Been a while

We celebrated the holidays with family and friends and have had a good 2012 so far. Wanted to post a few pictures.

At the CT Capitol for an adoption ceremony


Baby mia


2011 Holiday picture

November update.....

-Had heart ablation 3 weeks ago. Doing well and off of blood thinner. I get extra heart beats here and there but not that bad.
-Got the report from Illich . Birth family would like to keep in touch with us. We received a lot of pictures of birth mom,grandma,,inside of their apartment and outside also and pictures of the neighborhood and also the hospital Polina was born at.
-Polina is doing well. She talks a lot and in sentences. The potty training is not going too well. she wears underwear during the day at daycare and goes pee on the potty but not poop.Basically we have to buy a lot of underwear because they snip them with scissors when she goes. so every week we buy more and more underwear.
-Mia has 2 teeth on the bottom and we think she may be getting more on the top. She eats food jars and cereal. she just turned 6 months.
-Polina is leaving daycare to stay home with me. so Wish me luck on that one. I am excited and scared at the same time especially when they are so far apart in age.
-We had a wonderful thanksgiving. We went over Randy"s cousins house in New york. I feel like I gained 20 pounds. the next day my sisters house and we ate again. I like Holidays but its so hard to say no to food.
-We celebrated Polinas 1 year with us on November 16th. My family came over and we had good food and cake. Polina thought it was a birthday party for her so we just placed some candles on the cake so she can blow it out and of course my family bought gifts so she was really excited. she loved her ariel dress and cindarella dress. She just loves playing dress up.
-Mia still doesn't sleep through the whole night. she goes to bed at 7 but wakes up at least once or twice a night. sometimes I try to feed her before I go to bed at 10 or 11 and she still wakes up at 3 0r 4 so now I just give up. i just let her sleep and whatever times she wakes up thats when I 'll feed her

October update

Things have been good, but busy here at the household. Polina has been talking non stop and is forming sentences, which is really fun to listen to and conversate with her! We took her to the summer Luthern Social Services adoption family picnic where she got to play with other adopted kids, and she had a blast. She is still in daycare so that Maggie can focus on the baby and not put too much strain on her heart. Hopefully, Maggie's heart procedure will go smoothly the end of this month and Polina can stay home by the end of the year.

Baby Mia is doing good as well. She has bad reflux and is now on prevecid, which seems to be helping. She doesnt take any naps at all, and wants to be carried all day, so is a handful for Maggie!

Included some updated pics of Polina and Mia...

September Update!!!!!!!

Polina is doing awesome as a big sister. She loves to give kisses to baby Mia and knows how to make her smile and laugh. She knows all her colors and is starting to count. She has been doing a really great job going on the potty and loves to get piece of candy and ice pops as a reward. We finished the letter to the birth mom. We had my sisters friend who is Russian translate the letter that we wrote into Russian and all the questions that we have for the birth mom. Illich is leaving very soon so we are looking forward to all the new information that we hopefully we'll receive. Polina 's speech has been progressing quite well. She starting to talk to us in sentences. She'll say"Where did daddy go" or where is my lipstick" it's actually a lip balm and my sister started it all. When we went over my sisters house my sister decided to put some lip gloss on Polina's lips. So now if we go to the mall and we pass by Max Factor and she sees a picture of a model in the window she points out the lipstick. She applies the lip balm over and over and than smacks her lips together. She is such a girl...she loves shoes and dresses and loves to put on every ones shoes that comes over. The more sparkle the better. Mia is doing well also. She is 4 months old already and is a very big girl. She is at 95 % for height and weight. We had some trouble with acid reflux but now she's on Prevacid and its helping her tremendously. I am gonna try to be much better with updating the blog but with the two kids it's kind of hard. It's 10 pm here and everyone is sleeping except me. I should be sleeping also but I get too excited to have some free time for myself and I never wanna go to bed and by the time I fall asleep Mia wakes up to eat so I only get 4 or 5 hours of sleep. Than the next day begins and its the same cycle. I'm tired and should be sleeping but I cant because I'm to excited to finally have time to myself and I don't want the night to end and than by the time I go to bed its already after 11 than Mia will wake up around 2 so than I am up again trying to fall asleep than she'll be up again at 5 or so and than I am up again. This is not fun at all. I am going to drink some tea now and hopefully I'll be ready to go to bed.wish me luck!!!!!

update on the storm

the storm was very windy and rainy and although half of CT is without power, we were spared. It was just boring for Polina since she usually plays outside, so we all were getting antsy!

Hurricane

So it's 5:48 in CT right now and we are just waiting on this storm. We stocked up on bread,water and batteries. Yesterday when I went to the store almost all the water was gone. I hope its not going to be as bad as they say. We tied the grill to our deck and placed all the chairs and table into the shed.We also placed a tarp under our front door. last time when it rained hard we got some water so hopefully this will help a little. I will let you all know tomorrow what is going on.hopefully it wont be anything big. Wish us luck!!!!!!!!

August update

Well, its been a while as we have been busy with the family and MAggie's unexpected surgery. Turns out its pretty common to have gallstones after pregnancy, and sure enough Maggie has severe pains and needed to have her gallbladder out. Luckily, her mom (grandma) was able to live with us for three weeks until Maggie could fully recover and pickup the baby again.

Polina has been doing very well and continues to grow and thrive. She is putting together more and more words and likes to babble on, pretending like she is talking. We need to start potty training her as she still doesnt really like the potty at all, and we dont want to force it.

We have been in touch with Illich, and in the coming weeks, will be looking forward to having him travel from Moscow to Vladivostok to find Polina's birth mom. We want to try and make contact and get additional information and maybe even start a dialogue. We know there are mixed feelings from adoptive families, but we at least want to have as much info as possible and then if Polina chooses to learn about the info, at least we have something.

Baby Mia is doing well. She is growing like crazy and is slowly sleeping better at night. She is quite the Princess, and Polina loves being an older sister. Some additional pictures are posted below....