Roma's Probation Part One

Vitals:  In case you want to skip the endless drivel below and just get the bottom line:  Roma is making progress, slowly, slowly, SLOWLY.  Bill is coming around and life goes on faster than I can keep up.

Details:  So, now we are up to Thursday, December 23^rd, the first day of Roma’s probation.   The most annoying problems we were dealing with were that he was putting EVERYTHING in his mouth, getting into cabinets, bedrooms etc. and tearing them apart, making minimal eye contact, not seeking human company, not potty trained, and defiant when told, “no.”

As I wrote earlier, as soon as Bill heard someone else might take Roma, he totally took over Roma’s care.  This was an extremely good thing.  Roma was a Two-Parent problem.  There was just no way that his behaviors could be corrected without constant attention. 

One of the worst problems we had with him was that he was putting EVERYTHING in his mouth.  We hadn’t had toddlers in years, but even so, I considered our house moderately child proof.  We already had child locks on all the cabinets.  The toys in the playroom are in bins, so it was easy to put their covers back on.  Everything else that he grabbed, we would just take from him and put up high.  But even so, ANYTHING that he got his hands on, he was putting in his mouth.  If it didn’t fit, he would lick it.  There was nothing else to do but go one-on-one with him and keep taking stuff out of his hands.  It seemed like the only other option was to lock him in a closet and let him lick the walls. 

Sometime on Thursday, I noticed that his face was changing because it was filling out.  He came to us REALLY skinny.  He had no muscle tone which I initially attributed to CP, but now I think he was just extremely undernourished.  Our adoption translator in Ukraine told me that the budget for each orphan’s food equals out to 16 CENTS a day.  This explains why Ruslan was eating the same thing for lunch every day (rice porridge with a little bit of chicken broth and carrot bits).  Every time we visited him, we stayed until lunch and every day he sat down to that same rice porridge as we were leaving. 

Roma was probably on the same diet, but I have to say, he also didn’t know how to drink from a cup nor feed himself.  Anytime he got hold of a cup, he would drink so much that he would forget to breathe and most of the time, dump half the drink down his shirt.  We started only putting about ½ to ¼ inch of liquid in his glass.  With food, he would consistently shove as much as possible into his mouth with both hands and stuff his face chock full before he took time to swallow.  Every meal would find us taking his bowl away and saying “hoptai, hoptai” which means “swallow, swallow” and waiting for him to swallow before it was safe to return the bowl.   Every once in a while we would forget or he would get ahead of us.  He would suddenly look up at Bill or I with his cheeks puffed and so much food in his mouth he couldn’t close his lips.  Then he would give us a look that said, “what now?  I know I’m supposed to be doing something, but I can’t figure out what!”  So, we would take his bowl away (again) and try to get him to swallow some without grossing out everyone at the table.  Sometimes it worked.  Often he would need his bowl again to spit and start over.  

At some point Bill announced at dinner, “Roma, tonight you are going to enter the Bronze Age.” And insisted that Roma use a spoon.  Bill has the ability to stick to his guns no matter how discouraged other, less committed parents might become.  He got on Roma anytime he used his hands instead of a spoon and by the end of a few meals, spoons were a new part of the equation.

Anyway, I realized as I was pondering Roma’s face that he was also constantly saying “Gah-Load-Knee Coo-Shot” which is their words for “are you hungry” all the time.  Even after we had just finished eating, he would walk around the house in circles saying, “Gah-Load-Knee Coo-Shot, Gah-Load-Knee Coo-Shot”—so much so that we all started mimicking him and making up songs and jingles about it!!  You would think that this would be enough to clue me in that the child was constantly HUNGRY, but it took a while. 

I had told the kids that whenever he put stuff in his mouth they should take it away and give him something appropriate to eat.  I’m pretty lax about snacking as long as they finish their plates at meal times.   However, Roma’s situation required more than mere snacks.  I FINALLY noticed that he always finished his plate of food (sometimes it took a little initial coaxing, but he always finished and put his plate in the dishwasher).  However, he never asked for seconds.  Then I thought, “well, maybe he never had the chance to ask for seconds.”  --DUH!   So, the next meal time, when he finished his bowl of spaghetti and meat sauce, I just filled his bowl up again and lo and behold, he finished it ALL.  After that, the spaghetti was gone, so I gave him a ham sandwich which he started eating right away.  This is where I lost it.  I realized he must have spent all of his life hungry.  I just don’t think he had enough fat stores or flat out bulk to make it from meal to meal.   He’s FIVE years old and he probably spent most of his life looking forward to his next, inadequate meal. 

A little while later, I started thinking that maybe he didn’t know when he was full and was going to eat forever.  He ate about half of the sandwich and then he finally stopped.  The next time I looked over, he had taken it apart and was playing with the meat and bread.  It was probably the first time in his life he was really full enough to be playing with his food.  He did have a saturation point, but it was about double the food I had been giving him.  Poor baby, he was really making up for a lot of lost food.

That afternoon, he was putting MUCH less stuff in his mouth.  So, I took his snacks more seriously after that.  No more cookies or cheese and crackers for snack time.  When he says “Gah-Load-Knee Coo-Shot” now, I sit him down to a bowl full of leftovers.    So, this item is much better.  He still puts things in his mouth, but much less frequently.  Also, it’s been about a week since he chanted, “Gah-Load-Knee Coo-Shot.” 

