Shoes

New shoes or I really should say MORE new shoes.  WE like shoes.  We like to try on many different pairs of shoes each day.  Aunt Debbie sent a package today and it had some t shirts, new dresses and SHOES. 

While the new sandals were a hit, they also liked the other things.

Leeza really liked her monkey shirt and Sasha liked the new dress. 

The t shirt is a size 6/6x!!!!  It is a little big, but not that much!  They are not listening to me when I tell them to stop growing!

Doesn't Leeza look just like Debbie in this picture??  Sometimes she looks and acts so much like her.

Potty Training and Other Stuff

We started potty training this weekend. Leeza did really really good.  She was ready for it and has had very little problem switching out of her pull ups.  She is very proud of going in the potty. She goes to the potty and only needs Mama at the end to help her wipe.  Sasha loved her big girl panties, but showed very little interest in potty training.  I decided to try again in a few weeks with Sasha after she was laying on the sofa next to me and looked at me with a big smile and said " I pee Mama!"  Yep, she had peed right on the sofa while I was sitting there next to her.   I think seeing Leeza going on the potty for a few weeks will help get her ready to try again.  I let her wear her big girl panties over her pull ups so Sasha is pretty happy about that.

The girls are good at cleaning things.  Well, cleaning things that they want to clean.  I haven't figured out how to get them to clean the bathroom or kitchen yet.  They do clean their play kitchen.

Here is Leeza modeling some of her big girl panties while painting in her book. 

To catch up on some things in general life, the girls are doing great with their english.  They have too many words to count now.  Sasha is at her age level.  She will still have her speech therapy until she turns 3, but they feel she has already caught up to where she should be.  Leeza is doing good and is almost up to her age level.  She had farther to go since she was older when she came home.  BOth girls can count to 10 and are working on counting to 20.  They can sing the alphabet song and are now starting to work on knowing them by sight.  They know most shapes and colors.  Sasha really knows a lot of colors. 

They dress themselves and say "I can do it" whenever Mama tries to help.  They also want to pick out their clothes.  Sometimes it makes for interesting combos of stripes and plaids.  They still love to be naked as much as possible.  They can put their own shoes on now as long as they are velcro ones.  They wear about 5 or 6 different pairs of shoes each day.  They love to change shoes every few minutes some nights.

Leeza still doesn't like sweets much, but she is starting to eat a few vegetables.  Mainly corn, peas, potatos and beans.  She loves cole slaw!!  The girls will eat a whole container of cole slaw if I get one.  They also like salad with rasberry dressing.  Leeza still likes meat best.  She loves her Chef Boyardee mini spaghetti and meatballs and raman noodle.  Sasha is a good eater and will eat most things.  She is very very slow some days and finishes long after Leeza and I are done.  Her favorite pizza is pepperoni and Leeza perfers sausage.  I get pizza with both and them excahnge the parts they don't want. 

They are very active and love their swing set and the little pools I got them.  THe indoor slide still gets tons of activity.  They are playing with their baby dolls more and more.  I need to find them some dolls that have different outfits so they can change them.  They love to ride their bikes, but we have yet to make it around the block.  They get out and either push the bikes or tell Mama to push the bikes. 

They are still growing like weeds.  Leeza is still growing about 1/2 inch per month.  She is almost 38" tall.  I am clueless on what size fall clothes to buy them.  Sasha is wearing 4t shirts and 3t capris and shorts.  Leeza can still fit into 4t shirts, but we have a few size 5 girls(not toddlers) and they fit pretty good.  Pants will be a problem with fall since Leeza is too short for size 5 pants.  Sasha is WAY too short for them.  Capris almost fit her length like they were pants.  I guess I will be doing a lot of hemming this fall.  I hate that stores are already getting rid of summer clothes and stocking only fall clothes.  I am giving away lots of 2t and 3t clothes now that were barely worn more than once.  I've told the girls to stop growing, but they aren't listening to me. 

They are learning so many new things and changing so fast that it is hard to keep up with what is new with them. 

Grandma & Fire Trucks & Police Cars

Grandma came to visit last week.  We had a really good and exciting time. 

Tuesday, Grandma watched us while mom went to work.  We had a fun morning until we came back from our walk and then we found out Grandma had locked the door and did not have a key.  Grandma ended up calling 911 who sent a police and fire truck to let us in.  We were more excited about the man mowing the grass across the street than the police or firetruck, but it was an exciting day. 

It is one good thing about living in a small town that has low crime rates- I can't see a big city sending someone to open the door for a Grandma and 2 grandkids.  I guess the 911 operator said that since the fire truck wasn't doing anything right now, they would send it right over.  Grandma had called the police directly first, but since it was lunch time, they had the answering machine on.(Small town=small police force).  It didn't take them long to get the door open once they got here and they were very nice about it. 

Wednesday, we went to the Children's museum.  Although a lot of exhibits were for older kids, the girls still had a good time. 

This had air blowing through it and you put balls or scarfs in and they traveled around it.  The girls really had fun with this one.

