Small victory

This is what Krassimir ate for lunch today:

Macaroni and cheese, potato salad*, deli turkey, and Pediasure fortified with powdered milk.

It may not look like much, but for this boy for whom eating has been such a continual challenge, and we measure our victories in bites (as in his therapist sharing with us that he took three bites of cooked carrot instead of two bites), being able to eat an entire meal of food that has not been pureed is a big deal.

After three years of working twice a week with his speech/feeding therapist, and us working with him at home, it appears that we've arrived at a new threshold. She's been regularly reporting up to twenty bites of different soft foods, and we're getting more success with a greater variety of things here at home. We still need to puree most of his meals, because we can not get a sustainable quantity into him (yet!) this way, but being able to do an entire meal here and there served right from the food the rest of us are eating at the table is incredible.

The forward progress for Krassimir is often very slow and incredibly incremental, but a simple thing like lunch today is a great reminder of how far he's come!




* Because I am a low-tech person, this whole "having a cell phone" thing that I've been doing since January still trips me up sometimes. When I put photos on the blog the old-fashioned way** by uploading them from the ones I have downloaded to my computer from my digital camera, they then exist on the blog regardless of if I move or delete them on my computer. Today I snapped a photo of Krassi's lunch, wrote a quick post this afternoon, and then promptly deleted the photo from my Google Photos because, after all, I don't need to keep a photo of Krassi's lunch, and I'm still somewhat on top of things, like sifting out photos I don't need to keep. Well, turns out you can't delete from Google Photos if you still want it to be on the blog. SO, the photo you see above is a staged photo that I took tonight when I realized the one I'd posted was gone...but I didn't have any more potato salad, so you have to imagine there is potato salad in the bowl next to the macaroni.

** Is it ridiculous to use the words "old-fashioned" and "blog" and "digital camera" in the same sentence? Maybe better not answer that.

"Little Bobche" returns

Gloria takes every chance she can get to go into Bogomila's room and play with her headphones! She's decided, too, that Bogomila's remote control for her lamp looks an awful lot like an mp3 player. Today she's even got Bogomila's photo album, open to her favorite photo, open on her lap.

 

More and more, the kids are finding chances to slip into Bogomila's room and just hang out. She still doesn't come out a lot, so it's great to have a regular flow of people going in.

After lunch today, we took the "Little Bobche" thing a little further when Gloria brought a shoe over to Bogomila. Leah went running for her Captain America hat, and the look was complete. 😊

That's a big responsibility Bogomila's been given! She's got little people looking up to her!

Just another day at therapy

**I think I have the video working.**

Tuesday is our big therapy day. At 8:30 in the morning, Matt and I pack up Krassimir and Tsvetomira...and Gloria, Evania, and Rinnah (so Matt can get his work done) into Big Blue, and I make the four mile drive to the therapy center, aiming to make it into the lobby by 9:00.

Tsvetomira has one hour of physical therapy, and then we spend an hour in the waiting room giving her her morning feed, and coloring and kindergartening (Rinnah).

Mira appears to really enjoy her weekly physical therapy visit. She's not exactly smiling in this photo, but spends much of her time with a very attentive, contented look on her face while Lori's working with her. Here she is doing some weight bearing.

 Krassimir starts with speech/feeding therapy for a half hour, and then joins us in Tsvetomira's therapy room where he plays for a while before his one hour occupational therapy session.

Krassimir built a block tower with four blocks today!! See the pleased look on his face!

 At 11:00 we head home, and get everyone unloaded into the house, usually by 11:30. That gives us a little bit of time to tackle random tasks (laundry switched? grammar or science with the 4th and 6th graders? catch a few emails, or make a few phone calls?) before lunch, which needs to wrap up at 12:30 so Bogomila and I can get into the car (I can't get her in and out of the van myself) and get to Reuben's school to pick him up so he and Bogomila can make it to their physical therapy appointments by 1:00. Reuben is again seeing Brian, his Favorite Person in the World, for physical therapy once a week.

Among other things, Reuben and Brian spend time every week biking. Reuben isn't very motivated, and likely will never be riding a two-wheel bike on his own, but the benefits from a PT standpoint are still great - it works his core, and gives him a great chance to improve his skills in balancing. It also encourages him to engage in many movements simultaneously - pedaling, balancing, holding on - and the ability to multi-task physically in this way has plenty of carry-over into safe navigation when he's on just his plain old two feet. Brian has a belt around Reuben's waist, and a hand (or two!) on the bike, but Reuben's doing a lot of the work himself, too. Today Owen made the four-mile bike ride to the center to watch Reuben and Bogomila's sessions.

