Michael & Liz are Bloggable

This is my blog to attempt to sum up the last 6 weeks with Liza. I will admit I haven't done a good job keeping up with blogs about her. I think partly because anytime I geared up to blog, she would do something to annoy us and I'd end up putting it by the waste side because you never want to blog angry. So now that she has left, I am finally prepared, and this may be a long one.

As most of you know she left this morning and it was a chaotic exit to say the least. She was supposed to be at the airport at 9:15, fly out at 11:40 to JFK, and then fly from JFK to Kiev, Ukraine. We got an email at 8:40 saying "Flights canceled", stay home and wait for more information. So then at 10 we get an email that said "GO TO AIRPORT ASAP." The flight schedules got completely butchered and the kids got split into 3 groups and Liza will fly through Atlanta, Dusseldorf Germany, and then to Kiev.

As far as how the exit went emotionally, I will get to that in a bit.

Liz and I have mixed feelings on the visit. Like I've said in the past, at times she was an angel and just so happy and lively and wonderful to us. Other times she was the biggest brat, unappreciative of everything, and treated us like we were the meanest people on the planet. I will give some examples of her wonderfulness:

• Her laugh was too adorable.
  
• Her craftiness. She loved play-doh and drawing and Liz loved being crafty with her and spend time scrapbooking and taking pictures.
  
• She loved playing copy-cat with us, imitating everything we did. She would giggle endlessly imitating me dancing and me speaking. It was fun to reverse it on her when she broke character, and she'd throw her hands down and go "nooo" just cracking up laughing.
  
• There were times when she wanted to know what everything was in English. We would point to something and say it in English and she would learn that word. At one point she was joking around and just started naming all the words she knew in English, it was really cute.
  
• She was always a really good eater. Saturday night was the first time she didn't enjoy her dinner, it was Chicken Teryaki from Pei Wei. Her favorite foods were watermelon, grilled cheese with pepperoni in it, and chicken fingers and fries.
  
• She always wanted to do things herself. If she wanted to watch a movie and I started to get up to help her, she would go "DAT DAT DAT" and wave me to sit back down because she wanted to do it. It happened with everything especially with the dogs. She'd crate the dogs up, take them out, feed them.
  
• She always said thank you.
  
• She LOVES movies, especially Disney, which fits right into this family. I watch 15 movies a month on Netflix so to have a movie running all day long is awesome to me. Although I am a little tired of seeing Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, and Ice Age. Her favorite was The Little Mermaid, and Liz and I never get tired of that one.
  

So you know I had to get to it. The negatives, things that drove us up the wall:

• She WILL NOT shower! Only twice did she shower without a fight and that was after the camp days in which she was out in the sun and sweating all day. Those days she came home and showered and we were stunned. However the other days were not like that. This past Wednesday was the worst without a doubt. She hadn't showered in 10 days, yes a week and a half. At about 8, we tried the old "shower then ice cream" trick but had no luck, she said no and just sat there. We turned off the TV and she stomped upstairs crying and slammed her bedroom door. After a few minutes we went up and the tears became wails and sobs and the "AAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!" garbage that kids do just to make their crying louder. I am not joking, I think our heads were about to explode. It's nearly impossible to keep your cool in that situation with a normal child, then add to the fact that you can't communicate. So she balled up in the corner wailing still and after about 30 minutes I went in there, picked her up, and put her in the bathroom. Had it been my own child, 29 minutes ago she would have been in the shower with her clothes on. So she stood in the bathroom crying for another 10 minutes while the shower ran and Liz went in and threatened to call the interpreters. As most of you know from my previous blogs, this is not something Liza wants to have happen, so Liz left, Liza got in the shower and proceeded to curse in Russian. We say curse because it honestly sounded like she was saying something like "I hate you both! I can't wait to leave! You can't make me use shampoo! RRRAAARR!!!" So she went to bed with no ice cream and no words were exchanged between Liza and us until Friday.
  
• Going to bed was always a struggle. It was cute the first few weeks because anytime it was time for bed, it was time for us to deal with a new ailment that plagued Liza. One time it was her knee, another her elbow, another her finger. The funniest night was when we said "Ok bed time" and then all of a sudden an immense toothache caused her not to be able to leave the couch. It's terrible to say but we cracked up laughing as she crawled up the stairs clutching her jaw. We finally figured out that if we and the dogs went to bed at the same time as her, she had no problem going to bed. So win-win.
  
• Anytime we picked her up from places like camp, bible school, the doctors office, or anything, she was not happy to see us. If we tried to ask her, "how was camp", "fun?", "tired?", or try and help her carry what she was holding, she would throw her hands down, let out a big huff, and throw a mean disdainful look at us, as if to say "stop talking to me". We finally decided we'd not talk to her until she talked to us. That worked pretty well.
  
• Without sleep she got REALLY grumpy and was nasty in the mornings. If we let her sleep in she would be all smiles.
  

So in retrospect the list of positives far out weigh the negatives.

So this morning we were not expecting a lot of emotion from her as far as leaving. I think we were prepared for her just saying "ok bye" and heading up the escalator. I think what surprised us is that we were dead on with our expectations. She gave Liz a hug but it was completely unemotional for Liza. I then tried to give her a hug but it was the kind where I was hugging her arms too. Maybe as an only child she doesn't get a lot of love and attention, who knows? When it finally became time for her group of 8 to head up the escalator and she turned around to just wave at us and she gave us the going through the emotions goodbye and said "bye, bye, bye, bye" as if we were just dropping her off at camp again. While we would have liked a little more emotion and thanks from her we understand that she is only 8 and is going home to her Mom who she misses very much.

On the way home, Liz and I talked about it and we agree that the sad emotions from our side of dropping her off wasn't from the fact that we'll miss her or that we are sad to see her go, it is directly due to the fact that we are surrounded by other families with the opposite experience. The kids were crying and giving big hugs and most of the Belarussian kids were very sad to be leaving. It was clear that they all loved being there in America. In the meantime, we were standing there with our child who 2 minutes before we say goodbye, gets mad at us because all the other kids had backpacks and she had to carry her heavy carry-on bag over her shoulder (let's ignore the fact that 24 hours earlier at the store, Liz tried to buy Liza a backpack for her trip and Liza refused saying "no backpack"). It was the same bag she came with, and it was NOT that heavy, but she was annoyed at us anyway. Liza is not spoiled, she never wanted anything when we went shopping for her but usually we could gauge whether she was just being polite. But nonetheless, she was angry at us because she didn't have a backpack. It was the perfect ending to a trip with the same ups and downs.

While at the airport we were talking to a woman who goes to our church and also talking to her Belarussian boy named Artsiom. Artsiom is a perfect gentlemen who when walking into the conversation, shook my hand and said "hello". I think that's rare for a 13 year old. I asked him to ask Liza some questions. The first three he asked were "did you have fun here?" "will you miss Michael and Liz?" and "Do you want to come back next year", and as expected she gave a definitive "no". Then I just had to ask the question we all knew the answer too, "will you miss the dogs?" and of course it was a "YES!".

She doesn't want to come back and if she doesn't then we don't want her back. Although I will say we'd be happy to have her. Her Mom emailed us and said that she'd like Liza to come back next year. So as for next year, who knows? We will see.