Kaylie

This is my niece, Kaylie. She is like a part-time daughter, as she is usually at our house from Tuesday night through Friday morning every week. She has a chore chart, just like Katya, but unlike Katya she actually gets the importance of money and she is quite the little negotiator. I remember giving her, Allie, and Kaylie their chore charts one Saturday morning a couple of weeks ago (Kaylie happened to still be at our house that day). Kaylie was the first to prioritize what needed to be done and she asked if she could babysit Tony for longer and if that would get her more money :). I think the sad thing about that day was that her mom actually came and got her before she finished all her chores and my rule is that it is "all or nothing" (and although I'm not a complete "meanie" and was willing to let her make up for it later in the week, she didn't end up doing it).
Kaylie is nine years old and is the fourth grade. She is studying her multiplication tables like Katya and this makes it easy because they can practice together. One night I had them play a game where the first person to say the answer got the card and then the person with the most cards in the end won. Katya is actually very competitive and when it was clear that Kaylie was going to win, Katya stopped playing. We will need to work on that...
It is sometimes hard being pseudo parents because we are not really sure if we should punish her or not. Kaylie is usually an awesome kid but from the first day of school she kept telling us that she did not have any homework. At Back-to-School night, we asked the teacher if that was really the case and the teacher said that the students really didn't have any homework unless they didn't finish their work in class - and that she thought that Kaylie actually had quite a bit of missing work. So the next day Kaylie came home with a folder full of unfinished work. This was on a Thursday and we were planning on taking Kaylie with us to Lagoon that Saturday. Alex and I decided that we would let Kaylie decide how much she wanted to go to Lagoon and that if she didn't finish all her homework by Saturday that she couldn't go with us. It was really interesting because we didn't really know how Kaylie would react - whether she would get mad or not. But she actually got all her homework done, despite the fact that she was at Alex's other niece's house (who is around twenty one, I think) - a place that she doesn't get to go very often and gets excited when she is going. Kaylie made sure that I looked through all her homework on Saturday morning before we went to Lagoon so I could see that she got it all done. I told her that she must be very proud of herself for working that hard and I suggested that in the future she finish her work in class so that she doesn't have to do it at home. (She actually came home again last week with some more unfinished work from class so it doesn't seem that she learned her lesson too well!)
Her mom watches Katya and Tony for us on Monday, which is nice for us, but I think I think Kaylie appreciates having some structure to her life which why I am willing to have her here so much. Her mom's schedule is so crazy that I think Kaylie likes to know where she is going to be on a particular day. There have been times that her mom says she is going to come and get her and, when she doesn't show up, I can see Kaylie's disappointment and it makes me so mad knowing that sometimes even when her mom is home she opts to take Kaylie to Alex's mom's house or find somewhere else for her to go so she can go to her boyfriend's house. She is such an amazing little girl and I guess her mom does what she does for a living to make it so they can live where they do, but I think Kaylie would be better off not having as much as she does and instead having her mom home. For now, I am happy to have her be a part of our family and it is an added bonus that Katya and her along pretty well (usually!).

Softball

We signed Katya up for softball. I don't actually like softball. I think it is a boring sport to watch, it is such an inactive sport that you really don't get much exercise playing it, and when I was in elementary school I got hit in the face by a softball and have really hated it ever since. However, Allie plays softball and really wanted to Katya to play so Alex practiced with Katya for about 45 minutes before we shelled out the money to see if she really wanted to play and decided that she had enough interest that it would do.

So we paid the $50 to sign her up and then Alex went out and spent another $100 bucks on the stupid gear that she just had to have! (I get that she needed a mitt and cleats, but did she really need to have the bag, a new pair of shorts, and a bat? We just bought a bat for Allie last year...) We were a little worried about how Katya would do on a team sport. She doesn't really play well when someone is telling her what to do. We signed her up for gymnastics and two lessons in, Alex had to have a talk with her (which of course resulted in a "pouting moment") about how she needs to listen to the teacher and do the apparatus that everybody else is doing - she doesn't just get to wander around and do as she wants.

She has actually been doing pretty well. I have to really complain here about the time commitment, though. The softball games are basically every Tuesdays and Thursdays for the next 5 weeks. The coach must think these girls are planning on going pro, or something, because he has practices every Monday and Wednesday. So essentially, we spend all of our free time participating in a sport that I find to be very uninteresting. I wish she would get into soccer - I at least like to watch that.

