Yes, my 2 & 3 year old kids have their own computer

Zen and Mishka watching a Sesame Street playlist on her computer.

The hard drive on my trusty laptop failed about 3 months ago. Fortunately, I had been backing up the data via Mozy.com (highly recommended – it saved everything!)  So I ordered a new laptop and had the old one repaired so Ali and Zen could use it. Although Zen can navigate a touch screen phone/tablet, she can’t do much on the laptop independently yet because of the keyboard/mouse limitations (other than watch videos). Ali can navigate her way around rather well. They have unlimited access to the computer and I thought it would be a big hit, but the girls rarely ask to bring it out. I occasionally put it out as part of my strewing, and sometimes there is interest. Here are the sites I have bookmarked for them to discover:

• Starfall
• Sesame Street (channel on youtube)
• NASA Kids Club
• National Geographic – Little Kids
• Discovery Kids
• Watch Know Learn (filter by age)
• PBS Kids
• Peep and the Big Wide World - Games and Videos
• ABC Mouse
• BBC Cbeebies – Games and Story Time (Ali likes Alphablocks)
• Poisson Rouge
• Tumble Bo*ks (free if accessing it by this link)

Eventually they will have a touch screen tablet/notebook, which is much more intuitive for the younger crowd than a keyboard/mouse. I guess it’s only a matter of time before everything is touch screen. In the meantime, I’m still setting up their computer and will soon add movies and pictures. Any other ideas to help make this educational tool more useful for them? Any websites your 2-4 year olds love?

*End notes. Some people get nervous when they hear “unlimited access”, so I’m happy to explain more about our media situation at home. First, our kids are outside the house about 5 hours every day running around and doing interesting things. Second, we don’t have television (because my husband and I can’t stomach the ads). Third, our girls have unlimited access to Russian and English language movies and they are very responsible with that. Fourth, we spend absolutely tons of time interacting with our girls all day long. At this age, they would much rather be playing with us, reading with us, talking with us or going out with us than engaging with media.

A pattern seems to be emerging – a screen only seems to go on if someone could use a little zone-out / quiet time. I’ll put my youngest in front of the computer or movie if I desperately need a 20 minute break (but this does not happen on a daily basis). I also turn the computer or movie on daily for my oldest for 30 minutes while I’m helping Zen fall asleep at nap time. After bath, some days they want to watch part of a movie for about half an hour before bed, and we all quite like this bit of down time before transitioning to books and sleep.

Total screen time including movies and computer: our older daughter watches about 1.5 hours daily, and our younger daughter watches about 20-30 minutes daily. I should also mention that I am well aware of the studies involving media and children. One of the reasons we do not limit screen time is because we trust that our children know exactly what types of activities are best for their developing brains and they gravitate toward those activities naturally. If we were to impose artificial limitations, they would lose the ability to follow their intuition in this regard. 

Ali Got to See Her Friend from the Baby House!

Ali got to see her little buddy from Russia a few weeks back! He is the first child from her group at the orphanage that has a family now (home since Christmas 2011).
After a while he recognized her and was super excited – so cute! 
His family is SO nice and we hope to stay in touch over the years. What a sweet boy – I am just thrilled to know that he has such a wonderful family now.

Now that our family is together and adjusted…moving on!

Now that we are all fully transitioned, which was our top priority for many months, I can focus on some other stuff in addition to parenting:

Fitting in to my jeans After a 6 day “cleanse”, I am now committed to getting some physical activity which means cycling, yoga or walking daily. A yoga studio opened just a few blocks from my house so I’ve been going every other day and loving it! I dusted off the bike today and hooked up the bike trailer and took Zen to the library for the weekly story time and to check out some books from this fantastic children’s book list. I’m also eating a salad every day for lunch. Baby steps. Once all of that is part of my daily routine, I’m also planning on buying 50% of our food from farmer’s markets.

Traveling

After traveling to Russia four times last year, we’re ready to go somewhere else. In March we took a road trip to visit friends in Nevada.

Yes, that’s Ali rock climbing with a skirt on, tights and mary janes. She is athletic, rough and tumble, keeps up with the boys and loves to dress up in girly clothes and play princess. I also have a photo of her from New Year’s Eve climbing a tree in a formal party dress.

In April we went to North Carolina to see my side of the family:

The girls were very excited to see their Auntie and Baby Cousin again!

They also got to meet my brother’s 2 boys; more cousins! They are the same age as Ali and Zen. You’d think they’ve all known each other since the day they were born. They had tons of fun and got to spend lots of quality time getting to know their aunties, uncles and grandparents, too.

