We are working our way through some of the Pre-school basics to see where Z got off track, and to help E get used to Dorchester prep. On the one hand, Z can explain in great detail the different habitats of the many animals she is fascinated by, and on the other, she stops at 12 when counting because she gets stuck. E, younger by 14 months, can count to 30 (except for a stubborn skipping of the number fifteen that I can’t explain). I know you are not supposed to compare your children, but in this case it’s the only way for me to identify what is likely a learning gap (Z being so stressed by the school environment that she couldn’t learn) and what is more likely to be a challenge for her even in the safety of our home.

We are starting with alphabet cards (I found a super set of index cards with dividers on a ring at target, and we are drawing or gluing examples of each letter in use) so each day we are searching for things that start with the letter we are on.

Z likes this fine as long as its about animals. So A is for apple got no response or engagement but when I suggested there might be an animal or two that have names that start with A she popped out of her chair and came back with a rubber alligator and a coloring book that she turned to the ant eater page.

E on the hand took a different path. When asked to find an animal who’s name started with the letter A she looked around for a bit and then brought to the table a big stuffed toy cat. I tried to gently explain the idea again “no honey the animal’s name needs to start with the ‘aah’ sound. Like alligator.” E gave me that look and then explained ” oh, mommy. THIS is my cat Annie, hear it? aaaaaannie like aaaaaa for alligator”.

Okey dokey. We’ve got the letter A. Next?

I pulled this list of “does your child know” items that are meant to help parents judge if their children are ready for kindergarten – it’s not a perfect list, but it does seem like a good guideline to use as we set goals

Colors and Shapes

• Recognize and name primary colors
• Recognize circles, rectangles, squares, triangles
• Matches shapes or objects based on shape
• Copies shapes

Listening and Sequencing

• Follow simple directions
• Listen to a short story
• Listens carefully
• Recognizes common sounds
• Repeats a squence of sounds
• Repeats a sequence of orally given numbers
• Retells simple stories in sequence

Motor Skills

• Is able to run.
• Is able to walk a straight line.
• Is able to jump.
• Is able to hop.
• Is able to alternate feet walking down stairs.
• Is able to march.

• Is able to stand on one foot for 5-10 seconds.
• Is able to walk backwards for five feet.
• Is able to throw a ball.
• Pastes objects.
• Claps hands.
• Matches simple objects.
• Touches fingers.
• Able to button a garment.
• Builds with blocks.
• Completes simple puzzles
  (5 pieces or less).
• Draws and colors beyond
• a simple scribble.
• Able to zip a zipper.

Numbers

• Counts orally through 10.
• Counts objects in one-to-one correspondence.
• Understands empty and full.
• Understands more and less.

Position and Direction

• Understands up and down.
• Understands in and out.
• Understands front and back.
• Understands over (on) and under.
• Understands top, bottom, middle.
• Understands beside and next to.
• Understands hot and cold.
• Understands fast and slow.

Reading Readiness

• Remembers objects from a given picture.
• Knows the letters of the alphabet
• Has been read to frequently.
• Has been read to daily.
• Looks at books and magazines.
• Recognizes some nursery rhymes.
• Identifies parts of the body.
• Identifies objects that have a functional use.
• Knows common farm and zoo animals.
• Pronounces own first name.
• Pronounces own last name.
• Expresses self verbally.
• Identifies other children by name
• Tells the meaning of simple words.
• Repeats a sentence of 6-8 words.
• Completes incomplete sentence with proper word.
• Has own books.
• Understands that print carries a message.
• Pretends to read.
• Uses left-to-right progression.
• Answers questions about a short story.
• Tells the meaning of words heard in story.
• Looks at pictures and tells a story.
• Identifies own first name in manuscript.
• Prints own first name.

Each season change I’ve been trying to find new ways to get the girls to see beyond just noticing the temperature difference and to start anticipating the changes that will come. We have really large windows in the front of our house on each floor so I’ve taken to letting the girls use them as a place for art projects. We have a set of window crayons (Grease paint that washes off easily) and a never ending supply of clear glue pens that let you stick things to the glass and then peal them off later.

