PICTURES!!!

My mom had been feeding me pictures of John Paul while we were in Ukraine to help with missing him. We had our web cams going so we could talk and see each other for a few days. But once we got to Simferopol we didn't have internet in our room and I was unable to use our laptop. That made it harder. It was so nice to get the pictures and to see him having fun! I thought I would post them so that you can all see them too. I have more pictures from Christmas but I am just going to post these for now and give people a chance to see these. There are a lot of pics and if I post them all then some of them will be on the next page probably and might get missed.

In the picture where he is eating the chocolate wafer he looks upset, but my mom said he is actually laughing. He has learned to take a bite out of softer things, like wafer cookies and cheese puffs. He still hasn't figured out how to chew with his back teeth though. Dasha will chew, bananas that I know of, so I am hoping that he will see her chewing and figure it out. We have been exaggerating our chewing so that he can see, but he just hasn't figured it out yet. Well, I think he understands the concept, but for some reason isn't ready to do it yet. When Dasha chews you can see her move her food around with her tongue and everything. I am really hoping that he will see how she is doing it and start wanting to try too. They are going to be so good for each other. I know he is going to be able to teach her a lot!

I had hoped and prayed that he would continue to progress while we were in Ukraine, and he has! He is in a great environment with my mom, but I was afraid that the change and wondering where we are might effect him. It hasn't at all though. My mom said that the first day that I was unable to call on our web cam that he walked into her office around the same time that I had been calling and pointed at the computer screen and said, "mama". That melted my heart and made me sad at the same time. He didn't get upset or cry though so that is good.

He obviously feels really comfortable with my mom and step-dad and loves them! You can tell that in the pictures. He was just starting to let me know when he had to use the potty before we left. He has taken my mom to the potty several times to let her know that he needs to go. He has been testing her some too to see what he can get away with. lol!! Don't they all do that? lol!

I am going to get the pictures on now so I can get on the road to go get him!! I had to get some sleep so that I could be awake enough to drive down to NC. I slept for 11 hours straight! Boy, I was wiped out from all of that traveling!

Here's my little sweetheart...
Isn't this the sweetest?!

He fell asleep eating.
I LOVE wagon rides at grammy's house!!

Latest Accomplishments!

I haven't updated in a while so I thought I'd just list his latest accomplishments.

1. He is using the potty really well now. I have to take him and put him on the potty, but he will use it when he needs to. We are getting less and less accidents in between. And he LOVES to climb up on his little step stool to wash his hands. So much so that it has been his motivation for using the potty. I tell him to use the potty and you can wash your hands. I started rubbing his hands together when I tell him that and he will potty, then rub his hands together. Most of the time he tries to make a break for the sink with his pants around his ankles before I can get them back up. Now he stops when I say "wait". He looks so cute climbing up on his little step stool. And he immediately stepped up on it on his own before I even had a chance to show him. I thought he might need help, but he showed me real quick what a big boy he is.

2. He is becoming more vocal. The only words he is saying are mama and dada. But he is saying baba, and (as of yesterday) nana, and lala. He babbles and squeals a lot and blows LOTS of raspberries.

3. He is starting to drink some juice now. He stopped drinking vanilla soy milk. :(
He is drinking NutriPals, PediaSure, and juice. I am so thrilled about the juice!! That is a BIG accomplishment!

4. He is starting to spoon his spoon in his own mouth! He has scooped his own food up five times, but we are still in the process of getting him to do it independently. Tonight at supper he kept holding his hand out with his spoon in it for me to help him. Towards the end of his meal I ignored it to see if he would get tired of waiting and he did scoop twice. It was more of a dip, but still he helped himself and that was awesome! I helped him finish up because he was getting tired and it just wasn't the best time for it. So far I have learned that if you throw too many new things at him and expect too much faster than he feels comfortable then he shuts down and stops trying. So I do a little here and a little there and when he feels secure enough on his own he takes off. I no longer think about the fact that he is four years old and how he needs to catch up. I took that burden off of both of us! I stop and appreciate every new little thing he does without thinking about how far he still has to go. He is who he is and I love him just as he is. As long as we help him to accomplish being the person that God put him here to be then that is all that matters in this world. He's just amazing!

