A pair of Christmas concerts

Mouse and Alleluia Boy both had Christmas concerts . . . we're working on finding video of Alex's concert:

Alleluia Boy celebrates four years! "Oh my GOSH! That's CRAZY!"

Well, Alleluia Boy had a fun-filled weekend of birthday celebrations. One of the highlights was going through old pictures and videos with him on the computer -- a source of constant fascination for all the kids. Today he said, very seriously, "You know, my NEXT birthday is coming right up, so we better get ready!" Playing along, I answered, "Yep...it's only ONE YEAR AWAY!" To which he put a hand to his forehead (in classic AB style) and exclaimed, "Oh my GOSH!"

As he was falling asleep, he was asking whether he would have another birthday in two years (yes), four years (yes), ten years (yes). I told him he'd be fourteen years old in ten years -- as big as his oldest brother. "Wow, that's a LOT," he said, and then promptly conked out for the night.

The Big Talent Show

One of the highlights of our family gathering over the weekend was the talent show the girls pulled together (instigated by Helen, I think). It went on for about an hour...poetry, singing, gymnastics, bubble-blowing, a comic skit...here are some highlights:

Fun with Alleluia Boy at Home

Alleluia Boy is in preschool two to three mornings a week, and at other programs the other two days...but on those long winter days when he's home all day, here is a little snippet of how we roll:




For all of the drudgery of staying home with kids all day, it's times like these that I think I will savor when they've all gone. Love you, little guy!

Banana Baby, two years on

On March 11, 2011, we uploaded this video of Alleluia Boy falling asleep while eating a banana:



Now, some two years later, that video has been viewed more than 113,000 times. It's a minute long, so that means we've been accessories to all those viewers wasting a grand total of 1,883 hours.

Also, a Danish television station is in negotiations with Banana Baby's agency to purchase the right to use the video in a new TV show called Klipfiskerne...literally, "Clip fishermen."

And Banana Baby is also now listed as one of Ellen Degeneres's favorite videos (of many) on the website of the Ellen Degeneres Show.

Now we just need an endorsement from Pope Francis....

Getting ready to read!

Alleluia Boy is EXPLODING in the reading department -- if he sees a word, he asks, "What does that say?" He gets that letters make sounds that go together to make words. He can identify his own name, and name quite a few letters on sight (m, n, s, t, p in particular) and knows what sounds those letters make. Here is a video of him working with magnetic letters at ECFE recently:




Thanks to the folks who bought the LeapPad phonics toys for the younger boys...Matthew in particular uses his "letters" game daily!

Mudpup: Abstract artist

Mudpuupy does love his painting at ECFE.  We get a masterpiece every time.  I'm planning to submit one to the Walker (just kidding...mostly....).

The late January update

While the weather encourages hibernation (at least to us Southern transplants), we never stop.  A few things going on of note:

Bear got third place in individual and group kata at his first karate tournament!

Really, he's happier than he looks.

He also did an internship (more like job shadowing) for two days as a required project at his school for 7th and 8th graders. So his internship--at his instigation--was to shadow theology professors. My colleagues were very kind (he couldn't do it with me per se) and he really enjoyed it. He liked the college classes and mentioned he thought he could do the work. ;) He also interviewed a priest at our seminary on campus and the Dean of Campus Ministry. Last I heard, he wants to major in Theology, and double minor in Math and Communications. That's...creative....I guess we'll see.


 Mouse is a cupcake baker!

She got some cupcake tins and a decorating kit for Christmas and we have had quite a bit of cake since. Good cake too! This mixes in with a cupcake recipe book and a series of girls books on a group of friends who make cupcakes for fun and money. Her first cupcakes were pineapple upside down cupcakes. Yum.

Jubilee Girl got a haircut! Pictures coming soon!

The Music Man has all kinds of things going on...more at the Adopting Alex blog!

Sporting Rachelle's knit hat!

