closet cleaning

they are helpful when it comes to cleaning out the closet too....

Helpful boys pt 2

Do you remember when I said , "If only they could vacuum"?

Our boy's words

People asked me prior to our adoption some of what I would call "interesting" questions.

Like, "Will they speak English?" (the people actually meant at the time when we would meet for the first time!)

And ...the answer was..no, they have been in a Chinese orphanage where everyone speaks Mandarin and also...the boys, at the time the conversation took place, were just barely a year old so not likely to be speaking any language.

We have now been a family for four months.
We have been amazed at how fast their comprehension of what we say has taken place. Now they are working on starting to learn to speak.

We definitely have Mama and Dada and good,good, good (yes its said 3 times....because mommy always says....mmmm that's good good good!)

We have moved up from just MMMMMMM to MI, for milk

We hear FI for five (as in high five or give me five)


Buh-bye- for the obvious


and as of yesterday we have NA NA for bananna

We just noticed that they say CA...for Car (Mommy's car....when we open the garage door to throw out those diapey's they see my SUV)

and BA for ball!

We are getting amazed day by day as they start to add more "words" to their vocabulary!

***Kids who have the primary language they hear change to another language usually have an adjustment period before they start speaking so we are actually surprised to hear so many "words" so early!

We have applied for the Early Intervention program in our state so that we can have a speech therapist give us additional help.


We have also been working on teaching them some signs to aide in communication in the
meantime.


Their favorite sign is "more"- and they use this one a lot!

Snack Time!

Zachary enjoying his goldfish! Look at that smile! And he's so sweet, he's offering me one!

Yeah....goldfish! When we say, "Yeah!" We usually get clapping to go along with it. You can see I caught Zachary mid-clap.
We have been practicing some signs with them...Hunter, here, is signing for more.

Our boys love snacktime.

rub a dub dub

a boy in a tub, errr....a dog dish!

Hunter had me cracking up one day as he amused himself w/ Chloe's Dish

Our boys first kiddie pool adventure

taken 6/27.... we started w/ the pool under the deck to make it less bright for the boys.

now, we've moved the pool to the top, as they have decided they like to go out on the deck bright sun or not!

update on sleeping...

people have been asking if its gotten any better...

yes...and no.

Yes- now when they wake they aren't staying up for three hours

No- we seem to be doing more frequent wake ups

We had transitioned them to an earlier bedtime than what China had them on. We felt 9pm was just too late for such little guys. So now they go to bed by 8pm. They are out right away....Yeah!
But consistently 2 1/2 hours later they are up...or at least one of them is.

Last night went like this: in bed by 8:03...no sounds at all coming from the room by 8:05.

10:30- Hunter
10:45- Hunter again
11:30 - Zachary
12:30-Hunter
12:47- Zachary
3:40- Zachary
4:40-Hunter
5:50-Hunter
6:10- Zachary (followed by last ditch effort of bringing him into our bed for a hopeful few more minutes of sleep)
6:30- Hunter (ditto to above note, but w/ Daddy getting him)
7:00- both boys officially awake

As you can see there is not a lot of sleep time in there for Mommy. We are continuing to try the recommendations from our adoption groups, but if this doesn't get any better we may have to look to some professionals.
(But, actually, this IS better than where we were a month ago....then they weren't going back to sleep in 10 minutes or so....it was 2-3 hour periods of trying to get them quieted back down...so this at least feels a bit better. I just wish I was the kind of person who could konk out the minute my head hits the pillow...but not the case. I am usually just drifting off when the next wake up call begins...sigh.)