So the last year...

I'd say it's hard to believe it's been nigh on a year since my last post here, but I know me too well.

Galyna's tale hasn't ended, though, so I'd best be about the business of providing some updates.

Health:
This is as good a starting point as any. Galyna's second round of tissue expansion went exceedingly well. Her discomfort with the procedure was lower than it had been the first time through. She enjoyed being spoiled by the good folks at Shriner's once again. (I think she daydreams about further surgery so she can have ice cream for breakfast, do sand art projects with the nurses, and watch whatever tv shows she wants). Her hair coverage in the back is now about 70% or so, depending on what you consider as the baseline. Per the surgeon, there may be one more round to address a couple of spots on the front of her head, but we may be at the end of what we can do with the back; her skin can only stretch so much. That said, the difference between when we brought her home and today is amazing. With more hair, too, comes more confidence - which was a primary goal. We'll see what the surgeon says at our next appointment, sometime in the next week.

(For those of you who are of the praying ilk, this is also a potential challenge. We're not sure what this would mean for us, and wherever God leads is obviously fine by us; He has already blessed us more than we in particular deserve considering how many others need a lot more than we do. But our parents' heart is that if we can remove any barriers to her happiness, even if not yet encountered as hardships, we want to do what we can.)

School:
Ah, la escuela. She continues to make progress, and while still slightly behind grade level she is still closing the gap. There have been a few hiccups as she's started pushing boundaries a little bit - while also dealing with some fallout from her background. Galyna has a tendency to "study for the test" in most subjects, learning enough to get through the test, and then forgetting the information, or (in reading) getting through the pronunciation without paying attention to vocabulary or comprehension. These things will come as we instill within her the value of education, although this is proving to be a mildly unexpected difficulty. Those struggles aside, she makes friends easily and follows her teachers.

Family:
This has been an interesting year in terms of our family. Galyna has begun bonding a little more with Tierney, but sibling issues remain. She sees her sisters as competition quite often - quite understandable, considering, but for her sisters it's not something they're fully prepared to handle yet. One of the very few concerns we had when adopting Galyna was that the process would be difficult for her sisters, who were (and are!) very close best friends. It's been difficult for Galya to break through, either annoying Amissa by (as Amissa sees it) "stalking" her due to Galyna's dislike of being alone, or by pushing Tierney's buttons. But I may be making it sound worse than it is. All three girls have grown this past year, and do get along better. Tierney & Amissa have even learned through this a bit more about how to be open with us about what's going on, and about showing grace to someone still learning what it means to be in a family. For her part, Galyna is learning what it means to have sisters instead of other orphans competing for parents.

As far as our relationship with Galyna is concerned, the therapy helped move that along a little bit. She still shows signs of not having full moved through the preschool phase of development, so the play therapy needs to continue. Her progress, though, is noticeable. We don't want to diminish that progress. However, some frustration still exists. She hasn't fully moved past her RAD, and it is especially noticeable with Shannon. She doesn't show affection to Shannon except when asked to, and her trust that she is in a permanent situation isn't there yet. It is...hard, especially since she is showing some signs of softening with me. I ache for Shannon, who still wants Galyna to just hug her, or climb into her lap to snuggle.

Adding to this is the fact that in public Galyna shows few signs of this beyond occasionally being (still) overly affectionate with others (which, also, is difficult for Shannon and me to see; we want to encourage healthy relationships outside the family, of course, but it's not easy seeing the hugs you want being given to others more freely). This "public face" of things is different from our in-home experience, making it hard for some of our friends to understand some of our challenges.

That said - again, she has still been making progress. She had a difficult life, and is still adjusting to a huge life change. We are adjusting to a life change nearly as large. Things are progressing, and there are many more silver linings than clouds. We are really blessed as many things could be oh so much harder or more painful. She's still a sweetheart, still trying - and still growing.

This is getting long - and there's more, but I'll save that for next time.

Thanks for listening:)

God bless,
Ron

The First Autumn

All is well with the Stewart clan with fall well under way. I figure it's been long enough that I should let y'all in on the latest happenstances & goings on.

The family is continuing to bond, a process that will take the better part of many years. Amissa & Galyna get along pretty well most days, although there is some friction between (rules-oriented) Tierney and (still-learning-the-rules) Galyna. We look at it as a great opportunity to teach Tierney grace & compassion while continuing to help Galyna adapt to her new family/culture. It's been a wonderful thing to see how the bigger family has led to growth in all the kids, not just Galyna. Seeing Tierney & Amissa, for instance, get upset at the local water park when some boys were teasing Galyna showed a deep compassion and love for their sister. (And seeing Tierney NOT deck the boys showed a growing patience on her part; there was a time in daycare - years back - where she hit a boy who was teasing Amissa. She was promptly put into a timeout. Later that afternoon, the daycare provider came along to see Tierney once again in the timeout spot. When asked why she was sitting there, Tierney said something along the lines of, "I hit again for teasing Amissa and then put myself in a timeout." I probably shouldn't have been as proud of her as I was.)

School continues apace, and Galyna is starting to pick up some reading skills. Her verbal English has long been ahead of her written English, which is natural. It's fun to see her starting to catch up. She's also popular at school and we see her giving (and receiving) many hugs from classmates when we pick her up at day's end. The only downside is she's on phy-ed & recess restrictions while the implants are in. It's a blessing to have teachers willing to be creative in helping her remain engaged anyway. Her favorite subject is art, and she's said a few times now she wants to be an art teacher. (Heh - as I type this she's pulling out colored pencils and paper. Call me Nostradamus.) If patterns hold, we'll have Tierney as our dramatic/performing arts daughter, Amissa as our gymnastics/swimming daughter, and Galyna as our visual arts daughter. Which should make logistics fun when they're all involved in actvities.

