Halloween Party

Since I know there'll be many more tomorrow, here are some pics from today's Halloween bash.

There was a face-painting station, with your's truly manning the post. I did the best I could, but two boys came dressed as sheriffs and wanted a star. I'm the worst at stars!

A couple photos show my two washing off their face paint before bedtime. They really wanted to sleep with their face pictures!

I'm thankful there were no meltdowns this time. I watched the candy intake and kept having to redirect Anna away from the goody table toward the end of the party.

Funny, though, because after I wrote that last post about sugar highs I did some very scientific research (scanning articles from the first page of returns on Google!), and it seems to be a misnomer that kids act crazy after eating a lot of sugar. I found one doctor who wrote about it as if it were truth but otherwise the real scientific research seems to debunk this myth. What was really a hoot was one comment from somewhere about how, if you act as if the kids are going to go crazy after eating lots of sugary treats, then they pick up on this expectation and are happy to oblige!

Autumn Activities

We carved our pumpkin this morning. The kids wanted a happy face. I cut and they both did a great job of scooping out all the icky stuff. Shreve helped me supervise and made a new friend in the process.

Yesterday afternoon we made caramel apples. It seemed like a perfect treat since lately I've been giving the children lots of apple slices and dip (either berry whipped cream cheese or caramel) snacks.

Here are tons of photos from the quintessential kiddie fall fun.

Now I have to get the children up from naps and help them get ready for a Halloween costume party. You'll be seeing lots of costume pictures over the next few days, I'm afraid.

Tomorrow afternoon they're going trick-or-treating at a nursing home with school friends, and then of course tomorrow night is trick-or-treating in the neighborhoods.

My Little Pumpkin

Some cute photos of Anna in her Halloween sweater before school last Friday.

Two Years Together

Two years ago today, on the other side of the planet, we boldly entered a world of a different sort. From the threshold of the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, Russia, we started our family. It was a non-traditional approach but had the same kind of forever results.

I've said it before, but it just feels like we've been together forever. We couldn't have been more blessed in our adoption journey. We couldn't love Anna and Alexander more than we do.

So, today we celebrated our two years of familyhood. I don't think the children took away much more than the fact that it was a day to eat fancy cake and sip hot tea (decaf for the kids) and watch our movie from when we were in Russia. The children definitely know the word Russia, that it's a place whose images of St. Basil's Cathedral they recognize and that we were all there. That's good enough for now. They hear the references to adoption and baby homes in our "Russia movie," and Mikel and I sometimes make references to when we first met them. I guess this is all good to sort of introduce the topic so that one day when the talk and explanation and realization come they won't be caught unawares.

But for now we relish in the innocence of simplicity — that we're a family, no matter how we came to be. A mommy and daddy and sister and brother who love each other very much.

For the second year, I've purchased a fancy cake for this occasion and hope to be able to do that (or make one if I have the time) every year. This year I bought a Black Forest cherry cake, which sounds like it could have Russian origins, doesn't it? But Black Forest cakes are really German. No matter, it was gorgeous and yummy, and that's all that mattered. In Russia, our adoption facilitator/translator had us bring decadent cakes to give to each of the children's baby home directors. At Anna's baby home we actually sat down with the director in her office and celebrated our adoption by eating the cake and drinking hot tea. (I remember she also offered a cup of the highly-coveted instant coffee we'd purchased as a gift for her.)

Last year you may recall that I alluded to a terrible mishap at a local bakery where I bought the celebration cake. I suppose I can finally write about it. Basically, Alexander tried to climb a multi-tiered shelving unit on which many bottles of wine were displayed.

Yeah, you guessed right. I ran up in time to prevent the whole wooden structure from falling onto him. But darn those bottles of wine. Suddenly, my senses became overwhelmed by the crashing of glass, the wailing of my child, the pungent aroma of red wines mixed with the fragrant bouquet of white wines, hits on my skull from who knows how many of these said glass bottles, the rushing over of bakery employees, the wonder of how much this is going to cost us, the desperate hope that these were not $100 bottles of wine, the scanning of the wine-soaked dainty little once-dangling price tags on the carpeted floor, the relief that they seemed to be wines priced in the $10-$15 range, the realization that there seemed to be at least 10, 11, 12, who knows exactly how many destroyed bottles.

