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The Nelson Chronicles

Tag Archives: Adoption

Diets and Doggies

05 Tuesday Mar 2013

Posted by Dan Nelson in Adoption, Dogs, Family Life, Paleo

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Adoption, Dog Adoption, Paleo

We did the paleo thing, and to moderate success. It was great… while it lasted. I lost weight, I felt better, but once the holidays hit, I couldn’t stick with it. There’s just too much good food laying around. Food that only comes once a year. So come Christmas Eve, we had great food, and some left. The with Christmas Day, we had great food, and even more left. So I extended the paleoless period until after the new year, and after four false restarts, remain paleoless to this day.
The biggest reason is the problem with my brain feeding me lies and the rest of my brain me agreeing with it. Somewhere in the recesses of my mind something whispers… “It’s so hard…”  and the new the rest of my brain, in the voice of Forrest Gump says, “Oka-ay.” and I give up on the paleo plan. Then the one part if my brain (we’ll call it the Lie Center of the brain- everybody has one) says, “We’ll start this over tomorrow.”

The rest of my brain knows this is a lie, of course, but unfortunately doesn’t care enough to do anything about it. But I’m trying. I’m rallying the rest of my brain to overcome the Lie Center. (Yes, there is a sermon in there somewhere.)
I’ve decided to follow a simpler eating plan. Shannon will keep on a more paleolike plan. Benny will stick with the low color low wheat low dairy plan we have been doing.

Now. Dogs. We have a dog. We always said well never have two dogs again. So 1 dog, 2 rabbits, and a cat later, we’re going to get another dog.
Now let’s be clear. I do not adopt animals. I understand the idea behind this. I get to the whole Take Care of Your Animals thing and I Love My Schnauzer concept. But I don’t adopt animals. I’ll play along, and signed “adoption papers”  when I got the cat, but there is a serious problem when we equate animals with humanity. I adopt children. They become a part of my family. They become a part of my inheritance. My dogs, love them as I do, get nothing when I die.
For the majority of human history, we had dogs for reasons beyond just a friend to hug. We used them for working, for security, for pest control control. We still do. We used police dogs because should something bad happen, it is better that a dog should fall rather than a man.
Ultimately, adopting animals does more than raise the level of dogs, it lowers  humanity. I can’t go there.
But we got us a dog. We’ve got to wait 3 agonizing weeks while the “little” thing gets weaned from its mama.
We chose it for its size, for its gentleness and personality. So be looking for lots of pictures soon, probably of it sleeping in our bed, or in the middle of other family activities.
Out task now is to come up with a name. Oh, the options for names!  We’ve got a list of names on the chalkboard trying to decide. Nutmeg? Olive? Ginger? (Are those paleo foods?) Lucy, Maggie, or Olga? Stay tuned.
As Nafe would say, “We’re sikey.” (That’s “excited,” for those not in the know.)
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Yeah… About That Paleo Thing

13 Thursday Dec 2012

Posted by Dan Nelson in Family Life

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Tags

Adoption, Mexican Cheese Dip, Paleo Diet, RAD, Reactive Attachment Disorder, Russian adoption

