Thursday, December 3, 2020

Since my last update, we've seen some progress with Nicole, as Nadia continues to visit her daily and patiently teach her to consume food orally.  After initially giving her scraped bits of pear, Nadia has started spoon feeding her baby food from a jar, and Nicole has been taking it in small amounts.  And this week, Nadia gave her a small piece of corn that she attempted to chew lightly.  As I mentioned earlier, this is all new to Nicole as she has always received nutrition through a feeding tube that runs into her nose down to her stomach.  We wish someone at a hospital or clinic had tackled this challenge when she was younger, but we are confident she will learn how to eat!  To help in this effort, Nadia searched for and found a doctor in Moscow who has been offering guidance and consulting via video and phone calls.

Nicole is now more than 2 years and 5 months old, but has never spoken a word or walked.  So those are other challenges we'll need to help her with, and Nadia was happy that she said, "ah-goo" two days ago.  We consider that a start, and will hope for more baby talk in the coming weeks.

In addition to the therapy Nadia is giving Nicole, we have been taking steps to prepare for returning home to the U.S. as quickly as possible, once the adoption is finalized.  There isn't much we can do for the next couple of weeks, until the waiting period ends and we can obtain her birth certificate, which is needed to apply for a Ukrainian passport.  Once we obtain the passport and have the required medical exam, we can then visit the U.S. embassy for a visa interview.  We can fly out of Ukraine only after the visa is obtained, and it looks unlikely that we'll be back home for Christmas.  If all goes well, we'll fly back before the new year begins.

The past couple of weeks have been stressful as my job has been keeping me very busy, but we really enjoyed a visit from our 23 year old son Dania, who is currently living and working in Pyatigorsk, Russia.  We're always happy to see Dania, and his little brothers loved spending a few days playing with him.  And then we celebrated Thanksgiving in an unusual way, which is likely true for most of the USA.  We went to a local American-style diner a few blocks from our apartment, and had a traditional American meal - cheeseburger, fries, and pizza!  I was pleased to have a couple of days off from work, which helped me to recharge my batteries.

So that's today's update, and I will continue to try and figure out how to post photos and perhaps video.  Again, we greatly appreciate the financial assistance and want to sincerely thank everyone who contributed to our adoption of Nicole, including an anonymous donor.  I was assuming that notification of these updates is being automatically sent out to all donors, but I'll send emails to be sure you learn of them.  Thank you for reading, and we hope everyone is staying safe and enjoying the start of winter.