Massage first then statistics.

I have known Karmelle Chaise since 2002 (mainly via email). I am so please for her that this got off the ground.

Published: 6 March 2006

Five years ago on a humanitarian mission to Ukraine, Karmelle Chaise saw something she still can't get out of her aid worker's mind or her mother's heart: a lone child in a squalid orphanage silently rocking back and forth like a metronome.

.............

Several weeks later, Chaise returned to the former Soviet state with her husband, Keith, and adopted... more

My daughter was a human ping-pong ball when she first came home. She bounced off the walls, the ceiling, and the floor. She was 3.5 years old and always touching, touching, touching. And she was always moving. Her attention span was about 1 second. It was extremely easy to over stimulate her. Common activities like shopping for food or taking a walk in the park were big challenges for me because she was always on the move. At this point I totally understood why parents put leashes on their children.

Then I discovered the calming influence of bathing. Natasha could be... more

I wrote a blog on pain and grief in adoption. I got a comment that make me realize I need to clarify something.

I stated that "other people's crisis aren't my crisis". I was poorly expressing myself. I was trying to talk about a very common human behavior. I am not talking specifically about adoption, but rather every day life.

Here is an example of the behavior............

In the new movie Aquamarine there is a girl named Claire.... more

After I was able to get past my emotional reaction to anti-adoption writing, I was able to think and explore my thoughts that were generated by these emails, posts, blogs.

The first and most important reminder was that that Pain is real to the person feeling it. Pain isn't something that can be measured with a yard stick or weighed on scales. Doctors do actually try to measure physical pain and emotional distress to help with treatment plans.

But otherwise it is counter productive to try... more

The Life2Orphans is a good organization to work with if you are looking to ship boxes/letters to a specific orphanage or if you want to help Ukrainian orphanages. They have many different projects going on at the same time. Here is a link to my blog on their "Project Empty Orphanage".

The Vice-President of the organization is Lynn Kolber. She recently visited the Mykolaivka Internat and came back with 4 Hand carved and Handcrafted wooden items. They are beautiful and they are being sold to the highest bidder.... more

I have an email friend who gave me permission to share her story about adopting an older child from Ukraine. She went to Ukraine to adopt a child over 10 years of age.

Friday, Feb 24, 2006

There were several couples in NAC on Thursday. Today (Friday) we went to pick up the referral (at 12 instead of 3) and it was a ghost town. [Translator] says the director is "on vacation".

My friend and her husband received a referral for a 13 year old "gentlemen". They traveled on Sunday so they could visit the orphanage on Monday.

Wednesday,... more

When I decided to become a parent via adoption in 1999, I asked a friend (who had adopted) for advice on getting started. His reply frankly made me angry because I thought he was just blowing me off.

He told me to read, read, read and then read some more.

I decided to take his advice and I started reading. Can you believe it... google.com was just a beta release in 1999. I used msn.com and yahoo.com to search for adoption information. And I found USENET which later became Google Groups. Strange how the world changes so quickly.

I found people who people... more

Every night I say the same things.

Tasha head on the pillow and eyes closed.

My daughter says the same thing in return.

I can't get to sleep.

Then I say.

You haven't tried. Eyes closed. Sleep. No talk.

Strange sleep ritual, but it works for us.

My darling's brain is racing all the time. She has ADHD and is on medication to help with impulse control. But the medication interferes with sleep. When she is off medication she sleeps about 1 hour more then when... more

My darling daughter, adopted from Ukraine, came home to me at 3.5 years of age as a survivor. She survived her childhood, the orphanage, the adults, the other children, the feral dogs around her orphanage. She was just sure that she could handle everything herself. Control freak to the max.....

After taking a bath (which was a new experience for her by the way... she was used to a sponge bath) she would try and wash her clothing. She also washed dishes and swept. She knew how to work but she didn’t know how to play.

And about attachment.... She didn’t need no freaking attachment.... more

I didn't realize that Max Levchin who co-founded paypal.com in 1998 was born in Ukraine. Too cool...

Around the time he immigrated to Chicago from Ukraine as a teenager in 1991, Max Levchin became obsessed with cryptography. Living under the old Soviet regime convinced him of the need to carry out communications undetectable by authorities. As a computer science student at the University of Illinois, he immersed himself in the mathematics of creating and breaking codes, not only making it the focus of his studies but also, he says, turning his pursuit into a "huge hobby" that consumed countless days and nights at the supercomputer center on the Urbana-Champaign campus.... more