My favorite of their selections is the blue pony, I did turn away the stuffed butterfly that Elena tried to include, but the pony would indeed be able to carry us if he showed up.

After we played with the bevy of toys we built roads with our blocks and then built an entire city using leggos and blocks. This was the first time Zhanna took imagination play and really locked into the theme and built on in (she most often takes a story line and then runs it back to one she prefers)

The field trip today was to the museum of science and industry- full size train, actual airplane to climb through, it’s a Mecca of transportation.

Later this week we’ll ride the “EL” with stops at a favorite bakery.

Art projects and cooking posts related to our theme will be posted later this week.

I’m not certain how long she was calling out for me, but I didn’t hear Elena until after she had gotten sick in her bed and then become basically hysterical. (really is there anything sadder than a sick, cold, sad child who thinks she can’t find her mommy?)

We have a monitor set up in their room, and a receiver on my nightstand. But I didn’t bother to bring it downstairs with me because the girls sleep through the night on such a regular basis that it’s only real purpose has been to hear the early morning “I need to go potty” refrain.

Both girls still stay in their beds until we come in in the morning, as if they were in cribs and can’t get out. That has always seemed like a good thing, until tonight. Elena needed to get up, but was afraid too. Once she was feeling better and calm again we talked about it being ok to get up and open her door if she needed me. Elena nodded her little head and said she would, but it was clear she wasn’t going to really do it.

And now? Why am I writing a post after midnight? Because even though, once I managed to get her bedding changed and to get her cleaned up and in fresh “jamas”, Elena was ready to go back to sleep. She has a new fear. “mommy didn’t hear me crying”. So about every 20 minutes since 10pm she has woken up and performed a test of the emergency broadcast system (Elena Broadcast to be precise.)

I’m laying here in bed using the monitor to hear her breathe and hoping that the last test at 12:20 am was enough to prove that when she needs me I really will come. But I’m not betting on it.

The dining room? Not so much with that fourth coat of paint. I can only hope that the stuper brought on with 24 hours of flights Mark will have just completed will be enough to distract him from my almost completed surprise when he arrives in the morning.

This has been a test, only a test, if this had been a real emergency you would have had no idea what to do. We now return you to your regularly planned sleep cycle.

So, that was 9:30pm.

First it was a cat that suddenly needed to prove his prowess as a hunter by “capturing” a small stuffed Koala and carrying it up the stairs to lay at my feet. He was of course yowling the entire way. That was 11:15pm

Then it was the tiny voice of the 3 year old over the monitor “uh oh I’m wet”. Sigh, I knew that last glass of water was a mistake. Naturally the clean sheets and were down in the basement laundry room. Ok. I can do this. Calm sad and oh so groggy child down, get to basement, get child cleaned up and changed, get bed made, get child back to sleep. All while doing everything possible to keep from waking 4 year old zonked out in next bed. That was 12:45am

From there it was the natural result of all that hubbub. Just as I got back into bed, and settled down, the dog decided he had to go out….NOW. Ok. Back downstairs. Stand next to the freezing door and wait for him to stop playing in the snow and come back inside so he can bring his snow covered feet back to my pillow. That ended at 1:30am

Ok! Now it’s time for bed….a few hours of sleep and then…the SOUND.

If you have an iPhone, find the “boing” sound effect and turn your volume up as high as it will go. If you don’t, try to remember the sound from Road Runner cartoons whenever a large metal spring was used to fling anything over a mountain {{{BOINNNGG}}}.

I woke up to that sound echoing over and over again up the stairwell. At first all my groggy head could conjure was the idea that a smoke alarm with failing battery was going nuts. But it was so strange
{{BOINNNGG}}}
{{BOINNNGG}}}
{{BOINNNGG}}}

When I finally found the old model iPhone we gave the girls to play games on (in a toy box under the dolls) it was on the last round of alarm from a setting that showed “count down 12 hours”. It would appear that one of the girls was playing with the clock timer function at 2:30pm. Since that was 2:30am when it went off.

Ummm ok, maybe if my heart stops racing I’ll try to get some sleep before the morning starts.

I did eventually get a few hours in, but the girls woke up early and there is no snooze button for that.

Method:
325 degree oven
Drain liquid from Ricotta
Beat cheese with the sugar until light and fluffy, add the eggs, cornstarch, and extract. Then ad the cream to the mixture and fold in the almonds.