They had fun in the little grocery store also.  There weren't many shopping carts so once Leeza got one, she took off to the other side of the museum so no one would take it from her.  Luckily, the cart made a lot of noise so I could track her by listening for the sounds of a shopping cart going 50 mph! 

They also enjoyed the play house.  Leeza tried to organize the place, while Sasha swept the floor.

THe girls also spent a lot of time on the swings set and swimming. 

They have gotten pretty good at climbing the rock wall.

Plus, they like to hang out in their clubhouse while wearing their cool sunglasses.

Leeza really likes her shoes,  These would not have been my choice for climbing in, but she made it up the wall so I guess it didn't matter.

They love water in any form.  Little pool, big pool- it doesn't matter, they just have fun.

July 4th

Fireworks in Mt Zion are on the 3rd this year.  We started our day with the social worker coming for the 1 year post placement visit(It takes a while to get the reports processed so you have to do it very early).  We went out to Ruby Tuesday for dinner then went over to a friends house for a visit.  We got home around 7pm.  The fireworks aren't until dark(9:30 ish) so I let the girls stay up late.  About 8:30, they started slowing down, but were still awake when the fireworks started.  Sasha fell asleep about half way through.  I was afraid they might be scared, but they seemed to know what they were and were talking about booms when I was explaining the fireworks ahead of time.  I think they talked about them in daycare.  I woke Sasha up for the finale.  Leeza was much more interested in watching the light from a plane that was circling watching the fireworks.  You can see the fireworks really well from our front door so we sat in air conditioning with no bugs to watch them.    The girls went to bed at 10 pm so I was hoping they would sleep in- does 6:45 count?  Only 15 minutes later than normal!  Then they were so wound up today that no one wanted to nap- except me.

This was Friday morning.  They have their red white and blue one-Ready for their first 4th of July!

Today we went to the zoo.  We went at 9:30 trying to beat the heat, but it was already hot.  We stopped at the playground before going in.  They of course have to go down the biggest slides!

They always look so little going up the stairs to the slides.

They go up the stairs and down the slide and then run back to the stairs.  Always in motion.

This is Sasha's big girl pose.  She isn't my little baby anymore or even my little toddler.  After the playground, we went inside the zoo and rode the train and the carousel.  We didn't stay too long as it was HOT!

Lucky

Having recently met some new SHymkent adoptive families, I have been reading a few blogs again.  Things change fast in Kaz.  According to one blog, the judge I had when I was there was replaced.  The new judge is no longer as pro adoption.  He is also anti-single mom adopting.  A lot of single moms had been adopting from Shymkent because the judge was so pro adoption.  Due to some issues with the girl's paperwork, we were worried that even the pro adoption judge would not allow the adoption.  If he had been replaced a few months earlier, I wonder what my court experience would have been like.  I am also in contact with a family who met a little boy in Taraz 6 1/2 months ago.  A new judge there has started to deny all adoptions.  After going through the whole bonding process, they were denied and so far all their appeals have also been denied. They are finally having to come home after visiting their son every day for over 6 months.   I cannot imagine what that would be like.  I guess I am just feeling very lucky to have my girls home and to not have to deal with any of the stress of the adoption prcess anymore.

I have my 1 year post placement social worker visit this Saturday.  Even though it is not due until October, it take quite a while for the report to get written, apostilled, and sent to Kaz.  Can it really be that close to one year home that I need to be writing this report already?  Time has gone by so fast.   So this is 2 reports down, 17 more to go!  Only 2 more (2 year and 3 year) need a social worker so they will get much easier after the next 2 are completed. 

On the positive side, I also found some photos of the renovated baby house.  They fixed up the outside quite a bit and added some new slides.  The gym, where we spent a lot of time, was painted and got new curtains.  A ball pit was added(I had heard they had one while I was there, but I never saw it).  I got these pictures off another blog, but I am copying them since they have no people in them.

Sadly the red swing that the girls loved so much and that we spent so much time on, seems to be gone.  Also gone are the broken walkers that the girls had so much fun pushing around.  The gym equipment seems to be in a new configuration with some additional pieces.   The carpet is the same, but it was in good shape.

The little pool has been painted and the slides added.  We never went in this area as it was just full of weeds and broken down equipment.  I am glad things were fixed up.  I remember the workers washing rugs on this driveway one day a week every week.  I am going to try to write this family when they get home and see if they have any more photos that they would be willing to share.  I would love to see if they fixed up the other playground too.

On to Milwaukee

We got up the next morning and packed the car back up and headed to Milwaukee.   I thought the girls would enjoy watching the movie Bolt since it is about a puppy.  A few minutes after I turned it on, I heard a whimper from the back seat.  I looked back to see Sasha curled up in her car seat with her hands over her eyes and Leeza with her hands over her ears.  OOPS.  Mama forgot the first part of the movie has a chase seen where they are after the puppy dog.  After that, it was the Curious George DVD over and over again.

We met Abby and Jake for lunch, but poor little Jake was sick.  I later found out he was getting in 4 teeth and had a double ear infection.  No wonder he wasn't feeling good.  After lunch, we went to the waterpark at the new hotel. 

This slide was in the kiddie pool area.  The girls liked this slide and played a lot in this pool by jumping off the side into the pool.  It was about 1 ft deep.