Mudpuppy is three and bored. Well, not all the time, but he is a bundle of energy and taking it out on our living room. Yikes. Beyond that, he showed us he is learning to read. He began picking out words and reading them, and pointing to letters and doing the appropriate sound. He isn't full blown reading, but clearly he realizes that those words mean something, and he is determined to figure out what.

Matthew sporting his knit hat from Rachelle!

Finally, we had a great visit from Joanna and her family. Joanna is a person we had only met online but extensively that way!)--a young woman who made it her mission to get the Music Man a family. She and her family live in Canada and were in MN visiting relatives--and swung a little south to meet us. We had such a pleasant visit! And we were thrilled that Joanna got to meet Music Man, and he got to meet her.

Joanna and Alex.

We'll try to get more cute stuff up soon. Its all crazy around here, but there is an abundance of cute too....

Starling

Puzzle fun

Now that Matthew is home alone with me for a couple of hours every morning, we're finally getting some time to do things together again. His favorite activities include building really tall towers out of cardboard blocks and knocking them down (a toddler classic, right?), playing with water and pots and pans in the sink, and putting together puzzles. He can put together a giant fire truck floor puzzle pretty much by himself, with only minimal assistance. Here he is putting the final touches on:

Making pizza, walking (some more), and piles of paperwork

We had low-key fun this weekend...like, what do you do to entertain the kids while you're trying to make dinner? How about giving them their own little ball of dough to make into their own pizza? Alleluia Boy and Jubilee Girl loved it:



And The Music Man continues to enjoy his walker...seen here in the drizzle, without AFOs because he popped a screw on one of them from working it so hard. The day after this video was made, he actually popped one of the side wires. You can see why--he works it hard!


What else...if things seem a little quiet on the blogging front, that would be due to the fact that I am home with two very needy little boys right now. The Music Man wants to be constantly engaged, which isn't surprising and is probably a good thing, given his traumatic past and lack of human interaction for the first six years of his life. His language is REALLY exploding; sentences are a more and more frequent phenomenon. We think his English is probably better now than his Russian ever was, if our observations in Ukraine are any indication. Certainly he is talking way more than he ever did there.

And Alleluia Boy is needy because he is three, and because The Music Man soaks up so much attention from me and any other adult around. He shows very clear signs of sadness, anger, and jealousy, which are both natural and also deeply saddening to us as his parents. It also keeps me very busy; I often have both of them hanging from me, or requesting the same thing from me. We have a good friend who has been donating three hours a day to help watch them -- and I don't want to imagine where I would be now if it weren't for her help -- but we won't have "official" personal care attendant services for The Music Man for at least another week or two. Also, TMM will be starting preschool for 2 1/2 hours per week starting the week of Oct. 22, which should help. Until then, dealing with the boys takes up literally all of my time during the day. I can get grocery shopping done (in a harried sort of way), but that is about it.

The other factor is the continuing avalanche of paperwork and phone calls and planning related to getting The Music Man set up with what he needs. It is literally like a part-time job. I have a two-inch binder that is literally bursting with paperwork and forms. Every organization we deal with wants signed releases for every other organization we deal with. The paperwork for enrolling him in school is compounded by his complicated IEP, for which we wrote a six-page plan (and his speech therapist wants us to record a 50-utterance speech sample). There is more paperwork (all of those intake surveys), phone calls, and scheduling involved in his complicated medical care. There has been a ton of paperwork involved in getting him signed up with Medical Assistance (for a sizable monthly fee), without which we'd quickly go broke (his AFOs -- those little plastic foot braces that broke after two months -- cost $3,500 all by themselves)...but that has involved tons of paperwork (including yet another copy of our cursed 2011 income tax return), as well as ongoing reporting. Setting up PCA service has meant researching the various agencies and options, finding and talking to potential PCAs to hire, coordinating the paperwork necessary to hire them, filing more paperwork with the county and the state, meeting with the "qualified professional" who will supervise the service on behalf of the agency as well as the public health nurse and social worker from the county, setting up a schedule, creating a care plan, and reading up on all of the regulations around PCA services. We have to get his passport back to the Ukrainian consulate, and deal with some insurance and medical billing issues. And we have more than half a dozen medical appointments for him (three at Gillette Children's, one at the International Adoption Clinic, one at Gundersen-Lutheran Orthotics, his first-ever dentist appointment, several intake screenings with his therapist) scheduled over the next four weeks -- and that doesn't include his weekly physical therapy appointments.

