What a day.

First, the good news:

My boss’s tumor was completely resected, and he is still talking, texting, moving, giving orders, and making jokes. Given where the tumor was in his brain, this is a huge relief. We are so thankful for the prayers of all the saints, the power of God, and the technology that was used in the surgery.

We got Addie’s bone age back. Indeed, she is not four years old. Actually, interestingly, her bone age was the same as Palmer’s. If you’ve ever spent time with them, you know there are years difference between them developmentally.  There is 18 months of error on either side, so there’s a big margin. So she too could technically also be as young as 4 1/2 or as old as 8 1/2. So we are choosing to keep their ages as they have told us: age 6 for Addie, and age 8 for Palmer.

(Grab your Pepto and your Tylenol.)

Now, the not-so-good news:

I had called our attorney last week about changing their birthdates, and she finally had a chance to call me back today. She said Immigration will no longer allow changes in birthdates, because of new anti-terrorism laws, and sent me the documentation from Immigration to prove it. She said we CAN change it at the State level, but that Immigration won’t recognize it. Having two different birthdates, one at the state level, and one at the federal level is not seen favorably by any government agency. This will make it nearly impossible, if not impossible, to get passports, citizenship, drivers’ licenses, voters’ registration cards, etc. She said the decision to change their birthdates has serious ramifications.

Because children who are internationally adopted go through puberty early, having them at non-age-appropriate grade levels is not good. We’re back to them going through puberty in first and second grades.

We’re hoping that the school system will take the doctor’s word for it, but not require us to go through the process of officially changing their birthdates. We shall see.

The bigger concern came from the x-rays Addie had to prove she doesn’t have tuberculosis and the one used to do her bone age. We found out this evening that Addie Rose has a very enlarged heart, and needs an echocardiogram at Vanderbilt as soon as possible. Tomorrow afternoon, actually. And in addition to having calcium-deficient bones, she has significantly enlarged bone marrow. This means that hematology/oncology has to get involved, in addition to pediatric cardiology. The two could be related, which would not be good.

The news about Addie Rose is difficult as a parent, and as a medical professional. Still, we don’t know exactly what all of this means until a whole plethora of doctors weigh in on their thoughts. We are also headed to the ENT tomorrow to have Addie evaluated for hearing loss, as we try to figure out the cause of her developmental delays.

I think we could use a little more of the good news, don’t you think?

The morning after our kids admitted they were much older than our agency had told us, we went to work on a new plan. In addition to already known, although minor, health problems, we now had a new set of problems on our hands. I think Ken said it best when he said, “I feel like someone kidnapped our kids, and put 2 others in their place.” Our son should be in 3rd grade, rather than Kindergarten, and our daughter should be in 1st grade, instead of the 3-4 year old classroom in a local preschool.

If you have a headache, are feeling nauseated, or are even mildly disinterested, please feel free to skip this post. If you are interested and feeling well, grab some Pepto and Tylenol for what’s to come.

Here are the people who are helping us decide on a new plan, as well as continue with the necessary parts of our current plan:

1. Our family physician, Dr. Wallace
2. Our international adoption physician, Dr. Rothman
3. An ENT specialist, Dr. Fortune
4. A developmental psychologist, Dr. Ashford
5. An occupational therapist, who evaluated Addie as being 3 years old in her motor skills. This wasn’t really a problem when she was 4, but now that she is 6, it is.
6. Several radiologists, who have caught a rare abnormality in Addie’s neck, as well as who are determining their bone age (Palmer’s has been done, and Addie has hers on Monday)
7. A team of neurologists to consult about Addie’s neurologic state
8. The public health department– because they come from a country where diseases that are rare in the U.S. are common
9. Metro Nashville Public Schools, including the local school, the English Learners program, and soon-to-be a few others
10. Addie’s preschool staff
11. Ken and I. We both have advanced education in medical and developmental psychology, but want to make decision as a team.
12. Our kids

Where do I begin? Well, first of all, we have to decide how old our kids are. Once we found out their birth certificates were falsified, we realized we should throw out their birth day and year. We now have to, as a team, decide what age our kids are. Aging of internationally adopted kids can indeed be difficult.

