Sicko

Status Quo at our house is the following:

Many pieces of a torn-up catalog or magazine scattered on the floor
At least two members of the household are sick
Toys are everywhere
No countertop surface is visible
If there's quiet, there's trouble a-brewin'
Little hands are reaching for something the adults don't want the children to have

No matter how hard we try, the house is in a huge disarray!

I'm sick once again. I'm sick of being sick. When I'm sick, I have a short fuse and my kids know how to push my buttons. Its a vicious cycle though, because I also am too tired to stay on top of the things that might prevent illness- purelling the heck out of all hands, lysoling all surfaces and eating loads of vitamins and minerals!

The kids are progressing very well. The rages are much fewer and Liam really is a the best behaved kid of all three. He actually listens! I think Sophie and Liam are definitely improving in their adjustment to us, and their emotional output shows it. Their English is coming along very well. I don't speak in Russian very much now, and they do seem to understand most of what I say. They repeat a lot of what we say, which shows they are working on their English language acquisition. Eating, on the other hand, is a daily battle. That seems to be normal with kids in general though.

Rachel and I had a night out last weekend. I wasn't feeling great, but I knew I needed to get out of the house and do something that didn't involve running errands. We went out to dinner and had drinks, and just let our hair down a bit. It was good and we both needed it.

Last weekend all six of us had family portraits taken. I can't wait to see the proofs! I think we got some very cute pictures. Now I just have to figure out how many Christmas cards we want to send this year. I think I will have to do the adoption announcement pics ourselves, because photographers don't seem to like to sell their digital images.

Liam seems to have a big fan in Dominic, which can be quite funny. Nearly 4 year olds and 18 month olds express things very differently. Dominic likes to get Liam's attention in non-verbal ways by doing things like gently bumping into him! The three kids really wind each other up at night so we are still working on that.

I'll try to post more often....I have lost a few things in the disorganization- my driver's license and the memory card to our camera that has all the kids' pics on it! Ackkkkkkkkkkk!!!