Pour into prepared crust and bake for 1 hour. Cool slowly (in oven with door open works well)

There are lots of ways to do this, but regardless of the “school of thought” that we choose to follow it will be really important to document all the lessons and skills that we cover so that the transition into “notathome school” won’t be frought with scary administrators testing the girls or making them redo any grades.

That is really what this section of the blog is all about. We are going to use it primarily to track and plan and document the learning, discovery and imagination building that we do around here.

I’ll include any resourcess we find really helpful and, whenever possible, the actual lesson plans and guides for any one interested.

The comments section and discusion forum pages are open for anyone who has suggestions, ideas, or even questions. We welcome you to start a topic and for others to join in. Some of the best ideas we’ve used so far started as tips shared by friends.

Last night we followed our usual routine (sesame street watching after diner, some play time with the many toys downstairs, clean up time which is mostly everyone tossing toys back into the baby jail, potty time, change into PJs, sitting/squirming through Daddy reading Good Night Moon- both girls making kitty sounds and declaring each item on the pages theirs “Zhanna Mush” “Elena Brush”, as much cuddling and kisses as we can get away with,, then into cribs and under covers all the while saying ‘nite ‘nite to every toy and item in the room using the new found English words for almost everything)…but for the first time after we put the girls in their cribs to go to sleep and shut of the lights and walked out….nothing….silence….no super sad crying. We sat by the baby monitor and listened to Zhanna doing her little singsong chanting to sleep, but both girls were out in the land of zzzzzzzzs in less than five minutes. Peaceful…..

Today we are loading the car seats and girls into an IGO car and taking advantage of a big sale at old navy. Many of the little outfits we bought them are starting to be too tight!

Zhanna has been wearing her backpack around the house since she saw her first episode of Dora the Explorer. It tends to be filled with toys…and she likes to dance with her whole body to the intro theme to sesame street – I think her moves are the actual definition of “childlike abandon”.

Elena is using her own spoon now and most of her food actually gets in her mouth. She has taken to body hugging both dogs and giving them kisses on a regular basis (they seem confused but amiable to all the attention). We are fully into potty training now with the “reward” being that Elena wants to wash her hands.

At dinner we still find ourselves saying a sentence that no other parent has every uttered: “girls if you finish all your mac n’ cheese mommy will let you have some peas.” We are seriously bribing our children with veggies to get them to eat whatever the main course is. “carrots for dessert if you finish your dinner” actually works, and to solve the protein issue we are starting meals with a cooked egg white like it is an apetizer. Nutty!

Some new pics:

The girls spent a fair amount of time figuring out just how far an old school slinky could be stretched.

And Elena showed us that even tiny children can try to open doors if it means getting to take your baby doll outside to play on the slide.

Well, unless they have two toddlers in their care, they are just liars!

Today the girls and I played dress up, chase, slide, pretend cooking, had real breakfast, pretend phone calls, dress up again, read books, ate snacks (real and pretend), put baby dolls to sleep, colored on paper, chalked boards, road wheelie bugs, zoned out in front of Sesame Street on the big TV, ran in circles, broke up a fight over hand bags, tried time outs for hitting and then another for biting the sister who did the hitting, played a form of hide’n’seek that involved wearing a basket on our heads (I have no idea why), we watched Zhanna dress up some more and then admire herself in the big mirror, then determined that playing with the tiny kitchen is WAY more fun in a fancy dress from the dress up box, changed so many soaking wet or worse – Dora the Explorer – pull ups that it stopped being funny, tasted donuts and found them yummy and yucky at the same time, watched mommy try to scrape the stickers off the kitchen floor without destroying the marmoleum, and pretended to take photos of Elena with a pretend cell phone….. All before lunch time.

When Mark came down from the studio to join us for lunch he took one look at me and went and made me an espresso.

Things here are good, we are traversing meal time with children who aren’t big fans of protein, making great progress with language and general communication, sort of keeping up with laundry and house cleaning, and more importantly we are becoming a closer and closer family every day.

Both girls get stronger every day, it is amazing to see their little faces filling in and those wobbly legs running and jumping and wheelie bugging around.

Here are a few new pics from those trusty iphone’s:

The girls are still recovering from ear infections and the weather here in Chicago has been blustery (go figure!) so we have been mostly trapped indoors. And I’m running out of things for us to do.

