Tag: sofija

merci beaucoup

On By kacinpoint2 Comments

So many of you have been praying for our family and specifically for Sofija. Thank you! Gracias! Dankie! Hvala! Muito obrigado! Molte grazie!

In a thrilling, hold-my-breath, edge-of-my-seat game, the New England Patriots defeated the Seattle Seahawks in the Superbowl tonight. I have to confess, I’m not a fan of either team. I do however feel like my team won the Superbowl.

You see… My team was able to ride together in a car to and from church today. No hair pulling. No slapping. No hands in our faces. No objects being thrown. We all stayed in our seatbelts and kept our hands to ourselves.

And then… my baby girl stayed in kids’ church BY HERSELF for the ENTIRE service. Do you know what that means? It means my dear hubby and I were able to sit next to each other for an entire church service. Guys!! Girls!! That’s almost a date!

As if all the church and car goodness weren’t enough… I  made a pretty-long grocery list and as I was walking out the door to go shopping, Sofija asked to go with me. Without a second thought I said, “Okay.” Dear Hubby looked at me as if I’d lost my mind. Guys & Girls, me and my baby girl went to Wal-Mart, on a Sunday afternoon, along with half the residents of Alexandria, VA, and got all but one thing on that pretty-long grocery list. Baby Girl was A-MA-ZING! She made jokes and stayed by my side and helped me find the things I was looking for and a few things I wasn’t. And then, as if church and the car and surviving Wal-Mart weren’t enough, she clapped and squealed, “I’m SO EXCITED!” when I told her that we needed to stop at Safeway to find rye crackers. As we walked through the doors she exclaimed, “I love Safeway, Mama! They have Starbucks. Can we get Starbucks?” People, please read that again. We had a NORMAL conversation. And… she loves Safeway for the exact same reason that I love Safeway! She’s my girl. 😀

This day. This amazingly wonderful, peaceful, fun, stress-free day. You own a part of it. We are reaping a harvest of the prayers that you’ve sown. You’re a part of a team that lost most of the games this season but showed up in the playoffs and won the flippin’ Superbowl.

Thank you. Bringing up Sofija is a team effort and we’re incredibly grateful to have you on our team.

1 Corinthians 1:4 “I give thanks to my God always for you…”

Also… I made this kick-butt reuben dip for the Superbowl… Recipe herereubendip

so my daughter ran away…

On By kacinpointLeave a comment

I started this blog in the fall of 2009 so that our friends and family could be a part of our journey to adopt our precious Sofija. The last five years have been one heckuva journey! We had no clue what we were getting ourselves into. It was probably better that way. IMG_2216 IMG_2250 IMG_2360 IMG_2401 IMG_2409 IMG_2416 IMG_3029 IMG_3101

Sofija is amazing.

Sofija is beautiful.

Sofija is gifted, and athletic.

Sofija is the queen of selfies (Sorry, Kim Kardashian. She’s got you beat.)

Sofija is also very, very HARD.

Every single bad thing that can come from a child beginning her life in a neglectful institutional setting… she’s got it. She’s broken in a thousand ways. I have many friends with adopted and biological children who have disabilities that say, “I wouldn’t change a thing about my child.” You will not hear me say those words. I would give up a limb or one of my senses if it would heal my child.

One of the many things Sofija struggles with is a total lack of rational fears.  She has plenty of IRrational fears. But when it comes to understanding the dangers of this world… she hasn’t a clue. We have tried and tried to make her understand that she simply cannot run down the middle of the street or leave our house without us. We’ve put extra locks and alarms on the doors. Last Saturday night we grasped just how epically our efforts have failed.

We moved Sofija’s bed into our room a year and a half ago after she repeatedly got up during the night and put herself into dangerous situations or did fun things like pouring an entire jar of honey and bottle of ketchup into her bed… at the same time.

