Oh Where is my Kreschik?

Day 39

Vitals:  Nothing.

So, yesterday was our first full day with Ruslan.  It was hard, but he is really happy here.  He smiled all day long.  Since the kids sleep in the living room, we just wake them up by turning on the TV about 7am and then we let them watch-in-bed until about 8am, while we shower and get breakfast.  It’s one of the few perks of apartment life.  Well, as soon as Ruslan woke up, he wanted to put his bed away.  It’s hard to watch him, because his body is so uncooperative.  But, he was determined and kept at it until he was finished.  Since he slept on a huge quilt, I finally “helped” and we got it put away.  Then he wanted to put up the other kids beds, which was not a popular move. 

We distracted him by getting him dressed.   In Ukraine, they really pile the clothes on their children.  Every day that we saw him, he had on long underwear and at least two to three shirts.  He wanted to pile stuff on this morning, so I let him wear an undershirt and shirt, but it was a mistake.  His torso is solid muscle.  You wouldn’t believe how muscular his arms, chest, back and stomach are.  He is huge.  He spends all day combat crawling.  If you’ve ever tried this, you know it’s really hard.  I can’t remember doing it for more than a few minutes.  But, he does it all day long.  The upshot is that he runs hot and too many shirts caused him to get sweaty.  I am going to try  him with one shirt tomorrow, but it might be uncomfortable, since that will be less padding on his stomach.  Another problem with the combat crawling is that it is killing his little forearms.  I keep thinking I should have brought some sort of shin-guards to strap around his forearms, but he moves using the friction between the floor and his skin, so I’m not sure they will work. 

Overall, I’d say his body is in worse shape than I had hoped, but his mind is in better shape than I expected.  He was walking with a walker in the orphanage, but he was mostly holding himself up and pulling his legs.  We ‘walk’ him around the apartment and he CAN keep his legs under his torso, but not for long.  As muscular as his top is, his bottom has very little tone at all.  Plus, he is really stiff.  I was noticing at the orphanage that he doesn’t ever relax when we hold him.  He always seemed stiff, like he wanted off our laps.  But, then I realized it is because the CP keeps his muscles taught all the time.  I don’t know if he can relax his muscles at all.  His right knee will bend, but his left knee is very stiff.  The same with his hands. His right hand is much more flexible than his left and his fingers are not limber on either hand, although he can feed himself and I think he will be able to write in time.    

Anyway, we had school today and Ruslan did really well with it.  He has shown absolutely no interest in writing or drawing so, I decided to ignore him during school and hope that  he worms his way in.  I also just had a lot of work to do with the other kids, so it was kind of necessary.  He really likes playing with water so, believe it or not, he spent the entire morning that we did school at the kitchen sink “washing” the dishes.  I think he washed all the breakfast dishes at least three times.  Considering how cheap it is to fill a bucket with water and let a child play in it, I just can’t believe that water is not something he is already tired of.  But, apparently, they never let him play in water because he loves it.  Even after a full morning at the kitchen sink, he played for another hour at the bathtub with Sharon later in the day.

About lunch time, he started asking for something called “kreschik.”  He kept saying it over and over again with some other words thrown in for good measure.  “kreschik?  kreschik?” So we looked all around for “kreschik” and he kept nodding “no.”   We finally opened the refrigerator and he grabbed a box of juice.  So, we gave him some, thinking we had finally found “kreschik” but after he was done he started saying “kreschik” again.  So, we looked around again, with no “kreschik.”  Then he suddenly looked up at Bill and said, “tualet?” which is their word for “bathroom/toilet.”  He can’t really stand for more than a millisecond without falling over and Bill was busy, so it fell on me to take him.  We stood in front of the toilet for a few minutes, but he never produced.  I thought it might be because this was the first time I had ever taken him and he might be embarrassed, but Bill pointed out that women have been taking him to the toilet since he was born and this was nothing new.  I think we were both wondering how long to stand there before deciding we had given it the old college try when he finally motioned that the turn was over.  So we went back to the kitchen and as soon as I put him down he turned to me again and said, “kreschik?”  I finally called Nadya and gave Ruslan the phone. 

Nadya translated. One of our kids had given Ruslan a necklace and he couldn’t find it.  He was very worried that it was lost.  He remembered that Bill took it off last night at bath time and he wanted us to look for it in the bathroom.  So THAT was it….Poor Baby!  I could only imagine how he will explain the whole incident when he becomes a famous traveling speaker/advocate for adoption. “So, there I was in the bathroom, with my new mom holding me up and my personals hanging out, wondering how long we’d have to keep standing there and wondering how in the heck she got the idea that I wanted to go to the “bathroom” when all I really wanted was to get my necklace back!” 

Bill took them all to the playground by our apartment in the afternoon and Ruslan spent the rest of the day combat crawling, playing with the other kids and sweeping.  He really likes the broom.  He also found a teeny-tiny ironing board for ironing sleeves that he carried around with him for about half the day.  I joke with Reilly sometimes by repeating a line from an ancient, original Star Trek episode where a character kept yelling, “O’Reilleeeee!”  Now, when Ruslan wants Bill or me he starts yelling “Oh Bapa!  Oh Mama!”  A few times I wasn’t able to respond too quickly so he started yelling, “Oh Mama.  I Lahf Yoo!”  (I love you).  I think he said it because he knew I would come quicker, but it was still very cute.

After dinner, I asked Sharon to read a Dr. Seuss story to me. I sat on the floor with her in my lap while I pointed to the words and she read them.  Ruslan sat down next to us and paid very careful attention.  After a few minutes, he scooted over to a pile of homeschool books, got out Matt’s Algebra text and tried to push Sharon out of my lap.  I told him to wait until she was done.  He tried one more time, then he got the message and he waited quietly.  After Sharon was done, he crawled right into my lap, stiff as a board, opened the math text and pointed at the words for me to read.  I tried to interest him in the Dr. Seuss collection, but he wanted nothing to do with such juvenile prattle.  So I read it while he paid careful attention to where I was reading so he could turn the page.  After about five pages, it was time for bed. 

I made an executive decision and decided Matt and Paul will be in charge of getting Ruslan dressed and ready in the mornings/evenings.  They are 13 and 11, well capable of helping Ruslan and I’ve decided he’s too old to have a Mom helping him all the time.  They aren’t happy about it, but they’ll do anything for TV.

I usually read the kids a bed time story and Ruslan wanted me to read the math text for story time too, but the other kids revolted.  I ended up reading him a few more pages of Algebra while the kids got ready for bed, then it was acceptable to switch to The Lost Hero (next in the Percy Jackson series and highly enjoyable).   After that we all collapsed fairly quickly, for tomorrow is another day.