Galyna's treatments continue to progress. Her last hospital appointment went well, and it looks like the surgery to remove her implants will be December 28. That lines up well as it allows her to get through Christmas, as well as to recover in time to not miss any school. Of the four implants, we've finished filling two, and the other two are 1/2 - 2/3 full. To my untrained eye, the net result of this should be an improvement of hair coverage of 50%+. She's tolerating the saline injections much better now that we're finished with the two ports on her neck, which were always the painful ones. What I find myself wondering about is whether she'll want to go back for a second set of procedures when she sees the results of this one.

This is not to say there aren't still challenges, although things are smoothing out. The experts tend to agree that after 6 months you start to see real breakthroughs in bonding and we certainly have. She is starting to feel more comfortable, although there are still times it seems she's not sure of what's going on (or what's expected of her.) We have managed to work through some of the ... "survival habits" she picked up in the orphanage. As we come up on the one-year anniversary of the trip to Ukraine to bring Galyna into our family we remain grateful for the opportunity God provided.

As always, we thank you too for your prayers and support.

God bless,
Ron

Post-Op Update

Lots going on, so it's probably about time for an update. Medically, we took a big step today when both Shannon and I were taught how to inflate Galyna's expanders. That's interesting. I spent some time working at a plasma donation center when I was in college, and as part of that job stuck needles into many people. It's a different experience sticking a needle into your own daughter. But I marvel at the creativity of medical researchers who came up with this entire process for dealing with trauma-induced hair loss on children.

Galyna was not thrilled, to say the least, with the whole needle part of the experience. She hung in there, though, and the tears flowed more slowly (and quietly!) once she realized it wasn't as bad as she feared it might be.

The process is to add more saline to her implants each week, then revisit the hospital in a month to gauge progress. Then we'll discuss when to finish the procedure by taking the expanded tissue and using it to cover the areas of her scalp which are currently covered by (non-hirsute) skin grafts.

In the meantime, she's on full restriction of physical activity at school. Both gym and recess will have to be monitored for her as she can't do anything to risk head injury. The playground, anything involving objects flying through the air, running, jumping, etc. That could very well be the hardest part for her, and it will last 2-3 months. Fortunately, the teachers at the local school are great, and will be helping to give her options that keep her engaged with the rest of the class, yet protect her head from injury.

Speaking of school, last night was open house night. Galyna (and her sisters) met teachers, hugged people not seen in months and displayed a bit of apprehension at the thought of homework. Well, Tierney and Amissa weren't at all nervous about that, but Galyna is. Her speaking is coming along well. She's to the point we understand what she's trying to say, but are correcting grammar and vocabulary. Her reading is behind, and she still struggles with focus on certain words and letters. But even there she's further along than she was before the summer. (Honestly, with a pseudo-writer/avid reader/grammar geek for a father - not that you can tell from this blog - and avid reader mother and sisters, Galyna has zero chance of getting through life unable to read and write. Whether she likes it or not!) We're looking forward to seeing her blossom this year as she gets into the swing of things.

There are other concerns we're dealing with, naturally, due to the nature of adopting a previously abused, different cultured, institutionally raised child into a family like we've done. The good news is the issues are new, meaning many have been resolved. Life continues to be an adventure, and even in the tougher spots (squabbles with sisters, etc...) we wouldn't change a thing. The blessings outweigh the pain, and even the pain is a blessing at times.

I could go on about how pain can be used for evil, or it could be a necessary part of restoration, healing and redemption. But that's a bit deep for an 11:00 pm post. As always, thanks for prayers, support and love.

It's greatly appreciated. Always.

God bless,
Ron

The Latest...

So, some new things for the Galyna-interested out there.

• Galyna has started her first sports involvements, taking gymnastics and soccer (wait, since she's European, we'll call it football.) We're hoping these help her with her large motor skills and environmental awareness as these are not well-developed in her yet. For instance, she fell over once from waving at Shannon and saying, "hi mommy!" She's a strong child, and her fine-motor skills are good, so we think this is just a matter of exposing her to more opportunities to run, jump and play in places where there are things to climb on and things to avoid. On the other hand, this will probably lead us to a Thunder game this summer. No offense, but it can't be as fun as a Shakhtar game.


• The first parent-teacher conference went well. Galyna is well liked, and learning much. Her English is improving to the point where we can understand her, even though her grammar is unpolished. If we've gotten to the point that we're making her rephrase requests in the proper grammatical form, we've moved past comprehension - which is a good thing. Her classmates are curious, naturally, about her scarring, but so far little to no outright cruelty. We're blessed in that.


• Speaking of her scarring...we are working on the application to Shriner's to see if they'll be (a) able to take on her case, and (b) able to help remediate some (all?) of the scarring. We're particularly concerned with the graft on her scalp as it splits and bleeds very, very easily. We're not sure it's growing at the same rate as the rest of her scalp, or whether it's not thick enough. But we're also not medical doctors, so just want it checked out. If Shriner's is unable to take on her case, we'll start looking elsewhere - for both another hospital and funding.


• Galyna is fully American. She is now often the first to ask to watch TV or play on the computer. I guess we can say she's acclimating to American culture quickly. You know it's bad when I, of all people, am the one telling her she wants to watch too much TV.

As always, thanks for your prayers and support.

God bless,
Ron