Arrival and Beginning a New Era

We arrived home Saturday night!






It was great to be home. It was also painful to come home and feel Mary Evelyn's absence throughout the house, but that is my reality and I'm lucky to have had two wild boys shooting each other with nerf guns and pretending to slash each other with pirate swords all while wearing matching pj's to offset how hard it was for me that night to have sweet Nadia move into Mary Evelyn's bedroom.

The next day we went to church and Nicholas Ruslan was an altar server for the first time. He stands very straight and quietly like a soldier in church so he is an natural altar server. The Russian speaking women in our church put their arms around Nadia and welcomed her especially warmly. It was a joy to watch her giggling at lunch and chattering away in her native language with new friends.

That afternoon I invited some family members over for waffles, whipped cream and berries. I brought out Mary Evelyn's Hello Kitty waffle iron along with then plain round one and had fun making a nice party out of it. The kids enjoyed meeting everyone and since it was a smaller crowd and an informal fun meal they were less intimated than they might have been otherwise.

Before our guests came, I had the kids busily cleaning. The boys swept the downstairs and Nadia vacuumed the upstairs. Nadia always helps me with dishes and cooking and the boys set tables, take out the trash and walk the dog. Today I plan to create chore charts.

On Monday, after dropping Andrew off at his school, we started homeschooling. I wanted to establish a routine right away so even though I don't have a set curriculum yet, I started with a little writing and gave them free math placement tests I found online. It was a a little scary to see the results, but they are both smart and will catch on.

We went to the teacher supply store together and purchased simple  practce writing ABC's books, a writing notebook and sight word puzzle books for them to get started. We start each day with a prayer and then a brain teaser. They already know some of our letters so I'm doing 3 letters a day, both cursive and print, and working on phonics, sight words and English vocabulary. I'm also having them read in Ukrainian for 1/2 hour and then write about what they read each day. There were big sighs and long face about that. I warned them that I will have my Ukrainian friends read what they write later so don't just jot down something crazy!

I saw that they both needed practice with adding with regrouping so I showed them how to do that this morning and they got it right away. I hope most things are this easy.

I've already scheduled doctor and dentist appointments for them and tomorrow we go to a class at the library. They'll get to use the Rosetta Stone ESL program for 2 hours.We should be able to go every day if we want to. The next thing I want to set up is a sport for each of them. Nicholas may be able to join Andrew's baseball team but I don't know what Nadia is interested in yet.

It's much easier to know what to do since I've adopted before. I feel much more competent and organized even though this is a more challenging dynamic on some ways. Of course, last summer I felt like a train wreck so this had to be easier than that!

Yesterday, they got to meet Miss Cindy. We had a lot of fun together. She let each of them drive the golf cart. Andrew was kind of slow and careful becasue he wanted to do the right thing and not wreck, but the other two were fast and wild. Oh MY! It will be interesting around here.

The kids are all very happy and it's amazing to watch their confidence and affection for us grow each day. I was telling Mark that I only wished Mary Evelyn could be physically present with us now to have fun with her new siblings, and he reminded me that she's busy where she is and we'll all be together someday in the life that lasts forever.

These days are  a great start to an new era in our fast moving, blink and it's gone, life on earth.


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