Six Months Home

Actually, I'm 5 days late. As of July 19th we're home from Ukraine for six months.



This is the first month I can really honestly say that I haven't spent the majority of the time thinking I like the dog better or wanting to tear my hair out. This of course has more to do with my deep seated belief that I am completely inept at motherhood than it has to do with the kids behavior. I guess I'm finally hitting my stride, or at least the Welbutrin is kickin' in!!



The girls are growing at an alarming rate. Natasha STILL hasn't gained any weight since we've gotten home, but has grown taller. Vica has only gained 2 pounds but has grown over an inch since we last measured her in March.

The girls are currently learning to swim. Natasha paddles around happily with her pink swimmies on and Vica is like a little fish- usually has no swimmies, and is working on swimming under water. We just went out and got her some dive toys to help her work on it. This is a million miles from their first time swimming on Memorial Day. Both of them were crying and at one point Natasha was SCREAMING at the top of her lungs. "HELP ME!!!!! HELP ME!!!!" I thought for sure someone was going to call 911 it sounded like we were trying to kill her. Loads of fun, but Daddy's got swim duty as Mama only swims if it means livin' or dyin'.

My justification for all of this is that it would destroy by lovely natural blonde hair, thus wasting the great deal of money I spend "maintaining" my naturally blonde hair, wink, wink.... Funny, Matt doesn't seem to argue with this since he actually came out and asked me what I drop at Antonio's. He just stood there with his mouth hanging open. Wait until he starts getting the plastic surgeon's bills!!!

But, back to the girls. Vica went to her first Yankee game a few weeks ago. Matt took her in for a Friday night game. Poor Matt, he made the mistake of telling Vica in front of me that he was taking her to the store to buy her a shirt. This naturally prompted ME to tell Vica that she was under NO circumstances to accept ANY shirt with ANY number on it other than 13. Matt almost popped a blood vessel in his head over that one. Naturally, my girl listened to her Mama and would have no other number. Even when Matt tried enticing her with a pink Jeter shirt. Oh well!! I told him he could get Natasha a shirt in any number she liked! Vica had a great time, and lasted about 4 innings- which is usually all I can take before I start whining to go home too!

On July 8th we had both girls baptized. I had no indication that they were ever baptized in Ukraine and after I had the girls birth mother interviewed, I'm very confident that they weren't. The ceremony was lovely. Very nice, although I'm sure the other families were thinking I was just the slacker Mom of all time- because there are my two, 7 and 4 and all of the other kids were just babies. At least my kids didn't cry. As a matter of fact, Natasha had the Priest laughing so hard he had to take a moment to compose himself before continuing. Matt picked her up and held her over the baptismal font and she just leaned back as far as she could with a HUGE HUGE HUGE smile on her face grinning away upside down at Father Ray. It just made a really happy day that much happier.

After that we had a big reception for all of our family and friends. I'm from a big family, but Matt's is even larger. In addition to 4 siblings he has so many Aunts, Uncles and Cousins- well it was easy to have 125 people at the party- most of them Sicilians! It was so wonderful for us to see our girls embraced by this extra-large loving family. I couldn't help but stand there more than once and think how they went from nothing to all of "this" when we adopted them. But I have to say that Matt and I feel like we are the really lucky ones. The girls will just accept this as nothing extraordinary, like all kids do, and that's exactly what we want for them. To just feel like any child does, loved, accepted and to take that all for granted. I spent the entire afternoon hugging and kissing anyone that would stand still long enough for me to tell them I was so happy they were there and that I loved them.

If you were one of those people, I meant it, and I still do- it really wasn't the martinis talking :) And if you're one of the people I didn't get to, I'm SO glad you were there, and I love you!! If you were one of the people that wanted to be there, but just couldn't- we missed you terribly, but understand that these things happen, and we love you too!

Okay, love-fest is over, I wouldn't want anyone to think I'm going all soft and smushy now that I'm a Mom.

It was exhausting planning the whole thing, but so well worth it. The girls have now met pretty much their entire extended family and I'm not throwing another party that large until one of them gets married. Amen.

As for the rest of the Summer. Natasha is finishing her little pre-school program this week. She really enjoyed it and this will be a good experience for her when she starts going every day in the Fall. Vica will keep attending her ESL enrichment class until August 3rd. Then we head down to Florida to visit my parents on the 10th for about 10 days. That will leave about 2 weeks to get the girls ready for school, which will be nothing compared to getting Matt ready to go back. Right now he's hard at work on his tan.

English skills are progressing. We've got Vica using "I" more often now. The more we can get her to do this, the more Natasha will start using it. This is by far the hardest thing for them to learn. Natasha is getting better at expressing herself, although some days she's more lucid than others. Matt gets her going telling stories. She usually likes to tell a story about a bear that tries to eat her when she's sleeping, but usually either Mama or Sophia come to her rescue, with me giving the bear a spanking, or Sophia biting the bear and making it run away. Both girls are bonding with Matt really well. They really don't have a concept of what a Father is- at least nothing good, so it's been a longer process for them to make that connection with Matt, but this month has really seen that happen. I think the fact that they are spending so much time with him is making all the difference in the world. All they have to do is call him Daddy and the man is a six foot heap of jello at their feet- further proof of this is that Matt has hardly played any golf since school has let out and completely by choice. I didn't think I'd ever see the day !

So, those are all of the blog worthy events of our Summer, thanks for checking in!