Vitali Starts School & Grant's 1st Football Game

This week was an exciting week, especially for Grant and Vitali. Vitali started Mother's Day Out 2 days a week at a local church here. It was not as easy as I thought to find a place for him, but in the end we were thankful that so many doors closed, because it led us to the perfect place! Many schools werent equipped or said that they didnt have the staff for special need's, but finally (it actually was the last number on my list) I called the school he is going to and the director was wonderful and I knew right off that this was what we were waiting for and she immediately knew the exact class that would be perfect for him. The teachers are very compassionate and Vitali really likes them! His first day was Thursday and he was very proud to go! He is most proud of his car "masheena" as he calls it, lunch box. It is almost as big as he is, but he carries it around everywhere in the house, car, stores, etc... He also took his favorite mouse the first day..he calls, "Meeska" his only toy brought home from his orphanage. Here are a couple pics from the first day:

About to leave with the BIG lunchbox, "Meeska", and balloons from church the night before to play with in the car:

Pic with teachers:



Grant did have his first football game, which is played at the same stadium that the Prattville Lions play on, which was a big deal for him. He had a great time and even got some good blocks in and tackled the other team's guy running with the ball once. This age has been really cute to watch, especially since they look like all helmet :) Unfortunately, I did not get any good pics at the game because my camera quit working again while we were there. I will have to borrow Tiff's for the next game until we can get a new one. I did have this one pic of practice when running back after water break.

A few pics of Inna at gymnastics:
Striking a pose:



I keep forgetting to answer the question of when is their b-days from a while back:
Inna- Feb 28
Grant- June 28
Vitali- April 10

Also~ I have decided to add a new section to the end of each post in hopes that it may be helpful to other adoptive parents of things that we have found to work well for us or any good info that we have learned along the way in our adoption, through reading, other adoptive families, social worker, clinics, prayer :) If you are an adoptive parent and want to add any info that you think may be helpful or your experience with the subject, feel free. There is so much that we have learned, I am not sure where to even begin, but here we go:

Adoption "stuff" that we have learned along the way:
One issue that we were having when first arriving home is that there are 3 kids and 2 parents and how to juggle tucking them all in bed and prayer and bedtime story, and any wrapping up the day bedtime conversation (especially, when they all wanted mama to be the one to do it and there is one mama, haha). We were given some great advice by our social worker to try having an end of the night family time right before bedtime where we read a story, pray, and then talk about what will happen the next day. It was explained to us that talking about the events that will happen the next day is important when adopting older children who have been through any past trauma because there lives have been so unpredictable before now and with the fears that they face, they need to have the security of knowing some of what is planned for the next day, even if we share just one thing that is planned (if nothing major planned, could even be what we are having for dinner) (and that it involves that our new family will still be together :) Then, after the family time, we start tucking in one by one and the ones that arent being tucked first have a quiet time in their room reading a book, coloring, listening to music until mommy and daddy can get there. All of this has worked great for our family!

Post again soon!