5. He has started to dance and spin in circles while he dances! His new favorite toy is a Leap Frog Caterpillar that plays music, says colors, and the alphabet. I started dancing for him when he would press the music button on top and he thought it was hysterical! As soon as the music would stop he would press the button again for the music to watch me dance. Yes, he made me his dancing monkey! lol! As soon as I would start dancing again he would scream and laugh. After a few rounds he decided to get up from his table and start dancing too. He was imitating me and started spinning in circles and shaking his little hands. This went on and on until we both tired out. It was good exercise for both of us though. He loves it! That's another thing he learned to do was spin circles. He had already learned that he could spin around and around to make the room spin. His coordination is getting so much better! Now he has learned to spin and dance to his favorite thing...MUSIC!

6. He signs "mama", "daddy", and as of yesterday "more". We're working on "milk" and "drink" now.

7. He has learned to put my hangers back! I have a hanger thief on my hands. I keep my hangers in a basket outside of the laundry room under my folding table because I don't have anywhere to hang them in my laudry room. Well, John Paul LOVES hangers!! He kept stealing my hangers and playing with them even though there is definitley not a toy shortage around here. He just loves them! One hanger here or there wasn't so bad, but it started to become a situation where everytime he would walk past the basket he would grab a new hanger and leave it thrown out on the playroom floor. Finally I decided it was time to crack down on it. So I caught him in the act and said, "no John Paul". This was after weeks of me taking the hangers either out of his hands or picking them up off of the floor and placing them back in the basket. He looked at me and gave me a mean look and started to whine and pout. So I told him to put it back in the basket. He spun in a circle and put it back in the basket. He was already halfway turned when I told him no, so he just turned the rest of the way around. Then he put his head down on the floor and started pouting. I said, "I'm not mad, just please don't steal my hangers". The he got up and picked up two more hangers that he had just previously hijacked and put them back in the basket. Of course this totally melted my heart. He is such a good little boy! Then he looked at me like he was sorry. He's so sensitive if he thinks he has done something wrong even when it really isn't a big deal. He'll understand though as he continues to become more secure with us. So now I am going to start working on teaching him to pick his own toys up.

8. He is interacting really well with other children! He had so much fun in NC over Thanksgiving with his cousin Ethan and my friend's two little boys. I am going to post some pictures later. I am really busy with getting ready to go back to Ukraine in 8 days!

9. He is starting to give kisses! My favorite accomplishment! :)

10. Oh, and he has learned to pet the cats GENTLY! lol! The cats appreciate that accomplishment A LOT!

11. And one more thing that is just awesome! He has learned to put his shape puzzle together correctly. It's a wooden puzzle with knobs and it has a square, triangle, circle, oval, and rectangle. He's learned to put all of the pieces in the correct place. He doesn't need my help with that one anymore. We just started a fruit puzzle now. He's already gotten the apple spot right a few times and the banana twice.

I am so bummed about leaving him, but we just can't take him for numerous reasons. He will be staying with my mom and he will be in great hands! I'm just going to miss him so much!!!! :(

New Pics & Video of John Paul

on our adoption blog. I posted it on our adoption blog because it was Rick's birthday, and more of a family thing. I might should have posted it here since the video is of John Paul. Anyway, you can check out our adoption blog if you want to see it. :)

Please Pray for Zoey

Please pray for this beautiful little girl. I have placed a button to the right of this post. Clicking on it will take you to her blog. Zoey was recently diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia and has just started chemo. Please pray for her parents and family as well. If you have a blog, her parents have asked and will appreciate if you put her button on your blog. Let's reach as far as we can and get as many prayers for this little girl and her family as possible. Put her on your prayer request lists at church even. Just lift them up. Thank you.

