Mama vs Daddy

I'm always the one taking pictures of Artem and I'm sure he thinks I have a black Nikon camera permanently stuck to my face. We went out to dinner the other night with some friends and while we were waiting I thought I would switch it up a little and asked Randy to take a picture of Artem and me. See how well it went:

Take one: Artem picks his nose.


Take two: Artem picks mama's nose.


Take three: Look at the camera Artem.

Take four: FINALLY!

Mama takes the camera again and what a surprise, I get a great shot of the two of them first try. Why can't Artem do this for me??

All By Noon

This morning I:

*walked my 2.5 miles with Artem and Bella
*showered
*made breakfast
*went to the spa and had a facial (yummm!!)
*removed a dead rabbit from the backyard.

You read that correctly. Artem and I kissed Randy goodbye as he left for work and went out back to play. I was pulling weeds and discovered a dead rabbit. Why does this stuff always happen two minutes after the man of house leaves for the day? Last week I had to remove a dead rat from the front yard that had been severed in half, this week a dead rabbit. I'm worried what I'm going to find next week.

Valentine Party

Artem went to his first Valentine party today. I don't think he really understood the whole concept, he just knew he had to put his "choo choo" cards (Thomas the Train), bubbles, and ring pops into each bag for his friends. I think a couple bags got some bonus bubbles and some got shorted, but it was a good try on Artem's part.

Artem spent approximately 5 seconds constructing his bag. He's really not into arts and crafts.

Artem doesn't eat candy and might have one or two cookies in a week so when he looked over the two tables full of brownies, candy, and cookies, he just froze...what to chose? He ended up taking one cookie, and one white chocolate covered pretzel while mama ate three Rice Krispee treats. I love those things!

Shoving in the pretzel.

Artem waited patiently for the story to be read. He's very serious when it comes to story time and will sit still through the longest stories.


Mama's little Valentine.

This afternoon Artem was playing outside with Bella when he started yelling my name. I went out back to see what the problem was and found Artem running around the backyard with his shirt pulled over his head. He must get this from his father. :)

Cookies and Dora

Just a helpful public service announcement...You cannot make chocolate chip cookies in the toaster oven. I'd like to deny the fact that I was too lazy to heat the oven and thought I could put a few cookies into the toaster oven, but I can't. After letting Artem place the pre-cut cookie squares (homemade was just a bridge too far) on the tray and setting the toaster oven to the proper temperature, I placed the cookies in the toaster oven and Artem and I stood watching. But nothing happened. They didn't rise or spread out, well one did, and they turned a strange shade of brown. They won't grace the pages of a food magazine but they tasted a lot better than they looked. Lesson learned, next time use the oven.

Artem has never shown an interest in TV. I put Sesame Street on a few times to see if he would watch, but he doesn't want anything to do with it. Tonight he came up to me and asked, "Dora TV?" and patted the recliner. I turned Dora on the TV and he climbed up and put the blanket on his lap. I got him settled in and went to do the dishes and when I returned a few minutes later to take his picture, he didn't even notice me. Apparently stuffed puppets aren't his thing, but Dora...Dora's got him wrapped around her little finger.

Who Knew??

The weather has been fairly nice around here this past week and Artem and I have taken advantage of it by spending our afternoons hanging out in the backyard, we even had a picnic lunch one day. Normally Artem will not leave my side while we are in the house and has returned to being Velcro boy and wants me to entertain him, but this past week he's getting a little braver and playing out back with Bella. I leave the back door open and stay in the kitchen area working while he comes to the back door every minute or so to yell my name and make sure I'm still here.

Artem is not the kind of boy to jump off furniture or run willy-nilly into a new situation. He's pretty reserved and has to check things out first before he tries something. Each day he's getting a little braver and tries something a little different. He's no longer in the "baby" swing and is trying to master the big boy swing on his bottom and sometimes his stomach. He's had a busted lip here or there and fallen off a few times, but he doesn't give up.

He's also figured out how to climb his ropes and can scale them in no time. He still won't jump off the side and he won't go back down the ropes, but I did catch him trying to put Bella's foot on the ropes the other day; apparently he thinks Bella is ready for the ropes as well.

Artem mastered the slide a long time ago and the other day I was taking pictures of him, big surprise, and saw him trying to go head first down the slide. He got ready to go and called my name so I would watch and as soon as I started to count down for him to slide down, he changed his mind and if he could say it, I know he'd be yelling, "Abort, Abort, Mission No Go!"

I'm in no hurry for him to go head first down the slide but that's a story for another day.

So after taking several hundred pictures, no exaggeration, I uploaded them to my laptop and was looking through them and noticed something I hadn't seen before....knee caps...Artem has knees!! Who knew? When we met Artem he was 24.75 inches tall and now he's over 35 inches tall. He's always been so short and his shorts hung down to the middle of his calves, more like man-pri's rather than shorts. But finally his shorts are actually shorts and it looks like he's ready to graduate from 18-24 month shorts and into 2T. My baby is growing up!

Man-pri's

Knee caps!!

One Year Ago Today

~One year ago today we sat waiting in a small room to meet with the Ministry of Education (MOE) representative that would give us our referral.

~One year ago we saw Artem's black and white picture passed to us across the table and listened to the MOE rep tell us Artem's history.

~One year ago we made the two and a half hour drive to Fryazino, a city we had never heard of, let alone spell, to meet a child that we could potentially call our son.

~One year ago we walked up to the orphanage and saw little faces pressed up against the windows looking hopeful at us that we might be coming for them.

~One year ago we walked into a Russian orphanage and were surprised by the quiet calm the building had, as opposed to the noise and chaos we thought we'd hear.

~One year ago we sat in an office with the orphanage director listening to her read line-by-line through Artem's medical and social history while our translator tried to explain in English what all the scary sounding medical diagnosis meant.

~One year ago today I stopped breathing as we waited for the director to bring Artem into the room.

~One year ago a little boy in pink tights and green leiderhosen was brought into the office and for the first time I knew what it felt like for my heart to no longer be mine; for the child that was born in my heart was placed into my arms that day.

~One year ago today I cried tears of happiness after meeing Artem and seeing how perfect he was. All I could do was cry and kiss him over and over again and tell the orphanage director, "Thank you, he's so beautiful, thank you, thank you."

~One year ago we saw what our family would look like and understood why all the years spent trying to have a baby would prove futile despite the doctor's best efforts; because a little boy in a snow covered orphanage on the other side of the world was waiting for us.

~One year later a loving, laughing, silly, two year old fills our home with laughter and makes us wonder what life was like before we met him.

~One year later Artem has grown from the 24.75 inch baby we met in Russia to a 35 inch jumping, running, climbing, swinging, healthy-as-a-horse toddler.

~One year later we constantly ask ourselves, "Why us, what did we do to deserve Artem?" because we truly feel like we are the luckiest people in the world that won the ultimate jackpot; a healthy, happy, little boy who is obsessed with "choo choos", tractors, and currently the Chicken Dance.

It's more than we ever dreamed it could be and it all happened, one year ago today.