Thanksgiving and beyond…

Dave went to work early Thanksgiving morning and four of our five children were able to be home to cook and eat with us this year. Anya loved all the siblings and the attention and was very excited about the holiday as one of our translators told her about Thanksgiving the night before. She helped Greg with the prepping of the mushrooms and brussel sprouts and I don't even know what else as I was in another room! Every time I opened the oven to baste the turkey, her eyes would get real big and she would say, “Bolshoy!” (big!) and I had to let her know that it was not okay for her to baste the turkey like she wanted to and that the oven was HOT.

After we ate, we went to see Dave’s mom at his brother’s firehouse and then went to see Dave at his station. That was the fastest tour I have ever taken there! She was so excited and just raced through looking at everything. Then we went to take Grandma home and Anya got lots of hugs and kisses as well as a picture tour of her papa, uncles, aunts and cousins with all the pictures on Grandma’s walls.

Two days ago, Anya was talking to Scott (20) and I heard her say “student”. She was not taught to read, write or do math, but we have seen her write her numbers and letters over and over. So, I took out a kindergarten handwriting book I’d bought for her, thinking it might last several months. Prior to this, I had not offered her a car seat (she’s legal without one) because she turns her nose up at “baby” things. Well, I pulled the one out we had to give away, but she decided it made a good living room chair for her…back to the handwriting. She pulled the seat up to the low coffee table to do her school as her desk. Perfect fit for her! We were amazed as she did the whole book in 35 minutes!

Later she saw a pile of backpacks, laying in the living room, as I was rearranging all the suitcases before putting them away and she pulled out a really big one and asked if she could have it. I said yes, so she ran to her room, then back to me with the cute little girl backpack I had for her and gave that one back to me! So the one she has now hangs way down below her little butt! I tried to keep the weight up on her back only with a small one, thinking that would be ideal, but that is apparently not what she wants. Next thing I know she has her school books, coloring books, pens, crayons and some junk mail she asked to keep, in her backpack. She had a whole discussion with Scott about how he is a big student and she is a little student too.

We have a lot of dust on the TV screen daily and the sun comes in first thing in the morning to, shall we say, highlight that fact. Anya doesn’t like messes or dirt, so she often cleans off the TV screen. Yesterday morning I looked over and she had written made up math facts on the screen!! Something like 4x9=6 and 2x7=3.

This morning she grabbed her backpack out of her room and had a serious look on her face, so I raced over to grab the kindergarten aged math book I had for her. She got her car seat, brought it to the table and has been working on her math. I considered getting an older math book to start, but after looking at them, was reminded that math builds on itself, so I decided to start young knowing that an easy book would build her confidence as well. Luckily I can count a bit in Russian and say “how much” so I can demonstrate the way to do the problems for her. After about 40 minutes, she is on page 99 already!! This girl is a giant sponge. So much so that one of the boys taught her “pinky promise” on Thanksgiving (I think it was Greg) and she runs around doing that to people-probably because she gets a response from the person and a huge smile.

Anya did get to meet four of her aunts and uncles and eight of her cousins already (we did this soon after her arrival, as we are spending several days in the mountains all together at Christmas so we wanted her to at least be familiar with everyone ahead of time) and the only problems was a loyalty one. My 20 year old was wrestling & punching with my eight year old nephew the other day and she screwed up her little face, put her hands on her hips and made it clear that she did not like my nephew messing with her brother. That’s all for now.

~Monica