outnumbered

today was my first day alone with the two boys. sig headed off to the office and before he left, i jumped at the chance to take a shower. it was then that i realized that my hierarchy of needs has changed over the years. on the bottom of mine is sleep, and luckily, everyone here is sleeping thru the night. next on the pyramid is shower. followed by coffee. then food. followed closely by a tie of friends and the fact i didn't need to call 911 that day. for the most part, this day one went surprisingly well. altho there were a few minor falls i missed preventing, no blood was shed today. ethan and kola had a few competitions and i ref'd one and gave ethan ideas for 2 others. ethan at one point was carrying 2 'precious objects' with him while peddling a way too small tricycle to protect his valuables from swiping - and one of these objects was a kids folded-up lawnchair. shelley laughed and said she wouldn't be surprised one day to see ethan out there with a backpack, cart, arms full of stuff. all kinds of techniques are being tried.

ethan did realize that little brothers do come with some perks. he sometimes enjoys follow the leader, last nite they ran in circles playing tag and chase, and today they got teaspoons from the kitchen and used them to drink water from the powder room sink and 'fill' up a bucket -- as captured on the above photo. kola also came with a dowry (a few toys sig and i picked up in ukraine) of 2 toy cars, a toy steering wheel, a puzzle, a a couple new toys ethan helped me pick out - all good to help enforce the sharing idea. then yesterday, karen and bill (nessie if you read the comments on the blog)gave the boys each a book and a card that said congrats to ethan for being a big brother and welcome to kola - ethan thought that was pretty neat and it helped ethan understand that they'll both have cool stuff they can share with each other, not just ethan letting kola play with all his stuff.

sig was a welcome sight tonite around 5:30 and the boyz were very excited to see 'mama papa' which is what kola calls him. kola also now uses 'done,' whoosh (which means he wants me to pick him up) moo ba lalala (his favorite book), no, banana (which basically means food), wow - ie wow machina instead of the ukraine version - oy machina...ethan uses opala = what kola says when something falls and suddenly ethan has also lost his ability to keep all food on the plate. ethan knows die (give it), spaseeba (thank you) nyet (no), machina (which all of woodbine is using) and they each recognize but don't say yet a few other words. kola definitely knows telephone, sleep, more, bath.... aside from kola's sleep protests and ethan's about 2 hours of whinyness a day, i think things are going better than i expected. kola's dr. appt. went ok - he was a trouper until the needles came out for tb and blood tests - nyet mama!! a real heartbreaker, but he didn't squirm or thrash. we'll be having developmental tests done and are waiting for the labs, but the dr. didn't find anything unusual and gave us some good tips about transitioning him.....more soon! love b/s/e/k