Whew. After a year, it feels somewhat cathartic to get that out. Can you believe I almost had the gall to return this year? But even without the kids and with sunglasses I figured it best to stay away.

I'm sure you're wondering ... and the owner could not have been more generous. She showed concern for Alexander and said "things happen." What an understatement.

What more to say after this?

Let's see, for dinner tonight I tried my hand at a pretty gourmet-tasting Beef Stroganoff recipe from my Russian cookbook. It was a bit overwhelming for the kids' palates, but they managed to eat most of what I put on their plates.

Anyway, here are a few photos of us today. And also from our first day and night together two years ago, including our first family photo taken in the vehicle outside Baby Home No. 2, where Alexander lived.

Loving Life

Don't these children look so happy?

These photos were taken several weeks ago during one of our lunches at the city's downtown Civic Plaza. This Sunday marks two years since we picked them up from their Russian orphanages and we became a family.

And they are thriving.

If a bragging mom isn't your cup of tea, then here's your chance to move on.

Today was our parent-teacher conference at the Montessori school. We went in early before school started and were still there as other students began filing in and class started. It's so cute to see the children in their school environment. As we were leaving they were sitting in their circle time, everyone attentively listening to the teacher.

We got really good reports!

Their teachers, including one who is also the school's director, told us that Anna came back to school this fall a different girl. Last year she had a few behavior concerns, which may have been partly due to her social immaturity. They said she likes to challenge herself with the jobs she selects. They said she has good work habits and wants to be learning things. Anna "blew us away" with her mastery of the alphabet, not just recognition of all upper and lower case letters but also 20 of the 26 primary letter sounds. They said some of their kindergarteners aren't even to this point yet. (What they probably don't know yet is that at home Anna is also spelling words based on sound, another thing I've been meaning to post about but haven't gotten around to. For a few months now we've been working together at sounding out the spelling of simple words: car, dog, mom, dad, cat, bus, etc.) Speaking of kindergarten, the teacher pointed out that Anna will be eligible for kindergarten screening in the spring, and she recommended Anna go through this whether we decide to send her to public school kindergarten or Montessori school kindergarten. She said Anna would pass the test with flying colors.

One of the teachers also commented about how Anna really likes her friends or how having friends is really important to her. Honestly, I can't remember in what context this was said because I think we were wrapping up things and my mind was moving on to the next question I was going to ask. But the idea of my little girl having actual friends (as opposed to just fellow students) is cute! And it's interesting, of course, because this causes me to imagine all sorts of troubles in the years ahead. You know what I'm talking about my female blog friends!

Anna mastered the sequencing "test" they gave her, something I remember she didn't do the best at last year. They normally show a student 3 or 4 picture cards and have them put the cards in order to tell a simple story. Since Anna got 4 correct, they gave her 6 cards, which she also got correct.

Speaking of sequencing and picture cards, I've got the cutest little story to share about Alexander. The teacher said she gave Alexander 3 cards to sequence. She showed them to us. They were of a boy making a snowman. She told Alexander to pretend he was the boy making the snowman and put the cards in order. He got the first one, which showed the boy packing a big ball of snow. But Alexander transposed the second and third cards. For the second card he picked a picture of the snowman melted, with his face and hat in the watery puddle. For the third card, he picked the picture of the completed snowman before it melted. When the teacher asked him why he put the cards in this order, Alexander said, "Because he brokted," pointing to the second card of the melted snowman, "And then I fixed him," pointing to the last card showing the completed snowman. Hey, at least he's got some kind of logic going on there!

As for the teachers' other comments about Alexander, they said he is not shy and goes right to work picking out daily jobs, some challenging. He is a good worker who follows through, concentrates a lot and is very detailed in his work. They said that he appears to be a second- or third-year student at the school. But I don't think that necessarily means he knows everything. They marked that he knows 14 upper-case letters but no lower-case letters, which I know isn't true because he can spell his name. But these things are only as good as the environment at the moment or as good as the day the child is having. He knows 9 of 11 colors (Apparently, he keeps insisting that black is brown and brown is black. I didn't realize this.).

