?... ha!). During the latter part of the flight, she started getting pretty cranky because she was tired and she couldn't quite fall asleep. We were next to the bathroom, which was great for the 7 or 8 diaper changes we needed to do (they actually had a very decent fold-out changing table), and nice because it was near the galley where we could walk a bit. But of course it was also not so nice, because obviously there was a lot of foot traffic, and because the sound of the flushing toilet was unnerving for our sweet girl. It didn't quite make her cry but it seemed to startle her pretty regularly.

Our pattern of trying to get Meredith to sleep went something like this....she's clearly tired, so we rock her or carry her around a big, she starts sort of falling asleep, but then keeps whining and can't seem to calm down all the way. We take a sniff and smell a wet diaper, so we change her diaper. Now she'll surely fall asleep. But then after a while, when she still isn't sleeping, we think, hey, she'd probably like something to eat. So we give her a bottle of formula, which she loves. Surely she'll fall asleep. A little while later, still no sleep, but what do you think? We smell pee again. Basically, we created a cycle by which the twin comforts of feeding and diaper changing were showing their relationship very clearly! But aside from some whining it wasn't too bad - and she made a couple of friends on the plane. One old Russian lady would talk to her when she walked by and one older man would give her a finger to grab. We were also blessed that the guy in the seat next to us (no, we didn't get all three in the middle row) was a young guy - probably our age - who is Russian but spoke English really well and told us he has a 3 year old and that Meredith's age is a good age for flying. He started making faces at her and she was delighted! The flight attendants were also crazy about her, and one of them would always whisper to me if she was delivering drinks and saw that Meredith was sleeping on me. (It wouldn't really have mattered - when she's actually asleep, voices of reasonable volume don't usually wake her).

We've discovered that there are many ways in which Meredith's adoption comes up early in conversation. People say "how old is she?" and we say "she just turned one" and they look a little confused because she's so small. So we say "she was a preemie" and that usually handles it somewhat. But after I told the flight attendant that she had just turned one, she said to Meredith "Did you have a nice birthday? Did you celebrate? I bet you had a cake!" and I just couldn't take it so I said, "Well, we don't really know, we actually didn't have her yet - we just adopted her 8 days ago." Then she was all the more excited - I heard her telling the other flight attendants and everything! So even if adoption comes up pretty often, I don't mind because people are usually really supportive. I think the weird thing that comes up pretty regularly, though, is people then telling Meredith how lucky she is - good gracious, do they not realize how lucky WE are? People sometimes think we are selfless orphan rescuers rather than people who longed to be parents. So I say, "We are all really blessed to be a family."

Our landing in Atlanta was uneventful, but the time it took to get through immigration - which involved a special separate stop for turning in adoption documents - brought us extremely close to missing our plane. Good thing that Meredith likes the stroller and doesn't mind a fast ride because Rob took off with her at full speed to try to catch the plane for us. And he did! They were just about to close the door. Phew! God's grace to some weary travelers.

We were met at the airport by a few very close friends, and then met at home by two more who had a hot meal ready for us. So wonderful!!! And they had bought us milk and juice for the morning too! We ate our dinner after feeding Meredith and laying her on a blanket on the dining room floor (didn't want to put her in a strange crib without us there yet). When I picked her up to bring her to bed (we have a co-sleeper bed that sits right next to our bed) I had never felt her little body so completely limp. She was exhausted! Not a peep - she just kept sleeping. We all were in bed by a little after 10:00. Around 3:30 Meredith woke up and we brought her in bed with us and played (to the extent we could, half asleep!) and gave her a bottle. A little after 4:00 she was drowsy again, thank goodness, so we laid her back down. Then we all woke up at 10:00 this morning. Wow! What a great night that was. Meredith tried out her new high chair for her morning kasha (oatmeal) and then we played for a couple of hours before putting her down for a nap around 12:30. She is being an absolute angel!

Photos will be forthcoming - just wanted you all to know we are home and doing wonderfully well.

the penultimate post!

Rob recently pointed out that this blog keeps track of how many posts I have made. There have been 98 so far. We've decided that it would be perfect for us to end the blog at 100 posts and replace it with a regular baby blog about daily life with Meredith, since the "Hamersma Adoption" will be complete!

That means I've got this post, and then one more after we get home to let you know that we got there safely.

