Keep making progress

Today we went back to school. We'd been hoping that Daniel would be able to stay for the morning by himself, but that is not to be. He definitely likes having his mother or grandmother there to observe all he is learning at school. He learned to write the letter "P" and started saying "yes". The other children in his class were very excited he was speaking English now. They served pancakes as the snack and he didn't eat them at all....definitely have to work on the finer points of eating American style!

Maria continued to do well on her own at school - without anybody observing the sweet smiles. Every time I'd see her teacher I'd think there was a problem, but she'd say "no. She's doing GREAT!"

Grandma's been spending the night away getting ready to get back to her real life hopefully by the end of the week. Things are looking good if we'd just get the school situation going better for Daniel.

This morning Daniel and Maria learned what "hot" is - on the stove with some blistered fingers from a recently turned off burner. They'd been saying "hot hot hot", but I don't think they'd seen a kitchen before mine, so really didn't have a concept of cooking. Fortunately the blisters were minor and I think they understand "hot" now really. Maria's new word for the day is "pasta" - definitely likes that in her soup, but I sort of think she's speaking English because they never knew it in Russia. She is definitely a fan. Tonight they practiced their "helping at home" lesson in Sunday School by helping Momma make mashed potatoes and kool-aid (Maria). It was really funny having Maria think the Kool-Aid would be hot and then listening to her explain to Daniel that she'd made it! They really enjoyed the manual mashed potatoe process - mashing most of the potatoes themselves with the Pampered Chef masher (good product - thought I'd have to get out a mixer or something to do it).

Tonight it was fun hearing them explain to their Aunt Elena what all was going on. I'd ask her to explain Thanksgiving since they're studying it in school. Aunt Elena seems to think it sounds like they're doing good, but my favorite thing she said was that they didn't come to America on a boat like the pilgrim's - they came on a plane. Momma and I had a good laugh at the idea of bring these two over on a slow boat from Europe - we'd have definitely had considerable more gray or perhaps less hair - it was quite a two day journey, but I'll be listening to see how long it took the original crew on that boat at their preschool tomorrow - I definitely relate much better this Thanksgiving!