the Life of Olena

Things are still going strong :) We have managed to go 3 full days without a single melt down, absolutely no aggressive behavior, no whining (you have no idea how happy this has made me) and believe it or not, she has been really focusing alot better and showing her true potential when it comes to the academics. Such as she hasn't needed any prompting when counting or saying her ABCs , today at bed time stories she was counting objects on the page and pointing to each one with her finger. She couldn't do that before. She would get confused, not count all of them and her numbers would be out of sequence. Here is the best way to describe what is going on with her right now. The part of her brain that processes her senses, obviously isn't working. The connection is bad due to her birth mother drinking during pregnancy. SO because of this her brain does not process and organize the senses that her body is "taking in". In turn this sensory "zone" c...

We have had a 100% problem free day. No a single fit, scream, or even a single whining episode! I am sold on this body brushing and joint compression technique. The OTR told us to do it every 2 waking hours. In addition to what I did last night, I starting first thing this morning when she woke up. and I kid you not, she was perfect all day. Then at about an hour and half..forty five minutes after I would do it, you could see her start to slowly change. She would start fidgeting, getting frustrated, and sassy. So I would pull her aside, complete the process and when we were done she was completely relaxed and back to my sweet angel! I am just so amazed. Throughout the whole day you could really see the changes in her. Maybe today was just a coincidence so we will see what tomorrow brings :) What a great day!!!

I love the tongue .

ALL OF THIS FOR JUST ONE PICTURE...ALL MOMMY WANTED WAS ONE GOOD PICTURE!!!

Olena's fear of the month, is flies! She goes in stages and about every 4 weeks she becomes scared of something and right now it is flies, and bumblebees (though to her every thing that flies is a fly so I guess we could say any bug with winds) This fly thing has been driving me nuts. The poor kid is on the look out the second her foot steps out the door. If she evens SEES one she is screaming and latched onto my leg. Trust me, this has made for a very interesting summer. Anyhow I came home the other day, and I could have died! my house was swarming with huge black flies, and I don't mean outside...this was inside! It was like walking into my daughters hell. I could not believe my eyes. Every window in the house was covered with about 20 flies, and they were buzzing all over. I of course freaked and starting to instantly work on getting them out. I pulled the screens out and ran around like a mad woman with my fly swatter. I have to admit they were pretty smart lit...

Olena has the hearing of the hawk, because this girl will hear a fly coming around the block! Anyhow, the other night she would not go to sleep, she kept telling me she was " scurred " of the firecookies . What the heck? I was so aggravated because I had no clue what she was talking about. After about 10 minutes of arguing with her, she finally told me to open the front door so I did and she said "see....listen" so I stopped and listened and sure enough, probably somewhere in the next city - there were fireWORKS ! I said you are scared of THOSE fireworks! "Yes mummy - the firecookies "! Good grief!

Something I don't ever want to forget: The three of us were sitting in the living room the other night reading books. Olena and J were on the couch and I was in my chair. J and I were talking about something and the 2 of us started to chuckle. Olena then started cracking up, it was the funniest thing ever. It was a full belly laugh and she just keeped going. J and I laughed a bit, because it was cute, and we figured she was playing around because we were laughing. But she wouldn't stop, so I finally asked her "what is so funny little lady? "bbbeeellliiiieeesssss" while still laughing. "what bellies?" "daddy's belly" she then stands up, pulls up her shirt and starts to wiggle her tummy... "daddy's belly giggles when he laughs" I almost fell out of my chair, I started laughing so hard. J has sitting on the couch with no shirt on so when he and I were laughing she had seen his belly giggle, and that seemed pretty funny to ...

