The judge is an adoptive parent himself, and likes to keep the proceedings informal and fun. He asked us three simple questions, and said, “OK”.  We spent the rest of the time playing around in the courtroom. He let the boys climb up behind his stand, pound on the desk with his gavel, and sing into the microphone. They also had balloons set out for the kids. As you can see in the pictures, they enjoyed themselves.

The boys continue to make their adjustments. Evan learns more English every day. Today he even wrote out his name without have to trace on top of an outline. Lara and I were both impressed. He has also started to understand the difference between English and Russian. Every once in a while, he’ll point to an object and say “in Russian, that’s…”, or he might ask us to please speak to him in Russian. It’s pretty cool watching a little kid learn to distinguish languages.

He’s also starting to show some signs of confused feelings. We’ve received a couple of calls from school about him throwing his shoes or hitting his teachers. It usually seems to happen around “quiet time”, which he has never really handled very well (though that’s no excuse). He’ll occasionally say something like, “I want to go home to Russia”. We don’t take it to be anything serious. It’s like a lot of kids who might say they wished they lived somewhere else when not everything is going their way.

Alex is starting to feel his oats as he approaches the “terrible threes”. He gets more and more testy, which as frustrating as it can be, is actually kind of encouraging too. He started off a little too compliant for a two year old, so we’re glad to see him developing a sense of himself. Alex has quite a bit going on. He’s going to have tubes put in his ears, he is starting physical therapy to improve his strength and gross motor skills, occupational therapy to improve his fine motor skills (especially chewing), and speech therapy. It seems like a heavy load, but at the same time, it’s hard to deny him help if someone is willing to offer. We’ll just see how all of this goes.

Both boys have taken to spontaneous signs of affection, which has drawn a few tears from Lara. Out of the blue, they’ll walk up and give one of us a hug or a kiss. Evan will even say “I love you”, for no apparent reason at all. Needless to say, that’s one of the most encouraging experiences of all.

In another first, the boys celebrated Valentine’s Day at school on Tuesday. They came home with a bag of cards and candy bigger than what they had for Halloween. Hey, America is an awesome place! In the pictures, you can also see that they were pretty excited to get a stuffed Valentine’s bear from Grandma Judy and Grandpa Gary. They now have new sleeping partners.

That’s about all for now. We’ll be off to swim lessons again in the morning. Now that Christmas is past, Target started stocking pool toys again, so we got each of them a pair of goggles. We’ll get to try those out for the first time tomorrow. It should be fun!

Bacchus will be getting weekly chemo treatment for perhaps the next 4-5 months. Oy vay.  We’re well past the point where most sane people decide that they can’t justify paying for that kind of treatment for a pet, but we just can’t make ourselves let go. He is still very much a happy and energetic dog. We can only hope that he battles this thing into remission, and gets back to a reasonable quality of life soon.

If it is indeed T-cell, the odds of success are not all that good. The doctor said that a typical patient could expect to be in remission for about 6 months after the first course of chemo. What we didn’t realize is that “remission” begins from the moment they see the cancer cells pull back, which if all goes well will happen in the first month or so of treatment. That means that Bacchus would be looking at 2-3 months after wrapping up chemo before the cancer comes back, and with T-cell lymphoma, the follow-on treatments are much more difficult.

Apparently, either type of lymphoma develops very quickly. The doctor thought that left untreated, Bacchus would have 2-6 weeks until he was right back in the position he was in prior to surgery, only this time, he is going in with 20cm less intestine. It is entirely possible that Bacchus won’t react well to his chemo course, or that the lab results indicate we’re dealing with something pretty malicious, in which case we may be forced to make “the decision” much earlier.

If we get lucky, there is some chance that Bacchus either has B-cell lymphoma, or that he just happens to fall in a very small group of dogs (~5%) who are able to battle T-cell into remission for a year or more. Obviously, this isn’t exactly the news we were hoping for, but we’re still keeping our fingers crossed for the lab results.

Chris will take Bacchus tomorrow morning to get the staples out, and we’re hoping we can go to a 2x per day meal offering, and perhaps even allow him to come upstairs at night to sleep in our room.  I’m sure Bacchus would rather know when he can have his first Greenie…

As you might imagine, shoveling has been job #1 over the last couple of days. Today turned into another neighborhood shovel party, although many of the neighbors have broken down and are now sporting shiny new snowblowers.  I have to admit, I was pretty thankful when our neighbor John started blowing out the plow pile in front of our driveway.