We have only had one moment when Katya said she no longer wanted to play. It was after their second practice and (I wasn't at the practice, so I heard this after-the-fact) she got hit by the ball and Alex had scolded her because the coach was having all the girls run from one side of the field to the other and Katya was just moseying along at her leisure. She told me afterwards that she wasn't going to play anymore. I was thinking about the $150 that we had into this little adventure and sternly told her that we had spent a lot of money on this and that she was going to follow it through. It was funny because at this point she was still mad at Alex for the scolding and usually when she is mad at one of us she is unusually nice to the other one. She must have decided that I was just as mean as Alex after that and so she forgot to still be mad at Alex. I haven't heard anything more about quitting...

She had her first game on Tuesday. The coach had her play in the outfield. The problem with softball for girls this age is that they are required to have one of the girls pitch and really none of the girls, on either team, can pitch so there are very few hits that actually come out of an inning (although there are sure a lot of "walks"!). So she was bored, of course, and she was out in the field trying to catch bugs with her mitt, looking around at the sky, and at one point she even sat down (to which the coach reminded her that she needed to be ready - because a hit might happen!).

Katya did make the game interesting when it was her turn to bat. She got one strike for swinging at the ball after it had already gone by. On the second pitch, she was standing at the home plate, waiting for the ball, and swinging her knees like she was doing the chicken dance. The second strike was actually at a ball that was mildly "hittable". At the third pitch, the coach motioned to her to swing and then run (he was actually just meaning that she should run even if she missed the ball, but I believe that translated into swinging no matter what - even if she maybe wasn't going to anyway). They have this stupid rule (at least I think it is a stupid rule) that if the catcher misses the ball on a third strike, they can run anyway. With the way the pitching goes, the catcher is almost guaranteed to miss the ball - since it is almost impossible to catch a ball that is nowhere near the strike zone - and so the girls almost always get to run on a third strike. Well, Katya swung, and then ran - carrying the bat along with her all the way to first base. It was pretty funny! In softball, they have the "base coaches" that tell the girls to run. Imagine if you were playing a game that you really don't understand and just standing there waiting for them to tell you to run - how confusing would that be! Well she was confused and when they told her to run from second to third, but then had to run back to second because the girl running from third to home ended up back on third - well it is a good thing Katya is such a fast runner!

I'll take some pictures at their next game if my mom comes. It is really hard to take pictures when you are worried about your seven month old crawling around getting "conked" on the head by the ball. We had a near hit the last game...watch out Tony!

My crazy life

Katya and Kaylie are off reading, or at least they are supposed to be. I actually don't care what they are doing except that they are no longer next to me giggling and being very loud. I have already enforced the after dinner chore of loading the dishwasher, made them practice their multiplication tables (6's and 3's), and now they are supposed to be doing their reading but I just need a break and as long as they are quiet, they can do whatever they want. Sometimes I look at my life and wonder if there is anything I can do to make it less busy. Tonight I actually got to come home from work and not go anywhere. Do you know how nice that is? Tony is asleep and Alex is downstairs playing video games as his form of relaxation and I am upstairs looking at pictures and blogging. Blogging is my break from the world - the time when I get to wish that I had the energy or organization to actually scrapbook but know that at some point down the road I will be glad that I already did all my dreaded "journaling".


We have a break from softball today, as there was no game scheduled. Whew! I am sure tired of that sport and we just started last week! Katya is off track from school in two weeks. I am hoping that in the month she is off track that we can really buckle down and work on her math.

We found a math tutor for her (I think I might have mentioned this in an earlier post) - a darling thirteen year-old girl named Sasha. I had a math curriculum that I bought to use with Allie - back when I had was naive enough to think that we had enough time with her to try teach her all the things that her "homeschooling" mom isn't teaching her - so I had Sasha start at the multiplication of single digits (while we work on her multiplication tables with her at home) and then we will move on to the multi-digit multiplication. Her teacher keeps skipping around in school, trying to teach her fractions and other stuff and it is driving me crazy because on the one hand I feel like I should take it with us to the tutor to have them help her but then I really think she needs to know the basic stuff before she moves on. It is sometimes so overwhelming to think of all the stuff Katya needs to learn. I hope she doesn't feel overwhelmed.