My Little Bee

John Paul had a fun first Halloween! He remembered from the day he got his pictures made what to do with a Dum Dum lollipop. It still had the wrapper on it though. lol! I took the wrapper off and he touched his tooth with it and then threw it on the floor. We just went around the block because he hasn't learned how to chew yet anyway. It would have just been more candy for mommy and daddy to eat. lol!

His costume had a little stinger on the back of it and it looked so funny! It was adorable on him! I couldn't get a clear picture of it though because he was moving around so fast. He looked like a streak in those pictures. I'm so glad glad that he is moving fast though! My little streak!

He had fun walking around. He got upset because he wanted to go in everyone's house. When he couldn't he cried. :( We only went to about 5 houses because he didn't understand why we couldn't go in everywhere we went. There was one house with a little girl about his age that he REALLY wanted to go inside. He already had a leg in her door! lol! She was playing in the floor with what looked like her grandpa and when we rang the doorbell she ran to the door and gave John Paul his candy. She said, "here baby". It's kind of comical because she looked to be 3 to 4 years old and he is four. He's a little guy. He has grown some though. He can wear 2T shirts now and some 24 months pants. Mostly he wears 18 months pants though. His foot has grown a half size. His hair is getting so shiny too. Nothing like some good home cooking and PediaSure. :) He has ONLY wanted to drink PediaSure since I got him home. In Ukraine he would drink juice and milk, but after I got him home I gave him PediaSure or PediaPals all the time because he was so severely underweight. Well, he got used to the taste and did not want ANYTHING else. I could get away with 1/4 milk and 3/4 PediaSure, but any more than that and he could taste the difference. I mean protesting and refusing any imposter, such as half PediaSure and half milk or water, and also vanilla and strawberry flavored milk. A friend of mine, Mandy, gave me an idea of something else to try. She gave her son (who also was becoming a PediaSure addict lol!) Silk vanilla flavored soy milk. So I bought some, and lo and behold thanks to Mandy I have successfully tricked him...finally! lol! He will drink it if I pour it out of a PediaSure bottle, but he saw me pour it out of the carton one day at lunch and he fussed and refused it! He's one smart cookie. But not too smart to be fooled by mommy. :) Now I put it in PediaSure bottles and he drinks it. The first time I tried pouring it out of the PediaSure bottle after he caught on to my trickery, I held my breath. You see he was on to me and then the drink had to pass a thorough inspection of sight, smell, and taste. If he suspects foul play he will first look down into his cup suspiciously, then lift it up and smell down in it, and then he will take a small sip. If it meets the high standards of John Paul PediaSure connoisseur, then he will turn it up and drink it. lol! If not, he will sit it back down, give you the stink eye, fuss, and slide it away from him on the highchair top. This is a far cry from the shoving it back in your face while it splashes everywhere, and at the same time having him scream and cry hysterically while kicking you that he used to do. Total meltdown! Thank goodness he has learned to tame that temper some! He's not a big fan of "time out" when he is hungry and thirsty. A few minutes of "time out" each offense cured the tantrums. It only took about 3 or four "time outs" and he figured it out and started pushing his cup softly away. He still fusses, but I'm not dodging drink splatters and kicks to my knee caps. And he doesn't have complete emotional meltdown over it. But he does express his dislike. And that's okay! :) We want him to have a voice and to express his opinion, but in a calm, my entire world isn't ending kind of way. I guess he learned to be that way in the orphanage. I saw him act like that, the only day, I observed him eating with one of the caretakers until she added porridge to his bottle of broth. I guess that was the only control the poor little guy could get over his environment, that and he is PICKY over his drink! It was obvious it was a regular thing for him because she knew adding the porridge would calm him down. So I came to the conclusion that his feeding times were the parts of the day that he would definitely get one on one attention, even if briefly, and so that must be why he was throwing so many tantrums during feeding. They allowed him to throw them and if he did, he would get more attention, and get what he wanted. When the caretakers are busy trying to get everyone fed quickly on a schedule, I guess it took a major tantrum to get attention to get his drink the way he wanted it. It worked for him though! He was working that environment! lol! But it didn't work for him here. It took me a little while to figure out why he turned into this totally different child when it was time to eat. He's fine with his meal times now, unless he realizes his drink has been tampered with. lol! Smart boy! :) But thank goodness a loving home environment with structure has helped with the tantrums. He's such a joy to have here! I'm not trying to be negative about his past behaviors, just honest. It is nice to be able to think back to how he was when he came here and how great he is doing now! I am so glad that Silk vanilla soy milk is "in"! That will sure help out our pocket books! Thanks Mandy, great idea!