The thing about Denver is, 2′ of snow hardly makes people flinch. The boys’ swim lessons were still on for 8:30 this morning. So we started our day at the pool. Both boys are really starting to catch on, but Evan especially. This was his first lesson, after about 6-8 visits to the pool. One of the other parents asked how many times he had been in lessons, because he seemed to be swimming like a fish.

Later, we got a little play time out in the back yard, which is where most of today’s pictures come from. Both boys found it pretty difficult to maneuver in the snow, but after we stomped down a few paths for them, we had fun building a snowman, and a couple of snow forts. We were planning a family picture around the snowman built with the kit from Aunt Alana, but Evan decided to knock the snowman’s head off just before we could take it. That was the beginning of the end for Evan. He kind of turned into a stinker through the afternoon. So much so that we had to skip his friend Ella’s birthday party tonight. It was just a passing storm – probably because of all the activity with no naps. By evening, he had settled back down and actually asked to go to bed at 8:00. Wonders never cease.

We continue to wait for the biopsy results from the mass they removed from Bacchus. Hopefully we’ll have that on Monday. We can hardly stand the wait any longer. In the meanwhile, Bacchus is returning to his normal self. His appetite has returned, and then some. He even managed to get out a #2 yesterday! Right now our biggest challenge is keeping him sedate enough. He just wants to get in the action with the family. We take that as a great sign, but it is still frustrating to try to keep him calm when we would all love nothing more than to play with him.  We’ll pass on word whenever we hear something.

He’s supposed to be pretty limited for the next 3 weeks.  No walks, no stairs, no fun…  I’m not sure how we’re going to survive that long without letting him come upstairs with us at night, or without being able to let him go down into the backyard to do his business, but we’ll find a way.

He’s actually back on kibble (at least some mixed in with his fancy high-fat canned food) already. We need to give him several smaller meals (about 1/3 of what we used to give him, now every 4-6 hours). Looks like we’ll be working meal shifts for the next week or two. The vet said he ate very well last night and earlier today. He just nibbled a little bit once he got home, but that’s been pretty typical behavior after any kenneling or vet visits. Hopefully we’ll see him gobbling down some meals tomorrow.

Still no word on the biopsy results. The Doc thought we would hear tomorrow, but the tech told us not to expect anything until perhaps Monday. So, the waiting game continues.  At least for now he seems to be in excellent spirits, and much more comfortable than he’s been for the past couple of weeks.

They did a chest x-ray before admitting him for surgery. Luckily, it came back clean and they went ahead with the operation. It was getting pretty tense waiting for that phone call. The doctor told us they really never know what to expect until they get inside. He said he may have to call us during the operation to ask for direction (i.e., continue, or let him go).  That was a frightening thought. As it turns out, everywhere else was pretty clean. They did see a lymph node that appeared suspect, but they couldn’t get to it, so they took a tissue sample of another node for biopsy.

Incredibly, Bacchus is already on his feet at 7:30 when we came to see him. He was pretty shaky, and seems to be walking with a bit of a limp. From what we can tell, his hind right leg looked to be very stiff. We hope that is just an artifact of the surgery, or perhaps all of the muscle loss over the last couple of weeks, but it is something we really want to ask the vet about. We got a few tail wags out of him, but it was pretty obvious that he is exhausted. We decided to let him get back to some rest.

Now we’re back to the waiting game. The doctor expected Bacchus to make a fairly quick recovery from the surgery, and believes that he will feel much better starting immediately. The big question now is what was that mass. We hope to get the biopsy results Wednesday, or perhaps Thursday. Then we’ll have an idea of what kind of treatment we are in for. It seems fairly likely, though not certain, that this is a cancer tumor of some kind. Obviously, we’re hoping it’s benign, but we’ll settle for something early stage and non-aggressive.

That’s about all we know for now. We’ll post more when we get to bring him home, and obviously when we have some sort of prognosis, but this is pretty good news, considering.

The surgeon at the local animal hospital believes there is a chance that they can remove the tumor. They will then do a biopsy to find out exactly what are dealing with. We’re expecting to have some chemotherapy after he recovers from surgery. We have an appointment for the procedure Monday morning. We won’t know much until at least Monday night or Tuesday.

An indication of the criticality of his condition is that the vet wasn’t sure he would be a candidate for surgery if his condition worsened over the next few days. She put him on some special canned food to try help get some sustenance in his system. They won’t operate if he loses much more weight. He is also receiving periodic IV’s to keep him hydrated through the weekend.

In the mean time, the comforting thing is that he doesn’t seem to be in pain. He has a lot of noise coming from his gut, and he obviously has some discomfort, but he still shows flashes of his characteristic joie de vivre. He is also still trying to eat and drink. Even though he might not be able to keep it down, we’re taking the desire as a good sign.