E, in particular is a fan of this activity. We call her our little installation artist because there are days that she will spend hours with tape and glue and sparkly things setting the window up to be one amazing thing or another.

Yesterday the girls lamented the winter dragging on but not giving us any fun snow to make up for all that cold. So we talked about spring and how great it will be when we get to see the flowers growing , and butterflies and green trees again. So we decided to make our view out the front window become what we wanted it to be instead of just seeing the branches of our tree and the grey skies.

We started with making butterflies and sparkly flowers which took up most of the afternoon. Today we drew the tree and the girls took turns covering it with all of their sparkly creations. We managed to cover ideas about butterflies not liking to be cold, which flowers smell best and why they might have scents, that bees are cool except when they startle you, and my personal favorite, that it’s ok that we aren’t getting much snow this year because we can order some online.

This whole unschooling thing is really teaching me more than it is the girls everything in our day is learning and one of the best lessons today? That you can change your whole mood just by getting out the glue and sparkly paint and using your imagination.

It’s wonderful.

The first year of the food related entries in this blog were so filled with fat and high calorie concoctions that we came up with (heavy cream added to chocolate milk? You bet!) that it was borderline obscene. My own waistline is a testament to the fact that you can’t have heavy cream and butter in your mashed potatoes without needing to buy bigger pants.

Within 6 months Both girls had passed the amazing mark of a 40% body weight increase (just imaging gaining half again what you weigh now! (I don’t think they make pants big enough for me to do that!). The girls systems finally started to trust on regular nutrition coming in and growth spurts of 11 inches (mostly legs!) happened during the first year. Their hair has grown in thick and healthy and Z even has a tiny bit of a tummy now.

But even after two years now (next week marks the date, two years ago that we brought the girls home from Siberia) E is still no wider than my hand, at age 4 she is often confused for a two or 3 year old and we are still shopping for 3T pants and then having to cinch them in since her waist is so small. Her lips turn blue almost immediately in the tub or swimming pool (no fat layer means being cold) and yesterday she squeezed herself through the dog door our 15lbs Westies use.

She is healthy and strong, and in just this month she grew another inch (the pants she is wearing in this standing on tiptoes picture were long on her when I bought them three weeks ago) she just isn’t gaining weight as she fast as she is growing. So, we are back on a higher calorie/high fat diet with a little encouragement from the doctor to see if we can’t help her catch up a bit as winter sets in.

The catch? When we did this the last time she was 2 and all food was magic so we could get her to eat anything. Now at the ripe old age of 4 she has real opinions about food and the include assessments like “no mommy that is mushy” or “I don’t like that color food” most of you who have small children recognize this as something that happens around age two. In a way, since she has on,y had this lifestyle for two years thAt is exactly what we have, a child with two years of eating experience. Only the terrible two with the added power of reasoning and language of a four year old is making for some real hilarity in our household.

Guess it’s time to pull out those recipes and see what we can do to appease the tiny critique.
I’ll post successful ones for this of you on this same track, with the fair warning that just reading them might cause weight gain.

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.

Once we got past the shock and awwwwww ( as in oh my goodness they are adorable) stage, we started to notice small things that the girls needed some help with.

The fact that both girls had small hand tremmors was pretty high on our list. The doctors chalked this up to effects from lack of nutrition and sunshine (read that as ricketts) and to potential nuerological delays that would take time to catch up/resolve. Basically the brain is trying to do so many new things that the signals start to get crossed up a bit, resulting in tiny hands being a bit more shaky than you’d want to see. Doing puzzles (especially ones with small pieces) was one of the recommendations we got from the team of the international adoption specialist that we met with.

That made sense, but puzzles are expensive (at least the solid wood ones we were looking at) and Elena in particular was getting frustrated by her inability to place the pieces easily.

Time to break out the playdoh. Rolling and smooshing it seems to have helped with the tremors and overall hand strength. Then one morning I realized that all those cookie cutters made it possible to create puzzles on the fly that required all the dexterity (pincer grasp, two finger pulls etc) that we were loooking for with the added bonus of no frustration since pieces can be squished into place when need be.

