I’m sorry I haven’t been blogging much. We have been enjoying our awesome weather. I was so excited when we hit 50 a few weeks ago, and now we’ve had a few days where we’ve reached 80. So we’ve been getting out, a lot.

We’re still having lots of ups and downs. Ilya is just a strong-willed kid. While I think being strong-willed is an awesome attribute in a person, it is very frustrating to be a parent of a strong-willed child. Yesterday, Lena and I were looking at a book and Ilya was sitting next to us. I was asking Lena the colors and we looked at the color of a car. She told me it was “yellow” and I said “yes, that’s yellow.” And then Ilya said “I dink es orange.”

We also had a fun evening last week. We were at dinner and Ilya was bossing Aaron around. I asked Ilya if he was the papa and he said “yes!” So, we made him do papa’s jobs for a little while. He was very persistent with the whole thing, not wanting to give up. But, he would ask me for help and I told him that papa does not need help with those things. I told him if he was Ilya, he could have help. He never gave up, but I made him stop after awhile and reminded him that Papa is much bigger than him and maybe he shouldn’t try to be Papa until he’s that big. I know that he wants to be LIKE Papa, but we’re trying to teach him that he’s not ready to have all of the privileges and responsibilities that come with being a grown up.

Lena had a big owie last week, running on the driveway. She cried until we started cleaning her up. I got her a “special drink” (yogurt) and took her over to our rocking chair. She sat with me, until Aaron and Ilya decided to go play some more and she was off. That girl is tough.

Here’s a little March Madness message for you…