As you might imagine, we’re going to be on pins and needles this weekend. Anyone who knows us knows just how big a part of our family Bacchus has been for the last 8 1/2 years. He’s getting up there in years, but he’s far too young to let go just yet. Sure, he’s a little more lethargic than normal, but he hasn’t given up – and neither have we. We’d appreciate it if you’ll keep him in your prayers over the next few days.

That first day was crazy. We got to spend all of about 2 minutes with Alex, and then we were whisked away to meet other children. As we were leaving the home that day, we weren’t even entirely sure which child we were being matched with. Yet here we are, a world away, back in Colorado.

The boys continue to develop by leaps and bounds. Both boys have been advanced one class in their day care. That pretty much catches them up with the other children their age. Sure, they’re still a little bit behind where a typical kid might be, but they’re gaining fast.

Alex is pushing the boundaries of speaking. He now has several “words”. They’re still fairly muddled, but we can understand him well enough.  Earlier this week he spoke his first sentence – “Mama coo-coo” (cooking). Up until now, everything has basically been one word statements, so this seems like a good step. He’s also pretty much regularly using the potty now. Of course, he’s still regularly using his diaper too, but we’re making progress.

Evan has really become a chatter bug. We’re pretty much fully conversant with him now. He still has a few standby Russian words that he’s clinging too, but there’s a ton of English in there too. He now recognizes the difference between Russian and English, and sometimes points out the Russian word for something. For example, tonight he saw a picture of Alex drinking juice from back at the orphanage, and he said “Mama, in Russian – cok (sohk)”, which means juice.  We haven’t used that word with him in a couple of months, so we were both thoroughly impressed with his recollection.

I think we’ve finally found our sense of balance as a family after the holidays. As if by magic, we suddenly just feel normal. Clearly, it isn’t the pre-kids normal. Lara got to practice her “Super Nanny Timeout Technique” tonight with Evan. She had to keep putting him back on his chair for about half and hour before he finally sat still for his 3 minutes. That’s fairly typical around here, but at the same time it just feel like this is how it’s supposed to be.

All in all, things are going pretty well. We’re keeping the boys as busy as we can. Alex is in swimming lessons, and Evan is in basketball. We hope to get Evan in a swim lesson session in February, and Alex into some tumbling. They are both really enjoying the activities, and we’re enjoying letting them burn some energy. Now if we could just get them to go to bed!

Just one word of caution… The video is a little over 13 minutes long. I apologize for the length, but that’s roughly how long 2011 seems to have lasted for us. If you’re like us, there will be a few refreshers of the year that was very much a blur. I hope you find it worth watching.

Also, since the adoption process is now complete, and we’ve had some time to settle in at home, I think this will be our final post under the “Adoption” heading, and we will move all of our future stories under “Family Updates.”

Happy New Year!

We spent New Year’s Eve with our friends Matt and Michelle, and their two girls, Nissa and Ali. It was a good old fashion New Year’s, with sledding, pizza, and plenty of play!

The highlight of the week was Evan going to his first birthday party event Thursday evening.  He was so excited he even came up with a song…   I was really nervous about how Evan would play in someone else’s home with the over-stimulation of new toys, all of the food, all of the people, etc., but he did a really good job.  There were other parents who had to leave early because their children were having breakdowns, but Evan and I survived.

Today we took Alex to see an audiologist because we’ve been concerned about his balance and delay of speech.  Before the audiologist could perform the hearing exam, Alex’s ears had to be cleaned out.  With as much wax as the doctor removed from his ears, I’m surprised he’s been able to understand anything we’ve said to him.  There is fluid behind his ear drums which may be left over from his ear infection two months ago.  So we’ll go back after a few weeks to do additional testing.

This weekend’s New Year’s celebration is an especially big holiday in Russia.  When the Communists took power in 1917, they banned the open expression of religion.  In 1925, Christmas was effectively banned under the officially atheist Soviets, and did not return to Russia until 1992.  However, during that time, the Russians still wanted to celebrate a traditional Christmas so they included a decorated tree to the New Year’s holiday and introduced a character called “Grandfather Frost” to deliver presents.  He looks like our Santa but wears a blue suit.  The Russian Orthodox Church Christmas falls on January 7^th (using the old Julian calendar), and then the Old New Year falls on January 13^th.  So there will be lots of partying going on in Russia for the next two weeks. We were there last year for the Old New Year celebration when we first met Alex.