Late March

The kids are in school three whole weeks and bang-oooh, its spring break! These kids must be thinking this is a great place!

Well, not to let them backslide too much, Mama had a plan. Sasha was off to soccer day camp run by DC Parks & Recreation. The girls went off to Camp Masquerade, offered by the Girl Scouts. Here's their camp pictures:



We have been out exploring the different parks and playgrounds around town. Here they defy gravity in a kool rope jungle gym at Garfield park in S.E. DC.

Between playgrounds with their swing addiction. "Papa,Papa, one more.. one more.. one more (push)". 
Two of the upsides of orphanage life we see for these kids today:

One is a well-developed ability to share things. Conversely the concept of private property is a little underdeveloped.

Number two is, what I call the Timex effect – they take a licking and keep on ticking. I have seen Tanya fall off a swing and land flat on her back, after two and half tears she was right back in the saddle and giving her very chagrined and relieved Papa the "one more ...." routine.

Tanya and our intrepid friend Clinton, in a timed heat as Sasha cheers them on:
The day at the races. We took all three to a little 1/8 of a mile track at the Rec center to break in their new-to-the-kids bikes and training wheels. It was like an hour-and-a-half of amateur night at the NASCAR track. More spills and thrills than the Wide World of Sports opening credits. Each time Christina crashed, she would quickly remount while crying for another 20 meters of progress. After I adjusted the training wheels her success rate began to improve. At the end, Sasha is about to move on to unassisted crashing and I think the girls are well on their way to control peddling and braking (two out of three at a time).

Masha helped Tanya with this banana, raisin and pretzel caterpillar thing, that was made from a kids cook book Heidi brought home. The kids are getting more and more adventurous in dining, but they are a long way from curry and jalapeños. Most recently they made the jump, a blind leap of faith you might say, and tried a hot fudge Sunday. Wow, what a bunch of risk takers! 

They have all been making steady progress on schedules and rituals. Every night used to be a test of wills, and now it is mostly organized and peaceful(er). At first we had been trying to get them all in bed at the same time. This turned into a double bunk bed jungle gym time for three hours until we went to bed in disgust.

Older and wiser:
Our first trick was to stagger them into bed at 30-minute intervals and now add in picture books to let them unwind. This is the 80% solution but a whole lot better than where we started.

We had been warned that the kids will cycle into and out of moods. Yesterday, the girls came out of day camp in a rare mood. They drove Masha and I out of the library because of their active resistance. Because we could feel an ugly mood coming on, we headed for the car. Then last night, Christina and I had a little face-off over bedtime. The other kids stayed in bed (another big improvement over past chaos) as she and I went down stairs to settle it.

She is a very strong and persistent adversary, but with calm restraint we sat on the couch. She would try to get up, or bite or twist away and I would hold on. At a point we had a break through, but it made for a very long evening. It is really evident to us that she is carrying a tremendous amount of rage and frustration in that little brain of hers. Today she was off to camp for the last day festivities.

This weekend is the kite festival, the opening event of the cherry blossom festival. Two play dates, church, and of course two soccer practices for the girls to go to.

Jerry reports that Maxim is doing great, reporting 1 1/2's and 10 lbs. We look forward to his testing and lab results.

Thank you all for the kind words and deeds of support. All I can say that opening our heats and home to these kids has changed us in ways we could never have imagined.

As always, in his name,

Papa Dog