Did I mention that I have been frantically building an accessible raised walkway from our garage to our house before winter sets in?

Am I whining? I guess I might be, but I'm also just putting this out there as a heads-up for why we've been less available than usual lately.

On the bright side, much of this huge rush of work is a one-time deal -- and ocne we are set up with school, PCA services, and a comprehensive medical care plan, things should settle down to a more reasonable level.

Also, we can be extremely grateful that we have access to such comprehensive services, provided cheerfully by so many competent, helpful people. I'll leave you with a shot of some of them -- the folks who attended The Music Man's IEP meeting:

From left to right around the table: TMM's teacher/case manager; the district's
coordinator of services for disabled students; the speech therapist; the occupational
therapist; our amazing volunteer PCA; the school psychologist; the
physical therapist; the county public health nurse; the county social worker;
another of his soon-to-be PCAs; Starling (mom). And there were people missing!

Happy birthday, Alleluia Boy!

Guess how old Alleluia Boy is? If you ask him, "How old are you?" he will probably respond, "Good!"

Among his latest accomplishments are learning to count to twenty, learning basic (very basic) addition, an ever-expanding vocabulary ("What is that called? ... Oh!"), and using the potty (most of the time, anyway).

Easter

We did the whole Easter Triduum as a family, from Holy Thursday's
foot-washing (above) to the two-and-a-half-hour Easter Vigil. We
had multiple people come up after the vigil to compliment the kids'
endurance! They were definitely on their best behavior, and enjoying
everything from the bonfire to the baptismal rites and the unique music.

Easter morning. Peeps and beans! And a few Christian music CDs.

Alleluia Boy was VERY happy to finally be singing "Alleluia" again...he perked
right up when we sang it during the Easter vigil. Several times a week when we
sang a song for family prayer, he would interrupt with loud cries of, "NO!
ALLELUIA! ALLELUIA!!!!" The kid's destined to be a bishop. Or a liturgist.

If ever this boy is ordained, this picture will come out. This is his cousin's...he tried it on himself,
without prompting. Also, he likes doing the orans gesture like he sees Fr. Jim do.

Of course we're squinting into the sun! Oh well. This was taken during our quick
run up to the Twin Cities on Easter Day, where we enjoyed a very relaxed Easter
dinner at my brother's house.

Hello again!

Whew, it's been a long time since I updated our family journal! As I mentioned in an earlier post, I have been busy to overflowing with volunteer responsibilities, plus adoption stuff (including learning Russian). I will probably remember this past six months as the straw that broke the camel's back when it comes to volunteering -- I am scaling back as much as I can, and saying no to everybody!

What's been happening in the past few months? Mostly, Alleluia Boy has just been exploding socially and verbally. He interacts with us much more than he did before -- we have little vignettes of conversations. He is stretching in every way possible...sometimes overreaching, but that's what it takes to grow up! (He likes opening the refrigerator and investigating what's inside. He'll peer in and comment on thing: "Oh!" he says. The other day, he tried taking out a full gallon of milk -- it tooj him down!) For as much trouble as he causes (we finally had to put away the radio, before he destroyed it), he sure is cute...always with a smile or a joke. His latest catch-phrase is, "Oh...nice!" Sometimes he draws out the "nice" for emphasis, which just cracks me up. The other phrase that cracks everyone up (particularly the kids) is "ketchup," which he pronounces exactly like "shut up."

Beyond that, I suppose the other notable thing is our complete lack of a winter. (Although as I write this a winter storm is SUPPOSEDLY bearing down on us.) We have had no appreciable snow accumulation, and very mild weather. This means that we've only been sledding once, and only ice skating a few times -- the outdoor rink at the lake didn't even open until mid-January, which is unheard of around here.