They noted that Alexander gives them his best when he is not seated next to Anna! This is pretty typical among sibling groups, and there are several of them this year. Teachers now just make sure siblings sit apart from each other during morning circle time.

They did make a point of telling us that Alexander's feet face outward a bit when he walks and he sometimes seems to be tripping over himself! So, the director is going to get us a referral to a group of specialists, actually Children's Care Hospital, a different group in town from what I called a little over a month ago. (You may remember the pediatric ortho specialist I called said he would review our primary doctor's notes and then decide if he'd see Alex. Well, our doctor didn't think Alex had a problem.)

I'm glad the school has noticed this and can help us get whatever issue there may be taken care of. Of course, I pray it's minor enough and is easily correctable.

It's a little coincidental, though, that on Monday we took Alexander to get tested by the local public school system (now that he's 3) to make sure he's caught up and/or on track in all developmental areas and doesn't qualify for special assistance with a speech therapist, for example. In summing up Alexander, they used words like "phenomenal," which, by the way, though we know our son is awesome, we were a little perplexed by since he basically scored a "C" in one area.

Anyway, in the public school system's assessment of Alexander's motor skills, he scored in the 98th percentile! They measured his skills in tossing and catching, with one hand and two hands, etc., and also in jumping, hopping on one foot and skipping/galloping. I'd say their observation of him in this area took all of 15 minutes. Also, he scored in the 81st percentile in language skills and in the 73rd percentile in concepts. And he passed his vision and hearing screenings.

Enough with all this school testing talk! Time for bed.

Strange Slumber, Part II

I couldn't let Alexander be the only one who gets a ribbing about the way he sleeps (see my Jan. 2 post of this year). He has since settled down a bit. No more falling out of the bed or sleeping backward. But he still seems to be quite the mover, with covers all over the place and such.

But for Anna, I can't stress the bizarreness of this sleeping position ('course, this would be really weird for just about anybody). I always go into the children's rooms to check on them before I turn in for the night and was caught off guard to see her like this recently.

Costume Parties And Sugar Highs

On Saturday the children attended a Halloween-themed birthday party of one of their Montessori school classmates.

I've come to realize that I'm kind of thrifty. Can you believe I picked up these cute costumes over the summer at garage sales (probably the only two I visited during the summer)? I got Alexander's Winnie The Pooh outfit for $2 and Anna's Princess Ariel costume for 75 cents (wand and tiara/earrings were from her birthday). And they were perfect fits!

The hostess went all out. She organized a lot of games, had tons of food, including candy and otherwise sugary treats (more on that in a bit), punch with fun spooky-shaped ice cubes, ghostly treat bags, etc.

Among these photos are the children posing at our home before the party, playing outside, playing a Halloween Bingo game with candy corn, pinning crazy eyes on a creepy character, mummifying a friend with toilet paper, stringing and then eating candy jewelry, getting a ride on birthday friend's motorized Jeep and gathering around for the pinata. I've also included a little video of one of the games. By the way, did you know that you can click (or maybe double click, depending on your computer) on each picture to view it a little larger?

The party ran over (more like three hours instead of two), and that's with the mom skipping a couple of games! By the time we left, the children were not acting their finest. But I can say that everyone was a bit on the cranky and/or sugared-up or otherwise overstimulated side by this time.

One of my rules is: "When it's time to go, it's time to go." The children know this but were not abiding by it, as they were too busy climbing aboard the boy's Jeep for the umpteenth time. So I turned my back and was going to put our stuff in the car before going back to physically retrieve the children. Before I could open the car door both children came running down the hill in a frenzy (I guess they thought I might actually leave them). Anna was screaming rudely at the top of her lungs, "Don't you ever leave me!" Then, when she got in the car she screamed again at the top of her lungs, "It's hot in here!"

Needless to say, she was grounded when she got home. (We've found that grounding Anna to her room is pretty effective.) After nap time and a subsequent grounding, she was allowed to play outside. When she came down she said to me without any prompting, "Sorry for screaming earlier, mommy."

This morning, on our way home from church we talked about how we should write a nice thank-you card to their friend and his mommy and daddy for inviting us to the party and for all the fun games and decorations and treats and yummy food they had. Then, Anna said, "Mom, too much candy can make me get in trouble."