I want to use this post for something important, and that is to provide a couple of links to our family and friends regarding the transition that Meredith is making into our family. In the psychology literature this is called "attachment" and for most babies it is a natural process in which they learn very early on that their parents will always meet their needs. This allows for healthy brain development - especially emotional development. They learn that there are a couple of particular people who are "theirs" and it allows them to feel safe as they make discoveries in their world. When a child hasn't had this experience early on with her parents (or any parents) she usually has some catching up to do, which can mean that adoptive parents need to provide a more intense nurturing experience than might be typical of a child her age and need to be somewhat "jealous" of her attention. It can appear to others like spoiling or coddling, but it's an essential step in building those bonds that every parent and child need to have.

Rob and I found a nice website with some helpful ideas and info for friends and family related to attachment. We hope that Meredith will have a smooth path of bonding with us and won't run into the problems that this website in some ways anticipates - but that is really the key: anticipation. We want to make wise decisions early to prevent later regrets. This will mean things like carrying her around, feeding her, diapering her, and comforting her when she's crying need to be exclusive Mommy and Daddy territory (sorry for all of those longing to change a diaper). The most helpful seem to be these two pages:

Sample Letter to Friends and Family

Dos and Don'ts for Friends and Family

There are other interesting links in the left panel on the website if you find yourself fascinated. We haven't checked them all out but the site seems pretty good and corresponds to the more detailed reading we have done on this topic.

We can't wait to leave tomorrow for home! Please pray for a safe and peaceful (?) journey for us on the long flight from Moscow to Atlanta and the shorter one from there to Gainesville. We'll post again when we are home and awake (in other words, not right away!).

out and about - a little bit

Our time in Moscow has not involved a lot of activity outside our apartment since we are trying to keep Meredith fairly on schedule with her usual eating and sleeping habits.

On Saturday, we tried something a little different. I wrote a journal entry about it (a journal I am intending to put into a baby/memory book for her, so it is written in that style) and I'll post that here for your enjoyment. Sorry, we didn't take pictures (but there are others below taken on other days):

***

"Today we didn't have any jobs to do, so we could have stayed at the apartment all day if we had wanted to. But Mommy and Daddy thought it would be nice to go out for lunch and do a little shopping. So after your first nap was done at 10 am, we started getting ready to go out. It took longer than we expected for us to both get ready, plus change your diaper and feed you and get you dressed. We didn't leave until about 11:30! We knew you would usually take a nap at 12:00 but we thought we would put you in the stroller and see if you fell asleep there. We went to lunch and ate blinis (pancakes stuffed with filling like ham and cheese, or apples and caramel) and you didn't seem to mind at all. Since you were not fussy, we decided to do some shopping on Arbat street. We got a present for a friend and a free matrushka rattle for you, from a nice lady at one of the shops. She really liked you a lot!

As we walked home, you were falling asleep in your stroller and so we though you were ready for a nap. But when you got home, you were just cranky! We changed your diaper and fed you, but you were still unhappy that we had kept you out until almost 2:00. We finally got you down for a nap, but you didn't sleep well and you woke back up in 1/2 hour crying and crying! Daddy and I took turns trying to play with you and feed you but nothing would cheer you up. So Daddy decided to bring you outside to the park to see if you liked that better. You did stop crying, and you went on the swing with Daddy, but you still weren't very cheerful. We felt bad that we had kept you out too long after lunch because now you were overtired! We kept trying to get you to sleep again because you were rubbing your eyes, but again you only slept for a very short while and you woke up crying again. We found that you wanted some yogurt and formula, so then you felt a little better.

It was getting close to nighttime and we started trying to sing to you to help you fall asleep for the night. First, I sang some scales, and then we sang some children's songs. Finally we tried "Sing, Sing a Song" and put you in your crib. We though you were about to fall asleep, but then NO!

You started crying again. We put on some lullabye music and also put some medicine in your mouth to help with your new teeth hurting as they grow in. After a long time of carrying you and rocking you, you finally decided it was time for bed! All of us were very tired.

Mommy and Daddy decided that they would not mess with your schedule again for a long time."

***

So if the pictures only show a sweet, smiley, compliant girl, it's only because we don't have the inclination to grab the camera during the wailing :) That was one rough day. Unfortunately, we will be messing with the schedule big-time by flying her to the US for 8 hours of jetlag! We ended up being unable to arrange to come home early, not because of anything with paperwork but because the plane was simply full. So we'll be heading out (and arriving home) on Thursday July 3. Only a couple more days here! We're ready to stop living out of suitcases after over 3 weeks away from home.

We did much better on the naps/outings yesterday. We wanted to get out once, but we planned ahead so that the moment she awoke from her nap, we were already completely ready and then got her ready like clockwork. Too bad it was sprinkling out - but we could not be stopped. We wanted to go to the restaurant a friend had recommended called "MY MY" (prounounced MOO MOO) - it has a cow theme and is cafeteria style so you just point to what you want (Russian style food). We put the rain shield on Meredith's stroller and off we went. Here are a couple of pics - with a new camera that we got (Samsung S760, which was not much more expensive here than in the US - we like it so far, as a very basic, small digital camera for me to carry around with me -- Rob will probably try to get the other one fixed too when we get home).