She is actually doing pretty well. We have somewhat settled into a routine (to which the stupid softball has again interrupted), where I have Tuesdays off work, Alex has Wednesdays and Fridays off, my sister-in-law gets Katya to and from school on Mondays, and my mom comes over and stays at our house on Thursdays. I have worked up a chore chart for all of us (including Alex and I) so that Katya (and Kaylie when she is here) has her after dinner chore, has to read and practice her multiplication tables each night, and Alex and I rotate who is on dinner duty vs. homework duty. This way, in theory, we should at least get a couple of nights "off" during the week where we can do something that is relaxing to us. I was starting to feel like my life consisted of running here, there, and I don't want to be the homework nazi every night...

Lagoon

Saturday was Ebay's Lagoon Day so we decided to take Katya and my niece Kaylie. I took no pictures. I think back now and really regret that but at the time, I had to get myself, two girls, and Tony ready to go and the thought of hauling our camera along just didn't sound appealing. We dropped Tony off at my in-laws for the day. This, believe it or not, would be their first time babysitting our seven month old and I was a little nervous about how he would do but when we got there he was so interested in the dogs that he could really care less whether I stayed or went :).

I took the girls to Lagoon-A-Beach for two hours and Katya, being the little fish that she is, loved the slides and her and Kaylie loved the little play area that they have for kids. Alex met us for dinner after he got off of work and then after that it was off to the rides. Alex and I hadn't been to Lagoon for probably about six years so most of the rides were new to us. The purpose for us really going to Lagoon was that Alex wanted to see how Katya did on roller coasters because he has this dream of taking his girls to Six Flags in California. We turned Allie into a roller coaster lover with our many trips to Disneyland and our forcing her to go on the scary rides even when she didn't want to (we were so sick of the little kiddie rides!).

Katya did really well. We met up with my mom, who was there helping my sister-in-law with her kids, and went on the old rickety roller coaster, the one that has this sign on it that at some point it will no longer be white but turn back to it's original brown wood color (which will make it look even more run-down, I am sure). Katya went on all the roller coasters, including "Wicked", which Kaylie and I decided to sit out. Katya only had a few moments when we would have liked to have just left her there (kidding!), including the moment when Alex got mad at her because she kept bumping into the girl standing in front of us in line. Katya was only mad at him until we got off the ride. Alex pronounced that we should take her to lagoon every day because then her pouting bits would only last for about 10 minutes instead of a couple of hours :)
Anyway, I think Alex has found another roller coaster buddy!

My big sister

Katya is such a good big sister. She comes along and says, "Me, Tony" and carries him off and we sometimes won't see them for quite a while. If Tony cries, she will drop whatever she is doing and run to him and you can hear her saying, "It's Oay, Tony" (until recently she couldn't pronounce her "K" sound). She watched me making him a bottle one day and asked me how to do it and now she will sometimes pronounce that he is hungry and go and make him a bottle (which he sometimes won't eat because he really isn't hungry!). She never tires of giving him kisses and hugs and she knows how to lay next to him and put her hand across the side of his face and put him to sleep. It's amazing that she is such a good big sister with so little experience. She seems to know what things you can and can't do with a baby - without being told. She even likes to change diapers. I'm sure that will change over time but for now, we will enjoy the extra diaper hand and hope that she continues to be the awesome sister that she is. She has a shirt that says, "My brother drives me bananas" and she gets a kick out of it (after we told her what it meant) - although nothing could be farther from the truth!

Tony Two Tooth

This is our little boy name Tony but we like to call him "Tony Two Tooth" and by this name he will be known (until he gets more teeth)! Tony is now seven months two weeks old. He crawls all over and pulls himself up on stuff and walks along it. I know I am biased but I think he is a genius and that he is the cutest baby in the world!


He is such a happy baby. You can get him to smile almost at any moment (except when he is hungry and tired) and if you get him laughing - watch out! You will just have to laugh right along with him because it is so cute! His most favorite thing to touch is all of daddy's TV and video game equipment and his favorite place to be is right underneath your feet - especially when you are trying to get something done. He is such a joy and his smiling face just brightens my day! I love you, little man!

I don't like pickles, Grandpa!

