Christmas 2011

Well my kiddos certainly had numerous present opening opportunities.  I believe they got a present everywhere we went!  First, they opened presents from Gigi, because she was going to her sister's for two weeks.

Then they got to open up a present on St. Nicholas day after we had a tasty meal from the local Euro Deli.

It snowed and I let them has their sleds early.

  We also went shopping because they received money from Dadushka Jones and Tetya Barb.  They each had $35 dollars to spend!!  We went to the Dollar Tree so they could pick out presents for each other, Jeff and me and paid with their own money.  They really loved it and they were very excited to see us open the presents they bought for us and each other. Since we were going to Kansas City for Christmas, we had our family Christmas time a couple of days early.

Then of course Santa came to visit on Christmas morning where they opened presents from Santa and from Tetya Susie and Brandee.  Later in the day they opened gifts from the rest of the family!

The next day we went to visit our sweet friends Sophia and Rich for lunch and they had a gift for the kids!  After we left there, we went to see a friend of Jeff's whom he went to school with (Curtis), and he gave Leeza a movie and Zhenya a Ninja Turtle picture. 
Wooo...that was a lot of gift receiving.  When we got home, Leeza wanted to know why Santa hadn't left gifts under our tree at home!!!  Geesh....you'd think she had enough!! 

December Update

I haven't posted in quite a while, so I figured I had better write a bit for all of our faithful readers!! The time is chugging along, and we are staying pretty busy.  The kids are making progress in school. We are still having some issues with the level of school work Zhenya is given.  I had to have yet another conversation about it.  Both of my kiddos are definitely coming to my school next year.  It will just be easier having them in the same building in the classrooms that my assistants or I go to each day.    After a couple of meetings, Leeza is getting speech services and occupational therapy services.  I really wanted her to get help with her writing because I don't want to see her having major struggles when she gets into the upper grades.  I have worked with enough students who just struggle with writing, and it can be miserable for them.  She didn't qualify for physical therapy, but I was not surprised.  This girl is really doing well in her gross motor skills.  Academically, both my kiddos are doing great.  Zhenya is a reading machine, and he has surpassed the words per minute level for kids in 4th grade.  I am very proud of him, but he still needs to improve his reading comprehension. 
On the physical level,  Leeza is growing like crazy.  I seriously can't keep pants that will fit her.  She is a long legged skinny thing...if it fits her leg it is way too big for her waist.  Her hair is really growing, and she gets prettier everyday.  Zhenya still isn't growing much, but so far he is still taller than Leeza.  Though I am concerned that she will outgrown him at the rate she is growing. 
Since we couldn't get Kristin Amaro from AFH to come to Colorado to take our family pictures for our Christmas cards, I had to do it myself.  The cards actually turned out cute...now I have to get them in the mail.  At the rate I am going they may arrive to their destinations by New Year's!  Here are a few of the shots I took.  They are no comparison with the photos Kristin did last year, but they turned out okay for my amateur self using only my cell phone!!!   I may have to invest in an actual camera one day. It was kind of fun taking the picture.  Though the day was EXTREMELY cold, and the kids fussed every time I made them take their coats off the pictures.  

Leeza is suppose to have surgery on her eyes some time in the next couple of months.  First, I have to come up with $1200 to cover our deductible...ughh...I really miss my Tennessee health insurance.  Ours here is just not worth much...  Anyway, the pediatric opthamologist here said the same thing the opthamologist at Vanderbilt said.  Leeza has exotropic strabismus...in which her eyes turn outward.  He said that glasses won't help because it may make her eyes turn out more.  Patching won't work because she doesn't have one eye that are significantly stronger than the others.  Her vision is 20/20 near point in both eyes and 20/30  20/40 far points. So the previous vision exam from the optometrist was WAY off and they were just going to throw glasses on her that possibly could have cause harm.  Vision therapy seems to be a highly used treatment here, but none of the insurance companies will pay for it and it is not cheap.  I am not excited about surgery, but this doctor is highly recommended by numerous people with kiddos with vision problems much more extensive than Leeza's.  Also, as I mentioned the opthamologist at Vanderbilt said she was going to need surgery at some point.  I think it is the best option...once we come up with the money.   

Starting Friday, we are off school for two weeks.  Yay! I am so ready for the break, and getting to spend time with my kiddos!  Jeff will also be out of school, so we will get to all spend time together. Woo Hoo!  Looks like we are KC bound for the Christmas weekend.  We can't stay long because Jeff has to work, but we are going for just a couple of days.  The kids are so excited to see their Tetya (Aunt) Susie and baby Logan, the newest family member.
Guess that is all for now!!
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!!!

Leeza's birthday

Leeza just had her 7th birthday.  Boy, was she excited to have a birthday!  Last year, I don't recall her being this excited about her birthday, but we had only been home a couple of months.  I think she probably didn't realize what a big day a birthday is!  This year, she sure knew!  She woke up bright and early, and she was running around the house talking about her birthday.  It was so cute.  She was very excited about all her presents, but her favorite by far was the Betta fish.  She asked for a fish and Bettas are typically pretty hardy.  So she now has a new little friend named Bubbles.  She named him herself.  She has finally expanded her interests for dogs to dogs,horses, and fish.

Attempting to blow out the candles...it took several tries!!

She asked for the horse, but not the doll that rides the horse!

A Biscuit book from Zhenya

Bubbles the Betta!

