Don't Hit the Potty!

I have had so many ideas for posts that I no longer know what to say. So I'll say a little bit of everything:
Ben, Happy Birthday! Enjoy your last year of the 20's...you are yet young. Although in many ways it doesn't seem like you are my "little" brother any more. At some point in the last couple of years I ceased to feel like your "big sister" and instead I simply feel like your sister, an equal and comrade in sibling-ship. Does this make you older or me younger? I hope you have had a wonderful year and enjoy many to come!

Dad visited with Sandra recently, and Mom came shortly after. I was afraid when we moved here that we wouldn't be near anyone so no one would come to visit us. Instead we are ON THE WAY for everyone and we get one-nighters with lots of traveling relatives. Way fun!

Inga loves school, and she's good at it. Her teacher told us last week that she and another girl are the top readers in the class. That's pretty amazing, since she only really learned to read around a year ago and boy, did we struggle to get there! But when she got it, she got it.

I was telling Lena that I would love her no matter what, trying to hint around the idea that no matter what she looked like or what parts she might be missing this in no way affected my devotion to her. She wanted to know if I would still love her if she got her legs chopped off. I assured her I would. Then she asked about her ear. Of course, I would still love her. I got enthusiastic and asked her what if her nose got chopped off? She gave me a horrified look and said, "Oh, no, Mommy, then all of my boogers would fall out!"

Big huge topic of the month: should we have a sixth kid? It's Fall, and as Ben K. can attest I seem to start adoption paperwork right before Thanksgiving (and call him with the onerous request of picking up my Ohio marriage license from a usually over-crowded Department of Public Health or some such important location), so out of habit I am starting to think toward that direction. No answers yet. Just lots of questions. And yes, there is a specific child in mind.

Annie, thank you for the awesome letters! I haven't had time to write back, but the kids loved them and I loved my birthday letter. You have an amazing way with words. I can't wait to see you at Thanksgiving!!

Mandy asked if I got my quote at the top of the blog from a forum. Umm...what's a forum? Since I don't know, I don't think so. But I did steal it off someone else's quote on their website. It was authored by anonymous, according to this person. I like the quote...I want to have that attitude, and most days I achieve it (at least usually I have to take a shower the next morning).

There is a port-a-potty at the end of my driveway. They are re-paving our whole area (called Hernwood Heights) where we live and the workers chose our little neck of the woods for their loo placement. The problem is that they put it right opposite our driveway, so when we back out I almost hit it, every time. I have trained the kids to remind me by saying, "Don't hit the potty, Mommy!" every time I start to back out of the driveway. So far, I have avoided spilling the contents of the port-a-potty all over our little dead-end street. When the tractors finally made it to our part of Hernwood this morning I was all happy. Surely they would be finished with their project soon and not only would we have a newly paved street with a more level sewer connection but I would also no longer have to be worried about inadvertently destroying state contractor temporary toileting facilities. They did move the port-a-potty this afternoon before they finished for the day...and left a large bull-dozer sort of thing with a caterpillar attached to it...right across from my driveway. This is much bigger than the Tardis-sized toilet box. I must now put our van through several contortions to get out of my driveway--that is, if I remember to do so instead of simply plowing into the thing before checking in my rear-view mirror.

How could you not?

OK, surely someone would comment on that last blog, I thought. Cute pictures of little children playing a game that Anne Marie in particular loved when she was in her youthful prime...Jennie actually admitting that she doesn't mind a sport...how could my family resist commenting? At least something like, "How can an armless kid be a goalie? Did she let any balls through?" or "You guys sit on a blanket when you watch the games? Really? Why don't you get regular folding chairs like all the other cool parents?" But nothing. Is anybody reading this?!
(dramatic pause for nose-blowing and pathetic sighing)
Boy, glad I got that off my chest.

