Would you like bananas with your chili?

Yeah, me neither.

But last night when I told the boys we were having chili for dinner, Zhenya requested bananas so that he could dip(!) his banana in the chili (his exact words). And then of course Dima wanted to do the same. So I ate my chili like a normal person with crackers and cheese. They ate theirs with bananas. Dima actually mashed his banana up into large chunks in his chili. But they ate it all, so I'm fine with it. I'm just glad I have a strong stomach.

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We've been noticing the boys have been really tired lately. As I've mentioned, school is hard for them in large part due to trying to process everything in a language they've only been hearing for 8 months. It tends to wear them out. It all came to a head last night after dinner.

Zhenya had finished dinner and was supposed to ask to be excused, except he wouldn't say it correctly. Not only does he know how to say it, but Dima had just said it (and was repeating it to try to get Zhenya to say it). He finally broke down in tears. These were tears of sheer exhaustion, and it was reminiscent to me of when we arrived in NYC on our way home from Ukraine. Both of the boys were exhausted and Zhenya just couldn't hold it together any longer. We sat on the floor of the rental place and he just cried tears of exhaustion. So last night instead of disciplining him, I wiped his hands and face and told him to go get his pajamas on and crawl in bed. He was mad, but he obeyed (crying the whole way) and I went in and helped him undress and get in his pajamas (at the rate he was moving he would have been undressed sometime around midnight). He stopped crying while we were putting on his pajamas, and then crawled into bed. I leaned over to kiss him goodnight and he threw his arms around my neck and gave me a big hug, then he rolled over and went to sleep. Can you say TIRED? Not one protest about being sent to bed. He was asleep by about 6:15pm.

I was a little concerned that he might be sick (even though he hadn't complained about anything), but I figured we'd wait and see how he was doing this morning. You have never seen a happier child wake up. He woke up about 6:30am, saw me, and just got a huge grin on his face. Yes, definitely needed some sleep. I may try putting the boys to bed a little earlier the next couple of weeks and see if that helps a little. They're usually in bed about 7pm, but I may bump that up to 6:45 or so. Since it's getting dark earlier now it makes it a little easier for them to think of it as "night". :)