On Saturday night, after her bath, Sofija asked to play in her room. Every 5-10 minutes I checked on her. I always do. At 10pm I called her name and asked her what she was doing. She replied, “I’m still playing.” At 10:05 I called her name and told her it was time for bed. She didn’t respond. Before I got to her door I had a sinking feeling in my gut. It was too quiet. She wasn’t there. As I walked away from her room I noticed that the door to the garage was open. Walking into the garage I saw that the door from our garage to the back yard was open. There was no need to search the rest of the house. She was gone. I didn’t think to call 911. I just took off down the street in my socks. My husband took off in the opposite direction. I made it around our block, ran back in the house, grabbed the car keys, and told my son to call 911. I drove down our street with my windows down, screaming her name, and looking for any sign that she was at someone’s house. Two blocks from home I passed an unmarked cop car that was driving slowly with a search light on. I jumped in front of his car and fell apart. He asked me to please calm down and began describing Sofija to me. It turns out that one of our neighbors had seen Sofija sprinting down the road in her pajamas and glitter boots (that are two sizes too small – they were in a donation bag in the garage). The neighbor called the police. Within minutes Fairfax county search and rescue had seven police cruisers and a helicopter searching for my daughter. The policeman that I jumped in front of followed me back to our house and I listened as calls of “Sofija sightings” continued to come in on his radio. She ran from our house to 7eleven (about a mile) and when the clerk wouldn’t let her get a slurpee she ran to Safeway (a block from 7eleven) in search of ice cream cake. A police car followed her from 7eleven to Safeway and four cars cornered her at Safeway. My husband was driving around the neighborhood when an officer called from the Safeway parking lot asking for a family member because “She’s very aggressive.” EIGHT cops could not get her in the back of a police car. Her Daddy went and got her and brought her home, mad as a spring bear, because she “didn’t get a slurpee OR ice cream cake and the police lights hurt her eyes.”

I didn’t sleep Saturday night. Or Sunday night. Or much of any night since.

Sunday was spent installing new alarms and keyed chain locks. And then, Sunday night, after her bath, she put on socks and shoes and asked if she could play in her room “with the window open.”

What? The? Hell?

Seriously?!

This sinking feeling that I’m going to lose my child to an open window or unlocked door has got to be as close to hell as I ever want to come. I want peace. I need peace. My child needs a miracle.

We’ve done everything we can think of to keep her safe. She’s sleeping in our room with every door double-locked and alarms on all the doors and windows.  ~The irony has not escaped me that most people install alarms and locks to keep bad people out and we had to install them to keep a precious someone in.~ Sofija is now registered with the county as a “flight risk” and the search and rescue team have assured us that they will do everything in their power to get her home should she escape again. I’m printing postcards for our neighbors and all the local businesses with her picture and our contact information. If it was legal to microchip her, we would do it.

All that’s left is hope and prayer. If you think of us, pray for us. Pray for her safety. Pray for her healing. Pray for our peace.

Romans 5:2-5 NLT

Because of our faith, Christ has brought us into this place of undeserved privilege where we now stand, and we confidently and joyfully look forward to sharing God’s glory.

We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation. And this hope will not lead to disappointment…

Have you found your ‘thing’?

On By kacinpoint4 Comments

I have.  I’m supposed to gather stones.

In the book of Joshua (in the Bible) the Israelites FINALLY get to cross the Jordan River and enter the Promised Land.  In the process of crossing the river, the Lord speaks to Joshua and tells him to have one man from each of the twelve tribes go back and gather a stone.  They are to carry the stone on their shoulder to the place where they stayed the night (in the middle of the riverbed that God had dried out just for them).  The stones were to serve as a reminder that God cut off the flow of the water just so they could walk into the territory that had been promised to them.  Hope I haven’t lost you, but this story is extremely significant to me at the moment. You see….

From 1998-2000 our family lived in a little Korean city called Tongduchon (I’m quite certain I spelled it wrong.)  Those two years opened my eyes to something that I previously had no idea was going on in this great big world. I could not walk one block down the streets of Tongduchon without recognizing that all around me, women were living in slavery.  I began to build relationships with girls from the Philippines who were promised the world by a woman or man who brought them to Korea and held their passports while forcing them into prostitution.  My friends and I did what we could to help the girls make money outside of “the clubs” and we successfully raised money to buy the freedom of a few who were able to return home to their families.  What we did never felt like enough.

While living in Korea we vacationed in Thailand.  If my eyes had not been opened to the sex-trade in Korea, they had no choice but to acknowledge its ugliness in Thailand.  Everywhere we went we saw older white men walking around with young Thai children that they had purchased for their time in the country.  While shopping we would have flyers thrust at us by children with price lists of the sexual acts they were willing to perform.  Thailand was one of my most beautiful and disgusting life experiences all rolled into one package.  At the time I was five months pregnant with Seth and I cried myself to sleep on several occasions over the thought of bringing another life into a world that contained such ugliness.  My heart ached for those children.  Where were their mothers?  I could not imagine anything I could do that would ever be enough.

In the last few months of our time in Korea we noticed a change happening in the business of sexual slavery.  When we first arrived the girls were mostly Filipino.  By the time we left, they were mostly Russian and Eastern European.  It was a very strange phenomena to be in a place where you rarely saw anyone who looked like you and then come across someone who did and not be able to communicate with them.  The Filipino girls always spoke English.  The new girls did not.

A pimp rented out the apartment above us and filled it with seven or eight of these girls.  My heart ached.  I watched them come and go.  I watched the Johns (mostly American soldiers) come and go.  I heard screaming and crying through our ceiling.  I smiled at them and took them cookies and brownies and ached for a conversation.  Once again, I felt overwhelmed.  What could I ever do that would be enough to erase the ugliness of what these girls were experiencing?