An important consideration is puberty. Studies have shown that internationally adopted kids go through puberty very early. Girls start as soon as 8 and boys as soon as 10. This means we have just 1-2 years before our kids are likely to start puberty. On our current schedule, that would put Addie in 1st grade and Palmer in 2nd grade when they start to develop. So it’s really not okay just to leave them where they are at on their birth certificates.

Another consideration is that our kids know their age when they were in the orphanage, and know that they were told to lie. If they didn’t know, we might have more options. In fact, the picture in which they said they were 6 and 8 was from last December. Whether they know that it was from a year ago, is questionable, but they could even be 7 and 9 at this point. They aren’t talking about that, but we’re aware it’s a possibility.

Another factor is that they are not speaking English. Addie essentially admitted to me what I have believed: that someone told her not to speak English. That someone is likely the person she shares a room with. It is very difficult to assess childrens’ developmental abilities without language comprehension, since much of intelligence is based on receptive and expressive language.

We have found out from other parents of children from the same orphanage, that Addie has always been “slow.” She has never talked, walked, or run as other children her age do. She was always very loud, even for the Congolese. So her developmental issues aren’t because of a cultural shift. It’s who she is. I find it ironic that other children knew she was “slow” but the adoption physician wasn’t astute enough to pick it up. Ahem. We are having her hearing tested to see if hearing loss explains her delays and speech problems.

Now that I know that her speech problems are not cultural, and her actual age is 6, we have to be more aggressive with getting her therapy to maximize and even realize her potential. Because she is 6 instead of 4, the Metro Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) should be involved. She will qualify for services that would be very difficult for us to afford with our extremely-high-deductible health insurance. We will likely have to say farewell of our plans to send them both to private Christian school once their English comprehension was up-to-speed.

I called the school where Palmer is attending on Monday to explain the situation. Their first reaction was expected: “What in the world?” Their second reaction was that they believed that even though we don’t have their birth certificates changed, we needed to move Palmer to the third grade, according to the law, because we know about the age disparity. We wrestled with MNPS all week long, played phone tag, talked to lots of different people, but ultimately it was decided that we will need to advance Palmer more slowly, but the goal is to get him within one year of age level within the next year or so. This means skipping TWO grades in approximately 1 year. Remember, he’s not even speaking English yet. It’s a very tall task.

On the other hand, we want to go ahead and treat Addie like she is 6 right away so that she qualifies for services and get her in a more academic setting as soon as possible. Her current preschool has 15 minutes of academic work per day, and she is surrounded by one 4 year old, and seven 3 year olds. Behaviorally and academically, this isn’t good for her. Her preschool is trying to test her for Kindergarten readiness, but Addie hasn’t been very cooperative. She knows we’ve called her bluff and our expectations are changing. We’re not sure if she has a fundamental lack of intelligence, or has had a lack of being challenged.

Essentially, we are asking 2 different things for 2 children with the same problem. Fortunately, MNPS realizes what a pickle we are in, and has expressed both condolences and sympathy. They are taking a week to think about it. Because we have no proof at this point how old she really is because her birth certificate was falsified, we are at an impasse until the international adoption physician (and all of the above) helps us assign a new age and create new documentation.

Addie has an abnormality in her spine that was picked up on a chest x-ray. That, coupled with the fact that she is 3 years behind in her fine and gross motor skills, make me and the adoption physician wonder if it  is related to her developmental delay. It is an abnormality that is so rare that we all thought it was a typo, until I did some research and found that it is not all that abnormal in African children. No one here has heard of it, either, until they get out the journals. We are going to let the team of neurologists from Vanderbilt look at the original film, and decide if they want to sedate her for an MRI. What follows after that could vary. Just therapy? Surgery and therapy? We’ll see. It could be nothing, or it could be a big deal.

As you can see, deciding why Addie is so delayed is becoming as big of a dilemma as what to do about it. Palmer’s biggest challenge will be the fact that regulations say that he needs to be in an age appropriate classroom as soon as possible. We’re asking MNPS to do what is best for our children individually, and that’s a tall task for a huge school system.

Oh, and have I mentioned, we still have to file for readoption, refile our 2011 taxes, and apply for the Certificate of Citizenship? Oh, and have I mentioned that I have pneumonia right now?