I'm calling it a day for now, but I hope to catch up on posting over the next few days.

Here's a sample of what I have been working on for the kids' school. I edited this video (and took the interview footage):

Advent and Christmas 2011

"For just as lightning flashes and lights up the sky from one side to the other, so will the Son of Man be...." --Luke 17:24

A really good Advent sets up a really good Christmas, and we had a really good Advent this year. As we usually do, we set up the Christmas tree with a few strings of blue and purple lights (Advent colors), but nothing else. Actually, Jaybird had fun coloring and cutting out and hanging up Jesse Tree decorations, so for most of Advent our nearly-bare tree was decorated with those. In a nutshell, Jesse Tree symbols summarize salvation history leading up to the birth of Christ -- each symbol represents a different biblical story or episode.

We also lit the Advent wreath most nights; we sang a new verse of "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" every week, until we were able to sing the first four verses reasonably well. Even little Alleluia Boy was singing along in his own way by the end! Of course, we have read the Scripture readings for the day from the lectionary for years, so that was good too -- hearing all those very hopeful, poetically beautiful readings from Isaiah over several weeks leading up to Christmas.

We went to confession as a family, Advent being a penitential season and all.

And on the day before Christmas Eve, the kids and I ran around town donating things. We saw this story in the Winona Daily News about the 600 families who received a free holiday basket from Winona Volunteer Services. Actually, a friend had driven past on the pickup day and then Facebooked about the line that stretched six blocks. Here's a picture from the Daily News:

That was the prompting we needed to head to the grocery store -- each child got to pick an item to donate. Mouse wanted to donate a 15-pound ham! I nixed that only because I wasn't sure whether they would accept perishable food, so she chose two jars of pickles instead. (Turns out the ham would've been okay -- oh well, next time!) Jaybird donated a bag of potatoes. And Bear donated a can of pineapple. We ran all that over to the food shelf, where it was weighed; we also dropped off a check. Then the kids got a five-minute tour of the food shelf. (Or as Mouse corrected: "Actually, we just stood around while you talked to the lady.") We found out that, indeed, nearly 1,000 families in our area rely on the food shelf once a month or more. That's nearly one in five families in this town. And that, frankly, is amazing.

We also donated a whole bunch of stuffed animals to another charity. Then it was off to Pizza Hut for a bit of a reward!

It was a buffet -- and this being Winona, that meant it was absolutely packed. But the kids enjoyed it anyway. The other thing we'd done in the week leading up to Christmas was to go through all their toys (again!) to organize them and to get rid of some of them. It was a lot of work (again), so the pizza out was well-deserved. By me especially. : )

That night we went down to La Crosse to see the Rotary Lights display in their park along the Mississippi River. This year, Alleluia Boy was properly impressed -- he kept looking around, wide-eyed, pointing out the "light, light!" We think he enjoyed it. And it was unseasonably warm and ice-free this year!

Bear's friend came along for the ride -- far left.

Christmas Eve morning, we decorated the tree with "real" lights and "real" Christmas decorations. It's a wonderful tradition...it really feels like a turning point, like we've come out of this period of darkness and penance into this time of light and joy.

The kids watched "A Charlie Brown Christmas" on DVD in the afternoon -- their one and only Christmas special. I have a special place in my heart for that special, because of Linus's speech on the true meaning of Christmas -- the birth of the Christ child. It was fun to hear the kids all laughing like crazy at Snoopy's antics. Some things are just classic!

Also Christmas Eve afternoon, our next door neighbor came over for a small gift exchange and cookies and milk. I shouldn't say "small," since she is always VERY generous with gift certificates to the local book store and Godfather's Pizza.

Another Christmas tradition for our family is Christmas Eve dinner at the local Catholic Worker house. Dinner was great -- ham, turkey, stuffing, and lots of great sides, including a wonderful squash soup. People were a little subdued, for understandable reasons, but there was still a lot of camaraderie and laughter. Bear and I ate with a new guy who regaled us with wonderful and amazing stories of his 19 years working as a carpenter in the Alaska wilderness.