Inga: "Are those bugs male or female that suck your blood?"
Me: "You mean mosquitoes? Female."
Inga: "So if they get some of my blood in them, that means we are half-sisters!"
Me: "Hmmm..."

Quotes from Petry dishes

Dan and the kids were driving home from Inga's soccer practice when Dan looked in the rearview mirror and saw a beautiful sunset in progress. "Look, kids," he said, "the sun is setting!" Elena had not heard him, but looked dutifully behind her along with the others. She turned back excitedly. "Look, Dad," she exclaimed, "a pink moon!"

"I...I...I Fuppaman!" --Sam, saying 'I'm Superman' (it sounds much cuter when you can actually hear it)

"Go tell Daddy he has good taste," said I.
--"But Daddy is not a hungry person," said Elena worriedly, "and we don't eat him!"

Elena is working on the alphabet. Because she is still transitioning to English (she was adopted shortly before she turned 4, so she is still working on it), she does not always hold onto concepts based in language very well. This means that anything to do with reading takes a little extra work. So we are starting with the names of the letters of the alphabet, and we are working on A and B. For some reason she cannot remember the name of the letter A, no matter what we do. After working on it for a few minutes today she looked up at me in exasperation and said, "Wow, Mommy, these are the hard letters!"

The fan in our bathroom stopped working today. Elena and Andrei were the ones to discover this, and they were very concerned about it. "Mom, the air in the bathroom is broken," Elena came running to tell me, "so we need to buy a new house!"

From the kids

Here are a few things heard around the house recently:

One afternoon I needed to pack but I only had about 45 minutes before we needed to go somewhere for an appointment. So I told the kids they could watch a movie, but not a long one. "How about Little House on the Prairie?" I asked. They all cheered and as I was putting the DVD in I heard Lena explain to Sam: "We are watching LITTLE House on the Prairie because the big one would take too long."

Inga: "You mean when you get things out you should put them away?!" (said with utter sincerity, as if hearing this for the first time!)





A little preface to the next one:
"Pit" (pronounced "peet") is the Russian baby word for "drink". All our kids have a pretty good grasp of baby words in Russian by now, and use them interchangeably with English (however strange the grammar may turn out).
Lena's food quotes:

"I'm fine, I don't want no pit."

"Please don't eat all of them because then your belly will be too full and then you will have a baby--save some for me."

Heard around our house

It has been one full year since we first took Alex off of wheat and milk products. Our idea was to try it for a year, and then see what happened. Well, he has done amazingly well and I was afraid to take him off of his new diet. However, the nutritionist said his intestines may have had a chance to heal and may work correctly now that we have given them a break. So we went ahead and allowed him to have something with wheat in it, a small amount to start. After about ten minutes he started shaking his head from side to side and banging his spoon into the table and screaming. Both Dan and I tried to calm him down, but we were trying so hard not to laugh we weren't much use. Finally Dan said, "Alex, if you want to eat normal food, you'd better start acting normal!". I gave up pretending not to laugh, and had to excuse myself from the table. I don't know if it really was the wheat (how could it have happened that fast?) or if he was just having a moment, but I am not in a hurry to try wheat again. I have become the Wheat Nazi.

The kids were finishing lunch and Sam was safely ensconced in his high chair when I looked at the clock and realized we were late for an appointment (to get Alex's staples out of his head, actually). I grabbed a washcloth and started washing Sam's face vigorously and exclaimed "Shoot!", all at the same time. Sam looked up at me with his freshly scrubbed face, thought a moment, and then said, "Bolshoi shoot!" (which roughly translated means, "big-time 'shoot'!")

The kids were all in the van, Elena, Alex, and Sam in the back seat and Inga and Andrei in the middle seats. Elena asked Andrei to pass her something that was lying on the floor in front of him just out of reach. Andrei carefully reached down with his feet and picked it up, attempting to retrieve it with his hands, but having difficulty. "Don't use your feet, Andrei," Elena exclaimed, "you're not a girl!"