The Theory: Our skin is our largest sensory organ, followed closely by our muscles and skeleton, connected by our nervous system and governed by our brain. The sensory systems feed information from our environment, through sense receptors, and neural impulses via our nervous system, directly to the brain. The brain then organizes it, sends it back through the nervous system for use as understanding, adaptation, learning, and skill development. When this system functions well, it allows a person to interact with their environment efficiently, developing necessary motor and language skills, and appropriate social/emotional behavior. When this system is unable to organize the information appropriately, a variety of symptoms can present; motor delays, tactile defensiveness, learning disorders, social or emotional difficulties, speech, and language deficits or attention disorders. The Purpose and Benefit: The DPPT has been found very beneficial to children with sensory integrative dysf...

Well as much as I would love for the new addition to be another child, it is not. Instead we have "adopted" a reptile...say hello to Mr. Turtle. Olena found him at my parents house a few weeks back and she fell in love with him, and mommy being a push over (and also someone who LOVES turtles and always wanted one) gave in and said yes lets keep him. J and I built a nice habitat for him outside, with lots of stuff to do and places to hide. He even has his own little pond! He knows comes to us for food and doesn't really hide anymore when we come over to him. He he is not afraid of Olena in the least bit, which surprises me because she is the one who is always poking at him. She likes to watch him hide and come back out, she thinks he's silly. And for those of you panicking right now about all of the diseases and germs that turtles carry....it know! I make sure to take all necessary precautions when handling him, feeding and cleaning and I have been teaching Olena...

Well we are back in business and our internet is back up and running. I don't have time to post right now, but I promise to update everything tonight. Things that I will post about and something to keep you guessing... body brushing a new addition to our "family" belly wiggles and last but not least - firecookies! See ya soon :)

This weekend one of my friends/coworkers got married. She had a beautiful, elegant, simple wedding and we had a blast, including my little party animal. No normally I would never consider taking a 3 year old to a wedding reception. One - it is my time to enjoy adults with my husband and take in an evening of fun, Two - usually weddings=drunken guests and I don't really feel it is an environment for children to be hanging out in and Three - I hate my daughter being off her sleeping schedule because it makes her a rotten brat :) But I broke down and made the exception because Adriana (the Bride) insisted that I bring her. She thinks that Olena is the poster child for Ukraine and adoption, and her friends who are also adopting international were going to be there and they needed some hope, she figured Olena was the perfect way to do this. (they started in Russia in 2004 - agency didn't get accredited so they changed to China in 2/2005 they have been waiting to travel since...

Today has been a day of relief, a day of concern, and for my husband...a day of reality. We met with Dr Smeitana at the MIND clinic today - I have to comment that this woman is fabulous...kind, caring, amazing, and brilliant!, I just absolutely loved her - and she has diagnosis Olena with Sensory Integration Disorder, which she feels does stem from some mild Fetal Alcohol Effect. Certain measurements on her face such as her eye spacing, her upper lip, the space between her lip and nose, and her head circumference do suggest FAE. She also has a fold at the top of her ears, deep eye set, and a heart murmur, which Dr. S said is also very common in FAE. It all seems a bit scary yet on the other hand, I know how "healthy" she is too, and I know the issues we have to tackle at this time, are definitely manageable. We are scheduled for an MRI and EEG on 7/11, that is just to ensure that there are no abnormalities that they need to be concerned about. And we will also be starting an ...

Happy June! The days have been filled with chores, lawn work, and several "activities"! Over Memorial Day Weekend our friends asked us to watch their two kids, (ages 3 and 10) so we spent the 4 day weekend as a family of 5...oh boy!! Jason and I really enjoyed it and so did Olena but by Monday night the two of us where laying on the couch dying of exhaustion. I needed a Holiday from the Holiday weekend :) We even survived taking them on outings. We had grocery shopping on Friday, chores and keeping kids busy on Saturday, mass and my cousins Holy Communion on Sunday, (which went marvelously, 2 toddlers and a 10 year old sat through the entire mass without a single problem, we were so proud of ourselves!!) then a Holiday bbq party on Monday. This weekend we have a wedding, a graduation commencement, and a benefit fundraiser for our friend! For the rest of the month....3 graduation parties, 2 weddings, a friend is expecting their first baby **it's a boy!!**, Father's Day...