Picture Of The Day

Eggnog coffeecakes with streusel...

Don't they look scrumptious?

... one for Craig's Christmas lunch at work tomorrow

... and one for the Christmas lunch for the teachers and therapists at Rex's school

What's New With Ella?

Ella is doing very well.  Behaviorally we have seen improvements across the board and in all settings. Ella was even chosen as All Star Student for December - an honor bestowed for good behavior and effort, not academics - and her excitement over having a pizza lunch with the principal could not have been greater.  Attachment is going well and Ella now more verbally expresses her positive emotions for us as her family.  Here's what she told me recently about her plans for the future:

“When we grow up, Emilia and I will live together.  We will make campfires and I’ll tell her to be careful.  We will live next door to you and daddy and Rex.  You will have an outdoor pool and we will have an indoor pool, so we can swim all the time.  Emilia and I will work on the computer.  We will come to visit you and sometimes take Rex to something fun.  We will bring him a sandwich and chips.  When you die, Rex will live with us.  We will take care of him.  We will do everything he asks and buy him an i-pad.”

In early November Craig and I began to realize that the pressure and strain of academic demands were taking a toll on Ella’s continued attachment, happiness, language development and social-emotional progress.  We were in agreement that these areas of growth, for the time being, are more important to us and to Ella than her academic work, so we decided to take the scholastic stress off at home.  We also agreed that if this decision would lead to her needing to repeat first grade, it would be an acceptable outcome to us.  In conjunction with recommendations from Ella’s teacher, we cut homework to about 30 minutes a day, including weekends, covering spelling, math, reading and special projects.  

I think it is easy for adoptive parents and educators to overlook the tremendous effort children (along with their brains) have to make to learn a new language and how that process complicates their academic achievement.  If you talk to Ella conversationally at this point, you will hardly think that just over a year ago, she didn’t know any English.  She gabs away happily, she uses idioms, tells jokes, etc. However, when placed into the classroom where she has to cope with increasingly complicated scholastic terminology that refers to complex tasks (alphabetize, sequential order, Venn diagram, etc.), with spelling, with reading comprehension and so on, she is at a disadvantage in comparison to her peers who have lived their entire lives in our English-speaking country. Ella has to double up her efforts to keep her head above the water academically.  It’s not that she is not cognitively capable of doing the work.  She absolutely is.  But tasks take her longer to complete, she has to ask more questions for clarification, decreasing her independence and feeling of success.  I can always tell when worksheets come home for which instructions were clear to Ella and when the opposite was the case.  Based on extensive research with English Language Learners, we know it will take Ella at least seven years until we can expect her to reach grade level norms in English language literacy.  Hopefully she will be on par with her peers by the time she starts high school, especially since her wonderful ESOL teacher told us that she's a sponge for her new language.

The time that Ella gained back between coming home from school around 4:15 and going to bed at 8:00 is now spent hanging out with her neighborhood friends, relaxing, doing crafts, reading for fun, playing with her sister, completing puzzles, helping me cook, etc.  We have cut her tech time to 30 minutes a day which she usually spends watching Wild Kratts.  Surprisingly, as we have taken off the academic pressure at home, we have seen significant improvements in Ella's reading skills (up several levels in just the last two months), penmanship and cooperation in practicing it, spelling and willingness to tackle new academic challenges.  Maybe sometimes less is more indeed.

Picture Of The Day

While Craig and I were thinking Rex was quietly watching a movie in our bedroom...

Too bad Craig didn't take a photo of Rex covered in shaving cream from top to bottom, too.  He had a blast.

On the upside, our sink is really clean now.

Kids Christmas Shopping 2015

The dreaded task (for me) of Christmas shopping has been finished for over a month.  Yes, you heard that right.  I didn't like driving around last minute last year to get the kids gifts, so I started early in 2015.  Since we only give each child three presents (from us as their parents aka Santa), my preparations were not too difficult.