International adoption is hard enough, but we are overwhelmed with the to-do list to make our situation manageable. We’re searching for the new normal.We march on. This is the race we have been called to run. Two to three doctors’ visits per week. We’ll be needing to add psychological and occupational therapy to that soon as well. It’s daunting. I’m running out of time on my part-time maternity leave. Soon, Ken and I will both be working full-time. Our families are thousands of miles away.  

We have to grieve after the kids go to bed, or while they are at school, because we in no way want them to think that we are disappointed in them.

Forgive us if we don’t want to talk about it in passing. It’s just too much for casual conversation, especially in front of our kids. If you want to take us to lunch or out for a cup of coffee, or call us on the phone when the kids aren’t around, we’ll talk. We love to hear the words of support, which have poured out since we broke the news on Tuesday, through e-mail, text messages, and cards. We need them.  We need a team of cheerleaders in our life, because our team is tired. Very tired.

We know that though this situation has been brought about by much evil and deception, God has intended it for good. I’m reminded of when Joseph said to his brothers who had sold him into slavery, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done.” Genesis 50:20, NIV.  We cling to that.

When Palmer and Addie Rose got home yesterday, they knew something was up. I sent them outside to play while Ken and I talked. We hadn’t had a chance to debrief the news we received only 48 hours before that our kids weren’t who we were told they were.

Yesterday morning, Palmer had spit oatmeal at me, refused to wear his jacket, and threw a temper tantrum all the way up to the point where he was climbing the school stairs, and he suddenly realized that it wasn’t cool to have a temper tantrum in front of 100 other kids. So he lost his backpack of toys and his jacket yesterday for the way he acted.

I’m sure they were conspiring about how to run away, so I decided to break it up.

I called in Addie Rose, and asked her to sit down with me and look at her picture book. I took her picture book that we had sent to her in Africa, and showed her the picture of her in the orphanage. I asked her how old she and her brother were in the picture. I wasn’t too hopeful I would get an answer, since they don’t speak much English, but she actually said that she was 6 years old and he was 8 years old in that picture. I made sure we were understanding each other. Yes.

I also got a good look in her mouth, and counted her teeth. She has her six year molars. Four year olds can’t have six year molars, especially when they come with a history of malnourishment.

My four-year-old is actually six.

We started working on alphabet flashcards, and she only knew about four. Her preschool teacher said that she knew all of her letters, numbers, and colors when she was at school, but she has been acting like she doesn’t know any of those when she gets home. So, like a good mom, I gave her a time out for not doing her best. Then I promised her a bubble bath with toys if she could get her letters correct.

She got a shower last night instead.

My time out for her to think about how hard she was trying was strategic. I went out to her brother in the backyard, and had my husband ask him, in French, the same question: “How old are you in this picture?”

His head hung in shame.

We both told him that we will still love him if he is older, but we wanted to know what soccer team to put him on in the spring.

He told us (in French) that he was 8 and his sister was 6 in the picture.

Same answer, different child.

Confirmation.

I hugged him for being honest with us, even though it was hard to tell the truth.

They have not told us who told them to lie, but it’s in there. It will come out. We also know that our agency knew their real ages, because it was common knowledge among the children in the orphanage. We were purposely deceived. And our kids have been burdened with perpetuating a lie, so that we wouldn’t send them back to Africa. That’s a heavy, heavy burden for children.

The good news is that we now know how old our kids are.

The bad news is that we are grieving. And we have to allow ourselves to do that. In 48 hours, we lost some good years. We lost 3 years with our son, and 2 years with our daughter. We went from an exceptionally bright child and an on-track child, to a child that is now capable but behind, and one that has very serious developmental delays that will need intense therapy. The fragile picture of our family, as dysfunctional and new as it was, has been shattered, and we now have to start over with new expectations, new rules, and a new plan.

Why haven’t I met your kids yet?

Because you don’t work in Lamb’s Club or at their schools, babysat, or haven’t brought us a meal. 🙂

In all seriousness, you all still freak them out a bit. Palmer still cries. every. single. Sunday. after church. Even if he appears happy when he’s there, he is still getting freaked out by all of the attention. He knows how to survive for the moment — smile, participate, etc. but when he gets in the van or at home, he lets us know that church is HARD.