Grandpas are good for giving kids stuff that parents normally wouldn't give them, aren't they? I remember Alex's dad giving Allie her first taste of soda when she was about eight months old and the sour look on her face afterwards. My dad thought it would be fun to see if Tony liked pickles. Well Tony did really give it a shot. He tried it once, tried it again, and even again before he decided that he really didn't like pickles. Sorry Grandpa!

Butler Days - July 24th

On July 24th, we went to the Butler Days in Cottonwood Heights because it is one of the few places that have fireworks on the 24th. We went last year but didn't get there until late and so had to park in the school next to it and this year we decided to go early enough that the kids could go to the carnival. Katya and I had been back for about two weeks. Katya had a couple of pouting bits but in between I think she had fun. For $10, we bought enough tickets that entertained the kids for a couple of hours. There were some blow up toys that the girls (Katya, Allie, and my niece Kaylie) had fun playing in, although Katya was so determined to not have Alex take her picture that she ran down it so fast that she tripped and fell flat on her face - oops! They had face painting which I think the kids asked if they could do but Alex will never let our kids get their face painted - it is one of those things. Our poor deprived children...

My mom came, along with my sister Cathy. Cathy is such an awesome aunt. The kids just love to hang out with her!

Tony had his first taste of watermelon. They were giving out free watermelon and Tony was eyeing mine so much that I gave him a taste. Luckily Alex wasn't around, otherwise Tony probably wouldn't have gotten any. Alex doesn't like him to get dirty :) But since Tony had already started, Alex did let him finish and took some really cute pictures in the process!

Alex bought some red, white and blue glow sticks on clearance at Roberts earlier in the day and they entertained the kids while we waited for the fireworks to start - although the girls fought over who got to have a pink one (even though it was really red - not pink anyway).
Katya climbed all the way to the top of a very tall soccer goal post and sat perched on the top, until one of the workers came and told her to get down.
I don't recall if that is what caused her to have one of her pouting moments or if it was some other silly thing, but after that she wouldn't sit by us and instead sat in front of us taking pictures of the fireworks. Oh well - I think she partially had fun...

Katya's First Day of School

Ok - so this isn't the best picture but is the best one we have! This is Katya on her first day of school. She started school on July 27th. Alex thought it would be best if we just took a picture of her walking to school, since he didn't think that any of the other sixth graders would have parents there "snapping pictures". He was right, of course! But I am sad that I didn't get a picture of her sitting at her desk. My mom has a picture of me on the first day of school sitting at my desk with a cheesy grin on my face all the way up through sixth grade. Maybe we can get one at Back-to-School night...

People ask me all the time if she likes school and I have to say - since she doesn't "pout" when she has to go to - my assumption is that she likes it. She gets excited to show me all the stuff she has done during the day - which is very cute, considering she is in the sixth grade! Being the little "social butterfly" that she is, she already has two friends named Alyssa and Alyson. According to her teacher, she will start to giggle in class and get the entire class giggling along with her.

I actually had a meeting today with the Principle, her teacher, the ESL specialist, and two women from the District to talk about how Katya is doing. They made us put her in the sixth grade, despite our request that she be put in the fifth grade, with the promise that they would evaluate where she is at a couple of weeks into school and possibly move her back to the fifth grade. According to her teachers, she is doing very well and doesn't need to be moved back and since Katya also objects to being moved back, we will work with what we got! My concern is that she is pretty far behind in math (she didn't know her times tables when she started) but her teacher has been awesome and gives her tons of individualized attention (which is amazing considering how many other students she has) and the ESL specialist pulls her out of class almost every day to work with her in reading. We found a thirteen year-old girl that speaks Russian that tutors her in math twice a week and since she has a dog, Katya likes going there (and thankfully must be getting her "dog fill", because she hasn't asked us for one again!).

Her teacher and the ESL teacher both agreed that Katya is their favorite part of the day - which is so sweet! It makes me not feel so guilty for just dumping her at school every day so that she can be taught :) Thanks Ms. Ramker and Mrs. Ebert!

Queen Pouter (a.k.a Katya)

(OK - I gave up on trying to go back and catch up. I was not feeling very inspired.)



