Brimming with Confidence

1. The girls of the pack together on a Saturday morning
2. Ana and Robin feeding baby carrots to the fainting goats at Fearrington Village

(by the way, that's an electric fence, no joke)
3. Ana singing to the beat of her own drummer. We still don't know what to call this song. I call it "Macher", which sounds like what she's saying, but I know for a fact that she speaks no German. If any of you have an idea, please leave a comment! In any case, it's an AWESOME song.

Brimming with Confidence

[Phil]

That's the way I would describe Ana since her surgery, especially in the last week or so. She has a much better command of English now, she likes to "say hi" to everyone, and she tries to push our boundaries as much as possible (although not in a bad way, really). Looking back at the earlier blog entries from Kramatorsk, it's hard to believe that it's the same person. Without a doubt, the main difference is her ability to communicate with everyone. Not everyone (including us) can understand everything she says, but since the surgery she can say many basic phrases very clearly and distinctly. In fact, she likes to talk on the phone as much as possible. This used to be an exercise in futility, but now she can say "Hi, Helen!" in crystal-clear English and then at least carry on some semblance of a conversation (especially if you ask her yes-or-no questions). I'm sure the rest will come in due time.

In other news, this weekend will be the 10th birthday of our dog, Lola. As you may recall from earlier posts, in Ukraine Ana was scared to death of both dogs and cats, but once she was got here she quickly warmed up to Lola and now they're fast friends. In fact, Friday afternoon I went looking around the house for Lola and found her curled up on Ana's bed with her head resting on Ana's discarded pajamas. To me it meant that Lola definitely considers Ana part of our pack now, and more importantly, wants to be near her. And tonight when Lola went upstairs to go to sleep, she actually went into Ana's room instead of ours! I never would have thought any of this could have happened when we first brought Ana home. She was literally terrified of Lola. But, as can be seen from the older blog entries, they both eventually came around due to some bribing and prodding from me and Robin. In any case, this is a long introduction simply to announce that we're actually having a 10th birthday party for Lola on Saturday, and our friend Jack (who did our beautiful wedding invitations) made a great invitation to the party, which can be seen here:

Lola Invitation

In much less important news, our beloved Oranje of the Netherlands lost to Russia in the quarterfinals of the European Cup. Now there's no question who I'm supporting: Onward Russia!

That's all for now. We'll update again with photos from Lola's party next weekend.