I’ve heard that in Kinshasa, there is a folk story that they tell children, “If you are naughty, the white people will come and steal you in the night and eat you.” Now whether our kids have been told this, I’m not sure, but if they have, can you imagine how they must feel walking through a crowd of 700 people staring and smiling at them?

“Do they like me, or do they think I look delicious?” may very well be their thoughts. They may even still be thinking this about Ken and I.

They are at church every Sunday, but we will not parade them around and do lots of introductions. There will be years for you to meet them and watch them, just like you would with any other child. They are 4 and 5 and didn’t ask to be mini-celebrities. They’d rather just blend in, which is already hard to do. Please try not to stare, be overly friendly, or treat them any differently than any other child in the church you don’t know.

Can I hug your kids?

Please don’t. We’ve actually tried to be flexible on this, but the adoption books all recommend that no one else should hug or kiss them for months as they transition into their new family. Our flexibility has backfired.

If you go to our church, parents, please talk to your children about this:

Every week, at least a 1/2 dozen people ask Palmer for hugs. Often, the same person asks Palmer for a hug a 1/2 dozen times. Palmer is not a hugger. That’s his right. Frankly, it takes a really special moment for him to even hug us, his parents. Remember back in Kinshasa? His birth family hugged Ken and I good-bye, but NOT Palmer. Please allow him some space to heal in this area. To Palmer, your kids are strangers.

Addie Rose has the opposite problem. She hugs everyone. She also calls every woman over 30 “mama.” She had 15 caregivers, called “mamas” in the orphanage, and every preschool teacher, Sunday School volunteer, babysitter, etc. is another “mama” to her. I am her mother. She needs to learn that — even though I’m not the most fun, or the prettiest, or give her as much candy as others. She needs to get her needs for affection from Ken and I, not from a dozen other people, and especially not relative strangers. She may even spontaneously want to hug you. Please remind her that you bet that her mommy or daddy would really love that very hug the  next time we see her. This is a vital lesson for a young girl to learn. Please help her to heal in this area.

Do your kids speak English yet?

Very little. But don’t be mistaken, they understand almost everything you say. They are just a little shy in speaking it. School is helping. Don’t be surprised if you ask our kids a question in English, and they respond in Lingala. We think that Addie Rose doesn’t realize that there is a difference between French/English/Lingala quite yet. If you speak French, you can speak to them in French, and they will likely respond to you in French. But we’re encouraging English in our home, and only using French for emergencies.

What do your kids like?

Curious George has been the biggest hit with both of our kids! They love to read all books, but especially Curious George. The Curious George cartoons on Netflix have been a huge hit too.

Palmer loves to learn to write letters. He is way ahead on his homework already (second week of school). I always have to MAKE him stop doing his homework (parent of the year) in order to eat dinner, get to church, etc. He always tells me lots about what he has done at school. I wish I knew what he was saying, but I can catch his enthusiasm!

They love toys that make noise, move, or wind up. It’s almost like they like the cheapest toys the best. They are learning how to do basic puzzles. Lincoln logs and Lego are a hit as well. Putting things together and taking them apart is very similar to what they are experiencing in real life, so that’s how they prefer to play.

Palmer loves soccer and is great at it. Addie’s motor skills are improving in this area. She’s going to be great with people.

Mostly, they play with each other. They are not used to having toys, so learning how to play with toys has been hard for them. We’ve had to push them a bit to practice fine and gross motor skills by playing. We don’t really know very much about what Addie likes to play with because she just likes to play with whatever Palmer is playing with!

Why were your kids brought to the orphanage?

That is their story to tell. When they are old enough, they may tell you, but Ken and I will not. No orphanage story is a happy one.  

Isn’t your life like a fairy tale come true?

We more liken it to a Biblical tale in which we’ve done something dangerous enough to get Satan’s attention. Make no mistake, there is still spiritual warfare going on for the hearts and minds of our kids. We are so thankful to have them home, to have the waiting over, to know them and their unique personalities and giftings. But they are grieving deeply and in their own ways. One responds to deep grief with laughter and dimpled smiles, and the other responds to deep grief with tears and tantrums. And as much as we want to help them, it’s difficult without a shared language. But every day is a smidge better than the day before. Every day, Ken and I earn a little more trust. Sometimes we laugh at how far we’ve come from when we first met them, and it’s only been two months. The best is yet to come.