I was looking through pictures to find something to write about and I saw some pictures of Katya playing in the lake. I was smiling at how much fun she was having and then I came across this one - a picture of her pouting - and I just had to laugh! I wasn't there the day that Alex took this picture but I remember him coming back to the house with an unhappy Katya and asking him what was wrong and him saying that Katya was pouting because he was taking pictures of her ;)


Perhaps it is because she is a teenager or maybe it is something she learned in the orphanage (since I have heard stories of the other kids from Ukraine doing the same thing) but she can be happy one minute and upset the next - over the silliest little things! One day, she pouted for over an hour because, after letting her tickle him for over 15 minutes, Alex told her to please stop tickling. Tonight she was pouting because in the car on the way home she wanted Alex to look at something and he told her he couldn't because he was driving. It is common for her to pout over what is for dinner, doing her homework, because no one wants to play monopoly with her, because she doesn't get to watch Hannah Montana and the list goes on and on and on...I just hope this pouting thing doesn't continue to go on and on and on because I can hardly stand it!

We made it home!

(I am trying to catch up my posts to the present so sorry for all you that already know about this)


We missed our last flight in Chicago. Our flight from Newark was delayed two hours and since our layover was only an hour and a half, we missed the flight from Chicago to Salt Lake. I have to admit that I cried. They told us as we were getting off our Newark flight what gate to go to, however they told us the wrong gate so we really had no hope of making it. I wanted to be home so badly. We had been traveling for about 24 hours already with pretty much no sleep and to be only three hours away from home - how could I not cry!


Then, I got to stand in a United Airlines customer service line for an hour and a half so that we could reschedule our flight. I was in line with several people whose flight had been cancelled altogether and apparently the place that they were going to was really only a two hour drive and yet they were looking at being stuck in Chicago for two days if they wanted to get there by flight. Needless to say, they were not "happy campers" and by the time I got up to the customer service lady, she was in a sour mood (perhaps she was already in a sour mood anyway). My mom suggested that she would be a perfect Ukrainian customer service employee, as customer service in Ukraine is lacking in many things - such as courtesy, respect, and friendliness. The lady was so rude to me that at one point I said to her (between tears), "Why are you being so rude to me? I have not been rude to you at all!" She looked right back at me with this blank stare and said, "But I compensated you." I asked her what that meant and she showed me the first class tickets that she pretended were her idea, despite the fact that I was standing there when she discovered that the only flight that had been rescheduled was Katya's and that Tony, I and my mom's tickets were not on the same flight as Katya (and I think the only seats that were left were first class). I rudely said, "Thank you" and got away from her.


We spent the night in the Chicago airport. The weather that caused our Newark flight to be delayed was not a good enough reason for United Airlines to give us a hotel room and because we didn't want to spend $200 dollars (and who knows how much on a taxi to get to the hotel!) to possibly get five hours sleep in a hotel room, we decided to stay in the Chicago airport. People sleep in airports all the time - how bad could it be? It was 10 pm and our flight was leaving the next morning at 6 am so that was only 8 hours - no big deal. We could get something to eat and find a somewhat comfortable place to sleep.


Our first mistake was trying to find something to eat. Everything was closed in the terminal that we were at, including the McDonald's. We asked some of the workers and they swore that if we left the secured area and went to Terminal B, there was a 24 hour McDonald's. So we left the secure area in search of a non-existent McDonald's and when we tried to get back into the secure area, the gates were all closed for the night. So we spent the night in the unsecure area - albeit next to the lone security guard that was posted to make sure no one tried to get in - sleeping on a hard wooden bench in a freezing cold area of the airport.

Sorry - but I am actually bored writing this so I will finish with this: we finally made it home and I was sooooooooo happy!!!!! Very tired - since we had traveled for about 40 hours straight but soooooo happy!!!

I do want to say one more thing about our flight home. While in the Ukraine, my mom had commented that not once did any guy offer to help us carry the stroller. We hauled that stroller up and down so many stairs and over so many potholes that I feel weary just thinking about it. Had we been home, there is no doubt that some nice guy would have offered to help. The funny thing about this is that we were on the flight from Ukraine to Frankfurt and I was hauling Tony in the baby carrier, had a diaper bag on my back, my laptop bag on my shoulder and was trying to wrestle with the stroller when out of the heavens (Ok - so not really but it sure did feel like it!) I hear, "Let me help you with that" and a young guy grabs the stroller and carries it for me. It took me a little bit to realize that he had actually spoken English and when I asked him where he was from, what to do think he said? The Ukraine? Ha! Ha! Not even - he was from Texas! Figures! He was there adopting, too!