Wednesday, January 16th, 2002
We’ve had a little computer trouble so this update is a little bit late, oh well…here it goes…
Terrible twos’? That gives you the impression that three is better!
Now that they are both three I can tell you… it’s worse!!! It should be called the “disruptive, breakable, non-listening, but now I can fake the cute face and the sad face” phase! You don’t believe me? Since my last update Ana has pulled a piece of furniture down on top of her (Thank g-d for the Fisher-Price farmhouse that blocked it from landing on her!) and together they put a toy cup so far down the toilet that Mitch had to remove the potty to get it out! Oh and when we put our old 3DO (Nintendo type) game system upstairs in the bonus room and put the games way up on top of the Entertainment Center so that they couldn't reach it, they took their toy house (the big kind that you can play inside of) and pushed it across the room, climbed on top of it, took the games out of the boxes and then put the house back! (Pretty sure Alek was behind that one. I thought I was going crazy thinking how did I miss so many games??? Not to mention that Ana broke my necklace of Laurel and Samantha, one of their games, and several new toys. And she keeps getting out of bed at night! That’s just the short list! (I thought girls were supposed to be easier) When she’s doing something wrong and I say "what are you doing?” she says “I don’t know”. And when I say “what am I going to do with you?” she says “My want mommy do nothing to me!”
Alek is loving his karate class but I think he likes the class part better than the karate. 
He spends most of the class playing with his belt or spinning in circles and then trying not to fall down. That’s why we call him the Drunken Master. 
Juneau turned ten and Mitch threw her a birthday party which the kids loved! 
And we found out that the kids down the street were adopted from Russia the same week we got ours from Ukraine! What a small world!
For Halloween, Mitch turned his tractor into a hayride and our fairy princess and scary skeleton are still talking about it. 
That and the neighbor that scared them with his Halloween mask! 
They spend a lot of time telling on each other which is sometimes good and sometimes bad. And Ana yells at him all the time. We’ll be in a store and I’ll hear “Alek! Don’t do that! Stop that right now!” Then there are other times I hear her saying things like “smell my stink Alek!” or “See how that works Alek?” (after SHE puts him in time-out!).
And “You don’t listen to me Alek!” it may not sound like it, but she really loves him. She has a framed picture of the two of them I her room and I am constantly finding it in her bed with her!
Alek has unfortunately learned from his father to throw a kiss from across the room instead of giving big hugs and kisses like he used to! But I’m working on him! And when he wants my attention he says “Mommy! I talkin to you!’ or “I needs to talk to you Mom.” And then he goes into a long story that I usually can’t understand. Or when he says a word and I don't know what it is, I feel like I'm in a game show trying to figure it out shouting out what it might be, until Ana tells us what he was trying to say!
I joined an Internet group that has about 40 members that all adopted from Kharkiv, Ukraine! It’s great to look at other peoples pictures and recognize people. And it motivated me to finally make the kids their scrapbooks of when we got them (a year and a half later!)
Thanksgiving was fun this year because we were interviewed by Sonya Pfifer with Eyewitness News 11 (ABC). 
They wanted to do a story on a family who adopted internationally and when they found out some of our company was from Ukraine, it changed into more of a friendship / small world story. 
We had a great time but I think next year when we say it’s Thanksgiving, the kids will be looking for the news trucks! 
One day Ana said she didn’t love me and I got upset. I know she was playing but it was a bad day for me and I may have over reacted because several times now I’ve caught them playing and she says “Alek? You loves me? What/ no? I’m leaving!” and she runs out of the room. Now I have to watch everything I do or say around them but on the bright side, now she’s constantly telling me “My loves you All ALL the time!” and Alek says “Mommy, My loves you all night!” which has gotten me plenty of strange looks!
If you ask Ana where her food went, she’ll tell you “In my mouth, and my tummy, out my butt”. She walks around bumping into things and saying “oops-a-daisy”. And for some reason I’ve yet to figure our, keeps telling me that she has girl parts and Alek has boy parts. 
When we’re in the car she says “you did good driving today Mama” and while we eat dinner she tells me “you’re a good cooker today mama”. Like I’m not always? And her and Mitch play this game where they rename everything! I think our last meal consisted of Ogers, fishlips and alligator brains! 
She’s been very nosey lately and always asking what we’re doing. I guess we don’t usually tell her because I just heard her say “what are you doing Papa, nonya bidness?” One time I called her monkey toes and she told me “My no have monkey toes, my gots normal feet!”
When Alek want’s a drink, he says he’s thirsty but it sounds like he’s saying “I doofy” which Mitch thinks is so funny. 
He’s also started making this face that makes Mitch laugh no matter what mood he’s in so now the boy is constantly making this face which I hate! He kinda goes cross eyed with only one eye! I’ll try to get a pic next update.
A lot of people were asking the kids if they were ready for Santa or for Christmas and Alek has started answering “No, I Dewish!” I swear I didn’t tell him to say that, he just figured it out on his own! Also, when we drive by the temple he says "Look! Shabbat Shabbat!!!"
They both have been abbreviating words lately. Like toast for toaster, water fount for water fountain, and mitt for mittens. And my favorite, tomorning for tomorrow moring! And they have to see all their movies from the beginning. Like if I put on Dinosaur they yell baby eggie or with Shrek its Shrek poop. For a while Ana was walking around singing Halaluya from Shrek and I thought she had been watching prayer TV too early in the morning!!!
One day we passed a cemetery and Ana said “Look, same as Lala and Mantha”. Alek turned to her and said “Stop it, you make mommy sad.” What do you say to that?…
Ana had her first Dance recital. It was cute and well cute. There’s just no other word for it! The pink flowers were from my parents.
Mitch’s parents came for a visit and we took the kids to see Monsters Inc. It was the first time they saw a movie in a theater and Alek did great! Ana did pretty good too thanks to a lot of popcorn! I still can’t believe they sat through the whole thing!
We also went to ride on the Christmas train. Which is where I realized that the kids had never had candy canes before because they were calling them umbrellas! We had brought a picnic lunch and it was so unseasonably warm that it attracted bees and Alek got stung! He was pretty upset for about 5 minutes and then he was fine. Ana was talking about it for weeks!
We also took Mitch’s parents to Vinnies Steakhouse for their 45th anniversary. Everyone looked a little nervous when we walked into this really nice restaurant with two 3 year olds but they did great! After two hours strangers started coming up to us and telling us how good they were! I guess they just have expensive taste!
We had a nice holiday and the kids got way to many presents. Mitch got me an ugly stick! It’s a fishing pole. And I got him a DVD. Oh yeah, and we got each other a 53” TV.
We spent a nice quiet New Years at home because Alek had a cold. We pretended it was midnight at about 8:15 so we could do New Years with the kids before bed and just as we finished counting up (not down) someone shot off fireworks that we could see from the bonus room window! It was perfect timing and we were in the right place too!
Ana actually told Mitch the other day “Papa, you no help me, My not a baby anymore!” And Alek has gotten to be such a bad tattletale walking around saying “Ana did it, I seed it!” Unfortunately, I’ve learned that sometimes he didn’t “seed” anything! He just likes to get her in trouble!
Well, I will leave you with a bunch more pictures until nextime!
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