akopp2003 said…How much would you say they are understanding?
A lot. They both understand A LOT. We need to be careful about using certain words and using the same words every time, but doing that, we have little trouble communicating. I’m going to post some videos at the end and I think you can see how well Ilya understands me, when I ask him to sing and I ask him a few questions. I always try to show them something if I can. Like today, I showed the kids “jumping”. 


Anonymous said…I’m curious about Lena’s language acquisition. Did she speak much Russian? Is she naturally shy or is she just having trouble learning English?
She’s just at an 18month old level. This is normal for a kid from an orphanage to be very far behind. It’s possible there are other factors involved in it. She did not speak much Russian, but she understood a lot. The truth is, she understands a lot of English and even tries to speak it, she just can’t speak it well enough for us to understand her. Today, I asked her “movie” or “play” and she kept saying “pa pee ta”. That didn’t sound like either choice, so I was really confused. Until I realized that she was trying to tell me “Puppy town”, her favorite movie. 


Maydelin said… Well how is the relationship between them? they love? or they are so jealous of each other?
They’re both. They’re very normal, sibling wise. They have so much fun together and chose to play together most of the time. They often fight over toys, but it’s just normal sibling fighting. They celebrate with each other too, like making a big deal when someone finishes their dinner or whatever. Ilya especially loves having a playmate and will sometimes change his mind and chose to do what Lena is doing, even if it was not what he wanted to do in the first place. 

they go soon to the preschool? you know the character of each?

One of my favorite things that Ilya says is “I don’t know.” I asked him a ton of questions, thinking he’d say it, but then I just had to ask him to say it. Please ignore my loud voice.

Ilya loves to sing. He was singing a song called “Let’s Go” from an awesome video a blog reader sent us. I forgot how it goes, so I made him sing the Puppytown theme instead. And then you’ll hear Lena singing it when I asked Ilya too, but he would not, around 14 seconds. You’ll also notice how he is obviously all silly 4yo boy and if you pay really close attention, you’ll catch my dogs being all weimaraner. Also notice how I don’t respond to Ilya’s singing quick enough and he says “YAY!” himself.

I finally remembered to do the kids’ photos with the giant measuring tape. Actually, Aaron may have been the one to remember. Ilya has grown about one inch since he’s been home and Lena has grown TWO whole inches!

It has been warm here, wonderfully warm. I promised myself when it got warmer, we’d go out every morning before lunch. All 6 of us (me, the two little humans and the three big dogs) would go out for a walk. We went out on Valentine’s Day and it was SO sunny…

We didn’t go out yesterday, because some of Aaron’s family was visiting. But today, we went out again and it was a bit different!

I learned dense fog makes a lot better photos than bright sunshine!

This girl has too much personality.

She was telling me she knows that the train is that way, but she can’t see it.

Ilya has a tendency to get almost peed on during our walks. He always looks so disturbed when Cache lifts his leg while Ilya stands a few feet away. But, hey, I warn him not to stand so close every single time. (And no, he has not actually gotten peed on… yet.)

It’s not MY fault I almost peed on him.

Ilya and Lena play this game, where they look each other in the eye like this, and then one of them takes off running and the other chases…

This sums up their relationship.

Doesn’t he look like an advertisement for LL Bean? Just ignore the Nike logo and the fact that LL Bean doesn’t sell pre-ripped jeans.

I asked Ilya to make the face he makes when he doesn’t like something. It is like this, but minus the cute smile.

This is just proof for Amy that Josie is alive and well… and still muddy.

This cracks me up. He was telling her, “Okay, okay, stand righ der. Okay, okay, smile.”

He was telling her where to stand and to smile, but I don’t think he can take credit for her natural model moves.

It warmed up A LOT today, so we were able to actually leave the house and go to the dog park. YAY! The kids are no longer scared of ANY dogs, so now we are working on our manners around dogs. You know, reaching out your hand when a dog approaches you so he can sniff you, not running up to dogs.

Ilya is losing his Russian. I guess I expected it to happen without much notice, slowly, as he picked up English. But he seems to be forgetting the Russian and babbling sometimes. Just babbling, but he expects us and Lena to understand him. “Ah de da de da da de da.” Clearly not any language. But, can a Russian speaker please tell me what “ipso” (or something that sounds like that) means? He says it all of the time… I might just teach him Latin so he has a new use for that word!

We are working on the pronunciation of “h”. He has a really hard time with it and says “cands” “celp”, etc. He is doing really well with words that he does not understand, but still struggles with very familiar words like “hand” as you will see in this video.

Lena had a little too much to drink and couldn’t walk the other night…

As did Ilya.

Any interest in another Q&A post? Anything you want to know about how things are going?

I would really love some healthy, easy breakfast ideas. Lena will eat dry cheerios and sometimes oatmeal. Ilya we are really striking out with. The ONLY thing he’ll eat is cheerios with kefir and he does not seem to like that much. We have tried lots of different kinds of homemade oatmeal (cinnamon sugar, banana, banana and peanut butter) and lots of different ways of making eggs (scrabbled, omelet, over easy, hardboiled) and no luck. Please help. My stipulations are that it is easy to prep and not processed.