It has been thirteen harrowing days since we embarked on our Paleo diet, and I think I owe an update.
Since November 30, We the Parents have not had any sugar, grain, or dairy.  Well, almost.  Our ancient ancestors had some Mexican hunter and gatherer friends- who had hunted and gathered their way north.  They weren’t actually Mexicans, of course, since Mexico hadn’t been invented yet.  But they had already mastered cheese dip, and so my ancestors made a weekly trip (some would call it a pilgrimage) to get some pre-Mexican cheese dip.  We, of course, have to keep up that tradition. It’s in our DNA.
Anyway, the past thirteen days have been great.  It has gone very well.  For the adults, we feel better.  I’ve lost 10 pounds.  I can think clearly.  I can look at a plate of cookies and just walk on by.  Remember, freedom isn’t the ability to do whatever we feel like doing.  Many an alcoholic, and sugar-holic (and, yes, Dew-aholic…there’s no freedom there for me yet) have fallen into that trap.  Freedom is the ability to not do things that cause us harm.  So I am FREE when I am not compulsively required (by the constraints of my sugar-intoxicated brain) to do certain things.  Like eat a plate of Christmas cookies just because they exist.
I have had a wonderful 13 days.  I hope to continue this.
Now for the children. After the initial anger and not getting Our Daily Ration of two bowls of Lucky Charms, the kids are fine.  Seriously, they’ll eat whatever we put in front of them. (Except one).  So their transition wasn’t too bad.  They aren’t really on the same diet as us (except one), so they get grains and a little (make that a LITTLE) sugar.  They also get lots of stuff like fruit and fresh vegetables. They are doing just fine.
Now, for the other one. How is he doing?  Well, we (the parents) have  a way of not actually trying one thing at a time.  We usually go and try 2 or 3 or 11 changes all at once, so when something helps we aren’t quite sure what was behind it.  We took him to the chiropractor, and we did the diet, and we changed medicine around.  And we have, for the first time since that day back in September 2010… a pretty normal child.  A child who plays with siblings.  A child who cries when sad.  A child who does not threaten to kill us and take out all our blood.  Everyday.
We have tried Many Things (Occupational Therapy, Medicine, Eating Special Cheese, Trying to Go to Special Preschool, Going to See the Psychiatrist, Behavior Therapy, Music Therapy…I’m sure there’s more I have forgotten). And everything has helped…um, not much. There have been certain things that have been more helpful than others, but it has been a difficult 2 years. But. For the last week, he has woken up with an alarm clock, stopped spitting at random (well, less so), responds to threat appropriately, garnered calls from school about how good things are. Really, we finally have four children, rather than 3 children and that little boy living with us. Life is different.
It isn’t perfect. Its not like the planets haven’t aligned…more… they have sort of organized themselves. But we like this a lot. We just can’t help thinking, is this real? Did I just scold Sam and Nate for roaming the room while Ben sat in his chair the entire meal? Did I just ask him to put his coat away with a response of “Yes Sir” rather than being screamed at? (Note-that’s still an exception, but up until now that-no hyperbole here- never happened.) Yeah. I like this.

That being said, I’m looking forward to the Christmas season. I get sugar at (and only AT) Christmas parties. Its the allowance I’ve given myself (apart from dew and homemade cappuccino). I’ll update again soon.

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Ooh! Ooh! Here We Are!

01 Saturday Dec 2012

Posted by Dan Nelson in Family, Family Life, Odds & Ends

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Tags

Adoption, Belarussian, New House, School

I recently made a startling discovery.  As I was out perusing the rarely explored corners of the internet I found a few things.  Some old cassette tapes, a couple of mismatched socks, an adaptor that doesn’t fit anything, and hey, what do you know?  Our blog!  It’s still here!  I expected as I typed in the web address that I might get some sort of error message, but wow.  It still works.

It has been a goal of mine to blog for a while.  It gets lost in things like, a child who is causing some troubles, or a piano lesson, or a Cub Scout meeting, or work, or a dozen other things.  So it is my goal to write each day this month.
Strike that.
It is not my goal to write each day this month.  I’ve found that if I make a goal, and I fail that goal in some way, I’ll give up.  So if I make it a goal and miss a couple of days, I’ll just stop.   Or if I make it a goal and post at 12:03 am (thereby not actually posting on that particular day), I’ll just stop.  That doesn’t make sense, I know, but… wow.  That really doesn’t make sense.  But rather than make a goal, let’s say I’ll write more often.  All I have to do to accomplish that is repeat this process sometime before next May.

So life has moved on in the Nelson household.  Some big changes.  Three pretty big changes.

