Anya is Eight!

Guess who turned 8?

Our Anya-girl, that's who!

This is how she does 8 on her fingers.
She has a hard time getting that ring finger to stay up. :)

 

We decided to make it a friend party this year! This was her first one ever!

We invited two of her buddies from her DS small group at school and three of her friends from her regular ed class, and a few neighbors.

 

 

 



 

This was just a few days after Hazel's tonsillectomy, so she didn't last too long. She had to go inside for a nap.

 

The bouncy water slide was a huge hit!

 

Lacey and Lindsey are sisters. Lacey was in the same small group with Anya in the special ed classroom and Lindsey was in her 1st grade class. I loved their matching swimsuits!

 

 

The little girl in the turquoise swimsuit is one of her friends in her first grade class. I love her. She talks to Anya like a girl her age, not like a 3-year-old, like most of the other kids do (they are so cute with her. They just think of her as the little sister of the class, which is totally expected.) Anyway, she has invited Anya to come play a few times this summer and her mom says she just adores Anya. What a sweetheart.

 

Grandma F. sent Anya $20 for her b-day, so we went and got this "Elefun" game. I thought it would be a great motivator for doing her homework or speech.

 

 

Those of you who are members of the LDS faith may be wondering if Anya was baptized.

{Just a little LDS Baptism 101:  The 8th birthday marks the time when kids in Mormon families can be baptized. It's the age of accountability. We believe that baptism is a commandment, required in order to live with God some day. We also believe that babies are born perfect (not in sin) and aren't accountable for wrong choices until they are 8 years old. So, when they turn 8, they can make that decision to follow Christ and get baptized if they would like.}

 

So...people with cognitive disabilities may not understand the reasoning behind something like baptism, and we're told that they aren't accountable like the rest of us. However, some kids see their typical peers from their primary class getting baptized and they want to be baptized as well. Many parents let them do it. There's really nothing wrong with it, IMO. It's a personal decision.

 

Anya is still about 4 years old cognitively and she really doesn't understand what baptism is all about, though. So we aren't having her baptized right now. We'll wait until she can understand it better and she has a desire to do it for the right reasons. It may be a year down the road, it may be 5 or 10. Or she may never want to. We're just going to keep teaching her about Jesus and let her make that decision.

Although she's very capable of many things, sin isn't one of them. We were all sent to this earth to be tested, but these kiddos were not. They are here to gain a body and to teach us. They will live with God one day, no matter what. What a great trade-off for all of the challenges they have to overcome on this earth! Anya and Hazel have a guaranteed place in heaven. :) What a blessing that is. One less thing for us parents to worry about.

 

 

 

A long-overdue Anya Update

 

I haven't written an update on Anya's progress for a really long time! So I thought her birthday post would be a great place for it!

 

Anya has been in our family for 2 years and 4 months. That's amazing to me. Two years isn't a very long time at all. It really feels like she's always been here. They say it takes as many years as the child is old at the time of the adoption, to feel completely bonded. Anya was about 2.5 -3 (cognitively) when she came home. :) So "they" are right! LOL

It's been a slow process, but a sure one at that. She now feels like "mine." It's truly remarkable what time, patience and a big 'ol dose of grace can do.

 

It still makes me so incredibly sad that we missed out on those first 5 years, though. How I would LOVE to see a baby picture of her. I'll bet she was so stinkin' cute. I want to somehow contact the baby home where she was raised till age 4 and see if they have any photos on file.

 

Health

 

When she first came home at age 5.5, she was 37 pounds, which isn't much for a typical child that age, but she was the height of a 3 year old. She was a chunky little monkey. They were fed a lot of starchy food in the orphanage and not many fruits or veggies. I'm pretty sure that's why.

 

Take a look at these pictures that we were given when we picked her up from the orphanage. I'm guessing she was 4 in these photos.

 

 She had the same spunk back then as she has now! And look at the size of those cheeks!

 

This is what she looked like the day I took her out of the orphanage, about a year later. 

 

 

And here she is 2 years and 4 months after that...all settled in and loved by her forever family.