Notice that we stopped at Starbucks - a guilty pleasure at $7 for a Mocha. It's the only Starbucks drink I've had this trip though.


This is a picture of us at Moo Moo. It is funnier if you click on it to get the larger size and can see Meredith's expression. Please comment with your thoughts on the perfect caption for it! My candidate is: "I refuse to be a part of this picture". For the foodies out there, I'm eating some kind of fried mushroom and potato ravioli served with sour cream, and drinking "dried fruit compote" which has dried fruit on the bottom of the glass that looks pretty yucky.


Here are another couple of cute picks of a feeding session (we do formula for 2 meals a day and food for the other 3). The first one is the actual feeding and the second is the burping - she's generally pretty happy to be burped. In fact, Rob figured out that she also seems to like being patted rather than rubbed when she's trying to fall asleep or calm down.



And I can't resist putting this picture in. It is in my favorite sleeper outfit that we got for her. She likes to spread herself out when she's asleep, filling up as much space as possible with her little bitty body. What a cutie.

brace yourself for the cutest video ever!

As I noted before, the upside of our digital camera being on the fritz is that we have had to be more creative and use our webcam to capture footage of Meredith. We have moved from still shots to video now. Rob put the camera on the side of the crib and had a little conversation with our girl, in which she was amazingly cooperative with him! (I think it's worth mentioning that it actually took a half hour to get her down for her nap after her apparent compliance here.)

Enjoy!

finally, the backache I've been waiting for!

I had a "to-do" list for our adoption - things to do before this second trip. One of them was "work out upper body." I bet you can guess whether I did that - hah! Well, the Sarah who made that list knew what she was talking about. The Sarah who ignored that item has been lugging around 14 pounds of pure sugar for the last three days and she can feel it! But you don't need to ask if it's worth it :)

Tonight is our third night with Meredith, and our third location. The first night we were still in Yaroslavl at our hotel. Then we took a van to Moscow that we had all to ourselves - there were two bench seats in the van and zero working seat belts :) Gotta love it. So we just put Meredith in her car seat, rear facing, and we both sat with her in the back row. We made it just fine.

Right as we were leaving in the van from Yaroslavl, our facilitator, while saying goodbye, let us know that the first night in Moscow we would be at a hotel and then would move to our apartment the next day. Oh well. Kind of a pain since we hadn't packed in such a way as to make a one-night stop that easy. But we did fine, and the apartment was literally across the street so - with the help our our driver/facilitator here in Moscow (an English speaker!) we just rolled our luggage over as if we were in an airport. Meredith got to try out our stroller for the first time and she enjoyed it. She is so easygoing! But yet she has a lot of personality, enough that we feel like things are going well and we are beginning the bonding process on the right foot. She lets us know when she's unhappy with crying and an arched back, and we are learning how to soothe her as well as to read her signals (rubbing eyes for sleepy, smacking lips for hungry - clearly she is a very bright young lady!). We are also developing a system for helping her tolerate our frequent use of the nasal aspirator....the poor girl is so congested (she was every time we visited her, we noticed then too) so that little bulb has been a lifesaver. If we lift her up a few times (the flying position) we get some smiles, and then we can sneak in one good suck...and then we have to do it again. Maybe our pediatrician in the U.S. will be able to tell us more about how to help her, but for now this is working OK.

This morning in our Moscow hotel, we did our U.S. Embassy doctor visit. This is an English-speaking Russian doctor, accredited by the U.S. Embassy, who comes to your hotel room and takes a look at the baby to verify that there aren't any medical concerns that the Embassy should be worried about. He had her basic medical info already and his brief exam (10 minutes?) revealed nothing beyond what we already knew - she is congested (which might be related to teething, or, he suggested, just living in an orphanage) and she is small but on the growth chart and a little behind developmentally but should catch up. She also may have eyesight issues due to her prematurity (which we also knew) but he pointed out that clearly she can see reasonably well - she makes good eye contact. He said they must have been taking quite good care of her at the orphanage, and that the Yaroslavl orphanages are know for doing a good job. How encouraging to us! So he gave us a report, we paid the fee, and he was done. The only downside is that all of this happened at 6:30-6:45 this morning - ugh!