Change 1:
We have a visitor living with us.  Valya the Belarussian.  She lives in our basement.  She washes our dishes.  Sometimes she watches the children while We The Parents go Outside The House Without Children.  It’s great.  I hope she stays a long long time.

Change 2:
We (that is not We The Parents but We The Some Of Us Whom We Will Refer To As The Collective Whole) started kindergarten!  Benny and Nate both started kindergarten.  “How is it?”,  everyone asks.  “How are the boys doing in kindergarten?” The answer is: They both love it.  One is doing excellent, and one is doing… as we expected.   We get lots of phone calls from the school to tell us how one of them is doing.  We’ve mentioned this before, in other posts, like all of them.  So it is as expected.  Learning lots and having fun doing it.  And drawing others into our lives. One. Teacher. At. A. Time.

Change 3:
New house.  Yay!  We hadn’t expected to move.  We had no plans to ever ever ever move again in our lives, but then someone decided we should buy their house.  We looked at it and decided it cost too much, but they insisted we buy it.  So we put our house on the market.  And, shockingly, it sold.  Everything worked out.  It was amazing.  So we moved into a nice house, that is much larger, and has more land.  One of us had lots of trouble adjusting to it.  (Sometimes taking 5 minutes to find the bathroom… but we got that down) (It’s not that big).  We moved in late September, and after about a month and a half, it began to feel like we were moved in.  That was the point it felt like we could start to relax from getting things out of boxes.  We aren’t perfectly there yet.  We still have a few stray  boxes lying about, and not really any pictures on the wall.  And that playset looks pretty sad out in the back yard.  But we’re in the house.

So that is the very uttermost basics of what has been going on over the past few months.  I didn’t get a video made for our two year anniversary of the boys joining the family, but we were in the middle of our move.  It was my goal, but I didn’t get done before the anniversary date, so I gave up.

Here are some pictures from over the last weekend.  We had a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner in our new house and decorated for Christmas.  Oh, and before I go, keep in mind that just because I haven’t blogged, doesn’t mean I haven’t been around.  I post on twitter (@erphed) (that’s different from last time) and Facebook, and Streamzoo (@capedan),and we are both (We The Parents) are both on Instagram (@erphed and @pharmacist39).  So here. are some pics for you!

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The first day of school. That would have been a good blog post.

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Moving out of the old house. Probably would have been a good blog post, too.

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Benny's birthday. Hmm. That could have been a nice post, too.

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The carving of the pumpkins. Mostly done by children. Minimal injuries.

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Decorating for Christmas

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Our Christmas Tree

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Updates to Our Blog

07 Saturday Apr 2012

Posted by Dan Nelson in Family Life

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Tags

Adoption, Attachment disorder, Parenting, Russian adoption

If you have been readers of our blog for awhile, you’ll notice that there are some changes.  First of all, there is a new website.  Second of all, there is actually a post. (Actually, that may be the first thing you noticed).

We got through our adoption, and I realized that my blog was really pretty much about adoption.  So no more posts were coming.  But what we have come to realize is that life moves on after adoption.  Life happens and lots of it.  So we are going to be blogging more about our family.  And by we, I mean that this will be a family blog.  I will blog, and my sweetheart will blog… when time and laundry allow.

We will post our funny pictures, we will tell you what’s happening in our lives, and we will tell you about something that is sort of a dark spot in our adoption and our lives after adoption… something that we didn’t quite expect even though we knew things like this may arise.  That something went on for several months, mainly in despair.  But we finally got a name for it… Attachment Disorder.

Two of our four children are adopted, and one of those is just different.  We will never discuss his background-where he came from, or some of the issues as to why he has this diagnosis.  But we will discuss how we have dealt with it, because of two reasons:

  1. It feels like a hopeless endeavor.  Living with a child who hates you and fights you and wipes off every. single. kiss. you give is beyond frustrating.  Wondering if there is a problem with you, your child, both of you??? What???  Especially when there are all sorts of happy adoptions happening all around you.
  2. We have been told by everyone we go to for help (and our list continues to grow) repeatedly that we are far ahead of most parents at this stage, that we are doing the right things, that we were the perfect parents for him because of our ability to deal with the situations, and that we should start a class to help others.  Honestly, we don’t see that.  We see ourselves in the trenches, but with it being told to us by those who would be the ones who would know… we have to conclude there is something to it.  So we want to help with strategies and suggestions, and help.