 

 

She's now 45 lbs and a few inches taller. She still has a little pot belly, but she's definitely leaner and healthier. We've tried to limit her consumption of bread. The girl loves bread. She steals it out of the pantry whenever she gets the chance (and she taught Hazel to do the same. They are partners in crime.)  I would love to go gluten-free with her and Hazel because it's supposed to be much better for people with Ds, but I just know that she'll find the bread no matter how hard I try to hide it.

She is a pretty good eater. She will eat most vegetables and fruits. The only flavor she won't touch is Mexican flavors, like taco meat. That's a hard one because we have Mexican food at least once a week! But we all have our food aversions.

 

She is a good sleeper, for which we're very grateful. Having her tonsils removed 18 months ago helped with that. She goes to bed between 7:30 and 8:00 pm and gets up at about 7:15 a.m. I hear about all the sleep issues that other kids with Ds have and I'm counting our lucky stars on this one. Hazel's a good sleeper, too. Knock on wood.:)

 

Language

 

Two years ago, Anya knew no English words or signs. Now, she uses 5-10 signs (she refuses to watch signing times, which is how most kids learn signs. Ha ha!) She understands everything that a 3-4 year old would understand from the English language, and talks up a storm. The only hard part is that most people can only understand about 10% of it. She still has her baby-talk "Anya-ese" that she's always spoken, but now she mixes it with English. Her speech has finally started to improve in the past 6 months, enough that people outside our family are saying they understand her sometimes. Yay for that!

 

We still have so.far.to.go, though. She will always have to work hard on speech. I have no doubts about this. It's going to be her greatest challenge. People with Ds have low muscle tone, including in the muscles that are required for speech sound production.  That, combined with the thickened tongue that resulted from incorrect suckling, and a weak jaw and weak diaphragm, and learning to speak clearly becomes a difficult task. Kids with Ds get early intervention here in the States from the time they are babies, which helps. Our girls didn't get that. So we're playing catch-up. We're confident that Anya will continue to make progress, though. We're headed in the right direction with some extra speech therapy that we just started up this summer.

 

Schooling

 

Anya can name all of the letters in the alphabet and write them when prompted. She can also write her name. She can read probably about 30 sight words. This year we hope to get her to the point where she can sound out words to figure them out. She loves being read to, even by siblings. She loves books.

 

 

 

She recognizes all of her numbers up to about 40, and can write them. And she's learning to add using the touch math method. She can add two numbers that are under 10. She's really good at counting.

Anya's mind is a sponge. I really believe the sky is the limit with her if her educators really believe in her and push her to progress every year.

 

And if I can get her off of the dang iPad. :) She would play this all day long if she was allowed.  So would Hazel. Good thing for educational aps. And good thing we have two. Or maybe it's not a good thing. LOL

 

 

Behavior

Anya is very stubborn and competitive, which makes things like mealtime and bedtime stressful for us, as well as any time we have to transition out of a fun activity. But we're learning how to work with her. Much of the hard stuff is the result of a communication breakdown. It's incredible how hard a native language difference can affect things. Sometimes she'll be putting up a huge stink about something and we'll re-state what we're doing, telling her "first you do this, then you can do this" and says, "Oh, O-tay!" The traits that make things the hardest for us are just the traits that will make her go places in life. So we're rollin' with it. :) Once she gets into a groove in things like school, church, dance or therapy...anything that requires good behavior...she's great. She just has to be given distinct limits and people have to stick with them.

That about sums things up for our Anya. We love her dearly and can't imagine our lives without her. We have no doubts that Heavenly Father led us to her when He did for a reason. I believe that part of it was so that we could get her all settled in on time to go and get Hazel before the adoption ban in Russia. But I also believe there's so much more to it. They were sent to our family because we needed them, right now. They're teaching us to slow down and enjoy what matters most. And to appreciate every milestone and accomplishment in life. The things that come easily and naturally for the rest of our kids take a lot of work and at least twice as much time. We adore every accomplishment because we know it came with a price. As I've titled our blog, they are teaching us to "savour the little things."  We are truly blessed.