Gift 1: Something They Need

All three kiddos needed new pajamas - like yesterday.  As you know, St. Nick always brings them a holiday pair on December 6, but I also came across a huge sale at Two Adorable and was able to snag each of my little ones a pair of monogrammed fleece pajamas for $20 each that they will hopefully find on Christmas morning.  The only problem with this gift: I ordered the PJ's in October and they still haven't been delivered though I receive periodic email assurances that they will be here in time for Christmas.  Hmm.

Gift 2: Something They Want

Ella loves board games and puzzles, so she is getting a big floor puzzle of the US 50 states ($13) and two games ($10).  Rex loves to build with heavy items, so we chose these giant EverBlocks for him ($150 - by far the most expensive gift this year and more on these blocks in a separate post) and Emilia likes to pretend she's a doctor, so she is getting a doctor kit ($36).

Gift 3: Something We Want Them To Have

Rex is getting a body sock ($35) and Emilia and Ella are getting three books each which I bought via an adoption fundraiser ($15 per girl).

Total costs: $334.  I did not set a specific budget per child or for the three kids together, but as you know we like to keep things within reason which I think we accomplished while being able to get each of them something we hope they will enjoy.

Gingerbread Houses

I promised Ella that we would decorate gingerbread houses this weekend, so I sat up last night building them from graham crackers and icing.  I made four different structures, keeping in mind everyone's creative and fine motor abilities.  Earlier in the day I had stopped by Party City to get candy.  I bought 100 pieces for $6.70.  You can't beat that price for the gorgeous variety you get.

Soon after waking up this morning, we got started with our creative process.

I am very happy with the finished houses.  They look lovely on our fireplace mantle and reflect everyone's individual style and preferences.

Rex added his decorations by himself,
but kept it simple and down to earth.

Ella's over the top colorful and fun masterpiece
which is decorated on all sides

Emilia's favorite part was spreading the icing.
She spent easily 30 minutes on that task and loved it.
Her house affectionately reminds me of an East German bus stop.

My gingerbread house

We had a lot of fun together this morning and I'm glad we decided to decorate gingerbread houses this year.

Thanksgiving 2015

Last month, we gathered with a small family group to celebrate Thanksgiving.  As always, we were hosting, so I cooked all morning.  Ella helped.

Glazing the carrots

Our table was pretty, but not elegant... though a lot fancier than the usual dining around here.

Our Thanksgiving menu is very non-traditional because of everyone's food preferences.  We always have ham instead of turkey and this year I felt less guilty about it because Ella and I read that the meat at the very first Thanksgiving feast was likely goose and/or duck and/or venison, possibly swan or pigeon, but probably not turkey.  I am the only one who likes cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie, so we never serve them. Don't worry, I had a slice of pumpkin pie at a restaurant. And guess what, the Pilgrims had no wheat flour, so no pumpkin pie in 1621.  Cranberries don't appear to have come into culinary use until about 50 years after the first Thanksgiving.

In my feeble attempt for a bit of authenticity, I made cornbread without wheat flour instead of rolls this year, knowing that maize was a staple of Native American nutrition. Let's just say the cornbread was delicious.  I am holding on to this recipe and skipping the wheat flour from now on.  And we made carrots, white, purple and orange, because the Pilgrims' gardens in 1621 probably included this crop and because carrots used to come in several different colors before they were turned into the quintessential orange vegetable.

Oh, and in case you're wondering, the Thanksgiving meal as we know it today didn't start its popularity until the mid 19th century when women's magazines and cookbooks began printing recipes for the dishes we serve now on this national holiday.

P.S. Since we had a very mild Thanksgiving Day with temps in the low 60s, we decided to break even more with tradition and make a campfire instead of watching football.  Then we went another step further and busted out marshmallows to roast and leftover sparklers and glow necklaces from the Fourth of July.  The kids had a blast.  This might have been my favorite Thanksgiving yet.

Picture Of The Day

Rex loves to build train tracks and always finds new challenges for himself... like building the track vertically up a wall.  I am amazed by the way his mind works.