At noon today we moved over to our apartment, which is fantastic! I guess it is technically a studio, but a very large one, with an L-shaped room that has the bed filling the smaller piece of the L and a nice large living room, and large kitchen. The playpen was already set up. We wondered what Meredith must be thinking - third crib in three days. But she seems to like it fine. Right after she woke up from one of her naps today (she does indeed take all three) she and Rob were playing a bit while she was still in the playpen - which isn't usually for long. He set up our webcam on the edge of the playpen to take pictures - our camera has officially quit working (ugh!) but the webcam photos are quite good quality, at least for taking photos when we're here at the apartment. Here are a few highlights from today's playpen playtime:

She loves her feet! We don't know if she saw them too much, being bundled up in the orphanage.

Shaking her friend the bear. We are naming it Masha, after the bear that is the symbol of Yaroslavl.


She discovered my toothbrush (with a cover on it, don't worry) and found it fun to flick around.


This picture cracks me up because, inadvertently, she is posed just like her bear!


I need to call it a night - the days are very full even without going out too much! Tomorrow we have just one planned excursion - the U.S. Embassy for an interview. I'm looking forward to it because I think we'll see other adoptive parents there - everyone who adopts from any region of Russia has to go through this, and so it is a kind of bottleneck I think (hopefully in a good way).

I'll leave you with a sweet smile from our sweet girl (playing on the bed in our apartment). No she doesn't crawl, but she gets in position pretty well - just a matter of time :)

* GOTCHA DAY !!! *

Today was the big day! After a morning trip out to sign documents, and a delicious lunch at the hotel restaurant, we got to go to the orphanage at 2:30 for the final trip. Finally, not just another “visit” to the orphanage! Meredith was brought to us in the same special outfit we had left for her. We had brought another one just in case, but this orphanage seems very conscientious and they wanted her to be able to have this outfit. They also - to our surprise - brought out the blanket and bear that we left with her in May! I don’t know if they put them away somewhere while we were gone, or if she actually had them during our absence, but either way it was so thoughtful of the staff to hang onto them for us.

Our final time at the orphanage was spent getting some questions answered about Meredith’s eating and sleeping schedule (three 2-hour naps per day, and 5 feedings) and giving several of the orphanage staff a chance to say goodbye to her. We were able to get her photo with one of the care staff, her opthamalogist, her pediatrician (who we’d met on the first trip), our facilitator and translators (both today’s translator – a new one – and the court translator from a couple weeks ago, who happened to be there with another family). We were getting ready to leave and then we were told to wait for one more person: the orphanage director. I was really glad she wanted to come and say goodbye. I have the impression that she is an intense, sort of severe kind of person after having interacted with her on our first trip. But saying goodbye to Nadia brought out her sweet side. She was so happy to have her picture taken with her, and she held her and whispered little things to her. I got a little choked up. Then she started talking to us – she makes eye contact even when though she’s talking in Russian and knows we can’t understand, and then our translator translates. She told us that she knows Meredith will do wonderfully well now that she has a family, that they will look forward to getting photos and letters from us, and that we are invited to return to adopt again in the future. It felt so good to have her blessing.

We don’t think it’s a good idea to show photos of the various people we took pictures with today, since this is a public blog and we did not get their permission to post their faces on the internet. We will be putting these photos in Meredith’s album, so you will have a chance to see them when you are with us. For now, enjoy a few photos of our special day…
Rob and Meredith reunited:

Sarah seeing whether Meredith was okay with being in a carseat – she was!

Rob bringing our little sleeping princess (fell asleep in the car) to the hotel room:

Home sweet hotel room – they brought in a crib for us today! And the cleaning lady – who knew a baby was coming since she helped with the crib – saw us with Meredith and just smiled from ear to ear and spoke in an approving tone. I think what she said was probably something like “Isn’t that the sweetest little girl I’ve ever seen!” At least, that’s what I would say if I were her.

The plan for the rest of our trip is to get Meredith’s passport here tomorrow and then leave for Moscow in a car in the late afternoon (seemed like it would be easier than navigating the train with her). Then Thursday and Friday we will work on paperwork in Moscow and stay in an APARTMENT again!! We loved our apartment there last time, and supposedly the one this time is just as good and more centrally located. Over the weekend, I hope we’ll be able to get out and about a little bit. Given the three-nap schedule, we’ll have to organize each day in little chunks, but maybe this is good for all of us! We think our paperwork will be finished there on Tuesday (or so) and our plane flies out on Thursday. I finally feel like we’re in the home stretch! Only a little over a week left.

We don’t yet know our internet situation in Moscow – we think it will be good – but just be aware that we might not have as much freedom with our time to go find an internet café now that we are MOMMY and DADDY! We’ll try to post when we can, but please assume that no news is good news :)