So life is happy.  Life moves on.  Life is much more difficult than it was before, and we don’t do all the things we had thought we would be doing.  We haven’t had a vacation yet (although we have been camping often), although we are gearing up for one this summer. (Along with lots of camping).

But we have never tried to pretend that life is all sunshine and rainbows.  It never is.  But we know that we are doing this NOT for us, but for God. We do this because God told us to do it.  Plain and simple.  So no matter how difficult it becomes, or how boring it becomes, or how enjoyable it becomes, we must remember that it is all for His name.

We close with some happy pictures.  Because even though sometimes it rains, we are just like everyone else and tend not to take pictures during those times.  But we totally love the happy.

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Two Months and Going Strong!

25 Thursday Nov 2010

Posted by Dan Nelson in Adoption

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Tags

Adoption, Halloween

Two months already? And a productive two months it’s been, too.Brand New Blankets!

I can’t say that each day gets better, but I can say with all confidence that each week gets better. Shannon does an amazing job with the boys during the weeks that I work (and during those weeks I am around very little). Each week they learn just a little more English, and we understand them just a little bit better. They, for the most part, understand us pretty well.

Overall, they are acting like normal little 3 year old boys. (Yes, they are technically four, but they have a LOT of catching up to do!) We are trying to introduce them to things little by little. Both respond to things very differently. Ben has some trouble with stimulation. He doesn’t do all that well with going places (like the grocery store or Wal-mart), but he is doing better. Nate does pretty well and has none of those problems, although he did think that he could talk to Ben while we were watching a video on the computer- but we will get him there!

We are all still learning. We try to put all four kids together and essentially leave them to themselves when we can. Mama and Papa get lots of bonding time with the boys all day long, but the kids need to bond with each other, too. Right now the two older kids and the two younger kids will go separate ways.

Family Pumpkins

Halloween
Halloween was really fun. We didn’t do much-they dressed up and went to a few houses around our house. But at that first door when they rang the doorbell, and people gave “confietta,” it was obviously one of the most amazing things that had ever happened to them. The looks on their faces were just priceless. Learning that we can only have “some” candy vs. “all” the candy that night did cause problems, but I’m okay with that.  We have dealt with that behavior many times over the past 9 1/2 years.  Our clan was looking good with Cleopatra, Mario, “Scoody Boo,” a duck (the duck costume has gone through three Halloweens now!), Mama, and the Papa the cameraman following behind.

(More after the pics…)

"Ya Scoody Boo!!"

Eta Duck!

Carving Pumpkins

Duck, Cleopatra, Mario (actual mustache), Scoody Boo

Well-Being
The boys are growing. A lot. Every little kid grows at this age, but I really think they have puA Stronger Little Boyt on some much needed weight. Nathan, who’s strength was more like an infant-literally– when we brought him home, is growing stronger and stronger. (The trampoline is helping greatly!)  His body weight has increased 17 percent since he has arrived in our home. We wonder: Did he EVER eat? Or is it just that we are working with him and finding things he likes?  Ben is getting stronger and putting on weight, too. Both of their hair is growing more. Their hair was very sickly when we got them; it literally was peach fuzzy like a newborn child’s, not a four year old. But with enough good fruits and veggies (and chicken nuggets and hot dogs) we’re coming along quite well.

So is everything great? Of course not. We still have many issues to work through. We have issues with selfishness (don’t we all), and now we have added lying into the mix. For the record, though, Ben shares better than any child I have ever seen.The Siblings

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