They had fun climbing on the turtle and playing under the waterfall.

Then we went over to the big slides.  This slide is about 12 ft tall.  They had to climb 2 sets of concrete stairs with water running over them to get to the top.  Leeza fell down them twice since they were too small to use the handrail very well, but they went on this slide repeatedly for over an hour.  Finally they were so tired they were stumbling up the stairs so we called it a day.  They really loved the water.  Leeza was able to float a little by the time we were ready to leave, but Sasha tends to sink like a rock when I tried to get her to float.  There were 2 slides bigger than this, but you had to be able to swim to use them so this was the largest slide they were allowed on. 

Later that night, we went to the first official Kazapalooza event.  It was held at a childrens museum.  They didn't have enough tables to eat on and there were way too many kids for the size of the museum(Decatur has a much better children's museum and it is 1/10 the size of Milwaukee).  Finally, Abby dragged us back to a corner the mob had not found yet and the girls were able to play and have some fun.  I also met a couple of nice families there so it was fun in the end.  Leeza loved this little lawn mower and would not let go of it.  When she wanted to go down the slide, she dragged the lawn mower up the stairs with her and took it down the slide with her. 

Sasha loved playing with the sand table and spent a lot of time here. 

I had to take a picture of them sleeping.  They were so adorable.  They did really good sleeping in the big girl bed.  No one fell out until the last night and then Leeza slept in the center of the bed so Sasha had only a little bit of bed to sleep on and she fell out 3 times.  Sasha woke up at 5am as usual, but this time she had someone next to her to try to wake up.  One morning, I woke up to see Sasha pounding on Leeza chest saying "get up Leeza" repeatedly.  Poor Leeza needs all the sleep she can get.  She slept right through the pounding and just quietly said "stop it Sasha".    I turned the TV on to some cartoon and she watched them until we all got up at 6:30am. 
There was a luncheon the next day.  We sat with another family that had adopted from Shymkent.  Hannah has just been home for a few months.

This is our Shymkent group- Abby and Jake, me and the girls, and Erin and Hannah. 

We spent the afternoon at the waterpark again and then packed up and headed home the next day.  5 1/2 hours of the same Curious George video!  The girls did good.  Leeza slept a lot. As long as I gave Sasha a new toy or a treat every half hour, she was fine.  We stopped by a McDonalds for lunch that had a play area, but it was so hot that they did not want to play on it so we packed up and drove on.  Overall, they did wonderfully and we all had a good time. 

Our First Family Vacation- Day One

We had a very good first family vacation.  Two kids take so much more luggage than one adult.  I had the car packed full.  I have no idea of how I would ever travel by plane.  The girls need so many things to be comfortable at this age.  The back of the car was full and so was the passenger seat.  We left Thursday morning and stopped by Aunt Shirley and Unle Kenny's place.  The girls had a good time and didn't do too much damage to their house.  Uncle Kenny and Sasha played with a shape sorting ball and he made a friend in Sasha.

 After our visit, we went to Grizzle Jacks Grand Bear Lodge in Utica. 

The girls loved the lodge and we surprisingly confortable with the hotel room.  I thought they might be a little confused about being away from home, but they took everything in stride.  They really liked looking at the bear that was above the fireplace.  It tells a story at 7:30 each night, but we didn't make it.  Maybe next time.

They spent a lot of time looking around the hotel lobby.

They also like the big snowman.  Sometimes I forget how little they still are, but then I see a picture of them and realize they are still just tiny little things. 

Once we got our suitcases in the room, we hit the waterpark.  Once they got in the water, they took off and loved it.  The waterpark was not huge, but perfect size of them.  IT had a wave pool, but it was not on the day we went so they just splashed around the pool and then we went to the slides.

Pink Dora swimsuits are a requirement.

THey went down this slide dozens and dozens of times.  They look so little on it, but they slid down and then ran back around and did it again.

Neither can swim or even float, but that didn't stop them at all. 

The lodge also had a small indoor amusement park. If you look close, you can see a small train parked by the building, that drives you from the lodge to the amusement park. This was by far the girls favorite ride!  They love love love trains.  Since Sasha was so short, there were only 3 rides she could go on.  Aliens(little spaceships going in a circle), a carousel and the Tilt-A-WHirl.  Since Sasha was not 36"(only 34 1/4") , she couldn't ride without an adult.  I foolishly went on with them.  I forgot the I can NOT do spinning rides.  We took the train back to the lodge where I layed down to try to recover from the Tilt-A-Whirl. There were not many people there so they let the rides go a really long time!  Sasha and Leeza kept asking me if Mommy was sick.  Then I heard some russling and Sasha getting something out of the garbage.  She came back to me.  She asked me if Mommy was sick and did Mommy want something to eat and stuck her cold half eaten hamburger under my nose.  Not exactly what I needed at the time as that was the final straw and Mommy got sick in the bathroom with 2 little girls watching and giggling the whole time.  After that, we all got into one bed and went to sleep.  I got up and went to the other bed after they fell asleep.  They did very good sleeping in a big girl bed that night.