We eat there every week, of course, so many of the regulars have become good friends. I persuaded them to pose for a picture after dinner:

Then it was homeward to get dressed for "Midnight" Mass -- at 8 p.m. (which is good, 'cause we couldn't do any later!). The girls dressed in their Christmas dresses:

Mass was wonderful -- the high point of Christmas, as usual. Although...

...Christmas morning was pretty nice, too.

This little guy had no idea that it was Christmas, but squealed with delight on
seeing the "horsey" anyway.

There is a story about the little prayer book Mouse is holding. I actually "hid" this gift and a few other small religious items too well -- and ended up spending about an hour and a half searching for them on Christmas Eve night, meaning that I didn't actually get to bed until early Christmas Eve morning!

The kids enjoyed all of their many gifts, as you can see in the video below.

We took time out for a walk in the nearby Trempealeau Wildlife Refuge just to get out of the house and to enjoy the beautiful weather. Everyone was in good spirits.

Here is the video of Christmas morning:

One of the highlights of the season for me was listening to Brother Mann, president of Saint Mary's University, deliver some brief remarks before the SMU Christmas dinner. He offered one of the best reflections on the Christmas season that I have heard in a while. The Scripture quotation at the beginning of this post was part of his remarks. I was really struck at the imagery in this quote, especially in the way he connected it to the incarnation.

The Gospel of John gives us that wonderful image of the Christ child as a light in the darkness, but I also like this image of Christ as a bolt of lightning spanning the sky. It really captures just how radical the Incarnation of God is...because if you really are so crazy as to believe in a God whose love for humanity is so great that he becomes one of us in order to draw us to him, then the Incarnation changes everything, absolutely everything. Like a flash of lightning in the night, it lights up our world and our lives, so that we see them as they truly are...and that is a good thing.

The continuing adventures of Alleluia Boy

First snow of the season...interesting, but cold!

It helps to have big sisters to pull the sled!

Being a big helper, like his older brother.

While the other kids sled, Alleluia Boy likes just hanging out in the swings.
Not quite the same experience as in summer, is it?

An excellent winter diversion: playing with water in the sink!
Runs up the water bill, but as long as you clear the room and
remove his shirt, it's worth it for half an hour of relatively
peaceful co-existence with the rest of the universe.

Where's baby Jesus? We'll have to wait and see!

This is the smile that may have saved us from making TWO
long trips to get our fingerprints!

And this is toward the END of the trip...what a trooper!

After a hard day, you have to just crash. With your bottom
sticking up, of course. Why is this so comfortable???

Counting boy!

Alleluia Boy is now counting with us. If he hears someone counting (or if we get him started), he completes the sequence...up through six or seven, at this point.

First sentence!

For the past couple weeks, Starling and I have been eating dinner fifteen minutes before the older children so that we can get some time to connect (and eat) without constant interruptions. We figure we put in all the time making the food -- we're tired, we're hungry, we deserve to eat it in relative peace before taking on our nightly waiter/waitress shift. It works out pretty well, because then when the kids sit down, we're able to focus on their needs in a more cheerful frame of mind. I highly recommend it.


Mudpuppy, however, does eat with us -- just to keep him out of trouble. And it was while he was eating with us this past Wednesday that he said his first (real) sentence:

"Dada eat pizza!"

Made it up all on his own. Starling and I stopped in mid-pizza bite, looked at each other, and then started praising him. He just went back to eating his pizza, apparently unfazed. Maybe he's been thinking sentences for a while. Anyway, it is an honor for him to make my homemade pizza the object of his first sentence, since it is so very delicious!

We even took a picture to mark the occasion (see above).

He has also been singing variations of the "Alleluia" pretty nonstop recently -- often at the top of his lungs in various public places, and when he's sitting in his chair. I think he gets enough attention for it that he's kind of addicted to it now. He is actually pretty on key, for a two-year-old. So I am officially changing his nickname on this blog from Mudpuppy to Alleluia Boy.