Language Barriers

Well, today I realized why our kids were so excited when I told them about the other little girl coming home from Ukraine... They had been waiting all day for her to walk through the door and come and live with us. That language barrier seemed to have gotten in the way when I was telling them about the situation yesterday. They were pretty bummed when I said she wasn't going to live with us. One of the reasons I found out what they were thinking was that Adam asked me where this girl was going to sleep. Oops. (This family in UA, btw, said that they would try to use Katya as their driver and get her addy for us! Yay!)

Then, tonight, I was chatting with my sister online, and John was playing with the kids. When I got out into the kitchen, I discovered my wonderful hubby building a cardboard dollhouse for the kids! (And it was a pretty nice one too! In fact, if I were 6-yrs-old, I would want to play and play and play with it!) All three kids were pretty excited about it. I think Adam just liked the construction part of it, but who knows. Hopefully it won't be demolished by tomorrow afternoon. I have some doll furniture and stuff that I was hoping to wait until Christmas to hand out. Not sure if I can wait that long now!

I mentioned the other day that we hadn't been hearing lots more English from the kids and that they had reached a plateau. Well, I don't know what happened, but they've been babbling up a storm in English now. In fact, we have been hearing very little Russian. They still occasionally will sing a song from Ukraine, but not very often any more. :O( They use Russian/Ukr grammar and word order in their sentences quite often, but most often, the words they say are English. The kids were outside playing this afternoon, and Liana told me that Adam didn't have his coat on. So, I asked her to tell him to put it on. She opened the door, and said, "Adam! Put your coat on!" Perfect English. But then, she turned to Aleksa and said, "Adam ni put your coat on!" (Which was "Adam didn't put his coat on.")

I also heard Liana today calling her pants her "pants on." That one has sure been around a long time. She just can't seem to remember to drop the "on."

Speaking of hard habits to break, Adam is still dumping shampoo all over the place. He thinks it is bubble bath or something. After his bath tonight, there was still a thick layer of suds all over the tub, the wall, the floor, etc. The girls thought it was great though and had a blast with the after-effects of Adam's escapades. I'm sure it is fun to play with the soap, but boy is it getting old to be going through so much shampoo!

Yesterday was the first time the kids have asked us if they could say the table prayer for our meals. We got a lot of praying done yesterday and today because they each decided they had to have a turn. Their prayers are in English, but they are something like this, "Jesus, meat; Jesus, carrots; Jesus, milk; Jesus lotsa play; Jesus, lotsa tickle; Jesus, popcorn; Amen." John and I just look up at each other and smile when they're done. They're just such cuties!

Dollhouse