Ironically, it was my eleven year old who suddenly stood up during the Despicable Me movie, looked at me with bugged out eyes and said, “MOM!  I just swallowed a penny!’  He complained about stomach pains all evening and half of the next day until he forgot about it.  He wanted to go to the doctor, but we told him to look through his poop for the next few days until he was sure it had come out. 

No, the next doctor appointment was for my ten year old daughter.  She had told me a few days earlier that she had a small lump on her breast.  There is enough cancer in both sides of our family to make me jump at the mention of ANY lump, but this one was small, hard and she said it was painful.  I told her to keep an eye on it for a few days and when it didn’t go away and really started bothering her, I spent a good bit of Thursday afternoon trying to find a female OB/GYN to check her out. 

I got an appointment for Friday morning, December 24^th.  This was such a great appointment, the story just has to be told.  The doctor spent a good bit of time going over our family history, and chatting with my daughter.  Things were fine until the doctor asked my daughter whether she had started her period.  I jumped in and said, “She doesn’t know what that is.”  The doctor warmly smiled at me and replied, “Well, that tells me a lot.”  Nice.  Then she asked my daughter how many brothers and sisters she had.  My daughter rattled off all six of their names and ages and I could just see the gears turning in the doctor’s brain.    Then it came out that two of our boys are homeschooled and more gears turned.   The next time the doctor looked over at me, the gears were re-set and I could see her imagining me with my hair in a bun and wearing a plain, solid color dress, white ankle socks and Reeboks sneakers.    We were off to a great start.

After that, it was a quick matter for the doctor to check out the lump, check for enlarged lymph nodes (not), then turn to me and tell me that everything was fine.  The lump was just normal breast development.  This seemed odd, since it’s only on ONE side, but apparently that is normal and this time it was the gears in MY brain turning as I tried to calculate just how much money I had spent today, only to be told that my ten year old daughter is entering puberty. 

It was an 8am appointment, so we spent the rest of the morning together getting some more “Roma” shopping done.  Another of the MAJOR problems with Roma was that he wasn’t potty trained.  This was so annoying.  I just do NOT want to spend the rest of my life wiping butts.  It’s already clear that even though Ruslan has the understanding, he really doesn’t have the agility or coordination to clean himself well.  So, I’m resigned to daily butt wiping for a while, but I was hoping it would only be one butt.  However, Roma was making no progress.  I decided to face reality and buy some diapers.  We also bought some door knob covers, some bowls that can suction onto a table, sippy cups, plastic kid spoons, baby wipes, and Clorox wipes.   Just as we were about to leave the baby section, I remembered that Bill said there were small potties in Roma’s room and I grabbed a kid size potty and a stool.   It was baby-ville all over again.

As soon as we got in the door, Roma dropped what he was doing, ran to me, said, “Moma!” and gave me a hug.  This was a first on many levels.  He’d never initiated contact with me before, never produced my name spontaneously, and definitely never solicited a hug.  He would ask to be picked up, or stand near me if he was scared, but this was clearly more along the lines of a hug.  Then, sticking with the theme of a new day, the kids set up the small potty in the bathroom.  Roma followed them in, took one look at his new potty, dropped his drawers and produced.  I’d like to say it ended there, but it hasn’t.  As I write this, we are setting the timer for 60 minutes and putting him on the pot once an hour.  Even so, he still has daily accidents.   SO, as you can imagine, we are going through the drill with candy, stickers, diapers, wipes, etc. etc. etc. and on infinitum. 

The next day was Christmas.  We were SO behind.  We had not wrapped a single gift.  We agreed to spell each other for naps on Christmas day and just resigned ourselves to a late night.  We got the kids to bed and started to watch a movie while they settled down.  (We have a TV in our bedroom.  We got it last year and it is AWESOME!  Anyone who tells you this is a bad idea is an idiot.)  We stuff the kids stockings with candy so Bill dumped it all in a huge pile between us and we started sampling.  About ten minutes later Sharon, our seven year old, walked in.  Out of all our kids, she has been pushed to the side the most as a result of this adoption.  So, guilt won out and she climbed in between us among all the candy.  We were all so wiped out, we didn’t get up again until after midnight.  It was glorious.  I shudder to think of my life without her.

My kids get up early anyway, but on Christmas, they get up really early.  Ruslan must have had some sort of celebration in his orphanage, because he knew what was going on.  In fact, he was a little annoying earlier in the week.  Whenever he got the chance, he would rattle off his “list,” which was about ten items.  We only get our kids three gifts each, so I finally started telling him, “NO.  You’re probably NOT going to get all those things.”  He would actually frown at me (as though I was flat out stingy) and I would have to take a deep breath and  explain, once again, that he will only get three gifts under the tree, so he needed to pick his best three.  Roma was a different story.  He had NO IDEA what was going on.  He sat in my lap holding one of his presents and just WATCHED the rest of the kids.   Even after the gifts were opened, he didn’t connect on his own that he could unwrap what he was holding until the other kids did it for him.  It was flat out stimulation overload and another pitiful moment when I was left wondering about the extent of his neglect and how a country can so thoroughly ignore their most vulnerable members.