The kids' vocabulary is really expanding.  They amaze me daily with the things they come up with.  The other day, Zhenya was listening to a conversation I was having with a friend about mothers.  Zhenya comes over to me, and says "Mothers can be very aggressive."  I asked him if he knew what aggressive means, his reply was "No, but someone said it at school."    It was funny. Thankfully he is only bringing words home like aggressive. Leeza's teacher sent me a note with a quote from our little Leeza.  Leeza apparently said to her teacher, " I'm tricky, so you have to be careful."  No idea where she got that one, but it was so funny.  Clearly, her teacher thought it was cute too since she wrote it down!   One day, she comes to me and says, "Mama, I have a problem with you!"  I was laughing too hard at her to get upset over it!!  Prior to our adoption, Jeff made a comment about hoping to adopt children with some personality.  Clearly, we don't have to worry about that...these kiddos have more personality than I can handle sometimes!!  Overall they are doing fabulous!  No sickness and they are progressing in school.  There are always days of ups and downs, but no more than the typical child goes through from what I hear from others!  In fact, I feel very blessed with how they act most of the time...especially when I see how some other NON-adopted kids act with their parents.  I am very thankful for the blessing they are to us.  Jeff is working hard with work and school, and we are happy that Thanksgiving break is coming.  We will all be off school.  Jeff still has to work during the day, but he will be home in the evenings next week!  The kids love having him home at night!!

Fall in Colorado

This weekend we went on our first Colorado camping trip.  The weather on Saturday was fabulous, and it was a beautiful weekend for camping.  The night was COLD. I got little to no sleep because I spent the night concerned that the kids were wiggling out of their covers and trying to keep the dog from doing her business in the tent.  They told us when we paid that they DO have bears, so we needed to be certain to read the bear safety pamphlet.  This news did nothing to help me sleep. Every little noise I heard made me wonder if it was a bear.  I didn't want to get out of the tent to go to the bathroom because I was concerned about encounting a bear on the way.  The bathroom was NO where near our campsite, so I had to drive to the bathroom.  While camping seems like fun when we are roasting hot dogs and eating outside, I rarely find sleeping outside in a tent to be as pleasant.  The kids slept well, but we were happy to be home in our own bed.   After camping, we went for breakfast in Woodland Park at a donut shop that served donuts and cinnamon rolls among other things that were GIGANTIC! They have a cinnamon rolls called "Bigger than my head" cinnamon roll.  It really was bigger than a person's head.  Regardless of the rough night sleeping and the thought of bears, we had a nice time being together.  The kids really miss seeing Jeff during the week when he is at night school.

Last week, we had parent teacher conferences, and I went to meet with both kid's teachers.  They weren't the most pleasant conferences.  The teachers were all nice, but it is not always fun when you don't get a lot of positive things back from the conference.  Zhenya is apparently going for class clown.  He is being very silly at school in an attempt to get a laugh.  Academically, they have made some changes to his work, and I am seeing an improvement in the work being sent home.  I had to talk with him about the appropriate time for silliness.  This is not a new conversation because we have been experiencing excessive silliness at home as well.  We have frequent talks about how much silliness is okay.  I try to help him understand that too much of anything is not good.  A little silly is alright, but too much is not alright.  I can't tell you how many times I have said that to him!  Leeza's conference wasn't much different than I expected.  I just find it frustrating to hear her teachers say that she is not able to do anything on her own or that she is not showing progress.  It completely perplexes me because she is not doing things for her school assessments that she does for us at home.  For instance, her recent school assessment indicated that she only knew 6 letter sounds.  I checked her at home the next day, and she knew all her letter sounds except 6.   She has moments when she doesn't want to even try and I wonder if she is doing that at school.  She has a lot of learned helplessness or if she really can't consistently reproduce what she knows.  I struggle with having her compared to her other ESL (English Second Language) peers because she didn't come from where they came from.  No english or not, most of her ESL peers come from a home with a parent or two with whom they have always been.  Leeza came to us with NOTHING in the academic world and very little in the self care/help area.  As is common with institutionalized children, she is very developmentally delayed.  I guess I am glad they want to see how much help (Special Education) they can get her, but I also feel that is should be acknowledge how far she really has come from the little girl we brought home.  She has made progress...even if it isn't the same as the other kids.  If we were back in Tennessee, her teachers would have had a better understand of where she came from.  I told her teacher that her teacher in Tennessee would be so excited to see what Leeza can do now because it wasn't anywhere close to where she was last school year.  At home, we work on all the things we need to work on for kindergarten.  Some nights like tonight, we both get quite frustrated.  She has sight words to memorize and she can remember like, can, we, and go.  However, no matter how many times we practice and review she can not recall the word THE.  It frustrates me because I am a special education teacher. I am suppose to have strategies and techniques to teach children things in order to encourage retention of the information.  THE is just not sticking.  One minute she knows it, and the next minute she doesn't.  I don't feel like she has enough language to do any cognitive testing to determine her intellectual abilities.  I hate for her to be frustrated with academics, but she gives up so easily when she thinks it is too hard.  I just don't know what to do! The only thing I have decided is that THE is not a big part of her vocabulary. She almost never uses it. In fact, I don't know if she uses it at all.  She tends to say "e" when we would normally say "the".  I am having this thought as I sit here and write this.  This post is getting too long, so I will close.  Just blogging my frustration is truly helpful!! Any tips on this topic are welcome!!