Things around here are busy as always. I read Tonya's recent post a little bit ago and it seems she too had the cleaning "bug". It was long over due in this house, so my mom came over 2 weekends ago and we kicked butt. We started early in the morning, kicked out Jason and Olena and went to town. To answer your question Tonya, we always start in the bedrooms, work our way through all of them, on to the living room and bathroom and the kitchen is always the last....and unfortunately always the worse because by the time you are done with the other rooms your mess of junk ends up in the kitchen! We moved furniture, scrubbed the walls, baseboards, drapery...if it was in this house - it was cleaned. And your right, it makes you feel so good. Well at least until either the hubby, kids or animals trashes something :) We busted butt and we were both exhausted by the time it was all done and over. We even put the plastic on our windows to help keep it a bit warmer. For you southern folks, this is probably not something you are familiar with. We have drafty windows, and here in Michigan it gets cold, and it is very cold right now so the plastic is taped on the windows and you use a hair dryer to "shrinks" it tight. that's my favorite part and my mom always let me do it :) it made a pretty big difference and the house has been a lot warmer. I HATE having my thermostat any higher than 67 degrees because the gas bill is just ridiculous otherwise.
This past weekend I spent some time and put up all of the Christmas decorations and got the tree up. Though it is not decorated yet, I hope to do that by Friday. But I am pretty much done with the house hold overhaul. I still have not managed to tackle the play room but that will be easy, especially when 90% of the toys in that room are going to the Salvation Army. Most of them are older toys or ones that I had here before Olena came home. There is nothing she will miss so I might as well pass them on for better use.
I finally got the call today for speech therapy, 6 months after being on the waiting list but she will start on December 23rd. She is doing well but I think the additional work will help her out. Besides I don't know everything I should be doing to help her so this will be a learning experience for me too.
As many of you know, November 30th was our "official" gotcha day. It was the date that we officially became her parents. It seems so long ago. We didn't do anything to celebrate, honestly we forgot it was even the "anniversary". At this point it seems like she has always been with us, and I am more focused on celebrating her birthday, verses her "gotcha day". But I will say I am really starting to feel the adoption "urges" again :) We'll see what comes of that?!
Oh listen to this...I was trying to play catch up on all of the adoption blogs and came across a family that just came home with twin boys from the same orphanage. I was so bummed that I missed reading thier story while there. I would have loved for them to talk to the director for me. I send them pictures and updates of Olena about every 6 months but I never know if she actually recieves them. I read through the blog, looked at the pictures and was bawling my eyes out. I would love nothing more than to go back and bring home a few more. All of the kids in her groupa were so wonderful and we got so attached. I was hoping for a glimps of any of them, but this family's groupa was much younger. The boys they adopted were only 16 months. WOW!! very very cute too. I also learned something from their blog that I didn't know before. Mykolayiv also has the nickname, "City of Brides." Men from around Ukraine and the world come there in search of romance and spouses. The women of Mykolayiv are considered some of the most beautiful in the world. There is an unconfirmed story that traces the source to Peter the Great, who asked that the most beautiful single women in Russia be brought to the Mykolayiv region to become the brides of his soldiers. To this day Mykolayiv is said to be the city of the most beautiful women in the world. I have to say I agree because I know of 3 families that have 3 girls to prove that theory :) !
We also got another update about Alvaro (Olena's bio brother), he turned 7 in October and is handsome as ever. They are a wonderful family and I hope that one day we will be able to meet. We do plan to explain things to the both of them once they are older but for now I just make sure she sees his pictures and I always tell her his name. When I start homeschooling her, I wanted to work on teaching her Russian but I also hope maybe we can focus on some Spanish. I would be nice if the two of them could actually talk to each other once they older.