Back to Halloween...He was ready for a play date with that little girl! He protested having to leave that house the most. I wish he could have gone in and played, but we don't know them. Maybe he will run into her on the playground some time and make a new friend. But, all in all he had fun and so did we.

He has been signing mama and daddy for a couple of weeks. But tonight at supper I showed him the sign for daddy and he signed it back at me and SAID, "dada". It was awesome to hear and see! I just love his sweet little voice!

John Paul's First Professional Pictures!

I love these pictures of him! It's amazing to see how far he has come and how happy he is now. He is such a huge blessing in a little package! :) He was in the process of clapping his hands in the first picture. He was so excited to have his picture taken! I am so thankful for him! We are planning on giving one of these pictures (framed) to the orphanage when we go back for Dasha. I haven't decided which one yet. What do you all think would be the best one to give them?

Progress

John Paul is doing great. I haven't been able to get him doing his new things on video. He stops when he sees the camera and then all of his interest goes into trying to take the camera from me. lol!

So I'll just tell what he is doing and I'll keep trying for the video. He has learned how to sign mama, daddy, and eat. He doesn't necessarily use them in context, but he has learned how to do them and that in itself is great! I'm sure that he will understand the meaning soon. Right now he does them to imitate me, but when I say the word he looks confused. I think he is trying to put it all together. I am trying to teach him the sign for ball now. He understands the word ball. Like earlier we were tossing a ball back and forth and it rolled past him. He looked around behind him at the ball and then decided it was too far away and picked up a truck and rolled it back instead. I put the truck aside and asked him to get the ball. Then he turned around and got the ball. It's not that I didn't want him playing with the truck, I just wanted him to follow through with getting the ball back to me.

He is also starting to do a lot better with feeding himself. He was dropping the spoon if I didn't have my hand snug on top of his. But today we had some progress! I held his wrist, rather than his hand, and he held the spoon himself. He was doing so well with it that I slid back and held his forearm to help him scoop. He was doing the scooping motions by himself for the most part. It's like he just needs to know that he is being helped. Otherwise, he'll either drop the spoon and won't do anything or he'll try to scoop and feed himself with both hands on the spoon. He isn't able to do it that way and actually get food on the spoon, but he will try now. :) I'm not sure if he is going to be left or right-handed. I alternate and use both hands and he actually does pretty well with both. Sometimes he uses his left hand and sometimes he uses his right. It depends on what he is doing. I think he is trying to figure out which one he's going to use. Maybe he'll be ambidextrous.

I will be able to pick his pictures up tomorrow or Friday. I have to call tomorrow to see if they came in early. They didn't offer me a picture CD and then I found out on their web-site that they do have them. By then they had already been sent off for development. I may try to order one when I pick the pictures up, if it isn't too expensive. If not then I will just try to scan them and put them on this blog. I'll probably do that anyway so everyone can see them. Hopefully they will scan clearly. I can't wait to see them and get them hung on the walls.