  I don't have a photo of Bogomila today, but I DO have this video. It's a little bit long, but I didn't want to short her since I've got the rest of the Tuesday crew up! The highlight of this one for me is the four steps she takes without Lori holding her. Bogomila is holding the wall, but isn't getting any support from Lori!

I arrive home from the therapy run in time to feed Mira, and most weeks Tuesday is our day to take some combination of the kids to the library. But not today.

*Later that same day*

Here's Krassi stacking up a pile of whatever he can find on the kitchen floor while I'm making supper! I suppose we can call that carryover??

Tuesdays are a little bit nuts, but there is so much direct benefit that these four get from these times that we can't help but be grateful for the back and forth (and for a vehicle big enough for everyone and their chairs). (And that the therapy center is only four miles away!!)

Festival of Nations

A quick post, mostly in photos.

Being connected with the Bulgarian community here means Bogomila got invited to participate in the annual Festival of Nations held in downtown St. Paul (15 minutes away from our home). Their group had enough extra tickets that they were able to provide enough for everyone in our family who wanted to go. Matt and I took Bogomila, Leah, Reuben, and Rinnah in the earlier part of the day, and I went back with Leah and Owen after supper to pick Bogomila up after she helped work her shift at the Bulgarian cultural booth.

Our Bulgarian friends met us in the lobby with our tickets...and Bulgarian clothing for Bogomila to wear! She started with just the hat, and as you can see, was delighted.

 Neat exhibits:

Senegalese pottery

South American (Peru??) weaving.

German woodcarving

Native American bead loom

Silly photo opportunities:

And, best of all, very very many Bulgarian people! ...and Bogomila wanted photos with any one of them who had a moment to oblige.

Arriving at the Bulgarian cultural booth

Bogomila stamping passports at the cultural booth.

And a grand finale photograph with many of the Bulgarian dancers...and a few Turkish ones, too.

 And, of course, good food:

Eating a french donut

And, just because it was amazing, a carved watermelon (and others) at the Thailand food booth.

She's done growing...

...is what we were told when we picked her up. She had gained only a few ounces over the last two years, putting her from a few ounces under 25 pounds at 9 years old to just a few ounces over 25 pounds when we picked her up two months after her 11th birthday.

"She's done growing."

Or not.

Six weeks after coming home she had gained five pounds, and before her surgery yesterday she weighed in at 35 pounds, 11 ounces.

Yes, I know that what you weigh doesn't give the whole picture, but it does reaffirm that you can't believe all the information you receive about a child in adoption (either the "good" or the "bad"). She's not done growing.

Mira, recovering after her dental surgery, just before we packed up to go home.

Dental Surgery

Ah ha! After an entire morning of a fickle computer, I've made one last attempt here to sign in to blogger...and it worked! If you're reading this post and it's before supper time on Thursday it means it kept going until I was done writing. ;)

I am sitting here with Mira post-dental-surgery. She's doing great, but I'm still just not quite ready to try moving her to dress her in her going home clothes.

Sadly, I don't have great "before" pictures, but I'll share what I have:

Ouch. The amount of pain she must be in every day from that mouth is more than I really want to think about.

We've been planning for this surgery since the day after she was discharged from the hospital after coming home to the States. (Well, honestly, we'd been planning it since we met her last September, but the day after discharge was the day it went officially into the schedule!) The big question in our mind has been, "What's going to be left? And what are we going to do about it?" So I asked the surgeon when he came in this morning before surgery. His answer, "I don't know."

You've got to love an honest doctor!

It was wonderful to have him come in to talk after the surgery and say that he only ended up having to pull eleven teeth!! All of her six-year molars are still intact, and best of all, he was able to save the two top front teeth and the little ones on the bottom! It required a pretty substantial cleaning and filling - he said her front right tooth - the dark one - looked like it was all set for a piercing with a big hole in the middle of it! - but the decay had not hit the nerve, so he's pretty confident that what he was able to do will save the tooth. Mira obviously does not need her teeth for eating, but there's nothing like teeth inside a smile to make it look finished.

After photos will come in a few days. Right now she still doesn't look all that great, but the doctor's opinion is that even today she may already feel *better* because the net gain of having the rotting teeth out will more than make up for the pain of the extractions.

We are so grateful that our friend Lindsay just "happened" to email us a few weeks ago asking if she could be of any help this weekend! Knowing that she's at home with the other kids and Matt's able to make it to his meeting this afternoon is wonderful.

Growing up

 Someone wants to be just like her oldest sister...