Almost One Year Summary

It will be a year in August since we brought our daughters home and I have written very little. I am going to attempt to highlight this amazing year. Our daughters have become the absolute joy in our lives! John and I cannot picture life without them. They are so delightful, full of fun and energy. Valerie turned two in March and Galina turned five in June. They both have tubes in their ears and are doing much better health-wise because of it. Galina is scheduled to have her tonsils out in August. Both are speaking English only. Galina is enrolled in kindergarten and is ready to go! She knows her ABC's and she can count to 30 fairly reliably. Valerie loves her preschool/daycare and is growing in leaps and bounds. She is also wearing glasses to correct her eye that turns in. She is very good about wearing her glasses and looks adorable in them.

We take them to parks on a regular basis and their gross motor-skills are excellent. Galina was in gymnastics this Spring and she loved it. We will go again this fall. Both girls attended swimming lessons in June and they have both turned into little mermaids -- swimming underwater, jumping in without fear, floating on their backs. Galina is working on her crawl stroke now! It is amazing how fast they learn and overcome fears. Galina used to be terrified of dogs and we have been encouraging her to pet little dogs and talk to her about it. After her 5th birthday she informed me that she was 5 now and could pet big dogs. You would not know that this child was ever afraid of dogs. Now we have to work on asking permission to pet the dogs!

We have an amazing neighborhood full of families and friends that have been supportive and very excited about our two new additions to our family. We have quite the little neighborhood play group. There are three families on our block that have two children each about the same ages as Galina and Valerie. They are all boys! The children all get along well, as do the parents. We often meet each other in the park to play and talk together. This summer we have had many an impromptu pool party with everyone coming over to swim. When it is not raining, the girls have been in the pool!

We have completed our one-year post-placement report and the only paperwork we are waiting on right now is for the girl's passports to arrive. It has been an amazing year for us all. Our friends tell us that it is like the girls have always been with us and as an outsider you would never know it has only been a year. Our hearts are full with the joy of our daughters!