He's also doing really well on the stairs. He has been for a while. He can go up and down them on his own by sliding up and down slowly on his bottom. If one of us is holding his hand then he will walk slowly up and down them, but otherwise he can do it all himself on his bottom. I don't have to worry about him on the stairs now, but it will be a different story when Dasha gets here. She seems like Chloe was...FEARLESS! Which can be great for motivation, but not so great for safety. We'll have to kick the safety up a few notches when she gets here. There are things that I don't have to worry about with John Paul that I will with a smaller child. One thing I noticed is that she puts EVERYTHING in her mouth. Chloe was the same way, so I am used to it. lol! But John Paul doesn't do stuff like that. It will be hard to let him play with age appropriate toys when there is a little mouth following him around waiting to gobble his toys up. lol! I can't wait to get her home and see John Paul playing with her. We watched video of her the other day and John Paul looked at her and kept smiling really big. Then he would look at me and smile and then look back at her and smile. Then he started pointing at the computer screen that we were watching her on. He's going to be a great big brother, I think! I think he will be happy to have another little person here. He LOVES other children.

New Shoes!

I took John Paul to get a new pair of shoes this evening because I wanted him to have a pair of all leather tennis shoes for cold weather. He was SO CUTE at the shoe store! First he walked around and checked himself out in the mirrors while he babbled and talked to himself. It was adorable. Then I sat him down on the bench and tried a pair of shoes on him. He fussed at the time because he wanted down. After I got the shoes on him, I helped him off the bench. He looked down at his shoes and then looked back up at me and smiled from ear to ear. Then he took off walking faster than I have ever seen him go! It was so funny!

Then the lady told us that he could wear them out if he wanted to. So I thanked her and we went to the cashier to pay for them. He walked about four feet away from me and started checking out some necklaces that were hanging on a revolving rack beside of the check out. Then he looked down at his shoes again. This time he bent over and tapped them with his hands three times, stood straight back up, squealed, and smiled from ear to ear again. It totally melted my heart! It made me think back to when he was in the orphanage in April and they put a pair of shoes on him that looked like they were two to three sizes too big. And also when we were there in July they had a pair of girl's blue shoes on him. It made me tear up to know that he realized he had his own pair of new shiny white tennis shoes. Of course, he has other shoes, but I had ordered them online right after we got him. This was the first pair of shoes that he tried on and had bought for him while he was there. We take so much for granted in life. What a blessing to see him enjoying his new shoes so much!


John Paul in Ukraine


Happy About My New Shoes

Pictures from Grandma and Grandpa's Visit

Welcome to John Paul's New Blog

I set this blog up so that everyone can follow along with what John Paul is doing, separate from our adoption of Dasha. This is his very own little place. :) He is beginning to love Elmo, so I thought this background was appropriate. He likes when I sing la la la la, la la la la, John Paul's (rather than Elmo's) World. So that is where the name came from.

He has had a very busy weekend with a visit from his grandparents (Rick's parents)! They live in IL and this was their first time meeting each other. He has had a blast! We went and walked around Harper's Ferry today and checked out the museums. He enjoyed riding in the big stroller (rather than the easy umbrella stroller). He has been having a lot if fun playing with the new truck that his grandma and grandpa brought him. He's been loving the extra attention!

I took him to have his picture taken on Thursday and he did so well! He was a little ham! He smiled, laughed, and kept clapping his hands for me and the photographer. When I was looking at the computer selecting the pictures I wanted, he hopped down off of the chair, he was sitting beside me in, and charged after this little boy's tootsie roll pop! I didn't know how the little boy was going to react, but he and his sister laughed and thought it was funny. It really was funny! I was shocked that he wanted something like that to put in his mouth. When we left we donated a few dollars to a lady outside collecting money for abused children and she gave him a Dum Dum lollipop. I waited until we got out of her sight and to the car, before I gave it to him because I thought he might throw it down. I put it in his mouth and he licked it and pulled it back out. Then he put it back in and licked it again. Then he pulled it back out and snarled up his face, and threw it on the ground. Well, at least I don't have to worry about him wanting to eat candy. But I do hope he will eat something solid before too much longer. He eats great, but it is still pureed. He weighed 28 lbs when he went to the cardiologist. I don't know how much he weighed in Ukraine. They didn't weight him at his dr. appointment for his visa. :( But I do know that I can't count his ribs any more, and for that I am VERY thankful! He looks just right now, healthy.

I'll post some pictures tomorrow!