Words, Words, Words.

Anya's language is growing day by day, almost in an exponential way. The other day she told me, "My English so smart." I'd have to agree.

I was amazed last week at a fully clear, grammatically correct sentence. First you need to understand that in Russian, the verbs are conjugated and they also add endings to nouns and such for "cases". So, in loose explanation of their sentence structure, since words are identifiable by their endings, you can put words in lots of different orders in a sentence. They also don't use articles (a, an, the) and that is why you'll often hear a native Russian speaking English and it sounds funny and wrong to us.

So, Anya's belt broke and she was a little bit sad. She looked at me and clear as a bell, with no accent and in perfect word order as well as being in the past tense (none of which I ever learned in Russian), she pouted a little and said, 

"Scott gave it to me." 

The delivery was such that you'd really have no idea she didn't have English as a first language. Of course, she still has other crazy ways of saying things, but if she wants to convey that something was given to her, her sentence is very clear and understandable.

We have a Pug and the word "noisy" comes up often. Since we say he's noisy quite a bit, she thinks the word is "snoisy". For example, one of her sentences is, "They're snoisy."

She will also say in a very smug, but proud kind of way, "That's riiiight," with a satisfied crossing of the arms and a three quarter turned head that nods. Now, what is even funnier than the delivery is that she says it about brand new information that was just given to her. For instance, Anya will ask, "How old are you?" When you answer, she affirms you as a proud teacher might to a student, "That's riiiight." Oddly enough, you do feel like you did a really good job answering!

I brought Anya and two family friends to the duck pond to feed the birds a couple of days ago. It was a rainy day, but we caught a half an hour where there wasn't rain until the end. My friend sent a rain slicker for her daughter but Anya used it instead. She was calling the birds like you would call a dog, and forcefully chasing the pigeons, trying to get them to eat the bread in her hands. 

Okay, who can tell me what the deal is with this duck's head?

 Pigeons eating off of Anya's shoes!!

 There are LOTS of ducks at this pond! These are just a few that were near us.

 Whose is this fashionably dressed and well matched child, and why 

is she rolling around in wet duck droppings?!?

~Monica

ps stay tuned for the next post "She Swims!"

The Zoo.

The trip to the Santa Barbara Zoo was lovely. We picked up a friend on the way and Anya got to see the ocean for the first time from the car window. She had her hands on the door where it meets the window and her head was turned studiously toward the sea.

A soft, slow and reverent "Woooooow!" was heard from the backseat, followed by, "It's beautiful." Then after a seeing more of the coast, she added. "Manoega, (many/much) manoega, manoega water."

The weather was incredibly wonderful and the zoo itself is beautifully landscaped. Anya liked looking around at the animals (my father had taken her to the Living Desert Zoo already) and she especially loved the Capybaras (a yucky large 100 pound rodent, at least in my opinion), the monkeys, the vultures, the baby otters, the elephants and the giraffes. The video we have is of her feeding the giraffe and of her mimicking the monkeys grooming each other. After a few hours of meandering around, we left and had a nice lunch on State Street in Santa Barbara.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6baTr5S-tM

monkey video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebi0mjISZ-o

giraffe video

I also have Anya talking about how bolshoy (big) the elephants are and I posted it here so you could see what I put up with every day. Note the part about how wide they are, that's what I'm talkin' about. She tells me at least daily how bolshoy my thighs, backside, stomach and chest are...and she does it just the way she does on the video. Dave has told me to consider her vantage point, but that helps little. So, if I look depressed, it is due to a loss of self-esteem, brought on by 12 year old bullying.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfefMd2ax6o 

The elephants

I try not to tell her to smile, since she does this with her mouth. Actually, I just noticed these aren't too bad, it used to be a super

stretched out pursing of the lips. Getting better every day!

Her favorite animal by far. Yes, her favorite at the zoo, the dog statue.

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Imagine our surprise several weeks ago when we discovered that Anya didn't know she was a dwarf. Man, more grief to deal with. We were adamantly told, "I will sleep and I will get bolshoy."

What?! Uh, who told her that? Knowing her, she may have made it up in her head. She was in the orphanage with another Achondroplasia Dwarf, but apparently, Anya thought all this time that she would sleep and get bigger and probably thought the same about the other girl too. 

How do you delicately tell someone that what they thought they were, they aren't? She was pretty stubborn about accepting our suggestions that she may have little arms and legs, so we upped the strategy. Knowing that Anya respects doctors, we finally told her that the doctors in Russia and in America said her bones were small.

After some very sad conversations ("The doctors said I'm little, it's bad,") and clarification about people not being bad because of differences from the norm, she has accepted that she is a Little Person. But then we realized that we needed to show her what her future holds for her physically as a woman. Several people told us about a local family that is a little couple and they have a 12 year old daughter that is little too!! We did get together with them and Anya loved them. I was concerned that she would act disgusted, as she had before when seeing dwarfs, but we have gotten together twice and Anya adores them all.  Yes!

Now, after all that background, the other day, as part of her daily routine, she was telling me how bolshoy my hips are and I told her that when she is a woman, she too would have curves and hips and such. Her response, "No. The doctors said I am little." 

Good try sweetheart.

~Monica

Love the Language.

My child raising years were filled with my children playing with GI Joe's. I found it so funny that while looking for something in a cabinet, I threw a ziploc bag on the kitchen table filled with some of Matt's old small GI Joe's and when I turned around Anya had them out on the table and was checking them out. She must have played with them for at least 20 minutes, probably 30 and she was just mostly posing them and lining them up. I just cracked up. A true Nordquist she is. Why are they facing down? A firing squad maybe? On second glance I think she had them spying on bad guys.

Valentine's Day. 