Don’t get me wrong, shredding up the junk mail while sitting on the kitchen floor IS super fun, I’m just not sure how long the girls will let me get away with it as a project.

The routine is, well, routine. Bed time, wake time, snack time, lunch time, nap time, bath time, diner time…. All relatively predictable.

What is never predictable are things like how many words Zhanna will suddenly add to her new English vocabulary. Very important additions in the past two weeks include “more juice/milk”, “be nice”(which she is now saying to Elena about pet interactions), “rosie/apoleon” (the puppies who have gone from sources of terror to sources of comfort-she asks where they are almost as she wakes up), “bless you”, “wow” (especially when peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with no crust appear on a plate), “lola” (the dog from next door who barks and scares Elena-as in “NO LOLA”, “shoes”, “cool” (includes a thumbs up), “peace” (includes an attempt at two fingers up)

It blows us away how quickly she is replacing words- counting in English has started and letters too.

Elena has a tiny tiny voice (unless she’s screaching with crazy delight at something.) she will say more please, and bye bye and juice etc but mostly she let’s Zhanna speak for her.

In the middle of this past week we experienced a moment right out of a movie script. During the girls afternoon nap I let the pups outside in the back yard, when I let them back in Rosie trotted up to me with a kitten in her mouth! Yes, an actual kitten. At first I thought she had hurt it or worse, but after basically running up the stairs to the studio with a handful of kitten wrapped in a baby bib (I don’t know, I just grabbed for something on the counter and that is what I came up with) mark and I checked out the smallest kitten I have ever seen and found nothing wrong other than the terror of having a puppy carrying it around. We looked for the mommy cat and any signs of other kittens but found nothing and the weather was getting awful outside. . Ok, now what?! Our house is already a zoo with the two dogs and three cats and two children. The last thing we need is some more responsibility. And surely the last thing this tiny scared kitten needs is to be “loved” by the girls who are currently showing affection to the full grown cats by pulling whiskers and smothering them with full body hugs. Then it hit us, big brother, Jordan has been talking about wanting a kitten for his new apartment. An overnight stay at the vet for testing and a trip to Petsmart later and “Matza Ball” has a new home.

Sometimes I think our lives would make for a pretty good sitcom. Other times? I’m certain of it…

Back in the day to day we continue to find other unpredictable things, especially which foods the girls will eat. It eludes us since there isn’t a real pattern. Both girls continue to devour peas and carrots, green beans and sweet potatoes. Malt-o-meal is a big hit and so are scrambled eggs. But the home made sugar cookies were turned down with the same face you’d make if I handed you a plate of poo. Chicken and hot dogs are considered “kaka” and spat out with disdain. But tonight Zhanna ate 3 ounces of poached salmon. And the other day she slurped down cream of tomato soup so fast that it was awe inspiring. They both will drink only small amounts of the whole milk their tiny bodies need so much of, so we are hiding it in the “mush”, in the eggs, in the sweet potatoes, in the tomoto soup etc. They guzzle apple juice, and even the scary “first juice” for infants made of carrots and apple or bannana carrot (it has half the sugar of the apple juice and also vitamin D)

The TB test were read on Thursday, both girls showed no response to the special test given them since they had been vaccinated with the live BCG vaccine in Russia (often children adopted from Russia are given the stronger test by well meaning pediatricians which results in antibiotic treatments as a precaution). We are really fortunate to have a team if International Adoption Specialists at the University of Chicago Children’s hospital. (only 6 blocks away from the house).

So with that hurdle behind us we are on to dealing with Zhanna having to take medicine for an internal parasite, and poor thing has made it clear that it tastes awful- she swallows it all anyway with no more than some kind words of encouragement. 12 more days of that 3 times a day then we should be through with the yucky stuff.

We spend a fair amount of time each day picking out tights and shoes to go with the dresses the girls pick out each day. Zhanna would wear her fur lined boots to bed if we’d let her and she has found that even pajamas with feet will fit in them. She’s a trendsetter to be sure!

Mark and I are doing our best to navigate the white water rapids of toddlerhood. The not wanting to share thing and Elena tossing herself on the floor when unhappy is pretty eye opening (to the fact that their tiny bodies contain a world of emotion and plans and energy all bundled up and ready to spring out at a moments notice.)

