Six Months Home

Six months home. I can hardly believe it! Seems like they've been home forever, and yet it seems like just yesterday they all came home.

I think of all the months we've been home, this month has been the month that we've all really "settled." Everyone is more relaxed (including me!) Everyone knows what to expect, and everyone is comfortable. This month I've really worked on making our routine more engrained - especially for myself. I've reallllly needed to work on that, and it has helped my overall mental health a lot. Nice feeling to go to bed knowing I don't have to play catch-up in the morning. I think the hardest thing about going from a family of two to a family of five has been figuring out when to do what. So many things just blew my mind when the kids came home - how often I'd be sweeping and vacuuming and running the dishwasher, cooking, shopping, doing laundry, etc. I really had to learn allll over again how to manage the household. Happily, I've also learned how to delegate! Just this week I made some humdinger chore-charts complete with lamination and clip art. High-speed-low-drag, as my brother would say.

The other big challenge of going from just John and me to all five of us, is that with the new children come many, many challenges to become a better person. I have seen many, many areas in my life that I need to work on that I never saw before the kids came home. The kids know where all my "buttons" are, and let me tell ya, they push them quite often! I've had to take some long hard looks at myself and really had to get into gear and CHANGE.

Adam has really taken off with his schooling. He is reading now, and is quickly gaining ground. Math is still a struggle for him when it comes to memorizing math-facts. But if we can work on that while we aren't "officially" doing school, it seems to sink in better. Just yesterday we were skip-counting as we marched and waltzed around the kitchen and livingroom. Then he sat on my lap on the couch and practiced some more. He has expressed some of the reasons for his math-fear lately. Apparently there were some really awful "teachers" at the orphanage that would bang his head against the wall or table for not understanding things. Oy. No wonder he was so freaked out about it when he first came home. He didn't know us and didn't know whether we were going to do the same thing as his old teachers.

Adam is still not speaking in complete sentences, but he has come a really long way, and his comprehension is as good if not better than his sisters'. He struggles for words more than the girls, but he has a deeper understanding of a lot of things we read.

To my surprise, Adam has been remembering more Russian than I expected that he'd retain. This is especially true if he hasn't learned the English word for something. It's like once he has learned the English word, the Russian one is forgotten, but if the English word hasn't been learned, then the Russian word is retained.

Just yesterday I learned a phrase that the kids have said *constantly* ever since they came home. It sounds something like "Duh Vie." I have tried and tried to figure out what it means because they'll say something in perfect English, and then say "Duh vie" in it. I've asked many, many times what that meant, and the kids haven't known how to translate it. Anyway, yesterday I finally figured it out. I said, "You guys, does it mean, 'let's pretend?'" and all three shrieked, "Yes, Mama! Yay! You figured it out! You know what 'Duh vie' means!" We were all ecstatic. It only took me six months to figure it out! Now that they know the English equivalent, it will be interesting to see how much longer they say that phrase. Otherwise, the kids very seldom use any Russian at all. The "ya" ("I") word is all gone now, and that word hung around for ages.

Liana is practically fluent. Her vocabulary is astonishing sometimes. She has fabulous grammar "May I --?" instead of "Can I --?" She has the best expressive ability of the three. She still has a pretty thick accent, as they all do, but she's quickly losing even that. The most tell-tale sign of her accent is her "w's." "Ven are ve going to the store, Mama?" She is also more deliberate with her words than a native English-speaker, but it is obvious that she has a really great handle on the language.

Aleksa is also practically fluent. She's growing like crazy, and is physically the most changed (I think, anyway), of the three. She has had the biggest maturity changes too. Of the three, she's the one I'm worried most about though. It is becoming more and more obvious that there are going to be some learning challenges with her, though John is lots more optimistic than I am. We'll see.

I've babbled on long enough. Time for bed!