It's Been Six Months!

6 months ago, Inna and Vitali arrived in America and joined us as a family in their new home! It has been a wild ride so far at the Hall home with lots of ups and downs, lots of laughing and crying, lots of tantrums and behaving, lots of frustration with the "too hard" and celebration with the "made it through", lots of missing friends and making friends, lots of talks about the past and talks about the future, lots of calls to be on Jerry Springer(just checking to see if you are still there...Ha! :)lots of difficult doctor's visits and thankfulness for the easy visits, lots of expected struggles and lots of unexpected miracles, lots of learning what love is and what it is not. Anyway, you get the picture....

If you are another adoptive parent, you are familiar with "Gotcha Day" and for those who arent, Gotcha Day is usually the day most adoptive parents celebrate once a year of when their family came together. A lot of people celebrate Gotcha Day as the day that their child came out of the orphanage forever, but we are going to celebrate our Gotcha Day on the day that Inna and Vitali came home and we were ALL together since when they came out of the orphanage we couldnt all be there. I know a lot of families go to dinner on this day, but I would love to hear any other ideas of how your family celebrates this day.

To celebrate 6 mos, I am posting some pics below of when we first met in Ukraine and now...I will go from youngest to oldest....

Vitali in Ukraine:






Vitali now:







Grant in Ukraine:



Grant now:







Inna in Ukraine the first day we met:



Inna now:



Jason in Ukraine:


Jason now:


Mel in Ukraine:

Mel now:




Adoption "stuff" we have learned along the way #3:
We were given this advice by one of our social workers, I may have touched on this in an earlier post (can't remember). In Ukraine, the kids are not supposed to take anything with them from the orphanage. Now, can you imagine that you are leaving the place where you live now, except that you cannot take one thing with you, not even your clothes, not even one thing familiar to you. Inna's and Vitali's orphanage did allow them to wear the clothes they had on out of the orphanage(this is not the norm from what I understand), but this is absolutely all that Inna had to bring with her from her past was the clothes on her back and when she got home, she actually wanted to send those back in case the other girls needed them. Our social worker recommended buying a few things that you could ask the orphanage director if you could trade out the new things to leave at the orphanage for your child's familiar things....like new sheet for the child's sheet they are used to sleeping on with familiar feel and smell, new toy for maybe your child's favorite toy at the orphanage, new clothes for an outfit they are used to wearing, etc... Don't forget to ask for any pictures. Our kid's orphanages did not have any pics to give us, but you never know if you don't ask. We were able to get Vitali's hat from the orphanage (the one you see in a lot of his pics from Ukraine) and he loves that hat. He even wore it around the house in the summer some. Also, his prize possession is his "Meeska", which is a little mouse that was given to him when he left his orphanage. He sleeps with it every night, took it the first day of school here in America, and likes to carry it around with him. It has been very obvious how much it means to him and every night when I give him a kiss for bed, he holds Meeska up for me to kiss goodnight. Hope this helps some!

Comments:
Ukrainiac~ Loved hearing about your patriotism all the way from Ukraine! I am so glad you are able to send in the absentee vote! Grant will appreciate that too when he runs for president :)

Dad~ nope...our candidate did'nt win this time...glad you joined me in American pride on voting day at the polls though :) Now, just praying for our country and new leaders!!!

Mrs. Huff~ We did see your comment on the slide show. Thanks for letting us know that you checked on us. Inna saw some papers a few weeks ago that ya'll had worked on and she said, "I miss Mrs. Huff". Hope you are doing well!