blog to book

A friend of mine shared with me the site sharedbook.com which you can turn your blog into a book. You had a variety of choices from hard or soft cover, what cover design you like,and what posts you want to print. I was pleasantly surprised how nice it turned out. The paper and picture quality are really nice.It is definitely worth checking out if you have interest in doing a book to remember your experiences. It was really simple to do and much easier the scrap booking.(at least for me with seven kids)

Autism Awareness

April is autism awareness month.When I had my first child almost 21 years ago I knew very little about autism.It was not until our son was almost 3 and diagnosed with autism that our lives changed forever.As a very young mother I did not expect this to be part of our world however, we became engrossed in learning all we could to help our son reach his full potential. Those who have autistic kids know the amount of patience, commitment, financial sacrifices, advocating,and stress it takes to help their children navigate through this world when the world does not understand theirs.

Strides are being made to help these kids and adults but, the reality is Autism does not go away when you get older. Autistic children grow up to be Autistic adults.Figures now show 1 out of 150 children have some form of autism.As a mother of an autistic son I would NEVER trade this experience of learning and personal growth. I can honestly say our son has taught us much more than we can ever teach him.That being said there is a great need for more awareness, education, research,support and most of all acceptance of those with differences. If you love someone autistic or challenged in some way you will know they are more like us then different.

class 101 in smiling

Our Virtual twins and language development

I have been doing some interesting research on Virtual twins. Virtual twins is defined by psychologists as 2 children who have no genetic connection, who are less then 9 months apart, and grow up in the same family from a young age.By that definition are little Russians are virtual twins.Psychologists have done a number of studies to see how environment vs genetics plays out.From what I have noticed is that virtual twins is much like rearing fraternal twins. I have noticed some interesting twin like behaviors in our munchkins. What I find interesting is they have only known each other for a little over 4 months and yet they appear to have a very deep connection to one another and have some very classic twin behaviors.It will certainly be interesting to see their relationship in a few years.Would love to hear from any ones experiences with virtual twins.
On the subject of language development, it has been fascinating to see both Brock and Milana switch their primary language so quickly.Four months ago they only spoke Russian words to one another but understood a lot that was spoken to them in Russian and now they will only use English and Swiss words . They are now putting 3 to 4 words together.It is often a combination of both English and Swiss words but, it is so interesting that they do not use Russian words to speak even though still understand it. We have a couple people we know who speak to them often only in Russian and they clearly still understand it by their actions.Just interesting to see how many changes can take place in such a short amount of time.
They are certainly keeping us busy but we would not have it any other way !

The things we share

One of the things I feel very strongly about is to document our lives through pictures,journals,letters,life books,blogs or any other way we can.I so appreciate those who wrote about my life before I came to the US. What I cherish now is that my adopted children and I share more then one may think. We do not share genetics but, we share some history. One of those things I have been trying to do is document as much as possible about the lives of adopted children in their life books.They each have a their own story before they entered our lives and hope that some day their families will appreciate it too.The top picture is of myself and brother 40 years ago in Warsaw Poland. The bottom pic is the day before we left Russia to come home with our children.

Temple Day

This past weekend we had the great blessing of having our little adopted children Milana and Brock sealed to our family for time and all eternity. We had the sealing at the Los Angeles Mormon Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.It was a wonderful day to be surrounded by family and friends who have supported us through our adoption journey. We are so grateful for the blessings of the temple and know we can be together forever.It was a beautiful day despite the cold 40 something degree weather that we had here in Southern California last weekend. I know we are so spoiled in that regard. We are so happy our little ones are now forever ours !

Then and Now 3 months ours !

Our little ones have been ours for just over three months now. It is so AMAZING to see the changes in them. I started organizing the pictures of our trips to Russia and getting their stories in an adoption/photo album book.That is a BIG job!!With this comes the reality of how our little ones have changed in such a short amount of time.It has been so sweet to look at pics with our little ones and have them look at pics of their little orphanage friends and kiss them through the computer.Every time we have looked at pics of Russia Little Brock says " Bye Bye Russia" then climbs on me and says " Brock Mama " and snuggles in.Little Milana especially had a special friend that was adopted at the same time.Every time she looks at a pic of her friend ( who know lives in the U.S. too) she screams for joy !! Sometimes I just tear up to think of all that they have had to go through in their short life.In less then a month we already start our first post placement report. Now that they are home time is just flying by so fast.We love our busy little blessings so much !