Identity crisis

I get so frustrated with the many things that we need to catch the boys up on. How do you instill 5 or 6 years worth of knowledge in a few months?

One of the things the boys have really struggled with in their language acquisition is understanding questions. The simplest questions are difficult for them to answer. They don't have enough basis in the language to be able to understand subtle differences in questions. The other day I spent 20 minutes with them going over "What is you name?" and "How old are you?" which they can both answer. But if you ask the questions out of order, or ask them how they're doing first, they are completely thrown off. They still only know the questions as rote answers, not with a solid understanding of what they are being asked. It frustrates me to no end.
But we continue to work on it, and I know one day it will click as so many other things have.

Oh, and thank you to all of you for the birthday wishes! I had a wonderful birthday, probably one of my best ever! :)

Happy birthday to me!

A year ago, I wouldn't have been celebrating too much, as I was a 31-year-old without kids. There's nothing wrong with not having kids, but it's rough when you want to have kids and all of your friends have kids! Birthdays just remind you (as do Mothers Days) that you aren't where you want to be. At that point in our process, I was wondering if we would ever have kids. Now I'm the proud 32-year-old mom of a 5 and 6 yo. I feel so young. :) :)

I got a great birthday present yesterday when one of my coworkers pointed out that I can go home for lunch! The thought hadn't even occurred to me--I've never worked close enough to go home for lunch (working on campus in college doesn't count). So today, on my birthday, I am having lunch AND dinner with my wonderful husband. Since my love language is quality time, today should absolutely fill up my tank! I'm picking up lunch and meeting Mark at the house (he has Thursdays off) and then we're going out to dinner tonight at a Japanese steakhouse in Illinois. Some wonderful friends have volunteered to babysit and the boys will already be in bed before we go.

Quotables

I haven't felt like posting much, although things are going well. The boys' language continues to develop and I get a kick out of some of their sayings. I try to help them understand how to pronounce things by using words they already know. But when they get things a little mixed up it leads to some interesting comments. For example:

(Dinner)
"May I have some more tummy-foot?"
"What?!?"
"May I have some more tummy-foot?" (pointing at the appropriate body parts)
"Ohhh...yes, you may have some more tomato."

For some reason, they had a hard time picking up on how to say tomato--they had a really hard time repeating it back to me. So I told them to say "tummy-toe", because as they run it together they will get the correct sounds. Dima got a little confused on which parts of the body he was supposed to be using. ;)

Zhenya's new favorite phrase is "I don't know too!", usually said because he asks bizarre questions to which I have to answer "I don't know"--questions like "Why is the man driving that way?" "Why is the flower purple?" "Why is August hot?" (Okay, I do know the answer to that one. ;))

Dima loves to read to himself. Of course, he can't read just yet so he makes up the stories. They involve a lot of "you obey, good job!...you no obey...obey teacher...yes, yes, yes...good job!". You can tell what we've been focusing on. ;)

Prayer, please

A friend of mine, Ginny, just called me to let me know that her dad had a stroke about 7:15pm. As of 7:45 he was still unresponsive. Please pray for her dad, Sam, and for safe travels for her as she goes to Oklahoma to be with him.

Great week

This has been a really great week.

I started my new job, and even if there wasn't anything else to love I would be LOVING my drive--because it's very short. :) Thankfully, I also like many other things about my new job. People are really friendly (even random people just out walking around!) and I'm having a lot of fun getting to know everyone. I've got a lot to learn but I'm really excited about it.

Last night I went out to Bailey's Chocolate Bar with a very good friend and had an absolute blast! We talked for nearly 2 hours while drinking our chocolate martinis and devouring a cheese plate. It was a great evening. :) :)

The boys have had a good week as well which has made my week even better.

This weekend

Some of my favorite pics from last Saturday at the Botanical Garden Children's Garden:

Yeah, so that cast? Not slowing Zhenya down so much. ;) But the bright orange arm does make him easy to find!

Dima's learned how to write!

I haven't shared much about Dima's delays, other than to say that he is in OT. He has a lot of fine and gross motor skill delays due to his background. One of the things he really struggled with when we first got home was anything having to do with writing--coloring, tracing...he couldn't do any of it. And he was 5 and a half years old. So here's a picture of some of his work from March 2008 (4 months ago):

The paper on the right is representative of his independent coloring skills at that time. The paper on the left was done with significant help (i.e., holding his hand) while coloring.

And here's some coloring from the end of July, done entirely independently:

We have several pre-school and kindergarten workbooks at home that the boys like to do. They're great for rainy or cold days when we can't go outside. Monday night after dinner we did some work in the workbooks, and Dima was finally starting to get the idea of writing letters independently. He's been doing really well at tracing for quite a while, but I've had a hard time convincing him to try the letters on his own on blank lines. So Monday we were working on "A", and he did really well (and got LOTS of praise for it!). Today at OT, this is what he did:

Notice the note from his OT at the top--he did these independently with verbal cues as to the letters and how to form them! "Boy" "Dima" is making some great progress. :)