In our case we found that contrasting colors work best. Basically you make the puzzles twice and then switch the pieces.

After a while we added in matching, colors and shapes to the game turning it into a great lesson.

Now the girls make their own puzzles.

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.

Life is hectic, not more than I guess you’d expect for a family with two toddlers, two dogs, and a small corporation to run. But hectic, none-the-less.

We are struggling to help the girls eat enough calories, They both lost more than a pound while sick. But every day we get a little smarter about how to hide heavy cream, butter, protein and other treats in food.

Toddlers are notorious for loving a food one day and then hating it the next. It keeps us on our toes, and bends our patience, but generally we are managing the mine field that is meal time.

The language acquisition continues to grow at an astounding rate. Zhanna is no longer using any Russian words and mostly speaks in 4 or 5 word sentences. (often they include the words “Zhanna wants or Zhanna no like”). Elena can name dozens and dozens of animals and objects but is still speaking without many consonates so we spend a lot of time doing charades to figure out what she wants or doesn’t want.

We broke into the Pixar collection and in the past week have watched Nemo and Cars at least twenty times. Both girls are very concerned that Nemo didn’t listen to his daddy and then got lost. Zhanna is particularly indignant about the mean car that pushes the others in the movie Cars. It is pretty funny to see and hear the girls tell the characters to be nice.

More soon, we are just trying to get into the swing of the new year.

Here is a fun pic of the girls finally figuring out what all that chalk in the playroom is for. I wish I could have snapped a shot of their faces and hands afterwards- a rainbow of chalky goodness!

And here are some shots of their first hair cuts (we won’t count the crooked attempt mommy made to get rid of the mullets they were sporting when we got home) they sat in little cars and watched movies while getting their new sassy do’s. It was crazy.

First it was a small thud, then the pitter-patter of tiny feet. We raced up stairs and opened the nursery door and there she was. Zhanna had flung herself out of her crib. The hilarious part is that when we found our little monkey she had put on her shoes and socks!

What could have that thought process been? “I want to play, I don’t want to nap…oh! I made it over the wall..oh no! I need my socks and shoes so I don’t get in trouble!” ?!?!?!?

The not funny part is of course that it is a big distance to fall from and she somehow had time to run and get some not crib safe toys and toss them in with Elena along with an outfit, so we found the little sister half undressed and basically stuck in her shirt.

It was… Mayhem? Bedlam? Funny and scary all at the same time.

So now what? Zhanna is not ready to be in a bed yet…or we aren’t ready for her to be in a bed, but seriously it might be good to actually all be speaking the same language and to have our routine a bit more solid before going for a major upgrade in toddler freedoms.

We are online looking at something called a crib tent, seems nutty….

We should have known this was coming. The other morning we found every item from both girls cribs piled high on the floor. The two of them curled up in little balls without blankets or stuffed animals or pillows. Poor Tigger and Pooh Bear.

And just in case anyone is wondering if all those time in sessions had any impact on Elena…. Check out where I found her favorite baby doll today (yes, the infamous time out corner)

The finale to the monkey tale (tail?) was Zhanna insisting on trecking down the front steps today on her own. With the resulting scrape on her nose and fat lip possibly slowing her down for at least the rest of the day?! Or not….

Yesterday we set a household record… Not for the number of Dora the Explorer Pullups we changed, nor for the increadible number of times each girl climbed the coffee table to jump on the big sofa (our version of an indoor jungle gym), and not even for the staggering amount of food being consumed.

The record goes to Elena for earning no less than eight separate time outs in one day. Well, let’s be clear, the time out process of being sent to sit in a corner and ponder what breach of social contract you may have committed, is sort of lost on a two year old.

So, time out is actually time in. Small child sitting in mommy or daddy’s lap arms flailing and loud loud screaming (how can something so small have such big lungs?!) it takes a minute or two but then she calms down and sobs a bit and then says “sorry mommy” with a quivering voice that breaks your heart.

I’m not sure if it was a full moon or just the one month reboot or just one of those things. But boy oh boy. What a looooong day.

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.