8 months home together and counting

Enjoying ourselves at a local vineyard.
Does it get any better than this- a winery that allows kids?

August 25th marked our 8 month anniversary. Whew- the time does fly. Our 1 year anniversary will be here before you know it, so we'll be celebrating especially hard on Christmas day. We are looking forward to the upcoming holidays and spending them with family and friends back east.

We've been enjoying the summer, despite the heat in Austin. Maks is doing really well with his sentence structure and thought process. It's amazing how he's putting so many concepts together. He also has a pretty funny accent. He'll fit right in with those Baltimore hons. eerrrplane (airplane), peerr (pear), deeerty (dirty), (deerr) there... it cracks us up. He's a little mama's boy, smiley as can be, but he can flip quite quickly and cry.

Fin has been talking like crazy. I think it helps having a big brother to chat to all day. He's come a long way in 8 months, considering he was only making sounds for a few things not too long ago. No more speech therapy help. A frequent question we get from friends is how their English is coming along. We really don't need to use any Russian anymore. In fact, we stopped most of the Russian to focus on English by month 3. Truly amazing! We do like a few Russian words... my favorite happens to be "pash lee," meaning let's go. We learned that from our travel guide through Russia, so it holds a special place in our hearts. It also happens to be the story of our lives... let's go!!!!! They never stop going! We'd like to get them into some Russian classes when the time works out. Thankfully, they have enough to learn right now, but soon enough. And chatter box, chatter box- both of them! Sometimes I'm asking them to just sing along to the music in the car, so I can hear myself think. They both love to sing and dance and they have quite a few songs memorized. Our favorite happens to be a Michael Jackson hit, Beat It.  They love to play with their Thomas the train set, Elmo, Little Einsteins, Buzz and Woody from Toy Story.

Fin (2 1/2 years old) has grown about 4 inches and gained 2 pounds. As you can see, he loves to eat!!! Maks (3 1/2 years old), on the other hand, hasn't budged. We can't get him to gain any weight, but he has grown 2 inches since we've had them in the states.

Fin

Maks