Belated Update

1. Ana's preschool class
2. Ana lifting weights with one of the Carol Woods residents
3. Ana and Papa dancing at the first Carolina Inn bluegrass show of the season
4. Ana and her friend Cole
5. VIDEO: Ana singing her ABC's


[Phil]
Okay, so we haven't really updated this in a while. I suppose we've been too busy with work and parenting. The good news is that Ana has been doing great. She's speaking a lot more English now, the downside of which is that she seems to have forgotten a lot of Russian. The only Russian words she ever says now are "konfyetka" (candy) and "soak" (juice). It's kind of odd, because all the rest of the food words she says in English. For example, on the way home from school the other day, I asked her what her favorite foods are. She replied, "pasta, cheese, pizza, konfyetka, banan (I forgot, she still says that in Russian as well), apple (pronounced "ah-POOL"), and chicken." She's definitely not on a low-carb diet! In any case, we're able to communicate much better with her these days, except that her new favorite word is "why". For example, we had this conversation when I picked her up at school yesterday:

Ana: Where's Mama?
Me: She's at work.
Ana: Why?
Me: Everyone has to work.
Ana: Why?
Me: To make money.
Ana: Why?
Me: To buy food to eat.
Ana: Why?
Etc., etc.

People tell us this is typical 4 year-old behavior.

Ana has also learned to recognize and name all the letters of the alphabet, thanks to Robin. Every night they read the Dr. Seuss ABC book and every morning they go over their letters during breakfast. It's totally amazing to me, considering that she didn't even have a concept of an alphabet just a few months ago. Now we're moving on to actually writing the letters and making words. Since she'll have one more year of preschool, I'm confident that she'll be ready for kindergarten next year. The next thing we need to tackle is arithmetic. She can more or less count to 20 and likes to count things, but we haven't attempted to teach her addition and subtraction yet. All in good time!

As for fun, Ana has really been enjoying gymnastics, and her coaches are really impressed with her strength. She's not too crazy about the other kids, however, so it's usually just she and I playing together. Her favorite things are the rings, the trampoline, and the springboard (or vault, or whatever you call it). She also really loves putting chalk on her hands, although I'm not sure she knows the purpose of it! Besides gymnastics, she also enjoys riding her bike, walking Lola, kicking the soccer ball, blowing bubbles, and playing with her toy golf set. She's also crazy about jigsaw puzzles. Her first one was a wooden puzzle of the United States, and she's gotten so good at it that I swear she could do it strictly by feel. She doesn't even really look at the colors of the states anymore -- she knows the shapes instantly. It's a humbling experience to do the puzzle with her! She also likes books a lot. She often mimics her schoolteacher and pretends to read us one of her books, to the point of shushing us when we talk and making us raise our hands, I kid you not. Robin has been the main one involved in the reading, so I'll let her talk about Ana's favorite books.

[Robin]
Ana and I usually read three books each night before going to sleep. She picks the books out and then we snuggle on her bed and read them to one another. She particularly likes Harold and the Purple Crayon, the Dr. Seuss ABC book, Messy Mark, a Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes, Dr. Seuss's Sleep Book, and a "scratch and sniff" Christmas book. Phil and Ana went to the library recently and he let her pick out some books--it was funny because she came home with a number of dog-related books. I guess that is a good indication that she really likes Lola.

Ana's school is really great. It is so ethnically diverse -its like a little U.N. She tells us her favorite friends are a little Russian girl, Marina, and a Chinese girl, Claire, in her class. She comes home every day with art projects to share with us --most go on our fridge as display items. On Mother's Day she brought home the cutest card for me. They apparently asked her a series of questions and her answers were written on the card...it went like this:
How old is your mom: 27 (!yes!)
What does she do for work: She drives a car.
What do you like to do with your mom: Ride bikes.
What do you like about your mom: She makes me pasta. She loves me.
It went on..it was so heart-breakingly precious.
One of Ana's teachers had a baby recently and this was super curious to the kids in her class. Ana spent a lot of time playing that she was having a baby--- showing us her belly and putting "babies" under her shirts.

[Phil]
Finally, we should mention that Ana will be having surgery next Wednesday, May 21, to repair the remaining gap in her palate (called a 'fistula') and to put tubes in her ears. The reason for the tubes is that her hearing is being impaired by fluid buildup in her ear canal, which is typical for cleft palate children. In fact, the ENT doctor told us that tubes are used in 99 out of 100 cleft palate children. Right now her hearing is impaired to the point that she would need hearing aids if she were an adult. Once she has the tubes installed, her hearing (and consequently her speech) should improve dramatically. Right now we don't know the details of the surgery, except that she will only stay one night in the hospital. We have a pre-surgery appointment the day before, so we'll update the blog then.

Speaking of the blog, we'll probably change it to 'invitation only' pretty soon. Once that happens just send me an email and I'll send you an invitation. We just want to avoid the spammers and other riff-raff.