Something else happened while we lived in Korea.  Several of our friends adopted children.  A dialogue on the possibility of us adopting in the future began.  A dialogue that eventually led us to the home of the girls who lived on the other side of my ceiling in Korea.  A dialogue that led us to Sofija.

If you’ve read this blog for any amount of time you know it began as a way of documenting our adoption process.  Throughout our adoption journey I never took the time to document all that took place in our lives leading up to the day Sofija found us.  I find it so entertaining that we just knew she was meant to be ours when we learned about her even though we had no clue where in the world she lived.  When we did find out that she was in Serbia we actually had to look at a map to see exactly where that was.  And… it wasn’t until we were in Serbia (hearing the spoken language) that I began to realize that the girls living in slavery in Korea, the girls whose floor was our ceiling, must’ve come from there.

The day we met Sofija we were asked if we planned to prostitute her.  It had never crossed my mind that someone might suspect we had bad intentions for her.  But for the people who loved her in Serbia, such a fate was a very real possibility.  We spent three weeks in Serbia seeing things through gray-cloudy lenses.  The food was great.  The people were beautiful.  The oppression was heavy and real.  There was this feeling I got anytime I was close to the girls living in slavery in Korea.  The air around me would thicken.  It took an extra effort just to walk or breathe or speak.  It was like being under water.  I felt the same thing when I saw the children in Thailand.  For the entire three weeks that we were in Serbia, that feeling never lifted.  I felt the yoke of slavery.

I also felt the disgrace of discrimination.  People looked at us everywhere we went.  Not because we looked different or spoke a different language.  But because we had two children with us who are autistic.  They make noises.  They jump around and rock and spin and flap their arms and tap things and sniff things.  People stared with disgust.  We looked and looked and looked some more, but we never once saw another person in public that had any special needs.  They were hidden.

Last year I returned to Serbia and had the honor of getting to know people who have dedicated their lives to breaking the yokes of slavery and discrimination in Serbia.  I met parents who were forced to choose between keeping their child born with special needs and maintaining relationships with their extended family.  Those same parents have dedicated their lives to educating their children and taking part in changing laws regarding special needs citizens.  And…  God gave me the honor of building relationships with people who have a heart to bring His message to their nation.

Which leads me to gathering stones.

While we were in Korea and Thailand and Serbia, I did often feel like I was under water.  But you know what?  I wasn’t.  I was camped out in the middle of a river bed with the waters held back on every side of me.  I could feel the pressure and the moisture, but it never consumed me.  And now I have an opportunity to gather stones and take them back to that place where God held the waters back.

Those people I met who have a heart to bring God’s message of salvation and hope to Serbia have taken on something BIG.  Have you ever seen the movie Faith Like Potatoes?  If not, watch it on Netflix NOW!  My friends have taken a ‘faith like potatoes’ leap.  They have reserved two venues in Serbia for September 21st and 22nd and they have Nick Vujicic coming to speak.  If you don’t know about Nick, click on his name above and read his story.  He’s AMAZING!  Nick was born with no limbs and he’s proven that we are not defined by what the world says we are.  He’s proven that there is no special need that God cannot use.  He is a bringer of hope.  Oh. Did I mention that his parents are Serbian?  And… we’re gonna see him at Creation Fest in June!

On May 2nd, 2011, I wrote a post called ‘set up’.   Sleep evaded me that night.  My heart was aching for the people of Serbia.  I was there and I could see a lack of hope, a lack of God’s love, in the eyes of people everywhere I went.  It was that night that I begin to beg God for opportunities to bring hope and to bring His love to the people of Serbia.  Even if it’s never enough, I want to end this life saying that I gave it my all.

So… will you help me as I pick up a stone and carry it on my shoulder back to Serbia?

We’ve set up a fundraiser through wepay.  I’m working this week to transform my blog to accept widgets, but for now the link will have to suffice.

I have spent a year questioning why God stopped Paul (repeatedly) from going through Serbia.  Why he made him turn back south from Macedonia and didn’t let him cross the Adriatic Sea to reach Italy will be one of my first ‘Heaven questions’.   Whatever God’s reasoning, I do know that he has provided a voice and a time for Serbia to hear His message.  The voice is Nick Vujicic and the time is this September.

school placement

On By kacinpoint3 Comments

This post is for all the Mommies in northern Virginia of children with disabilities.