In May we’re heading back to the desert. Then we’re going to England for 3 weeks in June. Now, if I can only squeeze in a trip to New England this year…

Organizing Our Finances

Unfortunately we hired a CPA based on a word-of-mouth referral, but didn’t do any further research. He messed up our 2010 t*x returns and we got audit*d. That is an enormous project I need to work on asap. Fortunately we figured it out about a day before he was going to file our 2011 returns, so we took a closer look at that return and found that it was FULL of mistakes. We were forced to file an extension, so now I need to start t*x year 2011 all over again.

Honoring Their Past

• We have made contact with several people who adopted kids from both Zen’s group and Ali’s group! My goal is to maintain contact with as many of these families as are willing. It may or may not be important to our girls as they grow older, but we want for them to have the option to be in touch with their little friends from Russia if they so choose. Heck, they were growing up together like an extended family before we came along.
• We are still trying to incorporate Russian language into their everyday lives. Ali does a Russian immersion program on the weekends, the girls have a Russian speaking babysitter/tutor 2-3 days per week and they have access to at least 100 Russian language kids movies + audio CDs. True, we don’t speak the language so it probably won’t last forever, but we’re doing everything else we can for as long as their interested.
• We plan to make contact with their biological relatives this year. It’s not for everyone, but we’re hoping to have at least photos or letters to add to their lifebook. This is for their sake just in case they are curious someday about “who they look like” or in case they have other questions about biological relatives.
• I also plan to start their Life Books soon! Similar to a Baby Book, this tells their story from the day they were born, since their life didn’t start the day they were adopted

Getting These Two Kiddos Out and About More

Sure, we get out around the neighborhood and running all the usual errands and such. But I’m really looking forward to day trips, museums, farms, park days, workshops, and field trips. Ali has been doing swimming, golf and ice skating which she loves. There is just so much to SEE and DO around here, but nap times break the day up so much, so I can only plan things for 2-3  hours at a time which I find really restrictive. Then there is the maturity level of an active 2 year old which crosses off many of the places on my Must See list. I think it’s time to revise my list so we can have a list of places fit for a boisterous 2 year old.

Further Researching Alternative Education Options

Our primary educational interest is Life Learning. In the future, we intend to travel – a lot. We won’t let school dictate when (or how long) we travel for, so life learning (or travel adventure learning or whatever you want to call it) will be especially important at that time. In the meantime, we are considering the alternative education options in our area. We have it narrowed down to:

• Life Learning (independent learning)
• Democratic Education (independent and/or collaborative learning in a school environment)
• Social Constructivist Education (collaborative project based learning in a school environment)

In the end, it will be up to our children to decide if they want to attend a school or learn primarily out in the World with us as their guides.  This means that we need to know exactly what the school options are in our area, then apply to all the schools we feel might be a good fit for our family a year or more in advance of them even deciding if they want to go to school or not. Little Did I Know. I seriously thought we would just go along the life learning path, then if they ever decided they wanted to try school, we could just enroll them. Nope – that would only be true of our local public school (which is not one of the options we are considering). The enrollment process in the alternative types of schools in our area is more complex.

Zen has been home 6 months!

May 11th marks 6 months Since Zen has been home. Here she is arriving at the airport November 11, 2011.

And here she is now.

May.2012

►

Zen is happy, generous, thoughtful, gentle, hysterical, grateful and irresistibly adorable.

It is undeniably clear that she was meant for our family.

One Year Since We Met Zen (& 5 month post-adoption transition update)

Zen – April 2011

Zen – April 2012

April 15th marked one year since we met Zen! More about our first few days with her: Day 2 with Zen. Day 3 with Zen.

She’s been home 5 months now. Zen is quite the little instigator but she sure is cute, lovable, affectionate, funny and happy most of the time. She still runs off occasionally, but it’s more in an age appropriate way now, not in a post-institutional “what are parents?” kind of way. At least she looks back when she is off and running! I have been keeping our girls closer to home than I generally prefer to because I find it too stressful to be out with both of them in certain public places where running and screaming are not socially acceptable. Grocery stores and farmer’s markets = no. This little one has spent way too much time confined in a crib to be confined to a stroller or shopping cart. She wants to run and explore, wander and discover. Library=no. She loves pulling books off shelves and screeching to her heart’s delight. The exception of course, is when I have another adult with me, then I’ll take them both almost anywhere. The other exception is if I have only one of them with me, then it’s doable. She does reasonably well at kid-friendly restaurants lately.

