New foods

Monday night the boys had their first taste of tuna fish (with mayonnaise and hard boiled egg). I wasn't sure how much they'd like it, so of course they promptly finished almost the entire bowl! I had to cut them off to save some for Mark. LOL

Last night was their first taste of quiche (with polish sausage bits), which they also loved but I don't think as much as the tuna fish. They were content with one helping plus some veggies and a zucchini muffin. :)

I was so excited yesterday when I picked Dima up from school. His class has finished learning all of the letters, so they had a letter party yesterday to celebrate and ate in their classroom for lunch. Dima was able to tell me everything they had for lunch yesterday without me already knowing what he was trying to say! This is huge for him, since I usually have to already know what's he's trying to say to help prompt him, or I have to spend a significant amount of time guessing what he's trying to say. Yesterday they had a "hot dog", "yellow chips" (the color is probably referring to the color of the bag, so I'm guessing they had Lays potato chips here), and "soup". Soup? "Yes, A-B-C soup, A-B-C soup" Ahhh, alphabet soup! :)

Dima also tattled on himself Monday night! We've been talking a lot lately about obeying and disobeying, and that the boys need to obey us and their teachers (we also talk about us as parents needing to obey God and the people over us at work). We've also talked about disobeying, but the boys have had a hard time understanding the difference in the words "obey" and "disobey" (we're now using "obey" and "not obey" when we remember). So on Monday night at dinner, Dima had a very sad face on and told me that he "obey Mrs. H little bit" that day at school. I was confused, and said he needed to obey Mrs. H a lot. And he shook his head very solemnly. I wasn't sure where to go from there so I dropped it, but when I picked him up from school yesterday I asked Mrs. H if he had disobeyed her a little bit on Monday. Indeed he had! Not enough to get him in trouble, but enough to be considered disobeying. I'm so happy to see that he is developing a conscience and understanding what it means to obey (and that he needs to do it!).

A little side note on the boys' language development: I often read post-adoptive blogs and people will mention that their kids are speaking predominately in English after a few months. This is true for our boys as well, but it does not mean we (and especially other people!) can understand them. I estimate we can understand about 80% of what Zhenya says, and about 50% of what Dima says. I wanted to throw that info in for pre-adoptive parents to help with language expectations after you get home. Yes, your kids may be speaking English within a few months, but they will most likely be missing a lot of the linking words and correct tenses (not to mention incorrect pronunciation!). Our guys are around a 2-3 yo level of expressive language. Really, that's not too bad considering they've only been even hearing English for 4 months!