We live in Fairfax County.  Last year was an amazing school year for our six year old daughter Sofija and we felt certain that she was exactly where she needed to be.  This year.  Not so much.  She is now in a room where she is the oldest, biggest, and highest functioning student.  There are six other students of which two are completely non-verbal and have NO assistive technology.  The classroom is literally 1/3 the size of the room she was in last year.  There is not even room for them to bring their coats or backpacks into the class.  The primary teacher is a first year teacher who has ZERO ABA training and the two instructional assistant spots apparently have a revolving door of substitutes.  I literally cannot count the number of different faces I’ve seen in there in the first nine weeks of school.  The one IA that was familiar with Sofija from last year, dug her fingernails into the palms of Sofija’s hands and left fingernail marks under her arms within the first three weeks of the school year.  That was her last day.

I’ve been told that I’m the only parent that comes to the class daily and keeps track of what’s going on in the classroom.  It is my guess that this is the reason I’ve been called to come get Sofija three out of the last four days that she’s been to school because she was just “having a bad day”.  We’ve had two two-hour meetings and have yet to get to the behavioral intervention plan in her IEP.  The behavioral coach and behavioral intervention specialist have contributed nothing to the classroom or to her IEP.  In fact, I do not even know who they are.  We have a BCBA and BCaBA that work with her in our home for forty hours/month and they have both spent time in the classroom.  When asked, they put together behavior plans for the class that have yet to be implemented.

She is bored!  We brought her home from Serbia in April of last year.  At that time she spoke no English and did not know letters, numbers, colors or shapes.  She mastered all of those and was speaking English fluently by the end of 2010.  In January we started working on letter sounds and writing and working towards reading.  She never quits when a new tasks is presented to her and she very quickly masters every new skill.  She is literally acquiring 40-50 dolch words a week and she is able to pick up almost any book now and read through it.  She is also able to independently write sentences.  If she doesn’t know the words from memory she sounds them out.  She can count money and make change.  She’s even teaching herself to play the piano (It’s pretty amazing to hear her picking out songs by ear and singing along as she’s playing).

Having her in a room with children who cannot speak and who have physical disabilities has created a perfect storm for aggression.  The other students have a much higher level of needs and when attention is being focused away from her and she has nothing to do, she acts out.  When all of the adults in the classroom stop what their doing and focus on Sofija, her bad behavior is reinforced and it escalates.  The more attention she gets, the worse her behavior becomes.  It’s just become a vicious cycle and the staff doesn’t seem to be willing to do anything to break it.

At this point we are simply looking for another placement where both her academic and behavioral needs can be met.  I know that APTS  is great for behavior, but not so strong academically.  We are planning to visit Phillips today.  I’m hoping that somebody out there can give us some suggestions on schools to avoid or schools that they recommend.

If you read all the way through this and you have no connections in northern Virginia with schools or autism, feel free to pray for us to have clarity and peace about where she belongs.  Our prayer is simply that she be in the environment where she can reach her full potential and be loved and nurtured.

day 2 part deux (boundaries)

On By kacinpoint2 Comments

Don’t say I didn’t warn you. At this moment I can not begin to imagine what I will be twenty days from now. After only two days of fasting, praying and studying the sermons of Christ, I already feel like my load is a little lighter. How is it that we complicate our lives so much more than we really have to?!
I am about to climb in bed (no caffeine is forcing me to bed a little earlier than usual), but I wanted to take a second to write a bit about boundaries. That word has crept up in every productive conversation that I’ve had in the last two weeks. What’s funny is that I didn’t think I had a problem with them. I have this wonderful gift of being able to identify the lack of boundaries in the lives of others and to see how that lack of boundaries holds them back from living fully. If you were on the receiving end of any of those recent conversations, I apologize for sounding self-righteous.
Today I took a long painful look in the mirror. I’ve always been afraid that telling people they couldn’t call after a certain time or asking visitors to leave our home for fear that doing so would be perceived as rudeness. I’m a good southern girl. I don’t like to be rude.
But what if it isn’t rude to establish boundaries? What if it is actually respectable? I wanted to call someone today and thought that they were probably working and didn’t need to be interrupted. I realized that this person’s job has created boundaries that I have no problem respecting. Isn’t family supposed to come before work? If so, shouldn’t it be even more respectable to establish boundaries surrounding my family. I’m not really sure how people are going to take it, but “God has not given me a spirit of fear!”(2 Timothy 1:7) and he instructed me to “Not worry”(Matthew 6:34). So, I’m going to let go of my fears and stop worrying that people will think I’m rude and start laying down some boundaries. Feel free to pray for me in this process or share your pain if you struggle in the same area.
Change of subject…. Seth and Sofija sat at the table tonight doing their homework. Sofija kept pausing and rereading every part of her book that said something about animals. I noticed that Seth had stopped his own work and was just sitting and watching her just as he said, “I think God showed me what Sofija is going to be when she grows up. I think she’s going to be an animal scientist who studies the way that mother animals protect their young.” Maybe God was showing him something about his sister AND his Mom……