But the girls continue to play together and run to us with hugs and pretend food and bath time has turned into a whole event of water play that includes mommy and daddy in bathing suits so we can join in. Zhanna gets so sad when we stop the water and dry off that we have to bribe her with baby lotion and extra time in the frog hood towels.

So, in a nutshell- Life is good, exausting, messy and chaotic. We wouldn’t trade any moment of it for anything!

The increase finally tossed both girls onto those growth charts we’ve been fretting over since we got the medical information that came with the referrals for the girls. They are just barely on the charts now, but at this stage every positive move is such a huge relief that we’ll happily celebrate it.

We survived the blood draws and TB test yesterday (the girls we’re wiped out after all that stress and took five hour naps, and  to be certain both Mark and I  could have used a stiff drink after having held down frightened screaming little girls while it was all hapening, but it is over…) we’ll get test results next week, but the great news is that the girls are putting on weight quickly and continue to eat sweet potatoes and peas and other veggies like they might be discontinued at any moment.

Both girls are doing great. We’re settling into a comfortable routine that even includes some real sleep for the mommy and daddy:

Zhanna loves music. She figured out the harmonica today and sings little songs in Russian to us all the time. Unlike her mommy she seems to have the ability to keep a beat and loves to dance to any music we play for her.

Early this evening she and Mark spent some really nice time together, Zhanna learning to strum the guitar and then Mark playing songs for her to dance to.

Elena and I have found a new game that involves emptying and refilling a bag of cotton balls. Who knew that $1.25 of beauty supplies would be our favorite thing! Both girls like to pretend that every day things are happening, they make a big show of playing bath time sitting in the bin we have in their playroom to hold balls, and they spend a lot of time playing cooking and eating.  Oddly enough this play includes talking on cell phones…we can only guess that the care givers at the baby home were “keeping in touch” with the outside world on a pretty regular basis.

Time to go figure out what to make for dinner. Surely they are getting tired of the sweet potatoes- I know, I know, stop calling you Shirley…

Here’s some new pics to keep you smiling. 

When one child needs to go potty or is out of sync with her sisters sleep cycle or once in a while a mommy may just need to take a potty break hereself, or a coffee break, or just a break, we don’t have a way to ensure the girls are safe without putting them back upstairs in their cribs. So we went off in search of a standard playpen. You know square mesh sided baby jail for quick in and out times. It turns out that they no longer exist. The people at the baby store and target both pointed us to really complicated devices with changing tables and craddles and small living rooms attached. Yikes!

We finally settled on a system of little walls that you click together to make a colorful and musical (yes the darn thing takes batteries!) rectangle that the girls seem to really like. We leave the little door open and they go in and play tea time and slide and read books even when they don’t have to be inside (it must be funny to see Bobbi sitting in a baby jail with her daughters, but it’s more fun to be in there with them then outside.)

We are five days into the antibiotics for the ear infections both girls had coming home and all seems good there. This coming Tuesday will be the harrowing full medical review and blood work for both girls. We are heartsick about putting them through it all, but we know it is the right thing to make sure we are doing everything we can to get and keep them healthy.

Sleep time is getting easier each night with less rocking on there own and lots more hugs and kisses ‘nite ‘nite. The girls are eating well and we can already see a nice rosy color coming into their cheeks.

We even hit the park today and tested out the baby swings. Zhanna is a daredevil and kept asking to go higher.

The highlight of the weekend was that Jordan finally got to spend time with his new little sisters. Those of you who haven’t seen him since he was a toddler himself, should note that at 19 years old he is now 6′ 3″ and sports a full set of tattoos and in proper punk rock fashion a different hair color on a regular basis. He had told us that he was worried the girls would be afraid of him or that he wouldn’t know what to do. It didn’t take two minutes for both girls to be climbing all over him and Zhanna (who has been very specifically attached only to Mark) climbed into his lap and sat with him. He was gentle and kind and natural with the girls and even brought coloring books with magic no spill ink. (elena spent some time trying to eat those so we’ve put them away for a bit)

Jordan Tvoy Brat-means Jordan is your brother, and what a good brother he is! He, by the way is already planning to help Mark scare away any bad boyfriend material that tries to slink by our future door.

Jordan is one final pastry course and an externship away from graduating from the Le Cordon Bleu culinary program here in Chicago. We are so pleased that he is planning to stay here in the city working towards being a chef so that we can have regular family meals (better with his newly learned skills involved) all of us together.

