Our Journey

Oh my gosh...I'm such a blog slacker. I just looked and the last post was May. Yikes.

Well...it's been a nutty summer and an even crazier Fall.

Alina turn 2 years old back in April. Which of course all my faithful followers read about. She's now 40 inches tall and 36 pounds. Instead of worry about malnutrition, I'm having to find 3T and 4T clothes that can fit my little amazon. Fortunately, her growth spurts seem to be finally slowing down. She went through 4 shoes sizes since Christmas, but only one shoe size over summer. I've been reading that Toddler time they tend to slow down. She's still a full head taller than every kid in her class.

When she turned 2 years old I kept expecting the terrible twos to start appearing. I didn't appear. Two months pass, and she's still the same sweet little girl....THEN!! Nothing....until...suddenly about 3 weeks ago Miss Independent had a full blown fit in the grocery store. I'd never seen anything like that out of her. We changed from her same daycare class about 3 weeks ago and that's when the fun began. I'm sure the messed up schedule and restructured class had part of it. But now she has several other kids to learn nasty techniques from. Oh joy!

We're starting all over again. I've done more time outs in the last few weeks than the entire previous year. So frustrating.

But! With that is the trade off of how much fun she is. She's so inquisitive and smart. She's learning routines, conversation, songs, and her personality is sparkling. Such a Ham!

We've added more nicknames...we play 'What is your name today?'...she tells us what to call her. She loves that game :)

We went on three mini-vacations this summer visiting the Georgia Aquarium with friends and to the zoo here in Birmingham. The great part of these trips was we hooked up with some other couples we met in russia who adopted kids from the same orphanage as us. Their kids are doing great too and its so neat to see the children blossoming so much.

Well, much love. I'll try to be more consistent...but work and miss thing keep us on our toes.

Much love to all.