Zen rarely rocks herself any more. I have seen her do it once or twice in the past month. Since it has not completely gone away, we still stay with her until she falls completely asleep.

Zen is starting occupational therapy and speech therapy this week. I don’t personally think she needs O.T. but her evaluations have indicated that she is borderline in need of therapy, so we figured we’ll try it and we can always drop it if she doesn’t like it or if we’re not finding it helpful. Some things that have indicated she may need it are toe walking, grasping with her thumb and 3rd finger rather than thumb and index finger, and she can’t entirely dress and undress herself yet. Speech therapy is definitely in order. She says 40+ words, but barely intelligible. Apparently vocabulary for her age is usually in the 150-300 word range (but that is for children who have been exposed to the language since birth). Her speech is more like an 18 month old child (she’s 26 months). However, her receptive language is excellent and she understands most things which are said to her.

Have I mentioned how joyful she is and what an absolute treasure?! Be still my heart…I am so in love with this little one. She is such a charmer. She smiles and waves and says hello to people passing by and she gets SO many smiles. (This can be a red flag for attachment issues, but she is 100% attached to us, so not a red flag in her case thankfully). She truly brings joy to so many people and it is wonderful to see. She is often smiling, she laughs easily and turns everything into a game. She has a passion for living a fun-filled life and I am learning so much from her in that regard. She rarely complains about anything (except getting dressed or changed). She eats well, sleeps well (although she is our morning lark whereas I’m a night owl). She wakes up smiling and marches through her day happy as can be. She is in a “no” phase, but that is to be expected at this age of course. When she first came home, she was hardly demanding of attention at all, but now she’s gotten used to it and acts up a bit if she’s bored or tired, so it is a continuous process for us as parents to be proactive in those areas, which I find to be easier said than done. She made the transition to family life look so easy. It seriously took her about 24 hours. She is such a brave, loving and kind person. She is Miss Manners, and although she doesn’t know the word ‘please’ yet, she says ‘thank you’ All The Time. She is full of gratitude and generosity. And she’s always up for an adventure!

Fond Memories of Our Dog Scooch

One Year Since We Met Ali (& 9 month post-adoption transition update)

April 11th marked one year since we met Ali! More about the week we met her here: Day 2 with Ali  & Day 3 with Ali. We met Zen a few days later. It was quite an emotional and memorable week!

Ali the first week we met her. April 2011.

Ali April 2012 - exactly one year after we met.

Ali has been home 9 months now. She is a smart, resilient, adventurous, loving, wonderful person. She is cooperative, athletic, accepting, brave and quite the social butterfly. Her transition has gone so well. Her last remaining issues have been  tantrums and fears regarding sleep, although she has made enormous progress over the past 2 months. I had a draft post written at 7 months home which I was hesitant to publish, but finally just did (pre-dated). Here’s an update since then.

Ali has been working so hard on her fear about sleep. She works through it mostly through tears (tantrums) and laughter (play). At least 80% of the tantrums were happening when we mentioned “nap”, “sleep”, “pajamas”, “bed”, etc. Here is a previous post about therapeutic play and I cannot say enough good things about the book Playful Parenting. For many months she has been playing a game we call Mean Babushka in which my husband or I are always the mean babushka and she is the little girl running away from us or hiding or laying in bed, sometimes under the covers. Whomever was playing the part of the mean babushka was supposed to chase her around then pretend to shake her by the arms and pretend to be mean. At some point we started saying things like “whatever you do, don’t push the mean babushka away” (in a mock tone with a half-grin). At some point in the game she would run to her Papa and he would protect her from the mean babushka or she would push the mean babushka away. At that point, mean babushka always made a very dramatic tumble onto the bed, couch or floor and we fumble around and sometimes pretend to cry. We played this game with her as often as we could muster for many months. She still wants to play it sometimes. We have been very supportive and follow her lead when it comes to play and it works for healing! We think she probably suffered at the hands of the night watch nanny at the orphanage and has therefore been harboring big fears, poor baby. She has had a major breakthrough in these past 2 weeks and I am so thrilled for her.  Her tantrums have gone down from daily to less than once per week and I am proud to say that we are (finally) SO good at helping her through them. Getting all those fears out must be hard work. The healing power of tears and laughter!

Parenting Ali is one of the most wonderful and fulfilling life experiences I could ever imagine. We are so attached and in tune.  She is a truly incredible person!