We are going to be transitioning this blog into one that lets us track behavioral, medical and developmental, and educational milestones, in addition to being the place were we update friends and family and do things like store favorite recipes and latest photos and things the girls do well with. Since we’ll want the new version to be less public it will be password protected.

Any if you friends and family who wish to follow along can just send an email to weekahunas@reallyreallybig.com and we’ll happily set you up for access.

For those of you who are done following us on this path, we thank you for the support and hope you’ll keep in touch.

The pics of the girls in their Obama shirts are our not so subtle hint that we hope you’ll vote for him and ensure that our girls get the changes we all need! It’s shamless, we know, but we have even taught Zhanna to say “go ‘bama”

Best Wishes,

The Hendersons

So, where do we start?! I’ll go with the most often asked questions you have been sending:

Have we slept yet?
Well, yes we got off to a good start on Sunday night when even though both girls slept for most of the ten hour flight home from Moscow, they still let us put them down to sleep for the night. We were feeling pretty great about our little schedule until Tuesday. After we got back from the pediatricians office, we put the girls down for their mid day nap and set up the baby monitor and grabbed some zzzz’s for ourselves. (the jet lag and first week of parenting from a stalinesq hotel had caught up to us) we started naps at 2pm-woke up at 7pm and found the girls still hard asleep. We debated about waking them and tried, but they were having none of it. So, at 10pm when they woke up we realized that we had just set ourselves up for flipping night for day. We’re easing our way back into the real world but it requires the adults to go with less sleep than planned.

Dogs and kids?!
Right, many of you asked about this, the children in the orphanage are taught that dogs are scary and bad and will bite you (we actually saw wild dogs sneak onto the playground during our first trip to meet the girls.) our first night home the girls screamed with real terror when we let the dogs inside. They held their hands up high and even when we carried them it made them shake when the puppies got too close. Within a couple of hours we were at the point where they would walk around with the dogs in the room and by Monday they were patting heads and saying “Be nice” (our first English words!) so, kids and dogs? Da!
I’m sure Napoleon and Rosie are a bit shell shocked by the girls, but they have already figured our that the high chairs mean food will magically rain down from above.

Are the kids eating or hating all the new food?
Both girls weigh less than 22 pounds, but I kid you not when I report that they are eating our cubboards bare. Major favorite include malt-o-meal, mac n cheese, peas (but only if they can smash them a bit) yogurt and really anything that we put on a plate. I think today we may have finnally filled them up. For the first time Zhanna didn’t insist on eating every last crumb on her plate. Maybe they are starting to understand that there will always be more if they want it. One of the things that breaks our hearts is that even though she is only 3 years old Zhanna has been making sure Elena gets enough to eat or drink (to the point of actually giving up her own food to her little sister). It is great to see her relaxing this responsibility a bit and trusting us to take care of them both. Mark has been playing the piano with the girls after we eat- they both love music so it is our way of transitioning dinner time from an assembly line thing to a family time thing

How are you all doing?
We’re all doing great. Tired but great. The girls favorite thing right now is playing dress up and walking around the playroom carrying my old hand bags filled with blocks and other toys. There seems to be a little story being told through interpretive dance at the same time. It is like watching a strange fashion show mixed with a Martha Graham dance routine. We are also getting to spend some nice time each morning while Zhanna brushes my hair or let’s me do hers. It is just so sweet. She hides the brush when we are done to make sure she will still have it when we need it again.

Any trouble with attachment or bonding?
Well it is early to have a clean answer, but both girls call for us when they wake up, spend a fair amount of time attached to one parent or the others leg and our most often repeated game is bringing a sheet of stickers over to a parent and then spending close to 30 minutes taking a sticker one at a time from mommy or daddy’s chin or nose or cheek and gently peeling it off then bringing it to the other parent. it may sound strange, but the whole time they are making close eye contact with us, touching our faces and giving hugs. . Mark and I couldn’t feel more attached them, and we see both girls getting stronger and closer to us every day.

We’ll post more soon. But first I’ve got to go dig out some more options for fashion night from the back of my closet. You know, and wash the peas and stickers out of my hair.

We’ve hit a pretty good grove, managed naps and meals and traversed some pretty nasty results of mistakingly thinking that mushroom rissoto would be a simple enough dish for tummies that are used to poridge. Eek!

Only one last checkmark needed on the long list of hurdles to being a family back in Chicago. Just a long flight. How great is that?!