I spied out my friend's blog and how she whipped together beautiful last minute decorations for the kids. I went to a new client's home yesterday and besides the wonderfully decorated round table inside covered with Valentine's Day cards, a balloon bouquet and the like, even the plants outside were decorated with wired trim that was shiny red and full of hearts. I used to do up the house for all the holidays for the kids and loved making any holiday special. Well, I guess I am just old and plain worn out :(  

I did get Anya a little candy box with Snoopy on the front as well as a bargain shirt for $3 that is purple plaid and studded with rhinestones (very Russian indeed) and had placed them on the island the night before so I'd remember to decorate. I woke up that morning and after a few minutes of Anya chatting at me (having planned on getting up before Anya to decorate her chair), I thought, "AHHHHH! It's Valentine's Day and I haven't prepared anything."

I headed out to the kitchen with Anya and told her "Happy Valentine's Day" as I handed her the unwrapped shirt and candy. I also grabbed the package of balloons I bought and blew a few up quickly and tossed three on the counter to her delight. I guess if you don't even know the difference, it's all exciting.

As you may have noticed, I love language. So, I really enjoy watching Anya dissect it all and figure it out. Here are a few of her recent musings:

She doesn't say "your" in Russian anymore, but not in English either, so she uses "ya" which is me/I in Russian. I've called her Miss Miss a few times and she quipped back the other day,

"I'm not ya Miss Miss"

Tonight I called her a silly goose and she responded with,

"I'm not ya gloose."

Since getting her hair cut, everything 

"smells good". 

This phrase is used for any of the five senses and "smells bad" is indicated by saying "smells good", making a bad face and waving your hand under your nose.

When in a crowd of adults that call us 

Monica and Dave, 

Anya will slip into that too. After all, she did meet us with those names.

When Anya wants you to go get something or go into another room or something like that, she says, while waving you away, 

"Come on...go ahead".

The way she says it is too funny and very firm as well.

Tonight I suggested wearing pj pants instead of shorts since it's colder right now. I asked which ones she wanted and she said, 

"pengoon".

I wasn't sure what she wanted and she told me "blue". I realized that she was talking about her "penguin" pjs.

I am also amazed that Anya sits still and listens to me read a chapter at a time of The Chronicles of Narnia. I chose to read that since she LOVES the movie and is very familiar with the characters and what is going on in the story. I guess she is just soaking in the language.

Today a friend came over and taught Anya to draw in perspective, and she figured out how to draw a cube. She was best just doing it herself after being shown. She wasn't thrilled with listening to too much instruction. That's so Anya.

Later, she was a bit bored and some of her handwriting papers were out on the table, where I had written her name, address, and phone number to copy. I off handedley suggested, "Why don't you memorize your telephone number?"  I figured it could just be handy someday should we ever get separated. She finally admits she has the same last name as us and we feel that is helpful too. We dialed the number from my cell so she could see the home phone ring and her eyes lit up. Within about 20 minutes and much help from Scott, she did it! Area code and all!!

Off to the Santa Barbara Zoo tomorrow!

~Monica

Anya's Current Playlists

I am stressing myself out because I haven't written a blog entry in so long and so much new and interesting stuff happens each day with Anya. So, I decided to let myself off the hook and just blog about the songs Anya listens to on her old iPod (formerly her brother's) and my iTouch (which I got partially for entertaining our new girl overseas, at airports, at doctor's appointments and like, but also because I don't want to pay the big bucks for the monthly use of an iPhone). But as far as using the iTouch while we're out, she is so interested in everything else, that instead she just uses it to walk around the house with the volume up for all to hear as she sings along. She is also learning about being polite with her music when others are talking or watching a movie or something along those lines.

Her iPod:

multiple Russian children's songs

songs in Russian from some of the ladies at the church we visited there

Let It Snow (You know the lyrics..when you finally ISS goodnight)

Jingle Bell Rock

Reborn by Rebecca St. James

The Ventures Christmas music

Santa Baby

In Dave's car:

The Little Old Lady from Pasadena

Surf City

Deadman's Curve

Sidewalk Surfin'

Music Videos On DVD's:

When You Wish upon a Star by some blonde Disney girl named Meaghan Something from Pinoochio

The music video at the end of Shrek-she has the dance down too

Ever, Ever After by Carrie Underwood on Enchanted

On my iTouch: I just discovered my iTunes is gone, don't know-did she have something to do with that?  :/

Don't Stop Believin' by the Cast of Glee

a 9 minute video that came with my lastest Chris Tomlin CD, both talking and music

Defying Gravity by the Cast of Glee (this one drives her oldest brother crazy-he didn't like it the first time around). I only have about five songs from Glee on my iTouch and she listens to two of them!

Side note from dinner-I bought Trader Joe's Chicken Nuggets for her because our neighbors feed her Mickey Mouse chicken nuggets and she always talks about it. She was eating tortilla chips and dipping them in some Ranch dressing in a small prep bowl, actually it was quite a bit of Ranch dressing as she refilled the bowl herself while I was out of the kitchen for a moment.

I thought I'd be wise and suggested she use the dressing for her nuggets. "No, ketchup please." What? How did she know that she wanted ketchup? Ohhh, it must be what she eats at our friends' house. 

"How about Ranch?" I asked pointing to her bowl full of white delight, wanting to use up the ton of it she had sitting there.

"No Mama... KETCHUP. See (pointing to the red on the place mat) this one...ketchup." 

"Yes, Anya, I know what ketchup is." 

I was mostly caught off guard that she asked for something in English that I wasn't aware she had a preference for!

See Anya speaking and understanding English on this video. She'd been here almost three months. The amazing thing to me is she understands the super sped up English I speak!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oD6K8pUjAc

~Monica