As for Olena, she is doing great. She is up to about 28 lbs. Growing tall like a weed, and she funny as heck. She has a great sense of humor, sometimes too good because she tends to laugh at herself a lot! She has learned to spell her name without any prompting or writing, she can recite it when asked. She is still only counting to 20, I haven't had much luck getting her beyond that at this point, but thats ok. She can also write all of her letters, and an write a letter when asked without copying it from somewhere but she still needs some work because the "uncopied" letters seem to be a lot sloppier and harder to read but I can still tell she has the general idea and shape of the letter. She has all shapes and colors down pat, but the thing I am really struggling with is counting objects on paper. She can count without a problem but if you as her to count something on a page, she has trouble with them as a group. She loses site of where she started, she'll recount ones that she already counted and then she just gets confused and frustrated. Any ideas on how to help her with this? she can count actual objects that she can hold, but on paper is a different story. I am also working on her computer skills since Nina and Dadu gave us her very own computer! She can of course work the keyboard but the mouse...NO WAY. I have tried so many times and she just can't grasp the concept. For Christmas they also got her the Kool School Computer Keyboard so I know she will love that and hopefully it will strengthen her skill.
Her new fascination is Christmas! Christmas songs, Christmas decorations, Christmas stories and books, and of course Christmas "movies". She LOVES Rudolf and the Polar Express. She was running a fever on Sunday and was blah so she laid in my bed most of the day and I swear she watched that movie beginning to end at least 5 times. She also is a Christmas song junkie, she walks around all day singing carols. Her favorite being Jingle Bells (just like Lyra!!) Tonya: looks like you really need to send her up to us now. They can play in her room and sing Jingle Bells together. Besides I think the snow would do that lil' Southern Bell some good! After all she is Ukrainian. I can't promise I would send her back, but I can promise I would take great care of her ;) wink wink!!!
I also thought I would share this link It is a story that 20/20 did on older internationally adopted children mostly from Russia. It is about families who struggle and have or are considering disrupting their adoptions due to not being able to handle their children. Many of these families are fronting out $3500 a month just to keep their children there so that they don't have to come home. One boy said he had been there for over 2 years. I was dying inside. They even spoke with Peggy Hilt. Not sure if you all remember but she is the adoptive mother from FL who snapped and ended up killing her Russian adopted daughter by beating her and she died from the trauma the next day. It was a big topic of discussion on many of the chat boards at the time because her other daughter is adopted from Ukraine. It is a very sad story and I spent a lot of that half hour yelling at my computer. I am not going to judge anyone but this story really shows you just how important it is to educate yourself before you decide to adopt internationally. I personally feel after listening to their story that they really had no idea what they were getting themselves into and what to expect - in REALITY. It also focused on the Ranch in Montana where many of these children go. The woman who runs it is amazing, they call her the Adoption Whisperer. If you have 30 minutes or so, please take some time to watch it. It is 5 parts and they are fairly short segments. I told Jason, if that lady ever decides to retire we are moving to Montana and running her ranch :)
Alvaro on his 7th birthday
Comments
I saw that blog you were talking about. I told Landon to "come here" and asked him if anything in those pictures looked familiar. He recoginzed the outside of the orphanage right away. It was so cool to look at the pictures and think "I stood there!":)
That was a neat story about Mykolaiv. I didn't know that! It's funny how many people tell me "I can't wait to see her when she's about 16" and "it's a good thing she has four big brothers" and in the grocery store line to someone else "look at that CUTE little girl". She gets sick of being told she's "cute" and says "I NOT CUTE!" so I try to keep it to a minimum myself because nobody else does. Right now, she's a big fat mess with chocoalte all over her face and tangly hair. I don't know if you WANT her to come visit. The bath tub is like a mud-puddle when she gets out of it. Your clean house would have a hard time surviving. LOL!:)
As for getting O. to count on paper, she may not be ready yet, but here is something you can try. Give her a marker and have her put a dot on everything as she counts it. Lyra can only count to 10 (after that it gets crazy) but she counts on paper and counts objects in her hand very well. She even does simple subtraction with chocolate chips, although I don't think she understands what she is doing yet. She can only write a few letters, but she learned those few on her own so I guess I should try to teach her some more. It's funny. With Noah, I was all on top of pre-school. With Solomon and Lyra, I am such a slacker but they seem to learn stuff anyway.
It is taking me DAYS to accomplish what you and your mom got done in one day. 3,000 sq.ft. is too much. I told Landon that I want our next house to be 1,000sq.ft. smaller. I figure if we build it and deisgn a really good floor plan, we can make it work with 8 kids or so but he thinks I'm crazy. He doesn't like lots of noise in close quarters. HA! Like you can avoid it around here....